“It’s not going to get less scary if you wait. Come on, let’s go.”
I follow her down the bleachers; she holds the umbrella over us both as we hurry across the parking lot. Despite the exam, despite the writing that wasn’t mine, despite my parents, it’s not just me anymore. The thought is as warm as sunshine.
6
By the time the bus deposits us at the brick pile of the Lakeside Center, it’s stopped raining, but the river is still rising. Yellow caution tape, strung from fence to tree to lamppost, walls off the lawn where I once played badminton with Dad: the river has swallowed it up, its border of pine trees the only interruption in a long swath of gray water. Waves chase each other over the surface in a sharp wind that finds every gap in the weave of my sweater. Some intrepid soul in hip waders sloshes through the flood with a fishing rod.
“Wow,” Ron says.
“Yeah. I’ve never seen it like this.”
Waves spill over the path that leads down to the farthest point of the beach. Undaunted, Ron climbs up on the raised strip of green that usually runs alongside it. The grass squelches under her feet.
“Come on,” she calls over her shoulder. I waver on the pavement. Reflexive, animal fear tugs at me, the kind that’s impossible to argue down. But there was no hesitating in the dream, no stopping. That’s something. And there was no one with me. I look over my shoulder at the fisherman, who’s casting a line out toward the open water. It’s not the same.
We follow our grassy path to the pines that mark the far end of the beach. Usually they border a gravelly shore and three long fingers of tumbled rocks reaching out into the water. But those rocky peninsulas are nowhere to be seen; they’ve been devoured, leaving nothing behind but churning white foam. All that’s left of the benches that look out over the bay toward the sunset are their very tops, two thin lines of wood sticking out of the waves. It’s hard to tell the crash of the waves from the wind in the trees; they blur together into a constant, voiceless roar. The water reaches for us, slapping at the concrete, rushing past trees and lampposts standing in the river like we’re in a surrealist painting. A soggy drift of little sticks and bits of plastic accumulates at our feet.
“Well,” Ron says, “I guess this is close enough.”
She settles down to perch at the end of the grass, looking out across the water, and I reluctantly follow suit. The bend of the river leaves a brief gap where water and sky meet in an undistinguished haze, like the world is half-made, insubstantial. About to come undone. I rub my eyes, trying to scrub away the feeling.
“You okay?” Ron asks.
“I think so.” I wrap my arms around my knees, shivering, blinking. “I’ve been feeling kind of weird all day. I think it’s the medicine.”
“Sounds plausible, yeah. But no flashes of psychic insight or anything?”
“Not so far.”
She sits back, like she’s settling in for a wait. I pull my hands inside my sleeves, trying to think of something else to say.
“So is it, like, a family business? The paranormal investigator thing?”
“Hardly. Not for lack of trying on Mom’s part. I’m just missing the psychic gene or something.” Her expression darkens and she turns away, looking out toward the horizon. I have a feeling I’ve said something wrong, but before I can think of a way to apologize without being awkward, she speaks again, breezily, like nothing happened. “I bet I could bullshit my way through it if I wanted to. All you need is a little, you know, dramatic flair.”
“Yeah, clearly you have none of that,” I say, and she smirks.
“That was one thing you could say for Lebreton. You know, my old school. They had a kick-ass drama program. With a real stage, even. Not one of those crappy cafeteria ones. It had lights and everything. I was totally going to play Ophelia before I left. I would have been an amazing Ophelia.”
“How come you left, then?”
“Mm.” She gives her hand a vague wave, brushing off the question. “Long story. Got in trouble.”
“We went to see this play they put on at the School of Speech and Drama one time in sixth grade. They were all our age, but it looked amazing. Really professional. Maybe you could take their classes instead.”
“Not on a psychic’s salary,” Ron says wryly.
I wince. “Oh. Right.”
“Well, it’s not like we’re destitute. My dad’s not a total deadbeat.”
“They’re divorced?”
