Maybe One Day

by Melissa Kantor

  Olivia began talking me through a chaîné, which is the most basic turn in ballet. You start in first position, with your arms together; then you move your legs into second position while you open your arms; then you close your arms and your feet. All the while you’re on pointe or in relevé, keeping your eyes on a single spot on the opposite wall as you turn.

  I let Olivia’s voice rather than my own brain control my movements. As she spoke, I moved across the floor doing one slow-motion turn after another. It was strange to break down a move I knew so intuitively, and I actually stumbled once, the same way that if you try to think about tying your shoes your laces suddenly get tangled up in your fingers.

  When I arrived at the far wall, Livvie said, “Let’s see that again, honey.”

  When we’d been at NYBC, the only day of the week we didn’t have class was Sunday, and on Sundays, Livvie and I would sometimes go down to my basement and practice. We’d dance until our legs were shaking and we were watering the floor with sweat as we spun. Sometimes one of us would bark out commands, standing in the corner with her arms folded in imitation of Martin Hicks, NYBC’s director. When the one who was dancing would finish, the other one would say, Let’s see that again, honey, which was apparently (according to the girls we knew who had danced for him) his way of saying, That fucking sucked, you lazy bitch.

  I looked across the room at Olivia’s face on the tiny screen. The girls watching us faded into the background. It was just me and Livvie and our private joke. “I’m sorry, did you say, ‘Let’s see that again, honey’?”

  “I might have.” In Olivia’s voice, I could hear the effort it was taking her not to laugh.

  I put my hands on my hips and stared at her. “So, what are you saying, exactly?”

  Still keeping a straight face, Olivia answered, “I think you know what I’m saying.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the girls looking from me to Olivia, trying to crack our code.

  “I’ll get you for that,” I said. Shaking my head and laughing to myself, I held my arms out in front of me. Then I began to chaîné across the floor.

  All of the awkwardness I’d felt while I was trying to demonstrate the components of the turn separately disappeared, and I felt my body turn to liquid as one position slid effortlessly into the other, my arms and legs moving together without my ordering them to.

  I’d been doing chaînés since I was six years old, and they felt as natural a way to cross a room as walking. When I got to the far wall, I wanted to keep spinning, to push through the paint and plaster and brick and chaîné all the way to Manhattan. But then a bell rang quietly in the distance, startling me out of my reverie. I stopped abruptly, and to my surprise, the girls burst into applause.

  “Zoe, that was amazing!” Imani cried.

  “Oh,” I said, suddenly self-conscious. “I mean, thank you.”

  “Yeah,” agreed another girl, who also had tightly braided hair and who looked so much like Imani that I wondered if they might be sisters.

  “Thank you, Zoe,” said Olivia from the phone. “And thank you, class.” I realized the bell meant class had ended.

  “Thank you, Olivia,” said the class in perfect unison, and they all curtsied toward the phone before gathering up their things. A few of them glanced my way as they were walking out. “Thanks, Zoe!” one called.

  “Sure,” I answered, and then quickly corrected myself. “I mean, thank you.”

  When the girls had left, I went over to my phone.

  “That was fun, right?” said Livvie.

  “I don’t know.” I shook my head, not sure how to describe how confusing it had been. “It’s weird. Being here.”

  “You get used to it,” said Livvie quietly.

  It was the first time she’d even hinted at feeling weird about teaching the class, and I snapped my head to look at her. She was lying back on the bed, and now I could see that she was wearing a long-sleeved green T-shirt that we’d ordered together in August from J.Crew. The only time I’d seen her wear it was the day it arrived, which was when she tried it on and realized simultaneously that she hated it and that it couldn’t be returned.

  I’d planned to ask her what she meant about getting used to it, but seeing what she was wearing distracted me. “Nice shirt,” I said. “Let me guess: Your mom packed clothes for you.”

  She gave me a tired smile. “Bingo.”

