Tiny Pretty Things

by Sona Charaipotra

  “Crap.” I spin around only to see June.

  She’s quiet, I’ll give her that.

  And, if I’m being honest, she’s probably right.

  “Sorry. Just looking at your form. It’s gorgeous, but when you pirouette you lose your core for a moment and the whole thing falls apart.” If Eleanor were saying the same thing I’d snap at her, but June has the serious look of a teacher or a minister, and I can’t find it in myself to dismiss her. I’m all out of mean things today. Her head is cocked and her eyes look up and down my body, critically but not cruelly.

  “Oh,” I say. I work my toes back into position and ready myself to go back into the dance.

  “I think you’re really spectacular en pointe,” she says. I’m used to the petit rats saying it, or even sometimes the teachers, but never my peers. Never the girls. It’s enough to make me relax onto the soles of my feet again. I wonder what she wants. We’ve never been friends. Or acquaintances, even.

  “Obviously, you think I still have work to do,” I say.

  “We all do. But I was admiring you, before I noticed what you were doing wrong.” There’s zero inflection. No movement to her words, just flat, emotionless reporting of the situation that keeps me from getting riled up.

  “Oh. Well. I guess I’m distracted.” I turn away from her again and watch my stomach in the mirror, seeing the little pull when it flexes and the softening when I relax. It helps, sometimes, to see what your body is capable of.

  “By Gigi?” she says.

  Beads of sweat form on my back. “Poor thing,” I say. “She’s your roommate, right? Any word?” I keep it casual. June’s smart. And maybe not as weak as I thought.

  “Been at the hospital for a while,” June says.

  Some people say things carelessly. They let words pop out and roam around and they don’t give much thought to the consequences. June is not one of those people. I don’t know why she’s telling me this, or what it could even mean, but there’s a purpose to the tight little sentence. It’s the only time I’ve heard June offer information about something other than a dancer’s technique or weaknesses. The sweat on my back isn’t a cluster of beads anymore, it’s just a whole mess of damp stickiness.

  “Mr. K has already sent flowers to my room.” The way she says the word flowers sounds like she means dog shit.

  I choose my words carefully: “His star needs to feel loved in her time of need.”

  “And she’s getting plenty of that,” she says, and I hope that’s not a comment about Alec. “I didn’t think she’d land Giselle, too,” she adds, and I know I can talk a little trash with her about Gigi. I think I’ve worn Eleanor out with all my thoughts and theories and irritations about her.

  “It’s like she’s his little pet,” I say. “His favorite.”

  “Just like Cassie was,” she says, and I want to do anything to erase that name and any parallels to Gigi.

  “Makes you think, huh? Cassie was Mr. Lucas’s niece, and Gigi’s probably sleeping with Mr. K,” I throw out, probably too sloppily.

  “She’s not the type.” June shuts down my innuendo. I wish she’d just laughed or smiled or something else. Now it’s back to awkwardness with her.

  I don’t reply. I get back onto my toes, work myself up to the tip-top, and move away from the barre, trying to shake off my earlier fall.

  “Better,” June says, just the way Morkie always does. She tries to slip away unnoticed, but I’m onto her this time, so I call out before she’s able to slide out the halfway open door.

  “Thanks for your help. Give my love to Gigi. Keep me posted on how she’s doing, okay?”

  I catch her eye in the mirror. We’re looking at each other, but also not, and it’s one of the things I like best about the reflecting glass. The surreal, removed aspect it can add to regular life. We’re interacting, we’re talking, we’re seeing each other, but not really. Only through the glass. If pressed, we could say this never happened at all.

  “You want me to tell her anything else?” June says. Her lips twitch, like they are considering a smile, but aren’t ready to pull themselves all the way up yet. “Another . . . message?” Her eyebrows leap, as limber and expressive as her body when she’s dancing. I want to defend myself, but I swallow down the words. Thank god I took a pill an hour ago and am still clear and brave and sure from its impact. I control my impulses.

  “You need to get out more,” I say at last, brushing past her little accusation and this time not even bothering to look at her in the glass. Just saying it to my own leg as I stretch. “I owe you. For, you know, helping me with my center. I’ll take you out, okay?”

