Rules for 50/50 Chances

by Kate McGovern

  He puts his hand on my waist, sending a now-familiar shock wave through my spine. “We’re allowed to talk about this stuff, you know. Race, et cetera. Et al. So on and so forth.”

  “I know we’re ‘allowed.’” I roll my eyes. “But it’s like—I don’t know. I don’t even think of you as black.”

  Caleb’s laugh bounces off the high ceilings of the gallery, so loud that I’m sure people all over the museum can hear him.

  “Why is that funny?” I say.

  He pulls himself together and takes my face in his hands. “Sorry, sorry. I’m not laughing at you—really I’m not.”

  “Except you are, clearly.” I pull away from him.

  “No—HD—really. It’s just, how do you see me, then?”

  I look around the gallery to make sure we’re still alone. “You’re just—you. Caleb. Do you look at me all the time and think, ‘Gee, there goes that half-Jewish white girl again’?”

  The bemused look on his face is bugging me. Suddenly I feel like the most ignorant person on the planet.

  “No, but—HD,” he says. “If you don’t see me as black, maybe you’re not seeing me as me. Because I am black.”

  “I know that, obviously. I didn’t mean … We shouldn’t be having this conversation.” I’m officially mortified. But I’m just being honest. I guess I don’t think of Caleb as being so connected to those struggles in his grandfather’s paintings. It’s not the same as the old days, now. His family is way richer than mine—and practically everyone I know. And anyway, we live in a place where people just don’t think like that anymore. But now I feel like a total jackass for saying anything.

  He takes my hands. “It’s okay, HD. I get what you’re saying. What I’m saying is, we still don’t live in a world where race doesn’t matter. This”—he points to the skin on the back of one of his hands—“still affects the way people see me. It just does.”

  I force myself to look up into his face, in spite of my complete humiliation. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be … an idiot about it.”

  “You’re not an idiot, HD. You’re just white. Can’t be helped.” Then he cracks up laughing all over again. I shove him.

  “But listen, HD,” he says, calming down. “Look. At the end of the day, I wouldn’t want to live in a world that doesn’t see race. I want to live in a world where people aren’t disadvantaged on account of race, but that’s different. I like being a black dude, okay? And I’m proud of where I come from. That’s why I brought you to see my grandfather’s paintings.”

  We stand there for another minute or two quietly. I wonder if this feeling of mortification will ever dissipate from my chest. Finally Caleb nudges my shoulder with his. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” I say back.

  Then he turns me around to face him and leans toward me slowly, his eyes on my mouth. I close mine for a moment, waiting, and then feel his lips brush mine. As we kiss, he takes my hand and rubs his thumb lightly over mine. My whole body goes calm. I see stars behind my eyelids.

  After a minute or ten—I can’t tell the difference—we hear the sound of a throat being cleared and pull apart quickly. It’s Randall. He gives us a sly smile as he passes by. I catch Caleb’s eye; I must be blushing, I can feel the heat in my ears.

  “Shall we?” he whispers. As we head down the stairs, he threads his hand through mine and grips it firmly—like he won’t let me run away, even if I want to.

  Fourteen

  On Tuesday night, Studio D is quiet, lights off, as I know it will be at this hour. My pointe class just finished upstairs and it’s the last class of the evening. I managed to slip away before Eloise could nab me to walk to the train station with her.

  I don’t even bother turning on the overhead lamps. D is the smallest and dankest of the studios, down in the basement, but it doesn’t matter. I let the light from the street lamps outside filter in through the narrow windows that run along the top of the walls. The barre is solid under my hand, as always, and it makes me feel steady. I press up onto my toes, watching myself in the slightly warped mirror. I’m warmed up already from class—there’s really no need to stretch, but I do anyway. I put one leg up on the barre and stretch out over it. Then I switch sides and stretch the other leg. I do a few deep pliés with my supporting leg and drape my upper body across my lower body, as my hand comes to its resting place on my foot. Being able to fold myself in half is pretty much second nature to me at this point—that’s what happens when you start ballet so young that your body never even has a chance to stiffen up.

