by Una LaMarche
“I don’t care what you do. Just leave her out of it.”
“It’s not that easy,” Dante said, stepping back. “She’s a valuable asset.”
I swallowed bitter, coppery saliva. “But we’re family,” I said.
He shrugged. “Family is family, money is money.”
“And which one’s worth more?”
“It’s not like that,” he said. “Liv’s a big girl, she can make her own decisions. I’m not some gangster keeping her in line. Every weekend when the new stuff comes in she just shows up. I don’t know if she doesn’t have anywhere else to be or if she just gets off on being a tourist in the projects, or what. But no one’s got her on a leash. She can leave if she wants to.” His face softened, and for a second, under the carefully manicured facial hair and studied Clint Eastwood squint, I saw the boy I used to look up to. “I could have let her OD or let her fall off the roof at that party, but what did I do? I called you, right? Doesn’t that count for something?”
“Not much,” I said.
“Whatever, man,” he said, sneering and starting down the stairs two at a time with his hands shoved in the pockets of his hoodie. “Relax. It’s not life or death.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
May 13
14 hours left
“ARE YOU READY?”
I woke up with a start, sweating and panting, reaching for you. In the dream, we’d been onstage, doing the pas de deux, in front of hundreds of people—a packed house (everyone had been dressed in suits, even my mom, which was strange, but otherwise everything was normal). Right before the press lift, you’d whispered, “Are you ready?” and I’d nodded, but when I lifted you into the final position, the muscles in my arm gave out—just crumbled to dust—and I dropped you from seven feet up. The look in your eyes as you fell was so real. I heard your neck snap. I could still hear it.
I flopped back on my bed and hugged a pillow to my chest. Above me, through the crack in the curtains, I could see a triangle of dark gray sky slowly giving way to sunrise. It was the morning of Showcase, the morning that was supposed to be the first day of the rest of my life, or something cheesy like that. And I was dreading it.
It’s not life or death. That’s what Dante had said, and probably why I had the dream in the first place. But I couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling it left me with. It seemed like a bad omen, some kind of message I couldn’t decode.
today’s the day! I texted you, not sure what to do with myself.
AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! you wrote back, within seconds.
I smiled, then. That scream wasn’t real yet.
• • •
“How you feelin’, man?” I asked Dave as we met center court, in the playground on the corner of 77th and Amsterdam a few blocks from his house. It was almost noon but he looked like he’d just rolled out of bed, and his hair must have been in a special state, because it was stuffed under a knit cap even in the breezy 65-degree weather.
“OK, actually,” he said, yawning and dribbling sloppily until the ball hit his sneaker and shot off down the pavement. I jogged after it, already feeling a little bit better with the spring air filling my lungs.
“You skip school yesterday?” I asked, taking an easy lay-up.
“Yeah.” Dave yawned again. “Ethan sent us this incredibly long, pretentious e-mail Thursday night saying that the play was canceled and we were traitors and terrible people and bad actors, so I decided I didn’t feel like dealing with that in person.” I tossed him the ball, and he just held it, staring at it like he wasn’t sure what it was for. “Then, when I found out the, um . . . other stuff,” he said, “I guess I was glad I wasn’t there.”
“I missed it, too.” I nodded at him, encouraging him to take a shot, and he hurled it half-heartedly, missing the hoop.
“I’m off my game today,” he said.
“Yeah. Today,” I joked. I ran after the ball again, since Dave didn’t seem ready to move. “You talk to her yet?” I asked casually.
He shook his head. “I don’t know what to say. I feel like I should have known.”
“Nobody knew,” I said, feeling a stab of guilt.
“Yeah, but I’m her—” He winced. “I’ve been with her every day, man. I knew something was going on. I just didn’t . . . want to know. You know?”
“Yup.” I held the ball in my hands, turning it slowly, working myself into a quiet panic. I’d known Liv was in trouble and I’d all but ignored it. What if my dream wasn’t just anxiety, but a real warning? I’d known for months about your injury, and all I’d done was help you hide it. I couldn’t afford to make the same mistake twice. Not with you.
