“Or when you told Hye-Ji she was fat?” she says.
My face flames. “She’d locked me in the storage closet.” I’m seething as the memories flood back to me. All their torture. All their meanness. All the pressure from my mom and the absence of a dad.
“Or how you think it’s cool to text my boyfriend. Yeah, I saw your name pop up on his phone last night. He doesn’t like you, June. He takes pity on you, but that’s because he doesn’t really know what a bitch you are.”
“I’m not listening to you anymore. I didn’t do anything wrong. And you’re not going to make me feel like I did.” It takes all my self-control to keep my voice in check. I’m shaking, so I hold the railing and swallow fears that she knows what’s really going on with Jayhe and me. I’m not ready for her to know yet. But the rage inside me bubbles up, killing that tiniest hope that existed inside me that we could one day go back to how it was, the smallest corner of my mind that missed her. No, I will destroy her. “Get away from me, Sei-Jin,” I say, then lean forward. “Or maybe that’s your problem. You don’t want to.” I purse my lips at her.
Her eyes bulge, and she clenches her teeth. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And as a matter of fact, I should’ve figured it out earlier. You know, Mr. K pulled me to the side. He asked a few of us, separately, if we knew anything about what was happening to Gigi. I should’ve told him I thought it was you. I’m going to tell him first thing in the morning. E-Jun Kim is responsible for all the things that happened to Gigi. She’s a bitch. She’s terrorizing her poor roommate. Your mother will be so proud. Oh wait, she’ll probably hate you, too, after she finds out, just like the rest of us! Poor June! No father. And then, no mother.”
“SHUT UP!” I scream, not realizing it’s at the top of my lungs. My vision goes blurry and I can’t quite see her face. I imagine her marching into Mr. K’s office, saying that she knows something, and telling him that I’m violent. He’ll offer her a seat, listen intently to her lies. He’ll call Mr. Lucas into the office and make Sei-Jin recount her tale to him. Mr. Lucas’s face will twist with disappointment and shame and embarrassment. They’ll dismiss me from the school. There will be stories on the dance sites about how the ballerina from the American Ballet Conservatory got kicked out for hitting another dancer. I wonder what Jayhe would think, and hate myself for caring.
“It’s all so obvious,” she taunts.
I hear the blood pounding through my veins, and my heart is a drum beating a war chant. I’m ready to hurt someone. Not anything terrible. Not real violence. But just enough to show them not to count me out. To remind them how powerful I really am.
I don’t know what I’m doing, just that my hands are on her shoulders and I’m shoving her. Hard. Her mouth opens and shuts, but I can’t make out her words. She falls backward and tumbles down five steps. Her bottom makes a thud when she hits the wood. And her head clobbers the wall.
Bette appears at the bottom of the staircase. She races up, catching Sei-Jin before she tumbles any farther. “June!” Bette hollers, and I snap out of it, suddenly aware of where I am and what has happened.
I clomp down to where Bette is cradling Sei-Jin. I put my hands on my head, not sure what to do. My voice tucks itself into my throat, shutting it down so I can’t speak. Did Bette see me push her? Did I really push her? No, no, she must’ve fallen.
Sei-Jin is hysterical. She screams and hollers, her mascara running in black streaks down her alabaster skin. I try to reach for her. “Don’t touch me!” she shouts. “She pushed me. E-Jun pushed me!”
Bette walks her down several sets of the stairs, letting Sei-Jin’s spindly arms drape across her shoulders, her frail body leaning against Bette’s stronger frame for support, and they disappear, headed for the fourth-floor RA office. I collapse on the staircase.
“You better come with us,” Bette calls up to me when she notices I’m not following. “You don’t want to look any guiltier, right?”