  I don’t expect her to say much of anything in response. She never hangs out. She’s just not one of those girls. I turn again to check out her face for what little response it might give and she’s blushing. A pretty pink that goes from her throat to her nose.

  “Sure,” she says. “Maybe sometime.” That even voice finally shakes a little, and she slips out.

  In the physical therapy room, I’m sitting in a huge bathtub full of ice. The TV’s blaring a bad reality show, and I hope the cold cubes tone down the achiness in my knee, and maybe even my heart. Or maybe this is just what life feels like after Alec. Murky, untethered, throbbing with unspeakable pain in unexpected places. Adele told me over the phone to “dance the pain,” but the pain in this case is rocky and nauseating. Impossible to dance through. All I need is a glass of white wine and a towel turban on my head and I’d be my mother, drowning her sorrows after my father left.

  In one of the small treatment alcoves, a trainer helps a young girl stretch out her sore quad. Her cries slip out from behind the privacy curtains. I turn up the TV volume so I don’t have to hear her or the chaos in my head. I used to come here with Liz. We’d get in the oversized tubs together, and right now, I’d be willing to have the stupid conversations she and I used to have about the calories in grapefruits versus watercress, the latest celebrity drama, over being alone.

  I close my eyes and sink farther into the water. I prefer cold baths to warm now. The chill pinkens my skin, seeping into my muscles, erasing the pain, and resetting everything. My teeth chatter, but I clench them. I’ve been in here so long, my lips are probably blue. Way longer than the trainer said I should.

  “You look like you could be dead,” a cold voice says, “and maybe that wouldn’t be a bad thing.”

  I sit up. It’s Henri. He reaches his hand into the base of the tub. I pull my legs back in, a deeper chill settling into my spine. He takes a cube of ice, puts it in his mouth, and sucks on it. Water dribbles down his chin as he smiles at me.

  “Leave me alone,” I say, not wanting a rerun of him all over me.

  He drops his hand back in my tub, his fingers grazing my toes. Water sloshes over the tub’s edge as I flail, trying to avoid his touch. He laughs, loving that he can control me right now. I lift myself up to try to get out of the tub. His hand yanks my ankle down. “Not so fast,” he says. “This will work just fine.” He takes off his shirt, like he’s going to join me in the ice bath.

  “You can’t get in here with me. It’s against the rules,” I say, like some suck-up kid who actually follows the PT room rules—or any rules for that matter.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not joining you,” he says, dunking his sweaty ballet shirt into my water. He’s got a tattoo I never noticed before. It’s small, but I can make it out. Cassie’s name, in a swirly script, scrawled across his chest. Ridiculous. He slaps the shirt at me. He wants me to react. To jump away from him again. Instead I cross my arms over my chest, offering up a lazy smile, and wait for his arms to get tired of wringing out the shirt. I don’t let him see the fear in my eyes or how horrible I think he is. I don’t let him see how disgusting I feel after he put his dirty shirt in the water with me. I can hold my own against Henri. Against anyone.

  But he
’s not giving up either. “What do you want?” I finally say.

  “What are you willing to give me?”

  “Nothing! I’m done with you.” I look around the room to make sure no one is paying attention.

  “Are you really done?” He pushes his hands farther into the water. His fingers graze along my calf, then over my knee. “Or are you worried that I’ll tell everyone that matters your secrets?”

  I flex. His eyes narrow.

  “If you wanted to, wouldn’t you have already done it?” I say as his fingers travel farther up my leg, his rough palms circling my inner thigh. “I made out with you. A pity hookup. I thought we were done with this whole game.” I try to get up from the water, aware of his eyes on my prickled skin, the goose bumps rising. He climbs in now, pushing me hard, and I sink back down into the tub, a single finger pinning me in place. I hate myself for not fighting away from him. I could shove my legs forward, kick the ice-cold water up into his face. But what if he does tell Mr. K? Worse, what if he tells Alec? I’d lose him for good. So instead of fighting it, I pull him in, close to me, his warmth melting my chill. I let his mouth explore mine, his hands wandering along my tank top, cupping my too-ample curves, fingers exploring until they reach the small space covered by the tiny blue bikini bottom I’m wearing.

