by Una LaMarche
“I don’t remember it exactly like that,” I laughed. “I remember it more like you wandering the halls, awkwardly forcing people into pretend arranged marriages.”
“You are welcome,” he said with an affectionate wink, handing me the note.
STEP UP . . . to your locker, it read in your small, slanted printing. (But actually take the elevator so you don’t break your foot).
Inside the elevator, stuck to the second-floor button, was a Post-it that read, You give me SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER (without the depressing ending). I grinned stupidly at it as the doors closed.
Sticking out of the side of my locker was a second envelope. There’s some GREASE waiting for you in Studio 2, HONEY. On the floor, you’d laid out a little picnic blanket with a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich, coffee, and another note: SAVE THE LAST DANCE for me. I’ll be waiting CENTER STAGE.
I couldn’t wait. I grabbed the food and made a beeline for the auditorium as fast as I could, swinging open the heavy door and practically spilling the coffee in my excitement to see you. But no one was there.
“Hello?” I called as I made my way down the aisle. The stage lights were on, but I didn’t see any evidence of you—no dance bag, no jacket. But as I got closer, I saw that there was something out of place. Sitting on the edge of the stage, surrounded by the little pieces of gaffe tape Ethan used to mark the blocking for his play . . . was a boombox.
MAKE YOUR MOVE, read a Post-it taped to the play button.
I looked around, peering into the wings with a smile so wide my cheeks hurt. “OK!” I yelled. “I’m about to press play, so you’d better be ready with your Magic Mike striptease! If I don’t hear Ginuwine, I’m walking out!” I set down the coffee and tossed my bag onto a front-row seat. Then I followed instructions.
The sound that filled the auditorium nearly made me weep. I would have known those bouncy beats and claps anywhere. I’d probably listened to them a hundred times, over and over, as I’d twirled around on my rug in stocking feet, my face stoic with focus, imagining I was a very serious prima ballerina who just happened to prefer late-80s pop hits to Tchaikovsky.
By the time Whitney unleashed the effervescent “Whoooo!” that started the music in earnest, you appeared, in a black tank top and dance pants, taking a graceful leap that ended with you sliding across the stage toward me on your knees. You got up grinning and shimmying your hips, beckoning me with one finger. When you started mouthing the words, I threw my head back and laughed.
“What?” you asked, lifting me up onstage and guiding me into a penchée. “You’re not the only one with a mom who hoards her golden oldies.” I spun around and kissed you, but you broke away after a few seconds.
“Later,” you laughed, “This is a rehearsal.”
You meant it. We basically ran through the entire pas de deux, modifying the ankle-busting moves and adjusting the pacing slightly for the pulse-pounding beats of 1987’s #4 Billboard Hot 100 hit. It was exhilarating, all that childhood nostalgia crashing up against the first blush of love in some kind of retro, high-impact cardio fever dream.
“Think we should tell Adair to change the music?” you asked when it was over, catching your breath long enough to deliver a slow, knee-weakening kiss.
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “She’ll definitely go for it.”
“This dance, it is love! It is passion! It is synthesizers!” you joked.
“It is lust,” I said, before I could help myself. We looked at each other for one electric minute, and then you asked, “Are your parents home?”
• • •
They weren’t, but a thick envelope from Barnard was, propped up under the narrow row of mailboxes it was too wide to fit in.
“That’s good news, right?” you asked, reacting to my crestfallen face.
“It’s good news for my dad,” I said. “It might be good news for me if I wanted to go.”
“That’s the thing,” you said, kissing my neck, “You don’t have to. The great thing about life is that you get to choose what you want to do.”
“Not for us,” I said, squirming out of your grasp. I was more upset than I wanted you to know. I could already hear the dinner table conversation, packed with tense buzzwords like opportunity and privilege. I could practically feel the weight of my father’s elbows on the table as he gesticulated, trying to make me see how foolish I was for taking a chance over a guarantee. “We don’t get to choose a ballet company, they have to choose us.” I swallowed hard, reluctantly picking up the envelope. “What if no one chooses me?”
“I choose you,” you said.
“You know what I mean.” I pressed the elevator button. It was stopped, indefinitely it seemed, on the fourth floor—one more thing that felt close enough to touch but just out of reach.
“I do know, but listen—” You spun me around and made me look at you. “You can’t worry so much about the future. It’s coming, it’s gonna happen, and it’ll be beautiful and terrible but everything will be OK.”
“Beautiful and terrible, huh?” I smiled, impressed with your off-the-cuff poetry. “What makes you say that?”
“It’s from a page on my mom’s 365 Quotes of Faith calendar,” you admitted sheepishly.
“Huh.” I pressed the button again; this time the doors sprang open. “That where you get all your pickup lines?”
“Not all of them. The Book of Job is pretty dark, makes for awkward sexting.”
I shot you a particularly charged side-eye, and you laughed.
“Hey,” you said, “I’m kidding, but I know this is serious for you, so if you want me to go . . .”
“No.” I looked up at your face, marveling for the hundredth time in days how I could have looked at it for so many years and not felt the spine-tingling tremor of longing I was feeling just then. I pulled you in and kissed you as the elevator made its slow ascent, lingering on every floor like it had a mad crush. You finally pulled back, your eyes warm and dark, searching.