A few minutes later, we’re all in the RA office. Sei-Jin cries into the phone. I hear her mom’s Korean curse words fly through the receiver and I know they’re directed at me. I hear my mom’s name, Kang-Ji, and I know Sei-Jin’s mom is going to call her even though it’s midnight. My heart hasn’t slowed down yet. Bette sits beside me on the puffy couch, her fingers fidgeting constantly with her little locket. The RA switches between two calls, one with Mr. K and the other with Mr. Lucas. My tiny stomach folds in on itself.
“What happened?” Bette whispers to me. Her words are heavy with knowledge; she already knows the answer to her own question, but she wants me to confirm it.
I shrug. I’ve gone over it in my head like a ballet. Each move I made and each one she made. The memory of Sei-Jin’s words float around me like music, repeating in refrains. I don’t know how to answer Bette. I don’t know if she’s on my side. “I . . . I don’t know,” I say.
The RA hangs up and stands in front of Bette and me. Sei-Jin walks into a private area, still crying on the phone.
“What happened?” the RA asks. I wish they would all stop asking the same question over and over. It’s making me dizzy.
My mouth is glued shut. I can’t seem to open it. I sit on my hands, wanting and needing my compact, just so I could have something to hold on to. Something safe. The RA looks at Bette, waiting for an answer, and Bette’s big blue eyes land on me.
“I stayed late to practice in studio B,” Bette begins. “Then I had to take the stairs because the elevators are out. I heard yelling and shouting when I made my way up. And I saw Sei-Jin fall. I complained to the janitor the other day about how slippery they are.”
I gawk at Bette, knowing she saw me push Sei-Jin. The lie leaves her mouth so easily, I almost believe her myself. The RA turns to me. “Is that true, June? Sei-Jin’s saying you pushed her.”
“I didn’t,” I whisper. “She . . . fell.”
“Then why would she say that?” the RA asks.
“I don’t know,” Bette answers for me.
“We’ve always had . . . issues,” I tell the RA. The phone on the desk blares.
“Well, go to bed. We’ll deal with this in the morning.” She picks up the receiver but cups her hand over it. “In the meantime, stay away from Sei-Jin, June,” she warns, and I know she suspects me, but also trusts Bette because she’s a legacy here. No one wants to accuse her of lying and have to deal with her crazy mom.
Sei-Jin returns to the room just as we’re leaving. She calls me something nasty in Korean that I’ve heard on one of my mom’s soap operas. She lies across the couch with an ice pack, still sniffly and red in the face from crying.
Bette and I take the stairs up to the eleventh floor. I feel her looking at me, but she doesn’t speak. She’s waiting for me to say something. Finally, when we get to our floor and she turns to go to her room, I grab her arm. “Thanks,” I say.
She doesn’t reply at first and I assume her silence is You’re welcome. “Is it true, though?” she says instead.
“What?” I answer.
“I heard what Sei-Jin said.” She looks me right in the eye. “Did you do all that stuff to Gigi?”
“No,” I say with a frown. “Did you?”
Bette’s face pinches. “No!”
“Well, you haven’t exactly always been a model citizen,” I remind her. “We all know that.”
“Neither have you,” she snaps back.
With accusations flying, and me suddenly implicated, I want her involved. I want her secrets out, too. Not just mine. Because the more everyone knows her dirty secrets, the more likely it is that she is to blame. Over me.
At least, that’s what I keep telling myself.
31
Gigi
MY THROBBING FOOT PULLS ME awake. An April rain streaks the window, and gray light barely makes it through. I watch my butterflies flap their orange-and-black wings inside t
he terrarium. I bet they’re desperate for sunshine. Or maybe I am. I named them after the great ballet dancers: Martha, Gelsey, Mikhail, Svetlana, and Rudolf. My butterflies are the ballerinas of the animal world. Their movements light and peaceful and created by nature. I blink back the tears that keep coming in quiet moments when I’m alone. My pain meds knock me out and dull all the thoughts running through my head these days, but sometimes when I wake up in the morning, it all comes flooding back like a big ocean wave threatening to swallow me whole.
Did someone put the glass in my shoe on purpose?
The angry truth: Yes.
And: Why me?
