Tiny Pretty Things

by Sona Charaipotra

  “I could get emancipated from you,” I say, thinking of the one girl at school who bragged about doing this. “I could even make you tell me who he is by calling the police,” I say, knowing this little bit extra will be enough to unhinge her. And it does.

  She makes a loud harrumph and clears her throat. She asks the waiters for the check and shakes her head, as I was just doing. Her shakes are more forceful, and she doesn’t stop. She just keeps shaking and shaking, like if she does it for long enough, the right words will come out.

  “Your father . . . ,” she says, trying to imitate my softer, less shrill voice.

  “Also,” I continue, gaining momentum, “I’m not just an understudy. I’m one of the willis with a solo. They’re important to the ballet.”

  “We both know that’s nothing,” she says.

  But her head’s still shaking and she’s still mentally chewing on the idea of me finding out who my dad is. The thoughts spill out all over her face. I haven’t exactly won this round. But then, neither has she.

  I can’t match her stare for much longer, so I stand.

  “E-Jun,” she shouts after me as I run toward the bathroom. It’s dingy, the floor wet with footprints and who knows what else. But I can’t help myself. The porcelain toilet beckons me. My eyes fill with tears, and my mouth with saliva. I kneel on the floor. My body is trained to want to purge, so it’s not hard to get what’s inside out. I don’t even have to use my finger, just let my tongue swipe the back of my throat. Then I retch.

  Everything leaves me. Liquid, anger, food, pressure. Each time my stomach heaves, I feel more of it lift off me—little balloons of sorrow set to float away. Even if it’s just for a minute, I feel free. The tile under my knees cools my hot limbs and my head buoys above the toilet. I prepare for one last purge, the empty one that tells me I have nothing left. I can’t stop vomiting. The liquid keeps coming.

  All I hear are my tears, my heartbeat, the buzz of the Giselle performance music in my head. I let myself empty one last time, then drag myself off the floor. I open the stall door and freeze. My mom’s standing right outside like a guard. I’m so surprised, I stumble backward. I should’ve known it was too risky to do this here. I should’ve waited until I got back to the dorms.

  “Oh, June,” my mom says, looking a little devastated. “Maybe no public school. Maybe you need hospital.”

  Two hours later, I’m back at the dorm. My mom and I didn’t say a word to each other the entire ride back. It’s eleven o’clock. I should be in my bed, resting, or rehearsing if I’m going to stay up this late. But I can’t. Too much has happened, and I’m so exhausted, I can’t sleep. I head back downstairs to the front hall. It’s mostly dark and quiet, although a studio or two has lights on, meaning someone’s rehearsing still, striving for perfection, and hasn’t gotten booted to bed by an RA. Usually, that person would be me. But tonight I’m feeling defeated. I need to do something to defuse this situation with my mom, something that won’t let her snatch my dream away from me—not when I’m this close. So I’m going to find my dad.

  If what Madame Matvienko said is true, maybe my dad walked these very halls. Maybe my mom met him here, and dancing really is in my blood. Maybe I’m a legacy, too. The thought thrills and infuriates me. I stand in the lobby, the snow swirling outside the picture windows, coating the Upper West Side in a pure, powdery white that will turn dingy and dark tomorrow. But tonight, it’s beautiful. It flutters down in swirls of white, and I have half a mind to go out there, let it envelop me, let the cold seep into my bones. Instead, I stare up at the portraits of all the ABC dancers who’ve come before me through these very halls, marking the school’s history and success. My mother’s right. There are no Asian dancers featured here on the wall, although the school will happily take their money, importing dozens at a time for the golden opportunity of making it to the stage. But what does she know? Things are different now, right? They have to be.

  Anyway, it’s not her I’m looking for here. It’s my other half—my father, a reflection of myself. Where does my forehead come from, or my caramel-flecked eyes? My too-light hair? I look for myself in the bone structure of the white male dancers that grace the walls, mimicking their smiles, trying on their faces, trying to find myself. But it’s no use. In the shadowed hall, I’m invisible once more, even to myself.