“Never married.” She shrugs, her expression unruffled. “He left when I was little. Moved out West. I sort of remember visiting him once or twice, but mostly he just sends cards. When he remembers.”
I look out over the water, swallowing the ridiculous impulse to open the floodgates and confess how awful it’s been, this past week. It wasn’t like this for her; she wouldn’t want to hear about it. Ingrid doesn’t either, and who could blame her?
“Anyway,” she’s saying, “classes outside of school were never really a thing. If we had the money, I’d have taken ballet. I always wanted to try it.” She lifts her feet, encased in tall black boots, and points her toes, laughing. “Just as well. It’s not my style. And I didn’t exactly end up with a ballerina body.”
“I used to take ballet.” I clench my teeth belatedly. Idiot. What, like I’m trying to be impressive?
Ron just nods. “Yeah, I might’ve guessed that.”
I blink. “I thought you said you weren’t psychic.”
“Ha. No, but you’re tiny enough. And I don’t know, you can just tell. You hold yourself just so, you know?”
I do? “I wasn’t very good.”
Ron raises a skeptical eyebrow. “Well, you don’t have to be good at something to enjoy it.”
“In my house, you kind of do.”
“What,” she says indignantly, “did you quit because your parents said you’re no good?”
“No, no,” I hurry to correct her, “it wasn’t like that at all. My mom was all about me doing dance. She used to have this whole wall of pictures from all my recitals. Since I was, like, four.” She’d made me pose for a professional photographer for the last few. My stomach does a familiar, awful little flip at the memory. I can’t believe I’m talking about this.
“So why, then?”
“It was like…” I wave my hands, trying to pull an explanation from the air. “You know that fairy tale, about the girl with the red shoes? The one who danced herself to death? That’s what it was like. It just got…out of control. This thing that just kept going and going, faster and faster, and I couldn’t stop it.”
“Well, at least you didn’t have to chop your feet off.”
That response is so bizarre it actually makes me laugh. “Okay, what?”
“Have you read the story? The original?” When I shake my head Ron crosses her legs, sits forward, bizarrely intent. “It’s Hans Christian Andersen. That guy was fucked up. The story goes that this girl likes her nice red shoes so much that she wants to wear them to church, and because she’s thinking about looking nice instead of about God, some random guy she meets on the way—of course it’s a guy—he curses her shoes.”
“And the shoes start dancing,” I supply reluctantly, “and she can’t stop them.” I wish I hadn’t made the comparison. The dream feels close behind it, the memory of my feet pushing forward, step by step, against my will.
“Right. And so eventually she’s so exhausted that—get this—she asks the local executioner to chop off her feet. Like, begs him. And he does. And even then the shoes keep dancing. With her severed feet still in them. And they keep coming back to haunt her. The guy that cursed her shows up again too, I think, but all he ever says to her is ‘oh, what pretty dancing shoes.’ I mean, how creepy is that? Eventually she repents of her vanity, so she’s allowed to die. And go to heaven. Yay.”
“That’s horrible.”
<
br /> “Right? He had a real thing about dancing. It’s in ‘The Little Mermaid’ too.”
That one I remember. “Yeah. With the dancing on knives.”
“Exactly. And she dances anyway. To make the prince happy.” She rests her chin on her hand, studying me. “Do you miss it?”
My smile feels false, not my own. “Maybe. Not really. I mostly try not to think about it.”
Ron gives me an inquiring look, so I fumble for an explanation. “Well. I quit in about the messiest, least dignified way possible.”
“Somehow I have trouble believing that. You’re, like, unshakeable. If Farrell tried his shit on you, you’d brush him off like a bug.”
“Not likely.” Is that what she sees, looking at me? The thought leaves me disoriented, like the world has just picked me up and swung me around. “I’m invisible. You can’t harass a ghost.”
“That’s one way to deal with that brand of assholery, I guess. It’s a pretty convincing disguise.”
“Disguise,” I echo. “For what?”
“I don’t know. Hidden depths? Superpowers?”
