Tiny Pretty Things

by Sona Charaipotra

  “First stop. Seventy-fifth and Fifth,” I tell the driver.

  “Liz’s house?” Eleanor says.

  “Yeah, she’s coming with.”

  “Is that a good idea?”

  “Does it matter?” I glare at her like she’s speaking Chinese.

  “Have you spoken to her since she left?” Eleanor’s eyes get all big with sympathy.

  “Only online. But she’s fine. In school and everything.” Liz’s new school’s the kind of place where you wear expensive blazers and have fake IDs. A lot of celeb kids go there. “Why haven’t you talked to her?”

  “She’s not answering my texts. Is she still dancing?” It’s so weird for them not to be talking. It feels like everything is changing way too fast.

  “She’s taking a break from ballet until the summer intensives.” The car pulls up in front of her luxe Upper East Side building. The doorman opens my side with a gloved hand. I tell him to call up for her. Moments later she comes slinking down in a too-tight bubble-gum-pink dress and checkered heels and big gold earrings, like she’s fallen out of some terrible music video. Her legs are sticks and the hideous dress rides up because there’s barely anything to hold on to. She throws her coat on the seat before sliding into the car.

  I open my mouth to comment.

  “Don’t say shit to me about this dress,” she says. “I’m finally small enough to wear it.”

  I feel Eleanor’s eyes on me. They silently say, She looks and sounds a little crazy.

  I can’t exactly disagree, but we’re this far along, and I still need a good night. I have no idea what to expect, but we head on our way downtown to a club I know will take our fake IDs. Well, according to Liz. Eleanor and Liz talk about her new school while I fight to stay part of the conversation, fight to keep my thoughts anchored in place and not drifting back to Cassie, Alec, and what happened with Henri.

  We pull up in front of the club, and I’m ready for something fabulous and new and intoxicating. We step into line and take out our IDs. It’s a thrill. This is what New York City teenagers do, according to my mother and TV and the occasional trashy magazine that ends up in the student lounge.

  But when we get inside, it’s nothing like what I had in my head.

  The smell of liquor hangs heavy in the air, and though the club’s decor has all the glitz I could want—fifty-foot ceilings, vintage mirrors, expensive art, chandeliers—the bar is just a bunch of plastic bottles of the cheap stuff and buckets of ice with a few beers nestled in. We could not be more overdressed in our tight-fitting cocktail numbers and over-the-top makeup. Everyone else is rocking leggings and ripped T-shirts and clunky boots and fake fur vests. We’re the youngest by a few years. Everyone else looks college age and bored.

  Eleanor’s face falls on cue. “Um, gross,” she says. “Can we not? We have Pilates in the morning.”

  “Just an hour?” I say, tugging her forward. Liz disappears into the crowd, like she belongs there.

  “Where you going?” I call out.

  “Be back,” she says.

  “I’ll get us some drinks,” I tell Eleanor, who’s still frowning. “It’s an adventure.”

  “You’re drinking?” Eleanor’s lips curl in disgust, as if I’ve said I’m going to urinate in the middle of the crowd or tattoo Mr. K’s face on my stomach.

  “Just one drink. Vodka?” I say. “Whatever.”

  Eleanor looks like she’s about to tell me not to, so I cross my arms, getting ready to defend myself. “What’s up with you the last few days? I can tell something’s going on with you,” she says, shaking her head at me the way a mother might. Not my mother. But someone’s mother.

  “I’m having a shitty week,” I say. “You’re going to make me talk about it now?” Eleanor’s toes are peeking out of her sandals and I want to step on them. With a stiletto. I want to crush them, an impulse so violent and unexpected I take a noticeable step back and close my eyes for an extra-long second to get back control.

  “I guess not,” she says. “Just get me a water.”

  I make my way to the bar. And she follows. Henri’s got my head all messed up. Every blond girl I see reminds me of Cassie. Like there’re photographs of her all over the place. I watch one of the blondes dance, and it’s like it’s her. The grace of her movements, her ridiculous talent, resonates. I try to shake it off.