  When I get back upstairs, the room light is on. Despite my best efforts, my face is still splotchy from crying, but at first, Gigi doesn’t say anything. She knows I like my space. She putters around the room in silence, hovering over her butterflies, pausing to sniff the roses that sit on her desk. She sits briefly, tapping her pencil on the table as she does her math homework, then shuffles through her closet. She’s got this random excitement she keeps trying to contain, but it’s not really working. She sniffs one of the roses again. Probably an early Valentine’s Day gift from Alec. They make me think of Jayhe, and our kiss. But even those thoughts don’t erase what happened tonight with my mom.

  I know Gigi’s dying to speak, so I sigh loudly, a cue that she can talk if she wants to. She always wants to.

  “It’s snowing.” She’s peering out the window; tiny little flakes are still coming down. The sprinkle of white has turned the cityscape into a candy confection.

  “I know,” I snap. My stomach grumbles. I used to love the snow when I was little. My mother and I would pile on our heavy winter coats and head out to the park in Queens, which was empty then, a blanket of white covering the former fields of green. Even how the snowflakes seemed to be fatter outside of Manhattan. We’d have snowball fights and make snow angels, and she’d tell me stories about Korea. She never talked about her time at the conservatory, or why she left, but she loved telling stories about her life with her three sisters and how they’d help their mom with the cooking and the sewing. How simple things were then, and how she’d make little hanbok dresses to wear in the plays the girls would put on. I loved the stories about her sisters—the tall one, the cranky one, the baby. She was right in the middle. It made me want a sibling, too, someone to make memories with. Still, back then, I was happy with just the two of us, my mom and me. But as I got more serious about dance, she got more and more quiet, till we hardly talked at all.

  “We should go outside,” Gigi says, her eyes twinkling with glee. But then she looks at me again, and ducks her head. “Or maybe not. Lots to do. And it’s late.” She sits back down at her desk, and starts dismantling a math problem.

  “Do you miss your family?” I ask her, folding down my covers, crawling into bed. I don’t know where the question comes from, or how it escaped my mouth, except that I can’t stop thinking about my mother. All this time, I thought I was a fatherless child, but I’m finally realizing I lost my mom a long time ago. I’m an orphan. “It must be hard.”

  She looks up at me, the twinkle fading, a sadness seeping in. “Yeah. There’s so many things here I’d love to share with them,” she says, tapping her pencil again. Always restless. “It’s cool having my aunt here, though. We went to see the Chocolate Nutcracker in Harlem over break. The all-black cast. And we have this list of must-hit restaurants around town—we’ve been trying to cross one off each week.” She looks down at the flat expanse of her stomach. “Although I’ve been trying not to overindulge.”

  “I’ll take you out for Korean food one day,” I find myself saying, like my mouth has a mind of its own. “There are a few really awesome places in Midtown.” And I never go for fun anymore, not since Sei-Jin and I imploded. I do miss wandering with friends around Herald Square and the street nicknamed Korea Way, like it’s been snatched straight from Seoul. “Do you talk to your dad a lot?”

  “At least once a week,” Gigi says, looking at the photo on her desk. It’s Gigi and her parents on the beach, wind-tousled hair, glistening skin. They look happy. “I think me leaving was harder on him than on my mama. Even though he doesn’t say it.”

>   I look across the room at my own desk, bare, no mementos, no photos. “I never knew my father,” I say, sitting up in bed. I haven’t talked to anyone—except my mom—about this in ages. If ever. Sei-Jin was the last one I told about it. “I think he was a dancer, too. But I don’t know. My mom never talks about him.”

  Gigi is silent, unsure of what to say. So I speak again. “But I want to know about him. I’m going to find out. Even if it kills me.” Or my mom.

  “You should,” she says, grinning. “It’s such a big part of you, I’m sure. That’s why you’re such a natural, a born dancer. It runs in your blood.” She smiles to herself, then at me again. “You know, I’ll help if you want. If I can.”

  I don’t know why this surprises me. If Gigi’s anything, it’s helpful. Even to someone like me, who’s been less than welcoming. Maybe I should try more. But I shake it off. “Thanks, but I think I’ll be okay.”