  “You look beat,” I observed.

  She nodded.

  And suddenly, I felt overwhelmed with sadness. We weren’t in the dance studio together. Thanks to technology, it might feel like we were. But we weren’t. One of us was in a dance studio in Newark.

  One of us was in the hospital.

  “I’m sorry. Next time I’ll do more,” I told her. “I promise. I won’t let you get so tired.”

  “Don’t apologize,” she said, shaking her head slowly. “I wanted to do what I did. Aren’t the girls great?”

  “They are,” I agreed.

  Her eyes were closed, and I thought she might have dozed off, but then she said quietly, “Wasn’t it nice to dance again?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. How could I explain that I felt as if I’d spent the past hour in a room filled with ghosts? “Sure. Yeah.” Then I rolled my eyes. “Get some sleep.” She gave a tired laugh at my nonanswer. “Hey,” I added, “if you want, after my dad and I run errands, I’ll go to your house and pick some clothes for you. I can bring them to the hospital later.” I knew Livvie’s wardrobe as well as I know my own—probably better, because since her mom was kind of conservative, we had to spend a lot of time debating what her mother’s opinion would be regarding the appropriateness of certain items of clothing, including shirts with low necklines or any skirts that might possibly be modified using the adjective short.

  She nodded. “You sure you don’t mind?” She was so tired she was slurring her words.

  “I’m ignoring you,” I said. “Go to sleep. I’ll see you soon.”

  I turned off my phone, and when the screen went to black, Olivia’s face was replaced with a reflection of my own. Soft classical music still played. The studio was empty. Should I stay and try to choreograph something for the recital? Livvie had said it was a lot of work, but if I started now, there would be plenty of time. But it wasn’t like I was supposed to be working on a routine for the recital by myself. Livvie and I would do it together.

  I got to my feet and looked around. Part of me wanted to stretch out at the barre, really warm up, do something more complicated than a string of chaînés so I could—

  So I could what? Get better?

  Why bother? Who would notice? Olivia? The girls in the class?

  If a dancer dances but NYBC isn’t watching her, is she even dancing?

  I hadn’t signed on for these questions when I’d volunteered to teach the class. All I’d been focused on was helping Olivia. But here I was, feeling sorry for myself and thinking about things I’d promised myself I’d never think about again.

  As fast as I could, I grabbed my bag and walked out the door of the studio.

  I’d made my decision the day I got cut.

  Dance held nothing for me anymore.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  11

  I went home, showered, changed, and walked over to Olivia’s to get some clothes to bring to her at the hospital later. Tommy and Jake were playing basketball in the driveway, and they let me into the house.

  There was something creepy about walking down the hallway to her room all by myself, but I couldn’t figure out what. After all, it wasn’t as if I’d never been in Olivia’s room without Olivia. How many times had I run up here to grab something while Livvie waited for me in the den, the TV paused in the middle of a movie? Or raced back inside while my mom sat in the car and I retrived my notebook or my backpack?

  Standin
g in her bedroom, I dialed Livvie’s number, but she didn’t answer, and I plopped down on the bed, waiting for her to call me back. The comforter I was sitting on was her old one—her new one was on her bed at the hospital. This one was fire-engine red, and it clashed with the walls, which were a pale green. Before she’d redecorated (over the summer after seventh grade) her room had been all primary colors—red comforter, blue chair, yellow carpet. The day before the guys came to paint, Olivia had taken pictures of the room for her memory box, which was this gigantic box she had, filled with keepsakes. The whole time Livvie was taking the pictures of her old room, I’d kept telling her she was crazy. How could we ever forget her room? She’d lived in it since she was little, and I’d practically lived in it too. But now, studying the comforter that had covered her bed for the first eight years of our friendship, I found I couldn’t re-create her old room in my head, not even when I closed my eyes. I thought about going into her closet and digging through the memory box for the pictures, but I didn’t think I should without asking Livvie if that was okay.