I don’t really know either. Dance was the whole world for so long, the end of every road. What am I if I’m not a dancer? What’s left? After I quit, it was like some deafening soundtrack had been silenced. Like a heartbeat had ceased. I’ve been drifting cool and empty ever since. It’s easier. Peaceful.
“So now you have to tell me what you did that was so awful,” Ron declares, and then quickly adds, “Or, you know, tell me to butt out if you want. Sorry. I just can’t resist a mystery.”
I watch the water washing over the asphalt at our feet. I haven’t told anyone about this. Not Julie and Shayna, who I used to be so close with at my old studio. Definitely not Ingrid. But I brought it up. It’s my own stupid fault. Am I that desperate to seem interesting, to have something in common with this girl so outrageously visible everyone’s afraid of her?
“I’d been…trying to quit for a while. Anytime I talked to my mom about it I’d just get these…ragey pep talks. You know, commitment this, excellence that. If I pushed it she’d pretend to give in and tell me that if I could live with wasting all that time and talent after she’d worked so hard to support me, then I could go right ahead. And I couldn’t, obviously. I mean, we even had a barre in the basement. They built this whole room in the new house just so I could dance.”
“That’s pretty intense.”
I shrug uncomfortably. “It sounds worse than it was. Really. My grandmother was this total perfectionist, so she was always too scared to do stuff like that as a kid, and…anyway. This one day I said to myself that’s it, I can’t do it anymore, I won’t go back. So. After that, when Mom dropped me off, instead of going to rehearsal I hid in the library. For weeks. I mean, obviously she was going to find out eventually. It was the only way I could stop the red shoes. You know? It took longer than I thought it would. But finally she stopped by the studio early one day, and, well.”
“I bet it really hit the fan then, huh?”
“You could say that. It was awful. But by then it was kind of too late to make me go back.”
We sit in silence for a while after that. A few drops of water mist over me; I’m not sure if it’s rain or spray from the waves. My fingers, knotted in the sleeves of my sweater, are going numb.
What breaks the quiet is the click of a camera. When I look around at her, Ron’s pointing her phone at me.
“There.” She holds it out to me. “Want me to send it to you?”
It is a good photo. I’m looking out into the distance, wisps of hair escaping around my face, framed by cool, gray sky. Instead of cold and afraid, I look pensive, mysterious. Untouchable.
“You can delete it if you want,” Ron says. “Sorry. I should have asked.”
“No, that’s okay.” I hand it back to her. “That’s great. I don’t selfie very well.” Not like you do.
“I’ll text it to you. What’s your number?”
“You could just post it.”
“Well, yeah,” she says and shrugs, meeting my eyes. “But this way I get your number.”
I manage to recite it for her before the pause grows too awkward, letting the waves rushing past steady my voice. It doesn’t mean anything. Relax. She pokes buttons for a moment, and my own phone pings in my pocket.
“There,” she declares. “Perfect.” She peers at me. “So what do you think? Are you, I don’t know, getting anything?”
“Nope. My feet are wet.” I giggle, a little punchy from oversharing and relief. “Oh God, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m an idiot. And I’m freezing.”
“Do you feel better, though?” She stands, holds out her hand to help me up.
“Maybe. Less afraid.” I meet her eyes. “Thank you.”
Her searching look dissolves into a smile. A real smile, a sudden dip and flash like a bird’s wing, like sunlight glancing off a wave. It transforms her whole face; it pins me to the spot. I should look away. But if my eyes linger on her too long, she doesn’t notice, just leans over to grab her bag. Her phone chimes, chimes again, and she pulls it out to scan it, rolling her eyes.
“Look, I gotta go,” she sighs. “But I’ll see you on Friday, right? And if the weird shit isn’t getting better by then…my mom does readings at a coffee shop in Chinatown. Maybe you could try one. You don’t even have to tell her anything. Actually, you know what? Don’t tell her about it at all. Just see if she notices anything. And if she does, maybe it’ll mean she can help.”