  I don’t normally stick around after class like this. But sometimes I come here for the alone time in the studio. Sometimes I just need to be in the half-lit room, just me and the music and the hardwood floor and the ability to control everything, if only for a moment.

  I put my earbuds in and do the combination we just learned in class, pausing at the triple pirouette / triple fouetté combination that gave me trouble in class today. Thirty-two fouetté turns performed consecutively is considered a movement in classical ballet. Fouetté means whipped. It’s a showstopper, the turn audiences love—the dancer moving from a flat foot to pointe as the other leg extends at a ninety-degree angle and whips around, turning and turning.

  I do six. Then another six. Then another six. My heart is pounding out of my chest. Ballet isn’t something you think about as you’re doing it, not for me, anyway, not anymore. When I was younger I used to visualize the movements as I was doing them, the way Miss Julia or the other instructors would tell us to. But as I got older, it just became normal, like my body performed the movements without any help from my brain.

  Lately, though, I’ve been thinking about it again. I think one step ahead: I’m going to rise up on my toes, I’m going to extend one leg toward the ceiling. And then less than a split second later, I do. I always seem to be just a little outside myself.

  “Rose?”

  I jump. I didn’t hear the door open. The lights flicker on; it’s Miss Julia. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I figured you’d be in here.”

  “Sorry. Do you need the space?” I take my earbuds out and start gathering my bags and jacket from the corner.

  “No, it’s okay. I just wanted to catch you before you head home. Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  I grab my stuff and follow her into her tiny, cluttered office down the hall. She flicks off the NPR interview that’s blaring from the old desktop computer.

  “So, how are things?”

  I shrug. “Fine. Okay.”

  “College applications? They’re going all right?” I nod. By which I mean, I’ve filled out my name in the online common application that’s due at the end of the month.

  “Good,” Miss Julia says. “Good. Look, I wanted to … put something on your radar.” She says it slow, like she doesn’t want to scare me, and my palms feel clammy.

  “You know, obviously, about the BFA program at The Pacific Coast College of the Arts?”

  “Of course, yeah. It’s the best.”

  She takes a sip of tea from a heavy purple mug. The mug looks homemade, like one of her kids made it in a ceramics workshop at camp or something. “Yes. Exactly. It’s one of the few combined ballet BFA/apprenticeship programs in the country, and obviously it’s connected to the Ballet of the Pacific Coast, which is a fantastic company. It’s basically the Harvard of ballet.”

  I know all this information already. I’ve been over and over it, but I just can’t see myself—or my family—making the sacrifices necessary to make it happen.

  “Anyway, they have a scholarship program, a full ride, for very promising dancers,” she goes on. “It’s called the Grierson Scholarship. Don’t be mad at me—I know you’ve been looking at schools closer to home—but I spoke with their director of admissions about you, and they’ve asked to see a tape of you. They think you sound like a strong candidate.”

  Miss Julia forges ahead while I stammer to pull some coherent words together.

  �
��I know what you’re going to say—it’s too far from home. I know. Look. I just want you to have all your options open. I think you should send a video. You can tape it here in the studio. I was thinking of your Dewdrop…”

  My Dewdrop solo from The Nutcracker, the one Caleb never saw. It’s a beautiful solo, and I know I’m capable of dancing it well … at least, I was when I thought Caleb was in the audience.

  Several beats go by while I’m still stunned. Miss Julia smiles at me, her forehead crinkling between her eyes. “So? What do you think?”

  “Thank you, really. I’m so—I don’t really know what to say.” That’s the truth. It’s a huge opportunity. So huge that I’m pretty sure I wish I didn’t have it. “I think I just need … to think about it.”

  “But you’ll let me know? They need to see a tape in the next few weeks. There are in-person auditions at the beginning of April, but they’ll do invites to those based on the tapes.”

  “In person? In San Francisco?”