  The minutes passed. I lay back on her bed, my silent phone next to me. Outside, I could hear Jake and Tommy playing basketball. It seemed to me I’d been hearing that noise my entire life.

  As I lay there, trying to remember what art had hung on the walls of her old room, out of nowhere I suddenly thought, Olivia has cancer.

  My heart started racing.

  Cancer. How could my friend have cancer?

  Cancer killed people.

  But Olivia wasn’t going to die. We were sixteen. People who are sixteen, people you’ve known your whole life, don’t die of cancer.

  Why not? asked an ugly, scary voice in my brain. Why don’t they die of cancer?

  “Because,” I said out loud, the sound of my voice startling in the quiet room. “They don’t.”

  I got to my feet. Moving silenced the voice in my head. I slid open the middle drawer of her wooden wardrobe, where she kept her shirts. But staring at the top one, I found myself stymied all over again. Did she still like the red T-shirt with the three-quarter sleeves? I hadn’t seen her wear it in a while, but she’d never specifically mentioned not liking it. Maybe it was just out of the rotation? I bit my lip, looking at her drawer of carefully folded T-shirts: long-sleeved ones on one side of the drawer, short-sleeved ones on the other. How had I never noticed how carefully Olivia folded her clothes? We’d always joked that she was neat and I was messy, but I’d never appreciated just how neat she was. Each shirt was stacked on top of the one below it as precisely as if they were on display at Banana Republic or the Gap, two stores that Olivia and I both hated.

  Standing in her room, surrounded by her stuff but unable to know what she would want to wear, the voice in my brain informed me, This is what it would be like if Olivia were dead.

  “Well, she’s not dead!” I said out loud.

  I reached for my phone. I needed to talk to her, even if she just told me to chill out or said she didn’t care what she wore.

  I dialed her number, but it wasn’t Olivia who answered. “Hi, Zoe.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Greco.”

  Her voice whisper quiet. “Olivia’s just having a little nap.”

  “Oh,” I said. My heart dropped. I couldn’t ask Mrs. Greco to wake her daughter just because I was freaking out. “I was just going to ask her about some clothes. I’m putting a suitcase together for her.”

  “Yes, she told me about that,” said Mrs. Greco. “She hates all the clothes I brought her. I guess I haven’t been paying attention to what she wears.”

  Apparently neither have I, I thought, glancing down at the red T-shirt.

  “Do you want her to call you when she wakes up? Assuming she’s feeling up to it?”

  “No, no,” I said quickly, “I can figure it out on my own. I just wasn’t sure about this one particular shirt.”

  “Okay,” said her mom. “I know she’s looking forward to your visit later. And not just because of the clothes.”

  That was nice. Mrs. Greco’s saying that made me feel better.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I am too.”

  I ended up just picking things I’d seen Olivia wear in the last few weeks of summer—a blue-and-white-striped T-shirt, a pair of white capri pants, a skirt with a pattern of faces that we’d bought because we couldn’t decide if it was awesome or awful but that turned out to be clearly awesome—adding a couple of hoodies and some leggings and yoga pants because of the air-conditioning in the hospital. Then I zipped the suitcase, rolled it along the hallway, and bounced it down the stairs. When I opened the front door of the house, I expected to see Jake and Tommy still playing hoops, but instead I saw Calvin Taylor dribbling while Tommy watched from the sidelines. Calvin might have been the QB of the football team, but he was a damn good basketball player. His arm moved in a smooth arc as he seemingly effortlessly took the shot from far down the driveway. Just as I pulled the door closed behind me, the ball swooshed into the net. Tommy applauded. Neither of them saw me come out.

  “Now you,” said Calvin, bouncing Tommy the ball.

  “I’m not going to be as good as you,” Tommy told him.

  Calvin didn’t deny it. “Well, considering I’ve got about three feet and ten years on you, that seems fair, don’t you think?”

