As Daisy and Will lay bleeding out, James jumped off the stage into the orchestra seats. He fired right and left, filling the theater with chaos as students fled or hid. Marie Del’Amici was fatally wounded, shot in the chest and head. James then started up the aisle toward the rear of the house, heading toward the lighting booth where Daisy’s boyfriend, Erik Fiskare, was trapped.
“Until a couple weeks ago, I had no memory of the shooting,” Daisy said. “None. The last thing I remembered was walking down the aisle toward the stage, going up to rehearse with Will. Then I woke up in the hospital.”
She leaned forward and rolled up the left leg of her sweatpants. Two long scars down either side of her calf, from knee to ankle. Further up past her knee, a starburst of puckered flesh on her inner thigh.
“This is the actual gunshot wound,” she said. “It got the artery. They repaired it with a graft but I developed something called compartment syndrome. Your limb rejects the oxygen coming back to it and pressure starts to build up.” Her fingers ran down the sides of her shin, along the ridges of flesh. “They had to make these cuts to relieve the pressure.”
“Fasciotomy,” Rita said.
“This is what I woke up to.” She rolled her pant leg back down.
“It must have been horrible.”
“I didn’t know what happened. It made no sense to me, even when they explained it.”
“The injury or that it was James?”
“Both. I remembered nothing and understood nothing.”
“But some weeks ago, a memory came back. You said a window broke?”
Daisy nodded. “The sound of the breaking glass and all at once, I remembered.”
“Remembered what, specifically?”
“When James shot out the windows of the lighting booth.”
“Where your boyfriend was.”
“Yes.”
“You actually watched him shoot the windows.”
“Yes, from where I was lying on the stage, I saw them all break.”
“And when you started cutting yourself… What did you use?”
“Glass.”
AFTER THEIR SECOND PARTNERING CLASS, Will offered to buy Daisy lunch.
“You’re one of our Brighton Scholarships,” he said, when they were ensconced in a booth at the campus center.
“As were you,” Daisy said, winding the string of her tea bag tight around the pouch and squeezing.
The Brighton was Lancaster Conservatory’s top scholarship and awarded full tuition to two incoming freshman.
He unwrapped a turkey sandwich. “What else do you hear?” He bit off a third of the corner.
She rolled her lips in, thinking. “You’re from Quebec. You went to private school in Montreal but I don’t know if it’s your home. You were in the junior company of Les Grand Ballets Canadiens. Arturo Castellano and Andre Mejia were your teachers. You’re part Native American—”
“How’d you know that?” Will asked, shielding his full mouth against the back of one fist.
“I heard you telling someone. Your dad’s name is Maurice, which I also overheard.”
“And my mom is the pompatus of love,” Will said.
“I see what you did there.”
She liked him. She didn’t feel a physical attraction, good-looking and charismatic as he was, but in his company she felt on. As if they were dancing verbally, partnering each other through conversation. Which was exhilarating in its own way.
“Kaeger, though,” she said, “sounds German to me. I heard you mention sisters the other day in class so at least two but I don’t know if older or younger. You study martial arts. That’s no secret. You were offered a corps position at Ballets Canadiens but instead you took the scholarship here.”
Will wiped his mouth and sat back from the table, eyeing her. “You don’t seem the spying type. I think you’re one of those rare people who shut up and listen. And those crazy eyes of yours probably don’t miss a thing.”
Daisy smiled into her tea. She was used to comments about her intense, blue-green eyes.
“Kaeger is German,” Will said. “Mom is the native Canuck. Saint Brunswick. Not Quebec. Two sisters—one older, one younger. And I came here because my old man wouldn’t let me take the corps contract without having at least two years of college. He’s the intellectual in the family.”
Daisy nodded and bit into her own sandwich.
“Now you,” Will said, and held up a finger. “First of all, you’re a baby.”
Stung, Daisy flicked her eyes up to him. She chewed methodically and stared, waiting for clarification.
“I hear you’re only seventeen. Did you skip a grade?”