  I turn around in my bed, my face toward the wall. I will not cry. I will not cry. Especially not in front of her. I don’t know how to let anyone get close to me like that.

  22

  Gigi

  TIME GOES BY IN A blur here, much faster than it does in California. With rehearsals and classes and homework—and Alec—my days are a whir of activity. I usually sneak away to the park in the mornings to find a quiet moment or two—it’s just a few blocks away, looming and majestic, but some of the girls don’t even realize it exists. June never comes when I ask her to go with me.

  These days, she says, it’s too cold. I kind of love it—the way the air puffs white when you breathe out, the fresh snow on the ground. But she’s always reminding me that it will be black in a day or two. And then she retreats back into herself. So it’s right about this time of night that the homesickness starts.

  Dusk settles in, and it’s dinnertime here, but hardly anyone eats. It’s midafternoon in San Francisco, right around the time when I’d get home from school and my mama would make me a snack—her homemade blueberry granola and yogurt, or hard-boiled eggs and whole wheat toast—before I headed to rehearsal. She’d paint in the studio next to the kitchen, and my dad would come in from his office, ink-stained hands from reading at least ten different newspapers, a big grin on his face. He’d fire off a gazillion questions about my day, about the ballet we were rehearsing, about school, how I was feeling and if I had had any heart palpitations.

  And the worst was when he’d ask about boys.

  I never had anything to tell him about boys back then. Before here, before Alec, there was no one. Much to my dad’s relief. That’s all different now. Alec makes me feel good, feel like I belong, like this whole thing isn’t just a fluke. He makes me miss home less. He makes me happy.

  I move my butterfly terrarium to my desk, and I crack the window open. Snow collects on the sill, and some of it flutters inside. I watch it accumulate into little mounds and can’t focus on my math homework. I love how the little flakes pause on the window before melting into drops. Back home, the mist over San Francisco never transformed into anything this pretty. This is what February should look like. This is what Valentine’s Day should be like.

  My phone buzzes. I can feel June simmering as I comb through my pile of blankets in search of it. Every little thing I do seems to bug her this week. She’s been all weird and moody, more so than usual June behavior. Makes me wonder if there’s a boy. Or if she’d even tell me if there was one. And any moment of temporary friendship we had seems long gone. It’s almost like the last conversation we had about her dad didn’t happen. When I complained to my friend Ella from back home about it over text, she said June’s attitude was probably about the cast list. She reminded me that I don’t know what it feels like to be an understudy, that I don’t know what it’s like not to be picked first.

  “Do you want to rehearse together tomorrow after Pilates?” I ask June.

  She doesn’t answer for such a long time that I almost forget that I asked the question in the first place.

  “No,” she finally says.

  “Want to go down to Times Square after Pilates instead?” Before I moved into the dorms and to this school, I thought I’d have a close friend to do everything with, like many of the other girls have. No such luck here.

  “Why would I ever want to go there?” she asks, a sour look marring her face. “Too dirty. Too loud. And tourists.”

  I stop trying, and take out my phone. Alec’s name appears in the text box two seconds after I push in my passcode. My heart accelerates too fast. I get a little dizzy with excitement. While I was at home in California, he was in Switzerland with his family for most of winter break, and we messaged back and forth. But I don’t know exactly what it means to be someone’s girlfriend. We also haven’t kissed since that night onstage, swept up in classes and rehearsals since we got back from winter break.

  The text reads: Meet me outside of the building :)

  I let out a little squeal as I text him back yes.

  “Now what?” June complains. “What’re you so excited about?”

  I can’t hold it in. “Alec asked me to meet him.”

  I wait for her excitement, but she sighs.

  “For Valentine’s Day!” I gush.

  “Oh, wow,” she says in a monotone pitch. “Sounds thrilling.” She tries hard not to roll her eyes.

