by Lara Avery
“Shut up!” she said aloud, and her mother looked at her like she was a wild animal. “I’m so stupid,” she muttered. A thin layer of cool sweat coated her skin. “I thought you knew. I thought you had forgiven me.”
She could see the muscles of Peter’s jaw working. “Forgiven you? How am I supposed to forgive you?”
Kelsey’s mother took her shoulders gently, turning Kelsey to face her. “Kels, look at me. What happened?”
But Kelsey couldn’t stop looking at Peter. She wished he would look at her for just a second, a millisecond, so he could remember who she was, really. His best friend. His love.
Peter’s voice bit into the room.
“I can’t believe you did this to me.” Peter paused to laugh, but there was nothing good in the sound. Nothing mirthful. “What a—what a strange thing.”
Her mother’s grip tightened on her arm.
“Peter, please!” Kelsey called, her voice weak and strung.
When he finally met her eyes, there was nothing behind them. “I can’t deal with this.” He set the program carefully back on the mantel.
Kelsey tried to step around her mother, but she held tight to her shoulders. “How was I supposed to tell you?”
“I need to…” Peter put his hand to his forehead, trying to find an exit. “It will be best for everyone if I leave, I think.”
“Don’t leave!” Kelsey was practically screaming. Her words left her before she thought them, quick and sloppy. “It’s still me.… No matter what you called me… I’m still the person you talked to and wrote to.… I love you in every real way.… I tried to stop but I couldn’t.… I…”
Her mother put her mouth close to Kelsey’s ear. “It’s time to be quiet now. Let him be.”
The din of her own words collapsed on her. For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans.… She felt a deep pain, but had no idea where it was coming from.
The funeral passage, haunting her, now engraved in Kelsey’s eyes:
Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?
Peter sidestepped the table, the couch, taking the widest route around her that he could, kicking balloons out of the way.
With a creak and a click of the door, he was gone.
Dear Michelle,
My flashlight ran out of power last night because I was reading your letter over and over. I hadn’t planned on it, but once I read it, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to start at the beginning again. You make me laugh too loud late at night. You get me in trouble.
I’ve heard it said that comedians are the saddest people, that they resort to humor because their world is so dark and absurd it doesn’t make sense, that you have to be in deep pain to be funny, something like that. They say that about artists, too, for that matter. Hell, Vincent van Gogh cut off his own ear. What I’m saying is, you are both funny and an artist, and I hope that sadness is not the case with you.
But I would also understand if it was. I’ve always had a bit of the blues myself, even before I decided that a free college education would be worth nine months in this hellhole. I hate it when older people say that we have nothing to be sad about, that we’re young and we couldn’t possibly know real sadness. Or maybe no one has said that to you. But I bet they have. Anyway, if I’ve learned anything here, it would be from the children who hang out in burnt-out buildings by themselves, with no one to talk to but a dog and a beat-up soccer ball. They have lost their moms and dads and brothers and sisters, and who would say they don’t know real sadness? Sadness isn’t measured in years. Feelings, I don’t think, can be measured in anything. We are just bodies guessing about other bodies. That’s why songs and paintings and poems exist. They’re the best guesses.
I told you once that the thought of you somewhere happy is what keeps me going, but the thought of you somewhere sad is okay, too. I mean, I don’t want you to be sad, and if you aren’t that’s good, but it’s just you, as you are, that I think about. However you are.
Are you sad?
You don’t have to tell me. But just like you are there somewhere for me, I am here somewhere for you. If you are sad, I want to make you happy. If you are happy, I want to make you happier. Pen is running out of ink. Must get new pen.
Yours,
Peter
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
A knock on her door woke Kelsey from a dreamless sleep. It was dark outside, but her lights were still on. She had no idea how long she’d been out, but the partygoers were gone. One of Peter’s old letters lay next to her on the bed.
Her mother entered, now changed out of her dress clothes into sweatpants, glasses on the tip of her nose.
“All right, get up,” her mother said.
“Thanks, Mom, but I really don’t feel like talking right now,” Kelsey said, burying herself deeper in her pillows.
“Sit up,” her mother said.
“What time is it?” Kelsey asked.
“It’s time for you to be held accountable for your actions. Sit up.”
Her mother’s tone made Kelsey feel like she was seven years old again, and she hated it, but she did as she was told.
“Put on a sweater.”
She followed her mother to the front door without a word. The night air smelled as if it had just rained and they walked toward the river to the sound of the breeze. Yesterday’s events were still with her. Michelle’s death was, at least, out of her hands. It was accidental, a freak event.
The shame of losing Peter, of losing him because of her lies, seemed more like an endless sickness no one could cure. She would never forget what she’d done to him.
When they stepped aside for a jogger, Kelsey realized it must almost be dawn.
“I didn’t sleep last night,” her mother said beside her.
“Why?” Kelsey asked. Her throat felt itchy from crying.
Her mother put her hands in her sweatshirt pockets as she walked, and sighed. “I don’t know whether to call this boy’s mother or take you to a psychiatrist or what.”