  “Yup. I know it’s far, but I can talk to your dad if you want.” She leans in conspiratorially. “Rose, I’m not recommending any of the other girls for this scholarship.”

  “What about Eloise? Or Georgia?” I ask.

  Miss Julia shakes her head. “They both have plenty of options for next year. I want this scholarship for you. You deserve it. Give it some thought.”

  “I will, promise. Thank you, again. This is amazing.”

  “The Grierson is a big deal,” she says, looking mighty pleased with herself. “Don’t take this lightly.” She grins at me, perky as ever, and pats my knee. “All right, get out of here.”

  * * *

  I rush out of the studio and toward the train. While my stomach does fouettés and pirouettes of its own, I keep replaying the conversation in my head. And there’s really only one person I want to discuss this with.

  I text him. “Alert: High-priority convo. Meet up tomorrow?” Caleb writes back right away, of course, with a string of question marks.

  “Will explain. Meet me at Angelo’s at lunch?” Barrow kids are allowed to go wherever they want for lunch as long as they’re back in time for class, so I know he can come over to Broadway, to one of the handful of off-campus lunch spots Roosevelt kids are allowed to frequent during school hours.

  “See you at noon,” he writes back. I rest my head against the window of the subway car. A full ride to PCCA. An apprenticeship with the BPC. On the other side of the country.

  * * *

  Angelo’s Pizza is the kind of hangout that doesn’t appear to have changed at all since the ’80s or maybe earlier, with scuffed green linoleum tiles and a dusty Pepsi machine. It’s almost disappointing when your Pepsi doesn’t come out with a vintage logo on the can.

  I sit at a back table, to avoid the possibility that Lena will walk by the window and realize that I totally lied to her about where I was going when I rushed off after English. Of course I’ll tell Lena about this, of course I want her opinion, but for some reason, I just don’t want it yet. I think I can only handle talking to one person about this situation at the moment, and that person is Caleb.

  Unfortunately, he’s late. I pick at my slice of cheese while I wait for him to show up, but by twelve fifteen, I’m starting to get irritated. Finally he rushes in, full of apologies.

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he exclaims, wending his way through the crowd of my classmates in line for slices and dumping his stuff on the grimy table. “Really, we had to meet here for this serious conversation?” He looks around, incredulous.

  “Shut up, I love this place. You’re late, no complaining.”

  “Sorry. What’s up?” he says as he catches his breath. His nose and cheeks are a little chapped from the wind, and a cold breeze wafts off of him as he sits down.

  Caleb listens intently while I go through my conversation with Miss Julia, leaning forward when I get to the part about the admissions director wanting to see a tape of me. He doesn’t interrupt, but when I finally come to my conclusion—which is, hello, what should I do?—he breaks into a triumphant grin.

  “HD, this is amazing! Do you even get that? See, I knew you were an incredible dancer, although as you have pointed out numerous times, I have not yet had the pleasure of watching you dance.”

  “Because you were a no-show at The Nutcracker,” I interject—never missing an opportunity to make him feel guilty about that.

  “Yes, yes, because I’m an asshole! But now I’m obviously going to see you perform with the Ballet of the Pacific Coast. You have to go to the audition.”

  This kind of over-the-top exuberance is what I expect of Lena, not Caleb. From Caleb, I want measured, balanced debate. I want him to see both sides. I reach across the table and grab his madly gesticulating hands.

  “Listen, calm yourself. First of all, making a tape is not even getting an audition, and getting an audition is not the same as getting in to the program. So slow down.”

  “Fine, fine, fine—details! You’re so in.”

  In a burst of frustration that I can’t control, I grab my Pepsi can and slam it down once on the table.

  “Hey,” Caleb says. “What’s your problem?”

  It annoys me to even have to explain this to him. He should know. “My problem is that this program is on the other side of the freakin’ country! It’s so far away, and it’s not exactly cheap to get there, and the scholarship’s not going to cover travel, and what am I supposed to do? Ask my dad to either let me disappear for many months at a time and barely see my mom at all, or shell out thousands of bucks to fly me back and forth all the time?”