“I guess that makes sense,” I say slowly. Whether it does or not, it means we’ll talk again. It means I haven’t driven her away. Doesn’t it? “Yeah. Okay, sure. Why not?”
“Just…” She hesitates, looks at me sidelong. “Don’t stop taking the meds. Seriously. Okay? Promise?”
“Oh. Sure.” That seems inadequate, so I add, “Promise.”
She shoulders her bag and hurries ahead of me, back over the grass toward the bus stop. Maybe she feels like she said too much too.
“I gotta go,” she throws back over her shoulder. “See you. Be careful!”
• • •
I practically float back to Aunt Jen’s. Not only did I talk to Emo Rhiannon, I spent almost the whole afternoon with her. I wasn’t the one who suggested we see each other on Friday. And our conversation isn’t hanging over me like a flock of crows either. That was okay. That was good, even. Is this thanks to the medicine? God. If it is, I should have started taking it years ago.
The lightness in my step lasts until I turn onto Aunt Jen’s street, when I realize that I’m still going to have to tell Dr. Fortin about the writing on my exam.
I push my shoulders down, focus on my breath, on the lines of waves rippling out over the bay past the seawall. I’m supposed to see him on Wednesday. It can wait until then. Until then, I will forget about it. I can do that. I’ll think about something else.
But that night I’m pulled from dreams of drowning—thrashing for the surface in the dark, lungs screaming, pounding on the underside of the ice, soon I’ll have to inhale, I’ll have to, but the surface is a solid wall, and hands snake around my ankles to pull me down, drag me deeper—by a jarring crash of notes from the piano. From my hands on the piano. I’m bent over the keys, their white bars like teeth. They’re chilly under my fingers.
I jerk away and almost lose my balance, then grip the bench with both hands to steady myself. The bench. Where I’m sitting. I stare at the keys, my head thick and fuzzy, trying to force this to make sense. Am I dreaming? There’s a rattling swirl of sound from the window, but it’s only the rain blowing against the patio door.
I was in bed. I’m cold. How did I get here?
A light blinks on behind me, yellow light cascading over my shoulders. I look up to find Aunt Jen at the bottom of the stairs.
“Marianne? Wha
t on earth?”
I can’t let go of the bench. The world reels around me. I’ll fall if I let go. Aunt Jen hurries over to put an arm around my shoulders. The contact burns through my T-shirt. I’m so cold. I can’t think.
“Are you awake, Mare-bear?”
“I am now.” I think I am. I uncurl my fingers from the edge of the bench, one by one, and reach out with one hand to touch the keys again, to confirm they’re real. “What was I doing?”
“Playing with the piano. Pounding on it, actually. It woke me up. I think you must have been sleepwalking.”
Is that what it was? It’s the obvious explanation. The simple explanation. But I’ve never walked in my sleep before. The floor is icy under my feet when I stagger upright. Under my bare feet. My crooked toes are stark against the floor, the permanent black splotches on their nail beds standing out like splashes of blood.
Aunt Jen leads me to the dining room, making noises about some tea she always makes when she’s having trouble sleeping, but we stop short when she flicks on the light. The lilies in the middle of the table have been shredded, orange petals scattered all over the table.
She stares at them for a moment, then looks back at me, her eyes wide.
“I think you’d better tell Dr. Fortin about this,” she says.
7
“It’s not working.”
Dr. Fortin studies me, tapping his pen against his lips.
“What makes you say that?”
I should find his radio voice soothing; today it makes me bristle, makes me want to interrupt, to yell, to shake him. But that’s not me. I’m rational. Calm. I smooth the fabric of the couch down with my fingers, letting waves wash over me in my mind.
“It’s still happening. Even when I’m awake. I think I was awake. There were…things on my exam that I don’t remember writing. But it must have been me. Right?” The words spill out, faster now. “And I was sleepwalking, a few nights ago. I went to bed and woke up in the living room. That’s never happened before. And I…tore up some flowers, I guess. In my sleep. How could I do that in my sleep?”
The Dark Beneath the Ice Page 7