She shook her head. “Just born late in the year. I’ll be eighteen in December.”
Another finger went up. “Outside of dance, the two words I hear associated with you are rich and virgin.”
She nearly choked. “What?”
“You know David Alto?”
“Who?”
“Huh. I thought he would’ve made a move by now.”
“What are you talking about?”
“So David’s a rat.”
“A rat?”
“Technical theater guy. Leo Graham’s army. You rarely see them in Mallory, they usually roam around down in the basement shops and then emerge for production. Like rats.”
“I see.”
“David roams above ground, though. He’s got a thing for dancers and he loves the observation windows above studio B. Anyway. He’s got the hots for you.”
Daisy raised her eyebrows. “You know this? You guys are friends then?”
“Friends?” Will rolled his eyes. “We have some overlapping edges. Theater arts and we both speak French. I like him in small doses. Anyway, I’ve been getting an earful from him about you. He’s definitely the spying type, hence the words rich and virgin.”
Daisy put up her own finger. “I’m not rich.”
“Gladwyne isn’t the slums.”
Daisy brought her teeth together and exhaled carefully. “Fair enough, but I was born in Philly. I grew up in Fairmount. We didn’t move to Gladwyne until I was fourteen. Certainly I’m not poor but my father worked his ass off to make a good life.”
Will reached and pushed her finger back down into her fist. “What does he do?”
Daisy sat back smiling, her arms crossed. “Are you asking or spying?”
Will smiled back, his bottom lip disappearing under a side tooth. “Asking,” he said quietly.
“He’s a plumber. Or was. He sold the business last spring and he and my mom bought a place out in Lancaster County.”
“What kind of place?”
“A little farm, mostly orchards and they want to put in a vineyard someday. It’s their dream.”
“Is it yours?”
“I love it there,” she said, laughing a little. “Funny thing about me—I like to be dancing or I like to be at home. And my mom is one of those people who make a beautiful home wherever they go.”
Will took a long sip of his soda. “And what about virgin?”
“What do you think?” She smiled at him over the rim of her cup and their eyes held.
“Pure but not stupid,” he said under his breath.
Her eyes itched but she didn’t blink. “Are those your own words for me?”
He looked away, laughing. Victorious, she let her eyelids close.
“Anyway, about David,” Will said.
“I wouldn’t know him if I passed him on the street,” she said. “So I don’t know how he would know I’m a virgin. Unless it was a lucky guess.”
Will dug into his shirt pocket for his pack of cigarettes and thumped them on the table. “Or talking to the right people.”
“Why are you telling me this?” she asked.
He exhaled a plume of smoke and ran a hand along the back of his neck. His eyes flicked over her shoulder then his face twisted in a look of chagrin. “Look, don’t kill me.”
“What?”<
br />
“He’s coming this way.”
“Who? David?”
“Don’t turn around.”
Her mouth hung open. “Did you buy me lunch as a setup?”
“I bought you lunch because I wanted to buy you lunch, but…” Will looked around miserably. “I also owed Dave a favor.”
“Jesus Christ.”
A voice behind her. “Speaking.”
“Monsieur Alto.” Will flicked his middle finger against his thumb and sent the pack of cigarettes spinning toward Daisy. She took one, glaring at him, then turned a placid face up to the newcomer.
Her first impression was he looked like a bear. A sturdy, well-fed bear with a long torso and short limbs. His hair was brown, curly and rumpled, with longish sideburns. He was cute. And he slid into the booth next to Daisy with a little too much confidence. She practically felt his ego sit in her lap.
“Hi, I’m David,” he said.
“Of course you are,” she said.
“This is Daisy,” Will said, flicking his Zippo lighter. Beneath the table, he slid his foot close by Daisy’s, tapping a soft, supporting Morse code on the toe of her sneaker. She pressed her ankle bone hard against his, stilling him. She didn’t like to be tapped or patted.
“How are you?” David said.
She leaned the cigarette into the flame, took a drag. “At what?”