  “Hey, hey.” Caleb rubs my arm and then squeezes my hand. “Hey. Calm down.”

  Just hearing him calm down, like he’s finally hearing me, makes my eyes prick with hot tears. “I’m just not sure I should even try for this. What if I get in?”

  Caleb studies me for a minute. “What if you get in? You will be able to pursue the thing you love? Is that so heinous?”

  I laugh a little, in spite of my efforts not to. “I guess it wouldn’t be ‘heinous,’ no.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “I got you a slice,” I say, shoving the almost-cold pizza across the table. It doesn’t look very appetizing, but he doesn’t hesitate for a moment before taking a big bite. A little trail of grease descends down his wrist and onto the paper plate.

  “Okay, so it’s not heinous,” I say finally. “But it is far away. Would you go that far from your mom and the girls?”

  He takes what seems like an unnecessarily long time consuming his mouthful of pizza before responding. “I don’t know.”

  “See?” I start methodically shredding a half-grease-stained paper napkin.

  “Yeah, but, HD, I don’t know because the opportunity isn’t in front of me right now. Something that would change my life? An art program across the country and a chance to go for free and jump-start my career? I’m pretty sure my mom would kill me if I didn’t go.”

  “Well, you’re a lucky guy.”

  Caleb sighs heavily. “This is kind of silly.”

  “What’s silly?” All of a sudden I resent his know-it-all tone.

  “It’s silly that we’re having this conversation. Why is this some big, indecisive thing? There’s no way this is really about going far away from your mother, is it? You always say how much she loves dance. She’d want you to do this. So what’s your real problem?”

  The greasy napkin scatters across the table, torn in approximately a thousand tiny specks of paper. I wipe them into a pile in front of me, then look up at him. There’s a pizza crumb stuck to the corner of his lip, but I have no urge to lean over and kiss it off him.

  He’s right, it’s not just the distance. My mother does love ballet—she’d probably be happier than my dad if I went to San Francisco, if I spent the next four years dancing, so unlike what she’s able to do now. So it’s not really that. It’s the whole thing. I think when you’re maybe on the precipice of
a long, ugly, early death, the “What are you going to do with your life?” dilemma that annoys the average high school senior is a little, shall we say, heightened. Is that so hard to imagine? I don’t want Caleb to tell me what to do. I just want him to say that he understands why I don’t know what to do.

  “I’m freaked out,” I say.

  “When are you not going to be freaked out?” he says. “Rose—it’s just—why do you make things so difficult for yourself? This is easy. It’s a great opportunity. A lot of people would kill for it.”

  Heat rises in my cheeks. Maybe it does seem easy, to him—most things seem to be. “Fine. So let one of those people have my place.”

  “Maybe you should if you’re going to waste it,” he says. “At this rate, you’ll waste your whole life thinking about things instead of doing them. You’re exhausting to listen to.”

  I get up from the table and slam my tray down on top of the trash bin. Grabbing my coat and nearly knocking over the chair, I head for the door. Caleb follows.

  Outside on the sidewalk, Roosevelt kids rushing by on both sides, Caleb grabs my wrist and spins me around to face him.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean—I shouldn’t have said that. But you can’t not take chances in your life now, just because you don’t know what’s going to happen to you twenty years from now. That’s absurd. There’s too much stuff in this life that we don’t know about anyway.”

  Absurd. Exhausting. It’s so cold my face hurts, and I can’t tell if it’s the wind or Caleb’s words that make my eyes water.

  “I have to go,” I tell him. I leave him there by Angelo’s and rush across the street.

  Back in school, I duck my head inside my locker, pretending to look for a book, to pull myself together before going to physics. When my breath has steadied and my hands are defrosted enough to function, I take my phone out and search for the number of the one person I know who, unlike Caleb apparently, can help me make an objective decision.