“You sure?” you asked.
I nodded, still holding you, dizzy from adrenaline. “I need the distraction.”
When the elevator doors dinged opened again, I led you inside my apartment and tossed the thick Barnard envelope on the dining room table, unopened.
“Are you sure?” you asked again as we paused outside my bedroom door. A breeze was coming in through the open window, and the chimes I’d hung out on the fire escape crashed together, releasing a tumble of notes that washed over me like a sweet fever—like your touch on my skin.
I nodded and kissed you, first on the mouth and then on each cheekbone, each eyelid, the side of your neck, your Adam’s apple. I heard your breath catch in your throat, felt your heart as I traced my fingers down your chest.
We were standing on one side of a door, and I think we both knew that once we stepped through, there was no going back.
I pressed into you and felt your arms encircle me, lifting me ever so slightly just like you did onstage. All that time you’d been literally sweeping me off my feet, and it had taken me so long to feel it that it was almost too much—a dam breaking deep inside, pulling me under, leaving me breathless.
I love you, I almost said, but the words felt too new on my tongue, green like unripened fruit.
So instead I whispered, “I need you,” which was just as true. . . .
• • •
The only thing missing from that week was Liv. I was bursting to tell her what was happening. She’d spent so many years trying to force me to fall in love—wrong-headedly, of course, but kind of sweetly, in her way—and I finally understood why. It felt like she’d been speaking another language since we turned fourteen, and I’d suddenly become fluent overnight. I couldn’t wait to practice.
I told my parents—not everything, don’t worry, I wasn’t trying to kill anyone—but it wasn’t the same. They were cautiously happy fo
r me (they’d always liked you) but kept interjecting my lovestruck babbling, saying things like, “How will you find time for him with your ballet schedule and all your finals?” and “You know, it’s highly unlikely you two will end up in the same place next year.”
What I needed was someone who would shriek when I told them, who would breathlessly ask me what it was like, and how I felt, and what exactly had happened and in what order, spare no details. I needed someone I could confess to, and whose job it was to tolerate long, rambling monologues about infinitesimal gestures and glances and what they might mean, while prophesizing wildly with me about the future. I needed my best friend.
But she was gone. Every text I sent went unanswered—even my shameless attempts to drop hints that that I had big, big news—and when I finally called her, her voicemail box was full. On Friday I caved, and asked you to ask Dave to find out if he’d seen her, just to make sure she was OK. When you reported back that she was alive and in the city and “just flaky, like she is,” I’d stopped feeling worried and started feeling hurt. How many times had I patiently listened while Liv talked about a crush, or “educated” me about sex, or painstakingly analyzed a boyfriend’s motives? You were my first real boyfriend, my first real anything, and she didn’t even know. She didn’t seem to care.
“I just thought she’d be excited,” I said. That was Saturday. We were waiting in line at the movies. I was in excruciating pain by then; I’d been so caught up in you that I’d been careless. I had to wear the air cast Dr. Pashkin had given me just to be able to walk, and I couldn’t take a step without feeling a tingle of paranoia that someone would see me, and that I’d lose everything. (That was when I thought “everything” meant the chance to dance in Showcase.) At least you kept me distracted. You liked to joke that I probably needed to spend more time lying down.
I’d been talking to you a lot about how I wanted to talk to Liv about you, which was what happened when the best friend was taken out of the equation: a crazy-making feedback loop of misplaced angst.
“She’d probably be too excited, actually,” I went on. “She’d try to micromanage everything and I would hate it after about five seconds. But I just want her to know about us for some reason.”
“To make it real?” you asked.
“Nah.” I leaned into you playfully. “It’s gotten pretty real already. Maybe it’s just a girl thing.”
You smiled. “I tell people about you.”
“Oh, yeah? Who?”
“Theo and Dominic,” you said. “Abuela, obviously, although she can’t really hear so she thinks I’m dating a guy named Joe.”
“Stop it,” I laughed, burying my nose in your shirt.
“And I told Roth, too.”
“Do you think he told Liv?” I blurted before I could think of a way to ask it less blatantly. You’d been patient, but I could tell that my endless speculation about Liv wasn’t exactly your favorite conversation topic.
“I don’t know.” You shrugged. “I don’t know how much they hang, just that they’re rehearsing.” You wrapped an arm around me. “And you know what rehearsing can do to people.”
“Ha,” I said, as if saying a syllable of laughter out loud could make it seem funny. Liv and Dave hooking up wouldn’t have surprised me. But if it was true—if that was why she’d gone so AWOL—then it was even worse. Because she hadn’t told me. She hadn’t even gotten in touch to share her own drama, which she had always done, without fail, even when I didn’t have time to listen.
It would mean Liv wasn’t just being flaky, she was done with me.
are we still friends? Y/N, I typed quickly as we made our way into the theater. It was an infantile tactic, but I was done playing the responsible one.