  “I’ll get you wine. It’s fine,” I say to Eleanor, who is busy staring at every person who passes her by.

  Truth be told, I don’t drink much. I have a glass of champagne on opening nights or gala events, or throw a few back when I need to get someone else to have some so I can get information, but that’s it. I’m not an idiot. I haven’t worked this hard and this long to throw it away on some foul-tasting carb-heavy crap, like I’m a suburban teenager with a sad dye job and a football-playing boyfriend and nothing to live for but the next party.

  I’m special. Allegedly.

  But just this once I want the taste of something normal and frivolous and poorly planned. I want to drink until Henri’s threats lose their weight, until the Giselle music leaves my head, until I can forget all about Gigi Stewart and the fact that Alec has really left me. I watch a husky guy with a stained concert T-shirt order a drink by punching it into a touchpad screen at the bar, and I copy his technique, and the bartender brings me over a cocktail that is an appealing, watery pink.

  I try to see where Liz has gone, but the lights flash on and off and I can’t see much of anything. I feel a surge of panic the instant before I put the tiny red straw to my lips to taste the mixture. Adele once told me that the key to success is not letting it out of your sight for even one minute. My mother says the key to success is being better than everyone else. She says it with that look in her eyes, like some people (Adele) have it, and some people don’t, and she hasn’t decided which one I am yet.

  I take my first swallow and I’m wishing I didn’t cough, didn’t let my eyes water, at that first burning taste.

  “That good?” Eleanor says, raising her eyebrows and looking around like a captive squirrel. “See? This is what we are not missing out on.” She takes her time looking over each and every guest. “Right?”

  I don’t agree, even though I’m supposed to. I like the loud, cranky music and the oversized plastic jewelry the girls all wear, the bored way they hunch over their drinks and lean against the walls.

  Liz returns, downs one drink and then another, but basically ignores us.

  “What’s up with you?” My question an almost perfect repeat of Eleanor’s to me.

  “Nothing. I’m fine,” she says, the syllables of her words falling sloppily over one another. “I just want to dance. I am a ballerina.” She leaves us and sashays into the crowd, shaking and moving her hips like she was never a classically trained ballerina at all, like she’s something else altogether.

  I follow, determined to enjoy my night. I try to drop one hip and roll my shoulders forward. I move my feet so they are parallel instead of turned out. Like her. It feels all wrong, holding my body this way. I take another sip of the terrible drink and hold it in my mouth before I swallow it down. Then another. Then another. Eleanor starts gossiping about the conservatory’s gay boys and who’s hooking up with who, and before long, the drink—as disgusting as it was—is gone. My head is all fuzzy.

  “I like this place,” I say. I guess the vodka-filled version of me does. I like how dark it is, and the constantly shifting stream of scents: thick and musky perfumes, wine, tequila, beer, and body odor. I like the heavy, eye-covering bangs on all the girls and the strangers finding each other, meeting each other, going in for first kisses. I like the stream of banter, from which I occasionally can catch a few snippets about who’s found an awesome spot in the West Village or which subway line is the crappiest.

  At school it’s all endless mirrors and the lemony smell of disinfect
ant in the mornings, followed by the smell of sweat in the evenings after we’ve all danced our asses off. It’s all expected, routine, exactly the same as the day before and the days to come.

  This ridiculous club is an assault on all my senses. A welcome assault. A relief. Not what I had in mind, but maybe even better.

  I’d forgotten Eleanor was next to me, but there she is, shaking her head in disbelief at all the chaos around her: bodies grabbing and rubbing one another, a man shoving his tongue down a woman’s throat and lifting up her skirt. I try to get Eleanor to talk about the music playing, but she says nothing. She usually never shuts up, always has an opinion on everything and everyone, always has something she’s just dying to talk about. But here, in the real world, or at least this version of it, she’s mute now that she’s tuned into her surroundings. Shaking a little, even. Playing with her necklace nervously. Rubbing her red cheeks. She’s a wreck.

  I stumble forward a little.

