We swap places and I’m in front of the group now. My ponytail got mussed during the warm-up, so I tug out the elastic. Retie it. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. “Hey, guys. Um. How is everyone?”
Someone coughs. Montana raises her eyebrows.
There are so many people watching me.
If I can’t conquer this, I’ll be the quiet girl dancing in the back forever, choreographing pieces for no one but the walls of my room. And dances—my dances—are meant to be seen. I have to believe that.
“I’ve been working on this new choreography, and I’m excited for us to learn it. So, um, the piece is about two groups that are trying to prove which style of dance is best?” I don’t know why I phrase it as a question. My voice keeps rising at the end of my sentences. “We could form two groups? Taylor, you could stand over there next to Gabe? And, Liz, if you could scoot forward so you’re next to Kunjal?”
“Could we learn it first before we start blocking it?” Taylor calls out.
Of course. That’s what we always do. I was jumping ahead. “Right. Um, I’ll play the music and do a few bars so you guys can get the idea. It starts out—” I cut myself off when I catch Montana’s gaze. She’s shaking her head: Don’t tell. Do. So I let the sentence vanish.
We don’t really have solos on the team, so I haven’t performed in front of a bunch of people like this in a while. I start the first section, the one with the more graceful, classic steps. Then the second section, which is a little more hip-hop, a little rawer.
“I like it,” says Brenna, a junior who can kick higher than anyone else on the team. Brenna becomes my favorite person. “The different styles of music and dance—you’ve blended them in such a cool way.”
“She has,” Liz agrees, smiling at me. I give her a quick smile back, but then make my face serious for the rest of the team.
“Let’s break down the first four-count,” I say. “This will be the first group, but let’s all learn it for now and I’ll divide you up later.” Solid. Not a question this time.
“Can you go through it slower?” Jonah asks. “I’m not getting the rhythm.”
“Definitely!” I do it slower. Then a little faster. Repeat. Repeat. “Five, six, seven, eight . . .”
We do the first four-count over and over, then add the next few, and then I split the team into two groups. And—they’re getting it. The dance breathed to life like this is completely unlike what I imagined in the best possible way. Everyone brings their own flair to it. It isn’t just mine—it’s ours.
“It’s looking great!” I exclaim at the end of practice, pulling up my shirt to wipe my sweat-slicked face.
“This was fun,” Neeti says. “I love the song.”
“Isn’t it fantastic?” I’m glowing with this attention, this praise. My desperate texts to Peter the other day—I didn’t need his support, not really. Not for this. I did this on my own.
Montana returns to the front. “Thanks, Sophie! I think we’re all pumped about this new piece. I wanted to wrap up practice with an interesting opportunity. Our team’s been invited to attend a weekend dance intensive in Spokane in a couple weeks. There will be dancers there from all over the state, and the workshops will be taught by college dance professors.”
A chorus of excited chatter moves through the crowd.
“It’s optional, of course, but it’s not too pricey and seems like a great experience.” Montana opens her bag. “I’ve got permission slips! We need your parents to sign to make sure the school’s not liable if someone does something stupid. Which none of you are going to do.” She raises her eyebrows at this, and everyone shakes their heads no.
A weekend away from Peter. It shouldn’t be a huge deal, especially since I’ve been dancing so much with Montana and Liz lately, and he’s been hanging out with a couple of new mysterious friends, who I’m sure I’ll meet soon. In fact, I’ll ask him about them tonight when I see him.
If I can’t handle a weekend, how could I handle eight weeks?
As the team disperses, Montana and Liz congratulate me on today’s practice. Honestly, they are both still a bit of a mystery to me. Last year I thought they were intimidating, these cool girls who were somehow actually my age but so much more put together. The worry that churns in my stomach is this: I’m not sure what they get out of our relationship. The satisfaction of mentoring a shy choreographer? That cannot be it. They’ve given me so much, but I’ve given them absolutely nothing in return.
“What are you doing this weekend?” I ask in the locker room. Practice loosened me up.