Kelsey stopped in her tracks. “What? No.”
She put up her hands. “You obviously aren’t handling your sister’s death well—”
“None of us are handling Mitch’s death well!” Her voice was raised. Her fists were clenched. It was all coming out now. The rage, the hurt, the sensation of yelling at her mother from the bottom of a well to HELP ME UP, GODDAMNIT. “You criticize me all the time! You fill my house with strangers that you talk to more than me!”
She paused for air, watching her mother’s face fall. But Kelsey wasn’t finished.
“You don’t even like me!”
Her mother spoke softly. “That couldn’t be further from the truth. I love you.”
Kelsey wiped her nose. “Then why doesn’t it feel like you do?”
She couldn’t make out her mother’s face anymore in the streetlights, just the outline of her mane of hair and her body, more sure of itself than Kelsey’s. “Let’s keep walking.”
The flush of anger had not left Kelsey’s face. “Why?” she asked.
“Because.”
There was a deep rhythm to that exchange, an understanding that existed before she could even spell her name: Do this, her mother would say. Why? she and her sister would ask. Because, and that was the end of it. They would follow her anywhere.
But this wasn’t any other day. “Because why?” Kelsey countered.
She could sense a smile behind her mother’s words. “I’m not taking you to the loony bin, Kels.”
They continued on until they reached the river, and turned right down the gravel path on the north bank, deep into the trees as morning broke through the branches. Rocks crunched under their feet, birds conversed. The silence was soothing. Maybe it was the act of walking, setting a pace, putting her body back into a steady cadence. Maybe she had forgotten how well her body could speak to her. Maybe her mother knew what she was doing.
&
nbsp; When they reached the large rusted gate that marked the end of public property, her mother leaned on it, and Kelsey followed suit. They looked at each other, two versions of the same eyes, one with makeup streaks, one with crow’s-feet. Her mother waited, asking silently, Why?
She could tell the story from the beginning, as she had done for her friends, as she had done on the video, or she could just answer.
“I missed her,” Kelsey said finally. “I really didn’t mean to pretend to be her. I wasn’t even good at it. It was mostly just wanting to be close to her again, you know? Even closer than I was when she was alive.”
Her mother was looking at her, contemplating. “And Peter wanted to be close to her, too.”
“Yeah, I guess. And I just couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t be the one to break his heart. I kept going after him because…”
She had already said that she had missed Michelle. Her mother knew what it was like to miss Michelle, and she could say that to anyone, any old day. She dug deeper.
“I wanted to do something. I didn’t want to think. Whenever I thought too much, I wanted to take a seat and…” Kelsey thought of the night with Davis and his parents, sitting on the curb. “And never move again. Just rot. No, rotting would be too slow.” She swallowed. “I wanted to die.”
“I know how you feel,” her mother replied.
Kelsey looked up, in shock. She couldn’t imagine her mother thinking anything like that, anything strange and dark and unexplainable. Her mother made lists. People who make lists didn’t have room for those thoughts.
Her mother nodded. “I wanted to do something, too, I suppose. But that was easy for me. I had a career.”
“That’s the thing,” Kelsey jumped in, smacking her hand on the iron railing. “It wasn’t enough just to do more of the things I already did when she was alive. I wanted to, like…” Opening the letter. Comforting Peter. Going to Paris. “Do things for her. Because she couldn’t.”
Her mother reached out to stroke her arm. “There are limits to what we can do for people. We can’t do everything for everyone. And, honey, you’re going to have to be strong when I say this.”
Kelsey took a deep breath.
“You picked the wrong thing to do. For Peter, for Michelle, for yourself. No matter what you were feeling, that was not the right thing to do. What did you think would happen? You had to have known you’d break his heart eventually.”
She opened her mouth. “But—”
“No more excuses. I want you to repeat after me. That was not the right thing to do.”
Kelsey took a moment. She had never really said it, the whole time she was talking to Peter. She had never really told herself it was wrong. Because she didn’t want to. She sighed.
“That was not the right thing to do,” Kelsey said.
“It was selfish.”
Kelsey hung her head.
“Repeat,” she could hear her mother say.
“It was selfish.”
“It was cruel.”
Kelsey put her face in her hands. “It was cruel.”
Her mother took her hands down and held them, squeezing. “You are a wonderful young woman who was a little mixed up.”
“A little more than a little.”
“A lot. But you know who’s supposed to be there when young women get mixed up?”
Kelsey looked up.
“Their mothers. And I wasn’t,” her mother started, and her chin began to tremble.
Kelsey put her fingers under her mother’s eyes, catching her tears. “Don’t cry, Mom.”
“And their fathers, too. And we were so wrapped up in our own grief, we didn’t do our job. We had no idea how bad it was for you. You were always such a fighter. Michelle was the sensitive one, feeling everything so deeply, but you were tough.”
“I’m still tough,” Kelsey offered, but it sounded silly coming from her now, her nose red, her pink cardigan over her graduation dress.