  That’s when the trainer comes out from the back rooms. “Out,” she orders, and Henri grins, standing. “Out now!” The trainer’s trying to maintain her composure, to follow protocol, but her eyes settle on Henri, and I know she’s going to let him walk out without a reprimand.

  “Pardon,” he tells the woman. “No need for concern. That was never going to happen, as much as she might want it.” He smirks at me, still drowning in the tub, my lips bruised from cold or kissing, my ego smarting from the humiliation. “And trust me, she wants it.”

  30

  June

  “WILL YOU TAKE CARE OF Gigi tonight?” Alec says to me outside the lobby elevator. The sound of his voice makes me nauseous.

  “She’s not sick,” I say.

  Gigi nods in agreement while hobbling forward. Her foot is swaddled in soft gauze and a bandage, and nestled in a little boot. People have been stopping by our room for days, checking on her. Weirdly, Henri’s been leaving her little cards and notes, and though she throws them away, I sometimes fish them out of the trash. They’re all concern and sympathy, and the insistence that, when she’s up to it, they should talk. Alone. That she should be careful.

  Maybe she should. But I don’t know what that’s got to do with me. I’m meeting Jayhe tonight—finally, after weeks of broken promises—and I’m not a babysitter. And Gigi’s not five.

  “I’m fine,” she says. But I can hear the worry between those two small words.

  “You’ve gotta be freaked out,” Alec says. “I’d be freaked out. Just be a pal, June.”

  “I might have plans,” I say, trying not to let the irritation show on my face. Vague. Instead, I push the elevator button a hundred times to signal that I want this conversation to end, I want to go up to my room. Jayhe and I are still a secret. I don’t know if it’s his decision or mine. But it’s too soon to share. But maybe that will change when he finally sees me again. It’s the perfect revenge. I can’t wait for that moment when he realizes that he’s actually way more into me than Sei-Jin.

  I know that’s how he feels. He won’t come clean with Sei-Jin, but it’s me he calls at midnight, and we end up video chatting. I even fell asleep in the Light last week after we spent hours chatting about art and dance and the restaurants his dad wants him to run and my father the ghost and how it will be when we can finally decide things for ourselves. And that’s when I realize that, despite all my plotting and planning, this has become more than just vengeance. Our conversations make me crave him—his scent, his skin, his sleepy eyes on me, taking me in. It’s been weeks since we’ve been together, and tonight, maybe, it will finally happen.

  I punch at the elevator button again.

  “You know,” Alec says after a heavy pause and switching his body to the other side of the staircase, “you don’t get the parts because no one trusts you enough to dance them. It’s not that you’re not good enough. I’ve heard them talk about it. It’s your attitude. It’s that you have no friends. It’s that you’re so twitchy and weird with people.”

  The words hit me like a sock to the stomach. And echo in the lobby over and over again. If it were Bette, I’d think it was a mind game, a way to get me freaked out. But Alec’s not like her. He’s always been pretty nice. His words burn a little hole inside me.

  “I—” I can’t get any words out. What I want to say is: I used to have friends. I used to belong to a group. I used to be important.

  “June and I are friends!” Gigi interrupts, the words floating like bubbles out of her mouth, and I’d like to pop them all over her face. Even in this moment, she’s an optimist.

  Alec smiles, but it’s mostly at her.

  “Thanks for your help, Alec,” Gigi says when I don’t reply or agree that we are friends. “I’m okay. It’s . . . you know . . . I’m trying not to let it get to me anymore.” I don’t believe her. She’s too calm about it, and she’s already had two outbursts about smaller incidents. And I probably should’ve said something about being her friend. I don’t want anyone accusing me of doing things to her. A natural conclusion that I don’t need anyone making since I’m her understudy and roommate. I want the role she has, and sometimes I like seeing her struggle around in her cast, but there are times when I like her. A little.