  I put on the new dress my parents gave me for Christmas: a vintage 1940s tea dress my mom found at the thrift store a few blocks from our house. I pull on tights, and wet my hair a little, working a cream into it. I pull at the curls so that they billow around my face like a halo. I put on cute, dangly earrings and an armful of bangles. And then, for a minute, I ponder wearing my monitor. I open the drawer where it’s hidden and peer down at it. I can hear Dr. Khanna’s words again: Even when you’re not exercising, you could still have a palpitation.

  June pretends to have her nose in her history book, but I catch her watching me. So I leave it there, even though I know I should put it on. Even if it’s to prove to Mama, Daddy, Aunt Leah, and Nurse Connie that I don’t need it.

  I put on my winter coat and hat, and head for the door. “See you later. Cover for me, will ya?”

  I tiptoe into the hall. Bette’s door is wide open and music drifts out. As I ease past and toward the elevator, I hear a whistle.

  “Well, don’t you look beautiful,” Bette says, appearing in the doorway in little pajama shorts and mukluk slippers. Her legs are two long, pale beams of light: smooth and stark and flawless.

  I don’t know what to say. Each time I see her, I think about calling her out about the mean things she did to me last semester, but it doesn’t seem worth it. After all, I did get the lead role. Again. And her boyfriend. Bette’s used to winning. If I can just keep the peace—but that’s seeming more and more unlikely as she stares me down, her eyes like ice and her mouth still impossibly red from that lipstick she’s always wearing now, even in pajamas.

  “Uh, hi” is all I can manage, suddenly feeling frumpy and inadequate, even though I’m the one all dressed up. I wonder what she used to wear for special nights with Alec. I wonder what they used to do, if tonight feels different to him. A good different, I hope.

  She plays with a lock of her silky blond hair. “Heading out for Valentine’s Day?”

  “Yeah . . .”

  Bette eyes me—the perfect skin on her forehead scrunches. A pang of guilt hits me, knowing that she probably misses Alec, and this time last year she would have been the one going out with him.

  “Did you guys get a room?” she asks, pointed, and all my guilt falls away, like an anchor dropping. “We used to do that. The Waldorf. It’s Alec’s favorite—”

  I know she’s going to keep at it, so I turn away from her. “Bye. See you later.”

  I wait for the elevator, feeling her eyes burn into my back.

  “Hey, Solomon,” I greet the front desk
guy, and he beams. I’m the only dancer who actually uses his name. I sign myself out, leaving the time blank, and he lets me go outside. I keep thinking about what Bette said, but I’m determined not to let her ruin this night, to ruin Alec for me. Snowflakes flutter down from a dark sky, their tiny shadows making perfect pictures on the sidewalk. I let them rest on my nose and melt into my skin. I think I’ll grow to love East Coast winters. As a California girl, I know I shouldn’t like the snow, but there’s something clean and fresh about it. I love how the ice crystals have the power to quiet the streets and force people inside.

  The petit rats race out of the building from late classes, headed home. They giggle and point at me. Some ask me for my autograph, but I promise to give it to them tomorrow before morning ballet. I turn away from school and into the bustle of the city. I blow air from my mouth just to see it change into little clouds. I hear a whistle and turn to my right. Alec’s standing there.

  He leans into a lamppost. He looks like he belongs in college, not in high school. He’s wearing a winter coat, a red knit hat, and nice pants. I try to walk slowly so I don’t fall. I see his big white smile and I can’t help myself. I speed up, fighting the urge to run.

  “Hey,” he says, when I’m close.

  “Hi,” I say, surrendering to my feelings, jumping up into his arms. He kisses all over my face. I kiss him right back, all over his face. I like the little stubble he’s left on his cheeks.

  “Someone’s just as excited to see me as I am to see her,” he says, and we just stand there for a minute, the snow dotting our jackets and hats. I let him kiss me again, on the mouth this time, and the warmth erases the cold. I let him push the peppermint candy from his mouth into mine. I let him rest his hand on the small of my back. I let him lean into me so he can feel my body.

  I can’t resist a smile while his lips press mine, causing him to grin. If this is what it means to be his girlfriend, I could be it forever. He releases me, leaving me to suck on the mint. He pulls me forward into the snowy night. “Let’s go! We’re going to be late.”