by Cora Carmack
It’s the college inquisition, and it’s enough to make any recent graduate vow never to visit home again. Unfortunately for me . . . I don’t have that option.
One year. Two, tops. Then I’m getting out of here. I have to.
I shoot Mrs. Dunlap at the piano a desperate look, not just because I want her to speed up, but also because she’s one of the few people in this building that I actually want to talk to. In addition to playing the piano during the service and teaching the second-grade Sunday school class, she’s been my dance instructor since Dad and I moved here four and a half years ago.
The youth minister steps up to the pulpit once more, and people begin making their way back to their seats. I let out a sigh of relief when he tells us to bow our heads.
I try to listen, but I zone out not long after “Dear Heavenly Father.”
There’s too much quiet in prayers, too much time for my mind to wander. I think about how miserable it was to roll out of bed this morning and watch Stell go right on snoozing while I struggled to kick-start my day. Then I feel guilty for thinking I’d rather be sleeping during church . . . during a prayer, no less. But that only makes me think about the other things I feel guilty for . . . like the seriously hot stranger-danger make-out session I had two nights ago. Then I chastise myself over feeling guilty about something that in the grand scheme of things isn’t really that bad. But then the minister says, “Amen,” and I concede that while kissing someone isn’t bad, thinking about it when I’m supposed to be communing with the big guy upstairs probably isn’t winning me any bonus points.
We stand to sing a hymn, and even though the words are written up on a big screen hanging above the pulpit, I grab a hymnal so that I’ve got something to do with my hands. I follow along in the book, but don’t sing myself. I sound like a hyena on my good days (a hyena in the jaws of a lion on my bad days), and I’m too self-conscious that other people will hear me.
I hear Carson calling me a daredevil, and God, how wrong he was. If I were a daredevil, I would have said screw Dad and auditioned for real dance programs instead of caving to what he thought was best (and what his money provided). I would have found a way to make it all work—the auditioning and the moving and the money. That’s what daredevils do. I also wouldn’t have run off like a timid preteen when Stella caught us together. As if that weren’t pathetic enough, I’d then lied to Stella and told her that maybe I’d had a few drinks after all.
Because, of course, that was the only explanation for me doing something fun and out of character like actually hooking up with a guy.
A guy who didn’t answer either of the texts I sent him yesterday. Clearly he’d gotten over the fascination he’d had with me on Friday night. Maybe he’d been drunk.
I don’t know if I always hate myself this much and I never think about it, or if it’s a product of the reflection that’s inherent in church and religion and being wildly unsuccessful at growing up. Feeling like everyone around me can see the failure written across my forehead certainly doesn’t help either.
I sigh, and when Dad shifts next to me I catch him looking at me from the corner of his eye. I can’t tell if he’s disappointed or worried or annoyed.
Dad really only has two faces: normal and pissed.
And football. Football kind of gets its own expression, though it overlaps with pissed a lot.
Eventually, we return our hymnals to their holding places and take a seat for the sermon. I’ve given up the pretense of paying attention, choosing instead to doodle little dancers in the margins of the church bulletin.
The preacher calls all the little kids up to the front, where he does a short little minisermon for the kids before sending them out for children’s church. It’s usually a parallel for the more complex message he’ll give the rest of us. And I find myself thinking that church is like my kid’s sermon . . . it parallels my life as a whole. I show up, but I’m not in it. I go through the motions, but my mind wanders elsewhere. I dress and behave in the ways I know won’t get me in trouble. I get by. I bide my time waiting for the moment when it all ends.
But life isn’t church. It isn’t one hour during one day in the week. It’s everything, and I’m wasting it.
By the time the service ends half an hour later, I’m awash with emotions, anger and guilt and bitterness swallowing up whatever hope I manage to conjure. As soon as the benediction ends, I slip past Dad before he stands, mutter, “Be right back,” and flee before he’s inundated. As I walk away I hear Mrs. Simmons, whose daughter I went to school with, say, “You know, our youngest is shaping up to be quite the receiver. He’s just in eighth grade, but I’m sure he’ll make varsity as a freshman. Maybe you’ll be seeing him at Rusk in a few years.”
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. In Texas, everyone is a wannabe coach. Levi used to have strangers hand him plays they’d drawn up “just in case he wanted to try something new.” I pass Levi’s parents gathering their things from the second row, where they’ve sat for as long as I’ve known them. I smile politely and nod as I go.
It’s not their fault their son is a jerk.
Levi stopped coming to church not long after he started college. I should feel guilty over how glad that made me, but I don’t. Church always feels a little bit like I’m putting on a show, but with him here it was ten times worse. If I looked at him too much, of course I was still madly in love with him. But if I didn’t look at him at all, I was madly in love (and heartbroken). It was like living under a microscope.
Breakups are a careful and exhausting dance.
That’s exactly what I need. Dance. It clears my mind better than anything else. I stand by the raised little nook that houses the piano and wait for Mrs. Dunlap to finish the postlude. She must feel me there, because she looks away from her sheet music and gives me an overdramatic smile. She presses the keys with a bit more flourish for my benefit, and I lean against the wall humming beneath my breath.