  “Let me know if anything else happens, okay?” He kisses her forehead in that patronizing way before turning back to me. “And, June. Prove me wrong, you know?”

  I wonder if there’s a threat in there. Alec’s dad is the head of the board, one of the most important people at the conservatory. A conversation with Alec could be just that, or it could be a message from above. I get the feeling this might be the latter.

  “Fine,” I say, hoping all four of these elevators will open at the same time and they’ll get in a different one from mine.

  “What’s up with the elevators?” Alec yells.

  “They’re not working right now,” the front desk guy says. “Gotta take the stairs.”

  “Are you serious?” Alec says.

  “I don’t have time for jokes.” He turns back around. “You can wait an hour or maybe more, or take the stairs.”

  Alec scoops Gigi up into his arms—despite her squealing, ear-shattering protests—and heads for the stairwells. I feel a little pinch inside, part of me coveting a little of what they have, and the other part wishing I didn’t care. Hanging out with Jayhe has changed things a little. Maybe it’s just a physical thing, maybe it started as a way to get back at Sei-Jin, but I feel like I can almost trust him. A few times, I’ve had to stop myself from showing him the box I found, from telling him how close I am to finding my father. There’s no one I can trust with that.

  I climb the stairs slowly. I want to give Alec enough time to get up to the eleventh floor, drop her on the bed, and get out. Out of breath, I wait on the top step, hoping Gigi’s giggles will soon disappear, and I’ll see Alec’s blond head zip out of our room.

  “Looking over your handiwork?” someone says behind me. “You don’t deserve to dance with us. You don’t deserve to be at this school.” I turn around and Sei-Jin glares at me. Her eyes are narrow slits and her teeth are clenched. “I know what you did,” she says.

  I turn my back on her. Her feet pound the wood and she dashes up the stairs to me. Her cold hand jostles my shoulder, yanking me around. The banister presses into my spine.

  “Get off me,” I say. “What’s your problem?”

  I try to brush past her.

  “I know it was you who did all that stuff to Gigi,” she spits.

  My face drops and I try to compose myself. “Is thi
s your attempt at a late April Fools’ joke?” I quip back. I won’t let her get to me. Not anymore. I’m about to be one of the top dancers, and then she’ll beg for my friendship again, and I’ll have the satisfaction of saying no. She messed up my life, and she’s the reason I have no friends. I think I lost the ability to make friends after her.

  “You wrote that message on the mirror and put all that stuff about her in the Light. And that disgusting cookie. And I know you put the glass in her shoe. Of course you would. You’re her understudy. If she doesn’t dance, you do!” she says, her grip tightening on my shoulder, her voice echoing up and down, even reaching the eighteenth floor. “Who else, besides you, is that desperate?”

  I want to scream at her and I want one of the RAs to catch her keeping me here against my will. But most of all, I want to shut her up.

  “You did all of it!” she yells. “You make us all look bad, you know that?”

  Her accusations hit me one after the other. I start to feel a little afraid. Someone might hear her. They might believe what she’s saying. Blood drains from my face. My heart thuds in my chest. I want to vomit, empty myself of all it—her words, my tea, the noodles I picked at for lunch, the accusations.

  “I didn’t do any of that.” I defend myself, but my voice is shaky. “You don’t know anything.”

  “What I do know is that you’re jealous of her. You always have been that type of girl.” She’s got me boxed in and I can’t get away. “Remember when we were eight and you stole my jeweled leotard?” she says, her eyes bursting with anger. “You lied and lied and lied about taking it, then I caught you wearing it in your room. Twirling in front of your mirror, playing that stupid little music box.”

  I shake my head, trying not to remember that. She didn’t know what was going on, that it was the year my mom told me my dad didn’t want to be my dad, that he didn’t want a relationship with me. I think of the music box on my shelf and the tinkle of its melody crowds into my head. I was just borrowing her leotard for a little while, pretending to be a princess. I planned to give it back. I did some bad things, I guess, when things were so confusing at home. But isn’t that to be expected? I was just a little girl and I had a secret the size and shape of a fully grown man.