  “But I’m a prodigy,” Tommy explained, grinning. The twins’ smiles always slayed me. It was like the rest of their bodies hadn’t caught up to their enormous new front teeth. “My goal is to be the only third grader who can dunk.”

  “Is that so?” Calvin asked, laughing. He dashed over, picked Tommy up, and raced him back to the hoop. “Quick! Quick!” he cried. “Do it. Dunk!” Sitting on Calvin’s shoulders, Tommy was higher than the hoop, and he easily dropped the ball into it. “And the crowd goes wild,” yelled Calvin. “Aaaah!” He ran around the driveway, Tommy on his shoulders, both of them cheering.

  As they finished their victory lap, Tommy called, “Hi, Zoe!”

  “Hey!” I waved to them. “Where are your brothers?”

  “Jake’s getting Luke at Aunt Margaret’s house and then he and Calvin are taking us to the movies.” He lowered his voice and informed me confidentially, “We’re going to see a PG-13.”

  “In your dreams, little man,” Calvin said. He lifted Tommy off his shoulders and put him on the blacktop next to him. Tommy gave me a knowing wink and went over to the grass on the other side of the driveway to retrieve the ball.

  Calvin was breathing heavily from his lap with Tommy on his shoulders. He put his hands on his hips and cocked his head at me. “You running away from home?” he asked, nodding at the suitcase.

  “Yeah.” I shrugged and looked off to the end of the block. “You know how it is. Big dreams. Little town.”

  “Sure,” he said. “I get it.”

  “Actually, these are just some clothes for Olivia,” I explained.

  “You packed her a suitcase?” he asked, genuinely surprised.

  “Yeah,” I said, surprised that he was surprised. “Does that seem weird to you?”

  “I don’t know.” He wiped his sweaty forehead with his upper arm. “I can’t imagine any of my friends going through my clothes.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe it’s a girl thing.” As soon as I said it, I was annoyed with myself. I hate gender stereotypes like girls love princesses and boys like guns. All the guys I was with at NYBC had had to deal with being called fag and homo just because they liked dance. I mean, a lot of them were gay (or at least well on their way to being gay), and words like fag and homo are totally unacceptable whether or not people are gay, but my point is that tying particular behaviors and interests to a particular gender seems to be the major reason guys who like dance get called names.

  “Or maybe it’s a Zoe-Olivia thing,” he said.

  “Maybe,” I agreed.

  After our bickering earlier in the week and then my angry apology Saturday morning, this felt almost like a truce. Together we watched Tommy set up, shoot
, and miss the basket by a mile.

  “Good try,” said Calvin. “Don’t lean back so much.”

  Tommy headed to retrieve the ball, and I glanced over at Calvin. To my surprise, he was looking at me. There was something intense about how he was doing it—not anything gross, like he was checking me out, but more like he was watching for something or wondering about something, and he could only learn the answer if he studied me long enough.

  I felt self-conscious about how I was staring at him or he was staring at me or we were staring at each other. “You’re really good.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I was mortified.

  “What?” He smiled, but there was a confused look on his face.

  “I meant I . . . I mean, I meant to say you’re really good with kids.” I looked away, watching Tommy because it was something to watch besides Calvin. “I’m not very . . . natural with them. It’s a little awkward.”

  “I’m sure you’re fine.”

  “Trust me. I’m not one of those people who say they’re bad at things they’re good at.” Tommy sank his shot and Calvin gave a long, low whistle. “Nice job, T-dog!” Tommy did a brief victory dance.

  “Are there a lot of those people?” asked Calvin.

  “What people?” I was confused.

  “People who say they’re bad at things they’re good at.” He considered the possibility. “I thought people usually say they’re good at things when they’re not.”

  “Wait, what?” I pushed my hair off my forehead. My bangs were growing out, and lately they were always getting in my eyes. “I’m sorry, I totally lost what we’re talking about.”