Dave looked at me wearily, expectantly, and it took a few seconds to realize he was just waiting for me to throw. I took a jump shot and banked it. “You should call her,” I said.
“Did you talk to her?” There was a weird edge to his voice; at least he was waking up.
“Yeah. I ran into her yesterday. She seemed pretty upset.” Not entirely a lie. “But Joy says she won’t pick up the phone, and I don’t think her parents are exactly keeping her under lock and key, you know?”
I walked over to get the ball, turning my back on Dave’s tortured expression.
“She texted me,” he said softly when I got back in earshot. “Yesterday. A couple of times.”
“What did she say?”
“That she was sorry.”
“So tell her you forgive her.”
Dave looked at the ground.
“Do you forgive her?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said quickly. “I mean, what’s to forgive? I should be apologizing to her.” He squinted into the sun. “I should have said something.”
“Yeah.” I paused, thought about telling him everything I knew, but didn’t. That’s another on a long list of regrets. “It’s not too late to say you’re sorry,” I said.
He looked at me, confused. “What, like right now?”
“Tomorrow’s not promised.” (Another one of Mom’s calendar quotes. I was just saying it to sound deep. I didn’t know I was predicting the future.) I threw the ball at Dave’s chest and he reflexively caught it. “No day but today.”
“Are you quoting Rent at me?” he asked, cracking a half-smile. “I know you dance, man, but I wouldn’t have pegged you for a—”
“Just shut up and call her,” I said.
I watched him while he did it. It went straight to voicemail. But then I walked him to the downtown train. If anyone could get Liv to stay still, it would be Dave. And if he could manage to find her, hold on to her, for just a little while, well—that would be a start, at least.
• • •
“Are you ready?”
A chill ran through me. I blinked, just to check, but nope—this time, when you asked, it was real. It was 7:45 P.M., we were standing out of sight in the stage-left wings, and I’d been relieved to note, courtesy of a packed-house snapshot my mom sent when she arrived, that almost no one in the audience was in a suit, aside from Mr. Dyshlenko, who looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger, his arms practically busting the seams of his jacket. I was in black tights and a black leotard, in my wide-shouldered bolero and enough hairspray for all of New Jersey (“It’ll keep that hair out of your eyes, at least,” you’d teased), and you were nervously swishing back and forth in your ruffled red dress, practicing the fingerwork on your fan, opening and closing the paper accordion folds while you marked your solo and gingerly warmed up your ankle.
It was happening, I realized. I hadn’t stopped it. You’d shut me down with one sentence when I’d called you from Broadway, pacing back and forth in front of a newsstand full of tragic tabloid headlines.
“I didn’t come this far to quit now,” you’d said. But still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off.
“Are you ready?” I asked. On
stage, the second group piece was approaching its finale. In about two minutes, we’d enter on cue. We were the last act, the closers. It all came down to us.
“It’s fine,” you said, not looking up.
“Don’t lie to me now,” I said.
“Fine, it’s worse today.” You exhaled slowly, bouncing a little. Before a performance, we usually did jumping jacks to limber up, but I felt like if I jumped right then I might puke, and from the tears in your eyes I could tell you could barely tolerate any warm-up at all. “It’ll have to do,” you said with a grimace.
We’d already been at school for hours. The Drama Showcase performance had been that afternoon, so out of curiosity we’d gone to check out Ethan’s one-man revenge special (we’d looked around for Liv, hoping that she’d show up in protest, but no luck). It had been . . . talky and self-important but thankfully short, just like its author. You’d been too angry to go see Ethan afterward, but I caught him just as he was leaving to go celebrate at P.J. Clarke’s with his fifty Russian relatives. I asked him if he’d heard from Liv, but he told me “there weren’t enough rice grains in the Goya factory” to ever make her talk to him again. I didn’t get it.
Then we’d convened in Studio 1 with the other dancers and Ms. Adair had led us in a warm-up while casually dropping the news that reps from City Ballet, ABT, Joffrey, Alvin Ailey, Atlanta, San Francisco, Miami, and Boston had been confirmed for the show. “So, please, don’t dance like no one’s watching,” she’d warned. “Dance like everyone is.”