The next morning, I got my answer: A single thumbs-up emoji. No explanation, no apology, no acknowledgment of all the other messages. A thumbs. Fucking. Up.
good to know, I wrote, and then deleted the thread—which had been a one-sided parade of blue bubbles, anyway.
That was Sunday, one week to the day after I’d woken up after my date with you, tingling with excitement, feeling like the sun was rising over the earth from inside my body. In just a week, I’d gained my first real boyfriend and lost my first real friend.
Life doesn’t happen in montage, but sometimes it feels that way. A bud can blossom overnight; a fracture can break just as fast. I don’t believe anything happens for a reason anymore, but I have learned one thing about fate:
It’s got a hair trigger.
Act Four
Ethan
Chapter Twenty-Three
April 30
13 days left
THE MOST PATHETIC THING, the thing that makes me cringe now, is how hard I tried. And the biggest punch line is that I didn’t try hard at anything until I met you.
My parents never expected much—apparently my conception itself was such a miracle that just the fact of my being was enough for them—and in elementary and middle school, teachers always seemed to sense that they should call as little attention to me as possible, since I got enough shit for being so tiny and shy, with the kind of cartoon carrot-red hair that earned me nicknames like Ginger Ale, Gingerbread, and Ginger Rogers. The last one was especially insulting, since I knew there was no way those thick-necked third-grade mouth-breathers even knew who she was, but I also knew that admitting I watched old MGM musicals with my geriatric dad would only add to the ridicule, so I kept my mouth shut and my head down, writing revenge scenes in the back pages of my notebooks. I always liked making up dialogue; it came naturally to me, telling people what to say, controlling the words. Bending it to my whims.
But you were impossible to direct off-stage. The whole time in Key West, I kept trying to come up with something that would make you do what I wanted you to do in real life, i.e., kissing me more than once every six weeks; not acting like everything about me annoyed the living shit out of you. While my parents sipped their frozen cocktails at the bar, I composed saccharine sonnets about the sunsets, and how they reminded me of your eyes. At poolside bingo, I used the resort’s Wi-Fi to look up Spanish endearments on my phone. I bought one of those grains of rice with your name on it. During my cousin Candy’s rehearsal dinner, I got drunk and poured my heart out with my thumbs, typing a string of texts under the tablecloth that thankfully didn’t send because of Verizon’s piss-poor roaming. At night I lay awake imagining your unexpected change of heart in my absence, casting you in a silent movie full of loneliness and regret and lots of Holden Caulfield–esque navel-gazing at the Central Park duck pond, culminating in a string of lusty messages I’d get as soon as we touched down at JFK:
i miss you.
i’m sorry i’ve been so distant.
i’m going crazy here.
come back.
come over.
i need you.
i want you.
I replayed our sporadic, frustratingly PG-rated love scenes over and over, writing and rewriting the surrounding scenes. What had I done right in those moments to make you like me? And what had I done wrong to fuck it up?
• • •
I wish I could say I maintained even one iota of cool and waited to text you until I got home, but we hadn’t even taxied all the way to the terminal.
hey killer, need to catch up on what i missed while i was poolside in kw. buy u dinner?
Fucking idiot. That was my inner voice talking, the one my child psychologist had (patronizingly and not particularly creatively, I thought) called Angry Ethan, but which I called the Director. It wasn’t a multiple personality, so I wasn’t crazy or anything. I had just gone through a rough patch in middle school that had included a lot of depression and crying and what I later learned was called “passive ideation,” like fantasizing about being run down by a semi truck, or shot with a stray bullet meant for someone else—the classic innocent bystander. Also, my
mom had found a draft I’d written of a thoroughly mediocre, amateur-hour play called The Big Sleep, about a kid trying to plan his suicide (it was supposed to be a black comedy, because all he does is plan, he never actually does anything, get it?), and so the therapist had been called and meds had been prescribed, and it all worked out and I was fine. Except for the Director, who still excoriated me on the regular. But I had gotten used to it, and besides, he was usually right.
Leave her alone! She’s not into you. You’re just embarrassing yourself at this point. Take your sad grain of rice and your awful poetry and go shove them in a drawer along with your blue balls.
But then three little dots appeared in a bubble on my screen. You were typing. They kept vanishing and then popping back up again, suggesting that you were revising the message, putting some thought into it. And then it occurred to me that a constantly disappearing ellipsis was exactly what you were, in general, in my life, and that I needed to use that metaphor in the next thing I wrote that wasn’t set before the dawn of cellular technology.
kk, when/where?
I must have made some kind of noise, some gasp of shocked elation, because my dad clapped his book shut and peered over at me.
“What is happening in the world?” he asked, like I would use my first minute of Internet connectivity to check the news.
“Nothing,” I mumbled. “I’m just texting with Liv.”
“I remember those days,” he said dreamily, with a humiliatingly conspicuous wink. It was hard to believe my dad, with his thick gut and the forest of gray hair covering every inch of his body except for half his head, had ever been considered a playboy, but part of the reason he didn’t settle down until he was in his mid-fifties was that he had been what people called “a confirmed bachelor”—before it was code for gay.
“She wants me to take her to dinner,” I said, puffing my chest out a little, even though moving at all still hurt a little because of my sunburn.