The most likely answer: Because I got Giselle.
Other swirling thoughts: Because I’m new. Because I’m black. Because Alec and I are together.
I remember the tears in Aunt Leah’s eyes at the hospital when she saw my foot. My parents threatened to fly across the country, to come and take me home. I had no answers to their frantic questions. And now their questions have become mine. Each time they march through my head, I feel sick. My stomach twists in on itself, but my brain can’t stop trying to piece it all together. The list of stuff is getting longer if I really look at it closely.
I know Bette put the message on the mirror. She admitted to that, and putting up the picture of me and Henri in the Light. But the pictures of her and Alec that were hung on my basement studio mirror, she refuses to own that. She’s the only one who would have them. Does she expect me to believe that Alec did that? Or Eleanor? She didn’t say she wrote that I should watch my back on the Light wall, but it feels like her style. I don’t know who sent that disgusting cookie, or who put the glass in my shoe, which I should be most worried about. But the medical file haunts me the most. Even though it happened back in October. Someone saw my EKG report. They think I’m weak because of my condition.
I wasted the day away in bed. My mind a fog of medications. I hobble around the room. Mostly everyone is spending their Thursday evening in the studios, doing homework, or making runs to the store. Even June’s not around. I wish I could talk all this out with her. She’s so logical, I bet she’d easily figure out who is doing this stuff to me. There has to be more than one person. It can’t just all be Bette.
I text Alec to see if he wants to hang out after his rehearsal, then go down to the basement Pilates room to stretch, to make sure I’m staying strong. I’ll be out of ballet class and rehearsal for at least a week, and we’re five weeks away from the show. All the last-minute corrections and stage direction changes, I won’t get to actually do. I’ll have to watch them.
The room’s full of mirrors and squishy bouncy balls and purple and blue mats and a few weight machines. It’s empty. I get myself situated on a machine, the same way the physical therapist showed me. I lie on my back, sinking down onto the cushions. I put both feet on the foot bar, even though I shouldn’t put pressure on my injured foot yet, and I push. The steel carriage under me slides up and down with the promise of helping me keep the strength in my muscles. After five minutes on the machine, I can feel the stitches in my foot and pain shoots up my leg.
“Should you be doing that yet?” a voice says.
I crane my head, and see Will standing in the doorway, all sweaty, with a towel across his shoulders.
“No,” I say, but try a few more pushes. He stands over me and extends his hand like we’re onstage and ready to start a pas de deux. I stop, sit up, and take it.
“You could mess up your foot even more,” he says.
“You sound like one of our teachers,” I say. Or even my mama.
“Good.” He sits on the mat and starts stretching. “So what can you do? What did they say?”
“Stretch and light weights and floor barre.” So basically, nothing.
His eyebrows lift in that pitying way.
“Can we talk about something else?” I say, tottering over to get weights from a corner rack. He runs ahead of me and carries them back. I grumble at him, but eventually smile and say thanks. We sit on the floor together.
“So I shouldn’t ask you if they’ve figured out who put that glass in your shoe?” he says.
“Not unless you already know,” I say back.
“I don’t. I’d usually blame Bette,” he says, rolling his eyes, “but I’m not so sure this time. She definitely has it in her. Seriously. Don’t buy into the stuff Alec tells you about her. She’s got him fooled, and everyone else.” His eyes get all big, like he’s scared of what he’s saying. “She put a lot of people through shit. If it was her, she deserves to get what’s coming to her.” He inspects my foot. “You should be careful with her.”
His words mimic what Henri told me at the beginning of the fall term and in the notes he keeps sending me, and that stupid Valentine’s message. “I don’t want to talk about it. And you told me that before.” Especially not with him. “How are things with you?” I ask, for lack of anything else better.
“Really good,” he gushes in a way I’ve never seen before, then leans in. “I might have my first ever boyfriend soon.”
That’s news to me, but I try to keep the surprise off my face. “Oh really?” I say. “Do I know him? A dancer?”