She exhaled smoke in David’s direction. He waved it away, his dark brown eyes hungry. She worried it was a good comeback, but the wrong answer.
“I WAS YOUNG,” Daisy said.
Rita continued to sit quietly as Daisy tried to put her thoughts in order. The silence pressed her to hurry up.
“That must sound ridiculous to you,” she said. “I mean, I’m only twenty-four. But I feel so old…”
She ached with weariness. The skin stretching over her bones hurt.
“Seventeen when I started college,” she said. “It was a lot to get used to. The dance program and the academics and the social life, too. All these new people. New rules.”
Rita nodded with a small smile that seemed nostalgic.
“I had boyfriends in high school. I wasn’t ignorant of physical relationships. I just hadn’t gone all the way yet. And David Alto was…”
A wave of heat swept over her. A prickling anxiety at the back of her neck, creeping down her arms.
“Are you all right, Daisy?”
She drew in a breath. “It’s hard to talk about him.”
“Do you feel anxious?”
“I feel like shit.” She lifted her trembling hands from her lap. “This is how I go around feeling. Sick and scared. I hate it.”
The panic swelled in her, threatening to blow her limb from limb.
I hate everything. I hate what I did. I hate who I am.
“I swear I’m dying,” she whispered. A bitter laugh spilled up out of her throat. “At least once a day I feel like some kind of shit and at least once a week I’m positive I’m dying.”
Her fingers clenched open and shut. She felt herself poised on the edge of a secret. And like a bad dance partner, the anxiety was grabbing at her. Upsetting her balance and knocking her off the edge of the world.
“It builds up in me,” she said. The words dripped from her like a cold syrup. “It’s like my chest is going to explode, like my skin is going to crack open. And either I go running into the street or… That’s when I…”
Rita’s eyes never left Daisy’s. Her glasses caught the light as she nodded. “Try this,” she said. “Take a deep breath. Now hold it. When you let it out, envision blowing a bubble in front of you. Make it anything—soap, crystal, bubble gum. Make the shape with your breath. Hold it in the air or in your hands.”
Daisy slowly exhaled and envisioned her breath flowing down a long tube, like a glassblower’s pipe. A glowing red sphere emerging from the end, cooling into pale, transparent blue.
“Do you have it?”
It shimmered through the air, floating iridescent in front of her. Her hands rolled up in her lap, cupped like a base for it. “I have it,” she said.
“Put the words into it. Start with when your skin is going to crack open. When you want to run into the street.”
“That’s when I want to cut myself,” Daisy said. The words floated into the sphere. Black obsidian letters, slimy with mold and moss. The bubble flared once, alarmed, then its blue intensified. The black letters burst into flame.
“Now pinch the bubble off, like you’re tying a balloon. Do you have it?”
Daisy nodded. It didn’t work with her visualization, but she got the idea.
“Now let it go.”
In her mind, Daisy simply threw the ball against the wall and watched it shatter with a detached satisfaction. Her shoulders relaxed. The next breath into her chest was warm and soothing.
“That’s a good trick,” she said.
She listened to the silence, dissected all the layers of sound within it.
“Sometimes it’s like my skin is begging me to cut it,” she said.
“To release it.”
Daisy nodded, her eyes dissolving. “I haven’t cut in five weeks but I can’t stop wanting to. I think about it all the time. The therapists at the hospital gave me all these tricks and I try them. I run a nail file on my fingertips. I use a stress ball. I cut paper. It does nothing. I draw on myself with magic markers but it doesn’t come close. I need the slice. I need to hurt and I want to bleed and I want…”
Rita steepled her fingers beneath her chin. “You want,” she said. “Yet you haven’t cut yourself in five weeks. That’s tremendous.”
Daisy stared.
“I’m not being sarcastic,” Rita said. “I hear want and I hear need but I don’t hear I did it. If you were stripped and searched right this minute, would we find fresh cuts on your body?”
Daisy shook her head.
“Then that’s fantastic.”
