Practically Ever After

by Isabel Bandeira

  Kris nodded and quickly turned his attention to Dev and Phoebe. “Jacobs?”

  “You know Phoebe goes pretty much anywhere Em goes and I go wherever Phoebe goes.”

  Em grinned. “Smart boyfriend. As first lady of the senior class, of course I need to be there but, you know,” she reached over and played with Kris’ tie, “we could have much more fun doing other things.”

  The tips of his ears turned red and he yanked his tie out of her hands. “You have way too much fun with that ‘first lady’ thing for someone who hates politics.”

  “Please. Who came up with this year’s post-prom idea?”

  “The post-prom committee?” I volunteered. This was the millionth time we’d heard this argument.

  Em narrowed her eyes at me, then turned her full attention back on Kris. “I was the first to say glow in the dark mini golf. Totally beats the same bowling alley they’ve gone to in the past gajillion years.”

  A cloud of sparkly material wafted by our table and Alec seemed to perk up a little bit. “Hey, do you know if Laura is going to the post-prom thing?” He watched the girl as she passed our table, eyes wide.

  I could see what Alec saw in her—Laura was pretty in a Lord of the Rings elven extra sort of way, with big blue eyes, long, straight hair she bleached to a white blonde, a waifish figure, and she always wore flowy clothes and sparkly things to emphasize her elvishness. I liked more curves but had to admit that she was ethereally pretty. She twirled by in her layered chiffon dress, sparkling in the low ballroom lights, completely unaware of her one-person fan club.

  It was hard seeing one of my favorite people constantly trailing after someone like a lost puppy. “You know she’s a lost cause, right? She’s dating some guy at U of Delaware. That’s probably him.” I pointed at the longish-haired guy who looked like a Strider currently dancing with her.

  “Yeah, but she’s also going to Rutgers Newark and when she realizes she’s so much better than him and turkey dumps him, I’ll be there to sweep her off her feet. NJIT’s right across the street.”

  “What’s with you guys and turkey dumping?” The words twisted my stomach and suddenly the chocolate mousse I was eating tasted like sawdust. “It’s the worst time to break up. That’s right before first semester finals.”

  “It kind of makes sense. Think about it. Other than being the first break once you get to college, it’s before the winter holidays so you don’t have to get presents, but it’s far enough away from the holidays that you don’t come off looking like a jerk,” Leia said, then at Alec’s cleared throat, added, “except for the times that Hanukkah happens practically on top of Thanksgiving. Then you really do look like a jerk and need to wait for the next non-gift holiday break.”

  The whole conversation still made me feel a little ill, so I stood and practically lifted Leia out of her seat. “Okay, enough turkey talk. Dance?”

  Leia nodded and waved at the others, this time anchoring me as the pivot point, spinning us into the crowd. “This is fun,” she yelled into my ear over the loud music. “Better than anything the Academy would have come up with, anyway.”

  I squeezed her tighter, afraid she and everything around us would just disappear, but it didn’t.

  It was a fast song, but we curled into each other like we were slow dancing. We were perfect together.

  Chapter 13

  I tried to stay quiet as I made my way into the house so I wouldn’t wake anyone, but, apparently, judging by the light coming from the kitchen, I really didn’t need to bother. When I walked into the kitchen, Mom was still in her day clothes and was sitting at the island, her hands cupped around a mug of tea as she stared at four lists at the same time.

  “Hey,” I said, trying to keep my voice down. I dropped my clutch and keys on the kitchen counter and slid onto the stool kitty-corner to her. My dress made it a little hard to balance on the stool, but I managed with a little extra wiggling. “I hope you didn’t stay up late for me.”

  She looked up at me, a small, tired frown on her lips. “Oh, no, no. Just planning a few things for Trixie’s wedding and your graduation party.” Her usually neat bob was mussed and her concealer had worn away to reveal deep undereye circles. She and I both had constant, awful dark circles, but I’d never seen her outside of her bedroom without concealer.