Montana and Liz exchange a sweet look. “It’s our one-year anniversary,” Liz says. “We’re going to this Italian restaurant downtown that has acrobats perform while you eat.”
“Wow. Happy anniversary!”
“Hard to believe she’s put up with my bossiness for this long.” Montana slings her arm around Liz.
“I love your bossiness. I love all of you.”
My heart twinges. Their declaration of love is so clear, so confident.
“What about you?” Montana asks. “Any plans with your love interest?”
“Love interest,” I repeat. It would be funny if it weren’t heartbreaking. “Yeah, I mean, we’re neighbors. It would be weird if we didn’t spend the weekend together.”
“Have fun,” Liz says. And then she ropes me in for a hug. It’s so surprising that at first I flinch, unsure what’s happening. “I’m hugging you! Christ, you’re skittish.”
So I hug her back. And then I hug Montana, which is equally strange—they’re both so much taller than I am that it feels a little like hugging my mom—and yet I can’t stop smiling as I head for my car.
“Okay, so I have a million things to tell you,” I say to Peter, all in one breath. I drop my bag next to me in the booth at a divey Mexican restaurant called Dos Sombreros.
“Me too.” He dunks a chip into tomatillo salsa. “Their salsa is the best.”
“I have dreams about this salsa. Why would anyone have red salsa when green salsa is a thing that exists in this world?”
We’re quiet for a minute as we shove chips into our mouths. Then Peter says, “Tell me your news first, because you look a little like you might explode if not.”
“Okay. Okay. Well, first of all, I taught my song to the dance team today and . . . da-da-da, it didn’t suck! They actually really liked it.”
Peter claps. Like, actually claps. It’s adorable. I notice he must have gotten a haircut this week. It makes him look older.
“That’s so great, Soph. I’m happy for you.”
A server comes by, and we order tacos. Then we both reach for the last chip, and our hands tangle in the basket. I’m not sure who pulls back faster.
It’s this kind of thing that makes me anxious we might not be able to get back what we used to have, makes me wonder if this is what we are now: two people uncomfortable with even an accidental touch. We used to knock shoulders and brush arms constantly. We didn’t think twice about it. But now every touch feels like it means something. I worry he’ll read into it when all I want is for him to stop looking at me like he’s worried I’m going to spill my emotions at any moment.
He loved me once, though, the middle school version of love.
“Sorry,” I say, though I’m not sure I am.
“It’s fine,” he mumbles. He pushes the basket toward me. “Take it.”
“They’ll bring more,” I say as I swipe the last chip, dip it in salsa, and chew it slowly. Peter waits.
“So that was thing one out of a million?” he asks.
I swallow, wash down the spicy salsa with a gulp of water. “I have two more.” I mention the upcoming weekend dance intensive, building up to my biggest announcement: the workshop I haven’t told him about yet. “Montana told me about this choreography workshop this summer. It’s . . . it’s eight weeks long, though.” Eight weeks I’d be away from you, I think, and hope he hears the subtext.
“Eight weeks. Wow. In
Seattle?”
“No . . . in San Francisco.”
I watch his face closely, trying to gauge his reaction. Our server swaps our empty chip basket for a new one. Peter’s brow furrows. He doesn’t even grab a chip.
“Wow. You should do it. You think you want to do that, like, professionally?”
“Maybe? If I’m any good at it.”
“You clearly are.”
I smile, but his reaction has thrown me. It’s not that I was hoping for him to cling to my legs and beg me to stay, but I expected he’d say he’d miss me, at least. I was hoping for more than Wow and You should do it.
I shake these feelings off. “Tell me your news.”
He grins. “I. Uh. Sort of joined a band?”
“Wait . . . what?”
“You know I’ve been hanging out with Chase Cabrera? He’s in a band, Diamonds Are for Never—”
“Diamonds Are for what?”