She holds on to the last chords for a long moment, and they ring out in chorus with the organ before the song ends and only the chattering conversations across the hall are left.
“Let me guess.” Mrs. D turns on her bench to look at me. “You want the studio?”
“How’d you know?”
She snorts. “Because it’s all you want. Always has been.”
I know that. And she knows it. Dad still insists I’ll want other things if I give them a try. After living in a house for eighteen years with me, you’d think he would know me better than the lady who teaches my dance class a few times a week.
“You have a key,” Mrs. Dunlap says. “No reason to drag yourself all the way up here to see little old me.”
She gave me a key when I started teaching classes to the younger kids, but I still felt bad about using it without her permission.
“You’re not old.”
She is. The woman is nearly seventy, but she doesn’t look it. She’s lithe and slender, and if she’d dye her gray hair, she could probably pass for fifty, if not younger.
“Oh pish. You don’t need to suck up to me, child.”
I step up on the platform and place a quick kiss on her cheek. “Learn to take a compliment, Mrs. D.”
I turn to go, and she calls out, “Says the girl who never thinks anything is good enough.”
I blow her a kiss and call back my thanks instead of saying the thought that pops into my head.
Good is never good enough.
One of Dad’s mottos. He would frequently tack on, “Good may win games, but great wins titles.”
As I walk back toward him, he manages to peel himself away from the leeches, I mean, parents surrounding him.
He joins me in the aisle, and we head for the door together.
“Lunch?” he grunts.
I shake my head. “Mrs. Dunlap is going to let me use the studio for a while. I’ll just grab something fast after.”
“Sure?”
I nod. “Yep.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
We don’t say another word until we’re outside, and I press the button to unlock my car.
“Drive safe,” he says, and then climbs into his own truck.
I turn the key in the ignition and mutter, “Good talking to you, Dad.”
It takes me ten minutes to get to the studio, a nondescript storefront in a strip mall. Not exactly the height of culture, but it’s about all this town has to offer. And it’s been good to me. I’m careful to lock the door behind me and keep the lights off in the front so no one thinks we’re open. I choose the larger of the two studios and push open the door.
Breathing deep, I take in that indescribable smell of the studio. Sweat. Feet. Rosin wood from the barre. You’d think the smell would be unpleasant, but it’s not. It’s home.
Dance had started as a babysitting service while Dad had practice. He enrolled me in everything from piano lessons to Little League softball, so that I was occupied while he did his thing. I’m willing to bet he regrets that first dance class he dumped me in all those years ago.
I switch on the light and drop my bag by the door. Slipping off my street shoes, I dig out my lyrical sandals, which Mrs. Dunlap always calls dance paws. They leave my toes free and wrap just under the pad of my foot, giving me a better surface to spin and slide, but still allowing me the flexibility of being almost barefoot.
I pad over to the stereo system, the floor cold against my toes. I press play on the CD that’s already in there, and start skipping through the songs, waiting for something to speak to me. I flip past a few hip-hop and pop songs, followed by classical music (only in Mrs. D’s dance class would she have Mozart following up “Lady Marmalade”).
I flip through about a dozen songs, each time more and more frustrated with a feeling I can’t quite name. It’s not that I’m angry, though it’s close. Sad doesn’t quite fit either, even though I can feel hints of that dripping from the edges of whatever it is that’s eating at me.
Finally, a song makes me pause. Slow and simple, it starts with a long, low chord and a soft, frenetic beat building beneath. It reminds me of my morning spent at church. Serene on the outside, roiling in the depths.
A voice, smooth and sweet, rings out.
I’m wasted, losing time. I’m a foolish, fragile spine.
Yeah. That sounded like it had enough self-loathing in it to do the trick.
I start the song over and make my way to the center of the floor.
I let the music move me slowly at first, gentle swaying. Then right before the words begin, I burst into movement. I don’t bother dancing a routine I already know. There’s no challenge in that. It’s a battle already won, a feeling already mapped and conquered. No . . . that’s not how I like to dance, not like my father plays football with a book of mastered plays, each carefully designed with no room for mistakes. I dance the way musicians play jazz, with improvisation and soul.
It means I always dance alone. Group and coupled dances don’t exactly leave much room to play and change as you go along. I’m fine with that, though. I’ve gotten quite used to being alone. I thrive that way.
I move how the song tells me, cobbling together a series of steps on the fly. Some of them are familiar, stolen from previous routines, while some leap into existence of their own accord, rustling through my body before my mind even bothers to make sense of what my body is doing.
I make mistakes. I build to a move that doesn’t match with the song. Sometimes I stand there for a few seconds, not sure what to do next, but miraculously . . . it works with the hesitation of the song, of the lyrics. Because sometimes in life, you just have to stand there and do nothing. Overwhelmed by all the versions of ourselves that exist in our minds—who we want to be, who we should be, who we’re not, and who we are—it’s a jungle that can ensnare your feet and confuse your eyes. But sometimes if you stand still, all those things will snap back into place like a rubber band. And if you can get past the sting, you can keep moving, not quite whole, but held together for the moment.