  I reached out tentatively to touch her arm. “Is everything okay?”

  “I just don’t know,” she said with an exasperated note in her voice, just before she seemed to catch herself and pasted on her ‘everything is perfect’ smile. “Ignore that. I’m sorry, I’m just very tired. Everything’s fine.”

  That’s when I noticed an empty spot on the key rack. “Dad’s not home yet?” Visions of a big fight, and Dad storming off to sleep in a hotel or his office popped into my head and I couldn’t push them away. I suppressed the urge to play with the napkin holder, pressing my fingers flat against the cold marble of the island top, instead.

  Mom shook her head. “Last-minute emergency in God knows what country it is this time. He wasn’t even sure if he had to fly out there or not when I spoke to him earlier.” She pushed the lists together into a neat pile and focused on getting the edges perfectly lined up with the lines of the island. “Honestly, I still have no idea why everything is an emergency in that company. A few days’ delay won’t kill their product lines, but it will keep their executives from killing themselves working.”

  “A few days’ delay could cost them millions of dollars,” I said, repeating what Dad said every time we’d asked.

  “Whatever. I just wish your father wasn’t the one who had to fix things all the time.”

  I tapped her pile of lists with a smile. “Correas are just too good at fixing and organizing things for our own good.”

  She pursed her lips and shook her head. “Correas are also good at forgetting there’s more to life than work and to-do lists.”

  That sounded way too much like what Leia had said about me earlier, so I quickly changed the subject. “So, were you waiting up for me or for Dad?” I got up and checked the tea kettle and added more water—I didn’t feel like having tea, but I could tell by the lack of steam coming off the top of Mom’s mug that she could probably use a fresh cup.

  “Both? Either? The house was too quiet. Honestly, it doesn’t matter how long I live here, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to how weirdly quiet these woods are. I should have tried harder to convince your dad to get something in Philly, but when your dad is stubborn about something…” She trailed off with a shrug. “I think we need to get a cat, a really noisy one.”

  “Once a city girl, always a city girl?” It wasn’t like we lived deep in the middle of Wharton State Forest or anything—our house was just on one of the bigger lots in our development, and since we were an end lot that butted up against state owned and protected forest on one side and that had a lake in the back, it was quieter than my friends’ houses, but not by much. “Besides, it’s not that quiet. We have neighbors and civilization and stuff.”

  “Let me remind you I grew up a few apartment buildings down from a firehouse. This kind of quiet, Miss Grace, is horror movie silence compared to that.” She put down her mug and slid her lists into a folder. “Anyway, enough about me, how was prom?”

  “Prom-like? You know, dancing, food, the usual,” I said, then smiled as she made a ‘go on’ gesture. It was late and I was exhausted, but I didn’t just want to leave her alone in the kitchen again.

  “I did not pay that much money for your dress for such a lame recap,” she said, arching her brows at me as she took another sip of tea.

  I tried to look nonchalant but tried to hide the relieved feeling that came over me at her lighter tone. “Fine. The food was sub-par as expected, the music was too loud but okay, Leia and I danced a lot, and Dev and some of the other theater people organized another surprise choreographed dance thing at the beginning. It was a lot like a cheesy movie, so I guess it was good?”

  “Better,
” she said with a nod. “I hope you filmed the choreographed dance. I’d love to see it and would have loved it at my prom. Junior year, one of my friends wanted to organize something like that but she couldn’t find enough boys willing to risk their reputations to dance in front of the whole class.” A distant look came into her eyes and the corners of her lips turned up a tiny bit more. “But she did rig the prom queen elections senior year and that’s how yours truly managed to get prom queen.” She made a hmm sound as she dropped her chin into her hands. “I think Alya is in real estate now, convincing people to buy incredibly overpriced apartments in Manhattan.”

  “Alya?” That name sounded sort-of familiar, but in a way that was more random, distant family member than parental friend.