  “Are you okay?” Eleanor says, but I feel fine. Better than fine. Kind of good. Calm, like with my mother’s Xanax, but excited, too. Ready.

  “Are you okay?” I ask. “We should find Liz. I should tell her about Henri. I want to tell her how much I hate him,” I say when the glass is empty. “I want her to know how he’s messing with me. She’ll know how to fix it.” I haven’t told her about what happened with him at the restaurant. I haven’t told her much of anything lately.

  “What’s happening with Henri?” Eleanor asks, her eyes full of hurt that I know is from me keeping a secret from her.

  “Who’s been calling you? Where have you been running off to lately?”

  Her mouth opens and shuts, but only strangled sounds come out, like the words are choking her. “It’s nothing.”

  “Then nothing is happening with Henri,” I say, walking off into the crowd to find Liz again. Of course Eleanor follows. We’ve been near the bar the whole time, like we never really committed to staying, but now we move through the crowd and the noise. As always, everyone’s watching us. Sometimes with concern, sometimes with envy, sometimes with lust. We are legs and bones and pointy shoulders and necks that never end. We stand out.

  “It’s nothing,” she calls out again, like she’s trying to convince both herself and me.

  “Whatever you say.” I’m looking for Liz, but get distracted watching a pretty girl throw her hair over her shoulder and flirt with some guy whose hands are deep in his own pockets and hunched over. Maybe I don’t need to find her. Maybe I just want to see what it would be like to be Not-a-Ballerina. I put a hand on my hip and tousle my own hair, the way she does hers. Sip at the ice in my cup. Even the ice has the metallic taste of alcohol on it. I saunter closer to the dance floor, Eleanor trailing me like a little lost puppy. Midstep I run straight into Liz. She’s leaning in, talking to a sultry, foreign-looking older guy—Brazilian, Argentinian? She’s hanging on his every word.

  “Hey!” I say, too loud and too close to her face. Liz pulls away from me, and tries to look over her shoulder at the man like she doesn’t have the slightest idea about who I am.

  “Henri’s been messing with me. Threatening me about what we did to Cassie. All that old stuff.” The alcohol is like truth serum—the words tumble out despite the consequence. This finally gets her attention.

  “Better be careful then,” she shouts, sounding not at all like my old partner in crime. She moves away from the older man to face me. “You can’t trust anyone—I learned that the hard way.” I must look shocked, because she continues, her voice low and measured, like she’s been waiting to say this. Like she’s been practicing. “For example, I thought we trusted each other, but I bet you’re the one who told on me to Nurse Connie. Got them to weigh me two times a week. Watch me like I was some criminal. You knew I was going to beat you soon.” But her darting eyes give her away. She’s scared. I can tell by the way she licks all the lipstick off her mouth.

  I play with the too-short hem of my dress. I am the nakedest in the room. Looking for comfort, I turn my feet out again, throw my shoulders back, let my elbows find their tiny bend. Ballerina Bette can deal with the moment. “Who do you think you are?” I sound like my mother when she’s mistreated by people who should know she’s an Abney. She’s important. She’s rich. She knows people. “I didn’t say anything to anyone about you. I was worried. But I still didn’t say a word. You’re one of my best friends.”

  “You’re the only one I told my weight to. How else would they know to check on me?” The answer is obvious to anyone who looks at her—she’s nearly a skeleton. But she insists someone outed her.

  “I swear I didn’t say anything,” I say, trying to touch her wrist. I can’t lose her, too. But maybe I already have.

  The older man smirks at us before slipping away into the crowd of other girls who might be desperate enough to hook up with him.

  She cocks her head and takes me in. “You’re ridiculous.”

  My face turns an even brighter shade of red. I’m caught in a tornado of her anger and sadness. I don’t know what happened. I miss her being at school even though I haven’t gotten to text or talk to her as much as I’ve wanted. She’s fuming now.

  “This has you written all over it. I was getting too good.”

  Eleanor looks back and forth between Liz and me. “What’s going on?”

  “Bette turned me in. Made them watch me. Made them weigh me.” She just sounds plain crazy now.