That’s what the dance becomes for me. All the versions of myself. I move toward one corner, playing the perfect daughter, dancing with all the moments I’ve spent in bleachers burning behind my eyelids. Then I drag myself back to center. I take off toward the opposite corner. I throw myself into the highest leap I can manage, drawing on all the most complex combinations I know. That’s the me that doesn’t hesitate or question. That’s the me that dreams. But then mournfully, I pull myself back to center. I keep dancing—the me that placates Stella in order to keep her while simultaneously burning with jealousy, the me that strives to be better than everyone else at dance and school and everything within my control, the me without a mom, that’s too afraid to be feminine or emotional, too afraid I won’t know how or worse that I will and the emotion will consume me, the me that jumped off a balcony and kissed a boy I barely knew just so he’d call me a daredevil and I could pretend for a moment that he spoke the truth. I cover every inch of the studio, and when I drag myself back to the center of the room for the final time, it’s on my hands and knees, slicked with sweat, my version of tears.
I lie flat on my back as the stereo plays “Meet Virginia.” It’s one of Mrs. D’s favorites to use in warm-ups, and it’s already well into the middle of the song.
Pulls her hair back as she screams,
“I don’t really wanna live this life.”
I didn’t notice as I danced when the music switched, but I close my eyes and breathe, enjoying the familiarity of the song as it pulls me home, drags me back to center.
Back to me.
I don’t know that dancing fixes anything. I don’t feel magically happy because of it. My problems don’t disappear when the music ends. But I understand life better when I dance, and understanding is half the fight of surviving.
Chapter 7
Carson
My Monday begins bright and early with a six A.M. workout. I manage to make it through most of the morning without picking up my phone. Almost to lunch. That’s better than yesterday.
I’m sitting in my environmental science class, but I gave up taking notes three minutes ago, and instead I’m staring at my old text messages, wishing I could reply to the texts Dallas sent me Saturday.
Getting to know her had seemed harmless on Friday, but when I woke up the next day and skipped my usual morning run to wait around until it was an acceptable hour to text her . . . that’s when I realized what a monumentally bad idea contacting her again was.
I’d dragged myself out of the apartment for a run a few hours later than normal, when the sun was already breaking across the sky. As I mourned the cooler morning temperatures I usually had, I vowed that I wouldn’t contact her.
It was just a party hookup. I needed to leave it at that.
And yet here I am, ignoring a lecture in favor of looking at her last text.
How’s that list coming?
Bad. Very bad. Me, that is. Not the list. My list was still growing despite that vow I made on Saturday. How am I supposed to pay attention to a lecture over sustainability when my mind is full of all the mental images that text conjures?
I’d signed up for this environmental class because it was supposedly one of the easiest science credits, but it wouldn’t be a breeze if I didn’t pay attention at all. For me, especially. Nothing about school came easily to me.
But that text. I bite back a groan at the thought of her somewhere, maybe on her bed in her dorm, making a list of her own, contemplating the things she wants to do with me. It is entirely possible her list consists of things like going to dinner or a movie or for a romantic walk.
But there is also the possibility her list is a little more focused. A little more like mine, and if I’m not careful people are going to think I’m really passionate about the environment.
As soon as the professor dismisses us, I’m on my feet and heading for the door, and I know I’m gonna have to borrow someone else’s notes to catch up on
what I missed today. Not a great way to start out the semester.
A run. That should help. I have a two-hour break for lunch on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, enough to give me time to eat and join at least part of the one-o’clock workout if I want. I don’t have to since I do the morning one, but it pays to put in the extra time, especially while the coaches are around to see you. Or that’s what I keep telling myself anyway. If I swing by the student center and grab a couple wraps to go, that will give me even more time.
That’s the plan, until I walk out of the environmental science and geology building at the same time that Dallas is walking in.
I grind to a halt in the doorway, and my grip is so hard on the doorknob, I’m surprised I don’t snap it off.
She speaks first.
“Hey.”
I clear my throat. It’s a sign of weakness, but I can’t help it. Ignoring her text message is one thing . . . Ignoring her in person isn’t something I can (or want) to do.
“Hey.” It comes out quietly, so low that I don’t even know if she heard me.
“Move, douche-bag! You’re blocking the door.”
I step out of the way, but that brings me closer to Dallas. She moves too, letting the line of people behind me exit first.
I stand there in silence for a few moments, fighting the urge to look at her, and I feel like such a fucking coward.
“Listen, I’m sorry I—”
She cuts me off. “ Remember that time you promised not to be a tool? You already screwed that up, but keep that promise in mind while you formulate whatever excuse you’re making up right now.”
Ouch. “I deserve that.”
It occurs to me in that moment that whatever reasons I have for staying away from her aren’t as good as the reasons for why I want to be around her. I like her. I need people in my life to tell it to me straight. I need a friend. Friends, really, but I’ve got to start somewhere. Life is a balance, and mine tends to fall heavily toward work with too little play. And of all the people I’ve met, she’s the only one I’ve met that could actually be that kind of friend.