“Never,” he finishes, and a flush creeps onto his cheeks. “It’s cheesy, I know, and they just started out, so they’re not amazing or anything, but . . .” He trails off. He’s trying to downplay this, trying to make it seem like he isn’t bubbling over with excitement. “They wanted a keyboard, and, well . . .”
“That’s you.”
“That’s me.”
Peter is in a band called Diamonds Are for Never. I should be happy for him, but my features feel frozen.
“Tabby said you were at her diner yesterday,” I say slowly. I found it odd when she told me last night after her shift, but I was too distracted by my impending dance practice to mention it. “You were with them—the band?”
He nods. “Sophie,” he says. “Are you . . . okay about this?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” My voice is too high-pitched, too very-clearly-not-okay-about-it. “It’s not like music was our thing or anything.”
He picks up a chip but doesn’t eat it, just crushes it to yellow crumbs on his napkin. “So . . . I can’t play music with anyone else because of some dumb thing we did as kids?”
Some. Dumb. Thing.
The chips aren’t sitting right in my stomach.
He must realize this affects me because he reaches across the table and, ever so lightly, grazes my wrist with his fingertip. This touch—because he initiates it, it’s okay somehow. It’s a touch that communicates his apology but nothing else. It doesn’t linger long, as though he’s worried I’ll misinterpret it. As though a real gesture of affection would be too much.
“I—I’m sorry,” he says. “The Terrible Twosome wasn’t dumb. I didn’t mean that. I just meant it was something we did as kids, you know?”
Past tense. The Terrible Twosome was.
“I know.”
“And you have dance team,” he says. “That’s music.”
I’ve always had that, though. I’ve had dance team and dance class and I don’t know why it feels different that Peter’s off doing something without me when I’ve been doing this without him—but Peter was never going to join dance team. And Peter and I already have a band.
“I know,” I say again. I yank out my ponytail, wincing when the elastic pulls out a few hairs. As best I can, I wrangle it into a bun. It’ll never look as sleek as Montana’s.
“I mean, the Terrible Twosome couldn’t exactly play shows or anything.”
“We could,” I say in a small voice.
Our parents used to encourage us to enter talent shows, but Peter and I were used to living in our own world. The Terrible Twosome was for us, not anyone else.
“Sophie.”
Our food arrives, and while Peter digs in, I stab at my taco with a fork.
“You joined a band. Okay. That’s awesome. That’s really cool.” I force a smile. I am a robot learning how to express human emotions. “Do you . . . have any shows anytime soon? Can I hear you?”
“I mean, we’re still rehearsing,” he says between bites. “As soon as we book a gig, you’ll be the first to know.”
Gig. Peter is not someone who plays gigs.
Is he?
“Great.”
While Peter eats, I stare at my plate, fist clenched tight around my fork. I try to take a deep breath, but my lungs are tight.
“We’re okay, right?” he says after wiping his mouth with a napkin. “I mean, after—”
That strikes a nerve—no, it doesn’t strike it. It fucking smashes a nerve with a hammer.
I drop my fork on the table with a clatter. “I’m not silently pining for you or anything!” I say quickly, my voice jumping up to an even higher pitch again. I can’t control it. “God, Peter. I’m fine. I’m not still thinking about it. I just want things to be normal, okay?”
I’ve said this too loudly. Everyone’s staring at us. I’m shaking, even. It’s true: I want normal back, since it’s clear what I really want has to become a secret again.
But . . . I also want him to feel a little guilty that once again he’s gotten exactly what he wanted.
“We could play when we get home,” he says softly. An olive branch. He’s approaching me like I’m a lion he doesn’t want to pounce, quietly backing away from this strange conflict. “Or you could show me the piece from dance today.”
As calmly as I can, I pick up my taco, then finally meet his gaze. “It really looks better with more people.”
CHAPTER 18
PETER
WHEN CHASE TOLD ME HE wanted to hang out “just the two of us,” I wasn’t expecting it would happen so soon. The following Saturday night, though, he picks me up and drives us to the Laser Dome downtown. It’s connected to the science center, which I’ve been to only once, on an elementary school field trip. We played with bubbles and touched sea anemones underwater. For a solid three months afterward, I wanted to be a marine biologist.