“Oh, Kels.” Her mother reached out, and Kelsey nestled against her for the first time in so long, feeling some of the pain ebb away. But most of it was still there. It had been there before she knew Peter, and it would be there forever.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly.
“Me, too,” her mother said.
“I just miss her so much.”
“Me, too,” her mother said, and Kelsey could feel her mom’s chest begin to tighten against her, tears falling in her hair. Kelsey pulled her closer.
After a while, they began to walk again, in step with each other, moving back east, toward the sunrise.
Kelsey realized that the ache inside her wasn’t just grief, it was something else. Something simpler. She broke the silence. “I’m hungry. Can we get ice cream?”
Her mother let out her squawk of a laugh, making Kelsey jump. It was so rare to hear these days.
“It’s seven a.m.,” her mother replied. Then, after some thought, she asked, “You think the grocery store is open?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Kelsey stood at the center of Memorial Stadium in a line of dancers, her curls so stiff with hair spray she could almost hear them clack together as she moved her head. Her eyelashes were heavy with mascara, and her lips sticky with a fresh coat of color. She smiled at the enormous empty egg of seats as if they contained thousands of adoring fans. She hadn’t said a word to anyone except for hello and her name. She had made herself into a machine, because that was what it took to compete.
Now it was paying off. She was one out of twelve left in a full-day tryout that began with hundreds. After the first round of basic moves, half of them dropped like flies. After the second round, dozens were unable to pick up a basic two-minute sequence in the time allotted. They let her stay. Not because she stood out, and not because she had a certain way about her. No one can pick up individuality from stadium seats. She was still there because she could execute.
A redhead on the current team paced on the Astroturf in front of the line of girls, her poms behind her back. She was Missy, Kelsey remembered, the girl she met at Davis’s party so long ago. She’d given Kelsey a little wave and a wink from the sideline.
“Welcome to the final round of Rock Chalk Dancer tryouts! Congratulate yourselves. You’ve come this far out of a group of incredible dancers.”
Missy gave them a few exaggerated claps with her poms, and the dancers on the sideline did the same.
“You were expected to memorize a hip-hop combo. You will perform it solo. Can we see number seven, please?”
The first girl was also a machine, Kelsey observed. But good mechanics shouldn’t necessarily mean the dancer looks like a robot. Each motion was crisp, but the movements looked disconnected from one another. They should flow, as if the dancer was exposing something, as if she was thinking about each movement as she went. Like the video Mrs. Wallace had showed her. That was what dance should be.
“Thank you,” the redhead called, and looked at her clipboard. “Fifty-two, please!”
The next girl was perfect, until the very end. The back handspring left her off balance, which caused her jump turn to be poorly timed.
Kelsey swallowed, still smiling, clapping for her competitors, but she knew the back handspring might give her trouble, too. Unless you were a gymnast, a back handspring would give any dancer trouble.
“Thank you. Twelve, please!”
As number 12 performed, Kelsey let her mind drift. She had stopped trying to block her thoughts of Peter. In fact, his anger had pushed her to work harder. She found it was easier to lose herself to dance when there was something to run from.
So she would focus on her back handspring. She would visualize herself completing it over and over, until her body did its job.
Watching the flip in her mind’s eye, Kelsey couldn’t help but think of the absurdity of her entire future resting on one half-second movement.
If she made the team, she would complete hundreds of handsprings each year, and yet this one was so im
portant because she would do it today on the Astroturf, in front of a bunch of girls who called her by a number.
She watched 12 complete the combo, and in lieu of applause, the dancers clapped twice, following their leader.
The row of faces, made up in Technicolor reds and blues, reminded Kelsey of Andy Warhol’s prints of Marilyn Monroe. Except she couldn’t see how they made anyone think twice about dancing. In fact, if she deviated from the routine in even the smallest of ways, if she made herself “special,” she would be eliminated.
Is this how she wanted to spend hours and hours of the next four years?
“Thank you. Thirty-four, please!”
Too late to decide now, the decision was already made. Kelsey was number 34. She stepped out of the line, toes pointed as she walked to the center of the field, marking her spot on the 50-yard line.
The music began, and she let her doubts fall. She let her body do its job.
As she got down on her knees, she thought of the last time she felt special as she danced: when she had made up the moves herself. When her dancers had fallen to the floor and jumped up to the drop in “Dance Yrself Clean.”
She didn’t miss a beat. She had been working on this combo for six months.
Then she thought of swinging her hips in Paris as Peter watched her. He loved the way she danced. He was discovering who she really was without even knowing it.
Time for the back handspring.
She wound up, and it was perfect. She almost wanted to laugh. All that worrying for nothing.
She killed the routine.
Kelsey was a great dancer.
But she didn’t need them. She wanted to make people feel special. She wanted to make people think twice. And the first person who she needed to do both with was in El Dorado.
As the girls put their poms together twice, Kelsey tore off the number stuck to her tank top, and walked off the field.
If she hurried, she could catch Peter before he left Kansas again. For where, she didn’t know, but she wasn’t going to let him go without her.