  “We were inseparable from freshman year to graduation. She was the one who convinced me to do all the things that gave your grandparents grey hair.” Mom ran a hand through her hair and laughed. “And that gave me pink hair. I know you’ve seen the pictures.”

  I had, but I didn’t remember her saying anything about why she’d had bubblegum colored hair for most of her junior year beyond her usually dismissive ‘rebellious phase’ comments. “You know, you never mention anyone from high school. Did you stay in touch with any of them?”

  “It’s hard. Everyone changed so much in college, and then, once I got married and had you and moved down here, it just became harder. Honestly, I’m closer to my friends from Vassar now.” She put down her mug and a grin stretched across her cheeks. “Anyway, Alya also managed to work her magic and I ended up going with Ivan, the most popular boy in our school, to my senior prom. Oh, I was head over heels for that boy.” She put her hand dramatically over her heart.

  That name, at least, was a little more familiar. “He was the other guy, wasn’t he? Dad’s competition?”

  “No, I think we only lasted until the day after graduation. High school relationships have such a short shelf life… It’s just a part of growing up, you know?” Mom didn’t wait for my answer, just put down her mug and looked squarely at me. “Anyway, enough about my past. It’s really late. Either the two of us get to bed, or you need to pull up a video of that thing Dev and his friends did.”

  My brain was swirling too much from what she’d said to even think of going to sleep, so I got the kettle from the stove and refilled her mug before pulling my phone out of my clutch. “Leia sent me hers. I didn’t think to film it.”

  “Thank goodness for Leia,” Mom said as she dropped a fresh teabag into her mug.

  “Yup. She’s amazing.”

  May

  WEEK 20 INSPIRATION: “Dance is the hidden language of the soul.”-Martha Graham

  Chapter 14

  Sorry, got held up with Mom and then I got an email from Mr. Hayashi asking why I hadn’t turned in my paper, I texted Leia, then put away my phone and tried not to think about the five messages she’d sent while waiting for me at Marranos. By herself. For over an hour. While I’d rushed to figure out what had happened with the file I’d uploaded two days ago. It was as if the universe was actually working to get me the title of Worst Girlfriend Ever.

  Instead of turning the car around and driving straight to Marranos, I closed my eyes, dropped my head to my steering wheel, and took a bunch of deep breaths to straighten up my spinning world and push away the guilt. I had driven practically on autopilot, but I’d come to this parking lot outside the dance school every day for years and the route was burned into my brain. I didn’t have the time to fix anything at the moment, and digging myself deeper into the vortex of a messed-up schedule would just bite me in the butt later. I desperately needed to prep for the junior classes and Aunt Drina had texted that there would be an empty studio for the next hour.

  I took another deep breath and then I was off running through the raindrops to the school’s storefront. Inside, I ignored the stares of the parents and peeked at the schedule posted on the corkboard, doing a tiny mental cheer when I saw that the little studio was still free. It would have been just my luck if one of her competition dancers had booked it for practice right before I’d gotten there. Aunt Drina nodded at my wave when I passed the window to the studio where she was teaching the advanced ballet class, all buns and pointe shoes and attitude.

  The little studio was sandwiched between the two bigger studios and I could hear strains of Stravinsky coming from Drina’s class and soft music and thumping bodies coming through the other wall—probably one of the lyrical classes. It smelled like dance shoe leather and sweat and the occasional rosin the ballet dancers snuck in, even though Aunt Drina had marley floors and rosin was against the rules. I closed my eyes and took it all in—the sound, the smell, the vibration of the floor from the music. Home. Kicking off my shoes and dropping my car keys into them, I hooked up my phone to the sound system and pulled up the dance playlist I’d put together the other night. I was already wearing my sports bra and jazz leggings, so I just stepped into the middle of the floor and started warming up, my muscles and joints stiff and protesting before turning to butter with each plié and roll of my hips.

  As soon as I felt warm enough, I threw myself into the next song that came on my playlist, feeling my body disappear until there wasn’t anything but the beat and the music. It had been so long since I’d felt my body become the music, like how Em always transformed on stage into whatever character she was playing. Competition songs were always cut shorter, but, this time, I danced the full five minutes, collapsing at the end in a pile of sweat.