  A man passes me two sickly sweet shots, like magic. I take them both. And when I hand the empty cups to him, I smile up at him in that wicked way I know Alec always responds to. But then, bolstered by vodka, I turn back to the matter at hand.

  “How could Bette even do that?” Eleanor asks.

  “I didn’t do that, Liz. You’re one of my best friends. Have been forever.” I’m slurring. “I’ve protected you. If anyone ever said anything about you, I’d tell them to shut up. I’d threaten them. I made girls afraid.” I’m dizzy, I’m pissed, and Liz’s accusations have swirled into the mess I’m becoming. I want to remind her how many girls I’d yelled at in the past for calling her Ana, a code name for anorexic, or claiming that she only ate a strawberry for dinner. My eyes are closed and the world spins and I can’t find my center, my balance, the very core of me that I’ve been working on since I was a toddler. It’s like, for that one minute, I am a different person entirely.

  “You’ve done so many messed-up things to so many people, how can you remember? What’s one last thing? Couldn’t get rid of Gigi, so you got rid of me,” Liz shouts. “Watch out, Eleanor. I bet you’re next. The girls at school are so afraid of you. They don’t even report half the stuff you do. But mark my words, Bette, karma’s coming.”

  Before I can even begin to wrap my head around what she means, Eleanor takes my hand into her own soft, little one, her pudgy fingers wrapping safely around mine. The sensation is so familiar, so comforting, that for the first time in years, maybe in my whole life, I let myself be led. She drags me away, shouting at Liz that she’s messed up and should go home.

  We leave her there, and take a cab home to the conservatory. In the silence of our twenty-minute ride, Eleanor’s unwound the necklaces from her neck and dropped them in her purse. She’s unpinned her hair, letting all the frizz back in. She’s even managed to get some of her makeup off.

  “What were you thinking?” she finally says. I don’t know what she’s talking about: the booze, the bar, the fight with Liz. All three, probably.

  “Just wanted to have a little fun,” I say. I sound faraway, muted, even to myself.

  “Ballet is fun,” Eleanor replies in a tight little voice. All her bravado is gone. All that’s left is plain old Eleanor, even though she seems older and wiser. “She’s really sick, Bette.”

  “Yep.”

  “Should we tell her mom? She needs help.”

  “Yep,” I say again.


  “We can never let it all get to us like that, right?” Eleanor says, her voice climbing to that familiar whine. I’m sick of hearing it. “Maybe we shouldn’t try to deal with it alone. Maybe we should tell Mr. K, instead of taking matters—”

  I grab her arm, forcing her to look at me, forcing myself back to steady. “I always take matters into my own hands. That’s what you do. Because you have to fight. And you need to step up and take what you want, too.” I don’t know if these words are mine or belong to all the alcohol I drank. “You need to take control. Just like you did when you got that part in The Nutcracker.”

  Eleanor sighs, like she isn’t hearing me. “Bette, what if Liz gets worse? Or comes back to school for the summer session?” she asks, all her bravado gone. “What are we going to do?” Eleanor blinks away tears.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  Because I really, really don’t.

  24

  June

  VALENTINE’S DAY HAS COME AND gone, but everywhere I turn it’s still all pink and red and hearts and flowers. It’s enough to make a girl want to throw up. Not that I haven’t been on the edge of that already. The RAs haven’t even changed the hall bulletin boards to the spring kites and windy clouds they always put up in March. And it’s already the fourth.

  Lately, I can’t stop thinking about my father, about who he could be, about how I might find him. But I refuse to ask my mother again, and I won’t go home. Which leaves me at a dead end, my brain on an endless loop, rehashing what little information I do have over and over again. I tried to ask Madame Matvienko again, but she closed the costume room door in my face, muttering in Russian like she didn’t understand my question.

  So I’ve been throwing myself into dance, rehearsing every spare moment of the day, and late into the night, when the others have abandoned the studios for studying or greasy midnight Chinese food deliveries that they’ll wear on their hips for months. Or hooking up. Like Gigi.