“But I want to do it. Every day I wake up wanting it.”
Rita spread her hands. “I want to eat a bag of potato chips for breakfast every day. I don’t. You want to cut every day. You don’t. Wanting and doing are two different things and in this scenario, your not doing kicks want’s ass.”
Daisy sat back, slightly stunned.
“How do you keep from doing it?” Rita said. “What stops you from caving into the want?”
“Well, I’m seeing someone,” Daisy said. “He’s the one who made me get help. So he knows. And if I cut, he’ll see. He’ll be the first to know again. And it stops me.”
Rita nodded. “It’s good you have him.”
“No,” Daisy said. “I’m a shitty girlfriend. I have no business dating anyone. I’m not over Erik. I still love him. I cheated on him and I may as well be cheating now. I hate what I’ve become. I want myself back. I want it back the way it was before. And I want Erik. I want him back so bad.”
Shoulders heaving, she buried her face in her hands, rubbing against the hot saltiness puddled in the creases of her palms.
“He doesn’t know where I am. He doesn’t care where I am anymore. I ruined everything. I want to cut away the part of me that wrecked it. Cut that part of my life away, make it go away. Just make this all go away.”
Soft footsteps on the rug and Rita set a box of tissues down on the seat of the couch. “What you do in here, Daisy,” she said. “In this office, is a safe form of cutting. A productive form of cutting. You slice yourself open, not physically, but mentally. Because this isn’t about who you are or what you do. This is about how you feel. Cutting into your physical entity isn’t going to make how you feel go away. Cutting into how you feel, though…”
“What I feel has no name,” Daisy said, crying hard.
Sobs like glass bubbles burst from her lungs and smashed in pieces on the floor until she was spent, a sodden lump on the couch. Her forehead felt swollen and heavy.
“I’d like to help you find names for what you feel,” Rita said. “I’d like to help you
find yourself.”
Daisy nodded, perplexed that the woman seemed to be asking permission to work with her, instead of the other way around.
Rita took a casual glance at her wrist. “We’re nearing the end. I don’t want you to leave here this upset. Let’s do some breathing, try to get you back to harbor.”
“All right,” Daisy whispered, taking another tissue.
“Do you feel like you could come back and see me?”
Daisy opened her eyes. She looked over at the bookshelf and the Betsy-Tacy series. Sweet little girls in pen and ink, arm-in-arm. Braids and curls flying. Simple and carefree.
She looked at Rita. The crazy curls and funky glasses and chipped orange toenail polish.
“I want to,” Daisy said.
WILL AND DAISY STOOD AT THE BULLETIN BOARD outside studio A. It was a week after auditions for the conservatory’s fall dance concert and roles were posted that morning.
Will let out a slow, soft whistle. “Well, well, well. A little shakeup is good for everyone but this is a small earthquake.”
Daisy stared at the cast list. Marie was choreographing a new ballet to works by Johann Sebastian Bach. Daisy found her name in the two ensemble pieces: the opening Bourée from the Suite in E Minor and the finale to the Brandenberg Concerto. Being a freshman, it was what she expected.
But in the middle of the cast list her name appeared again.
Prelude in F Minor: Kathy Curran, Christine Chung, Jessica Barnes, Meghan Lamb, Daisy Bianco.
“This doesn’t happen,” Will said. “No slur on your talent. But freshmen don’t get solos. Brighton or no Brighton.”
A little further down from the Prelude line, the surprises kept coming.
Siciliano from Sonata #2: Kathy Curran and Matt Lombardi. (Understudy/matinee Will Kaeger and Daisy Bianco)
“Do you think Marie made a mistake doing this?” Daisy asked quietly.
“Mistake? No. Rules, especially unwritten rules, are meant to be broken. Your technique runs circles around some of the upperclassmen and they know it. All the same, I don’t exactly envy you. People are going to be pissed.”
“What’s the best way to handle this,” Daisy said. She had an idea but wanted to hear if Will’s matched.
Give Me Your Answer True Page 3