  Only when I stopped did I notice that the balls of my feet were raw from turning on the floor without my old calluses. I cringed and pulled my planner out of my dance bag to add a note to dig up my old foot undeez until my skin toughened up again.

  Clapping from the doorway made me look up to see a pretty girl, with shoulder length brown hair, poking her head around the doorway. “That was really nice.” I was too out of breath to answer, so she continued on. “You must be Drina’s niece. I’m Natalie.”

  I finally had caught my breath enough to stand up and walk towards the door. “Yes, I’m Grace.”

  “Nice to meet the prodigal niece,” she said, stepping into the studio. “Drina talks about you all the time.” She didn’t look too much older than me and, even though she wasn’t wearing the school’s mandated pink tights and a black leotard and didn’t have her hair up in a bun, she looked like a stereotypical ballet dancer, long and lean with natural turnout. Out of habit, I looked down to check out her feet and legs. That’s when I noticed the physio tape around her left ankle that even her legwarmers didn’t completely hide.

  I tried my best not to stare at her ankle and forced myself to look back up at her face, the obnoxiously purple wall, anything but whatever injury she could have.

  “Don’t believe anything she says about me, especially if it involves matches and pointe shoe ribbons,” I said, forcing a wide smile on my face. “I’m definitely not the reason behind why she had to replace the floors in the rose studio.”

  Her light brown eyes practically sparkled at my reaction. “I already like you more than April. Amazing dancer, but no sense of humor. And she called me Nat all the time.”

  I latched onto the barre and started stretching out my protesting hamstring as we talked. “I’m definitely not April. I can’t promise I’m an amazing dancer because I haven’t taken a class in three and a half years, unless you count the choreography for our halftime routines.”

  “Hmm.” Natalie stepped further into the studio and the contrast between her right foot and bandaged foot was too hard to ignore. Maybe a normal person wouldn’t notice, but as a dancer, I couldn’t help but see that something was going on. “Do you want advice?” I nodded and she walked over to the speaker system, pointing at my phone to ask for permission to touch it. While she scrolled back on my phone to the song, she said, “You don’t look like you haven’t danced in over three years, but there were a few rough spots. First, you need to point your toes a little more, espe
cially on your pencil turns. It was really obvious, especially here.” The music started playing again and she waited for the chorus before marking out the sequence I’d been dancing on the floor. Her injury didn’t stop her, though she did all the turns in the opposite direction from the way I’d turned, and she only barely pointed her left foot, making it look like she was trying to flex, instead. “And here, it might be nice to have a jump—any jump—that curls into a roll. You know, to counter the emotional low the music hits on the word ‘now.’”

  What she said made total sense. I waited for the chorus to repeat and followed her as she marked ahead of me, kicking into a barrel jump right before the ‘and’ in the song and falling to the ground on ‘now,’ my arms wrapped around myself as I rose onto my knees.

  “You’re right.” The choreography played through my brain and I did it again when the chorus repeated a final time, tweaking the barrel into a tour jeté to make even more of a contrast between the open legs of the jump and my completely curled-up body on the landing. I felt powerful and vulnerable at the same time. “That’s perfect.” A little more work and it might actually be useable. “Do you think the juniors can handle a song like this?”

  “Working already? I definitely like you.” She rewound and listened again. ‘I don’t know if they’ll like the song, because they’re all dying to dance to something by that new K-pop group, but I think they can handle it. Put single piques instead of the pique-fouette, and they might pull it off.”

  “Okay.” I made a mental note to work on that with the class—at their age, I definitely wasn’t substituting out fouettes. The next song in my playlist came on and I realized I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t used to awkward silences. “So, um, sprained ankle?” I asked, pointing at her leg.

  “I wish,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s a little swollen because I pushed too hard yesterday in PT. Sometimes I forget I can’t use it like I used to.”