“Hmmm . . . maybe,” is all he says. “Tall, dark, and handsome.”
It’s so hard to meet people outside the ballet world. Spending your time in and out of studios, at rehearsals, stretching, and fretting about every little motion of a variation doesn’t leave much room for anything else. The prom and homecoming invites come, and are left unanswered or declined, and they eventually stop coming. It’s easier to date someone inside ballet.
“Details? A kiss? Hanging out?” I parrot Mama when she’s poking Aunt Leah about her dating life.
“I’ll never tell!” he says, a blush making his face match his hair. “Well, at least not yet. He’s kind of shy. Anyway, so what’s the prognosis on your foot?”
“Wait a minute.” I turn to look at him, giving my best “spill it” face. “You’re not getting off that easy.”
“Well, let’s just say he’s really hot.” Will smirks, and is about to say more. But Alec steps into the doorway, and all of Will’s excitement and laughter zips right up, like a bag that’s closed. He clears his throat, and pretends to smooth his perfect hair in the mirror.
“Hey,” I say to Alec, and he steps into the room like it’s full of land mines.
They don’t speak, and I’m not sure what’s happened.
32
Bette
FOR THE FIRST TIME IN my life, no one’s listening to me. Even Eleanor has started putting in her earbuds and humming along with the Giselle music when I start talking about Gigi and Alec, and Gigi’s obsession with stealing everything from me, and Gigi’s obvious psychotic breakdown after her incident with the cookie.
But today, I pull her earbuds out while we’re getting ready for morning ballet class. “Are you listening to me?”
“I’m trying to focus,” she says. “And it’s kind of like you have an obsession.”
“No, I don’t,” I say back.
“Then why do you keep talking about her?”
“Just trying to loop you in.” I feel like she just spit in my face.
She starts to put her earbuds back in. “I don’t know if I want to be looped in anymore,” she says.
But I run right over all those words and keep talking. “I even talked to June about it. We both think Gigi and Mr. K are having an affair. That’s the way she got both of these roles.”
Eleanor’s hand freezes beside her ear before she can jam the earbud in.
“I kind of threw myself at him, too, a few weeks ago,” I admit, wanting my best friend back, wanting to be able to share everything again, no matter what. “Just to see.”
She turns red, and not the pretty flush you get after a long ballet class. It’s the kind you get when y
ou’ve fallen down a flight of stairs with everybody watching. Or discovered you have a booger in your nose while talking to someone you like.
“Why would you do that?” she says.
“I thought I could get my role back.” I start gathering my hair up into a bun. “It’s not like that hasn’t worked before. Adele told me.”
“He doesn’t go around randomly hooking up with his dancers,” she says, her tone snappy. “Don’t you think he’s too smart for that? He could get in trouble.”
“Adele says—”
“I don’t want to hear about it.” She gets up and grabs her dance bag. “I need to get ready for class.”
I take a pill to try to erase those thoughts, and the embarrassment of having my own best friend walk out on me. I try not to think about how many pills I’ve taken, or the fact that in the last few months I’ve almost doubled the amount. Instead, I slick down every piece of hair, making sure it’s perfect, and go downstairs for ballet class. I dodge Henri’s gaze as I slip into studio C, suppressing memories of skin on skin, his lips on mine.
I keep to myself. The girls are watching. Gigi is sitting in the front, her swaddled foot perched on a pillow on a chair, like it’s a glass slipper. I dance harder now that she has to watch from the sidelines. I hope she feels like I did when I had to watch her dance the Sugar Plum Fairy, or watch Cassie dance the fairy spirit.
Ballet class ends and Mr. K visits to tells us that tonight’s rehearsal is canceled. It’s Alec’s father’s birthday party. All the teachers are attending, and the board members, and other important people in the city who love ballet. My mother is pulling me out of afternoon academic classes so I can get my hair blown out and a new dress. She thinks I need to win Alec back. She thinks I am a mess. Maybe she’s right.
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