“Laser Beatles,” Chase explains when I ask him what we’re doing at the science center. “Tonight they’re playing Revolver all the way through, and they project lasers on the ceiling in time with the music. . . . Trust me, it’s cool.”
“I love Revolver.”
“It’s criminally underrated. ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ is a masterpiece.”
We get our tickets and head inside. It’s much warmer, and Chase’s glasses fog up. He wipes at them with his sleeve as he hums. There are a few rows of seats inside the auditorium, but Chase shakes his head and points to a stack of pillows. We each grab one and stretch out on the floor so we can stare up at the ceiling.
“I’ve never been here before,” I say as we’re waiting for the show to start. “I’ve been trying to decide what I want to do now that I have a more . . . freeing life than I used to, and clearly this should have been on the list.”
Chase rolls his body to the side, propping up his head with one hand. “What else is on the list?”
I turn to face him. Even in the almost-dark, his eyes are bright. “Nothing like skydiving or cliff-jumping. It’s not nearly that thrilling. It’s more like . . . Don’t judge me, okay?”
“I swear I won’t.”
I let out a sigh. “I’m sort of . . . exploring more of who I am? Like, I’m Jewish. Well, half, I guess. But I never had a bar mitzvah, and I don’t know very much about the religion. I . . . I think I might want to.”
“What does it mean, exactly, to be half Jewish?”
“My dad’s Jewish, but Judaism is passed down through the mother’s side, so if my mom were Jewish, I’d be, well, fully Jewish.” It’s definitely the most times I’ve said the word “Jewish” in a single sentence.
It hits me that I’ve never had to explain all this about myself to anyone before. Sophie has always known.
“In elementary school,” I continue, “we were doing this unit on world religions. And when we started talking about Judaism, the teacher asked what we knew about it. One kid raised his hand and said, ‘My dad told me Jews are kind of greedy.’ ”
“You’re fucking kidding.”
I shake my head. “And then another kid said, ‘They
have bigger noses than other religions, right?’ and the teacher was absolutely mortified at this point. But I called out that those were stereotypes and they weren’t true, and the first kid told me, ‘Peter, you’re only half.’ As though it meant I should have been offended half as much or something. Or I didn’t have the right to be offended.”
That was when I realized some people didn’t like people like my dad or me just because of what we are. There were people who’d hate me despite never having met me. A crash course in anti-Semitism for a nine-year-old.
“You have the right, trust me. Those kids sound like assholes.”
“Do I, though? I’m still trying to figure that out. Do I have the right even though I haven’t had a bar mitzvah? And what does it say about me that I’ve known about those stereotypes for as long as I can remember, but I don’t know a word of Hebrew besides ‘shalom’? Isn’t that messed up, that that’s all I know? I’ve even spent more time in churches than in synagogues. All my piano recitals took place in churches.” They were nice places, sure, but it felt like I wasn’t entirely supposed to be there. Like I wasn’t welcome, though my mom was raised Christian. There was something about being half Jewish in a church that felt wrong. I had a strange inkling it would’ve felt different in a synagogue.
Chase is quiet for a moment. Then: “Being half of something can be kind of a mindfuck. My dad was from Argentina, but he moved to the US when he was a kid. He grew up speaking more English than Spanish, so I don’t know the language.”
I’m stuck on the “was,” though.
“My dad passed away when I was nine,” he continues. “Stage-four lung cancer. He wasn’t a smoker—life was just cruel.”
“Chase. I had no idea.” My sympathy compels me to reach a hand out, to graze his sleeve. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you,” he says graciously. “We’re okay, though. They caught it so late, and he didn’t suffer for very long. We’ve had a lot of time to cope. And therapy, too. People say it’s not something you ever get over—and yeah, I’d love to have my dad come to one of our shows, but my mom and sisters and I are doing fine.”
Our Year of Maybe Page 13