I clenched and unclenched my fists. Everyone would be watching, you were dancing on a foot that could give at any second, and I was more nervous than I’d ever been before a performance. My head was all over the place. When you and I had rehearsed alone, it had felt like we were in a bubble; all I could see was you. But then, I couldn’t focus. I could barely breathe. So much was riding on what I was about to do—one minute to curtain and counting—and I couldn’t pretend that I had no control. I had to pull it together.
“Relax your face,” you whispered, elbowing me in the side. “Make it look joyful.” But then you must have seen the fear in my eyes because you grabbed my hand and said, “Oh, no. Oh, shit. You’re really freaking, aren’t you?”
“I’ll be OK,” I said, closing my eyes, shaking out my legs, trying to clear my head.
There was a swell of applause as the ensemble struck their final pose, and the curtain swished down from the fly loft. Our classmates filed quickly offstage, but I couldn’t look at them. I couldn’t lose what little focus I had left.
“Places,” the stage manager whispered from behind us, and you stepped in front of me without letting go.
“You got this,” you said under your breath.
“I know,” I said. “I just can’t stop thinking about what happens out there.” Out there onstage, out there in the world. So many trains and so many tracks. No way to know which ones might derail. “I need to make sure I hold you up so—”
“Stop right there,” you said. “Don’t you worry about me for another second. I know this choreography inside and out. I could do it on one foot. I could do it on no feet. I could probably do it on my hands if I had to.” You smiled, a beam of light in the dark. “You don’t have to be my crutch anymore,” you continued, “because you already hold me up. As good as we are by ourselves, we’ve always been better together. It just took me too damn long to notice.” You pulled me into you and kissed me just as the orchestra started playing our intro music.
“Ten seconds,” the stage manager said.
“You and me,” I whispered, with our noses still touching.
“Blowin’ up like spotlights,” you finished. The curtain rustled to life, racing away from the stage floor faster than I was ready for. Two feet, then six, then ten. There was nothing standing between us and what we were about to do together. Except one thing.
“I love you,” I said. “You know that, right?”
“I do now,” you said, with a grin that lit my world on fire.
And then we were on.
Chapter Thirty
May 13
Two hours left
ONCE YOU’RE UP ON STAGE, there’s no way to tell what the audience sees. All you have to go by is how it feels. There’s an energy, a rhythm, that takes over when everything lines up right. We were always being reminded that the human body was our instrument, but mine never felt like one when I was performing. Calling it an instrument reminded me of something delicate or breakable, but on that stage that night we were a force of nature, like a fire spreading, alive and unstoppable. We ate up space.
Watching you made the rest of the world fall away. We flew, and time stopped. I watched your calves carve arrowheads in your legs as you nailed your manège of piqué pirouettes, smiling softly like it was the easiest thing in the world even though my heart paused for those thirty seconds. After that, though, it was on. Every step felt spontaneous, like the first time we’d ever danced it. You were right: As good as we were on our own, it was no contest. Together we were like two currents converging. A perfect storm.
Still, I couldn’t stop a creeping feeling of déjà vu as we approached the press lift. Even with your hops en pointe and my jumps, the lift was the most dangerous moment because so many things could go wrong. It was a show-off move to thrill the crowd before our aerobic dash to the fish dive, and we had to stick it. More importantly, I had to stick it. You trusted me. And I swore I’d never let you down.
You stepped gracefully in front of me, into the arabesque that I’d lift you in, and I clenched my jaw, drawing every shred of strength I had, trying to prepare myself. I had one hand on your hip and was about to brace the other under your thigh when you turned your head slightly, breaking the perfect, paper doll profile that the girl dancers had always been taught to hold. My heart nearly stopped. We were nailing it, and you were breaking form.
Your lips barely moved. You kept your eyes focused straight ahead. But I heard the words clearly. “I love you back.”
I lifted you then, just like Mr. D had taught me. I held on, and then—before I could think about it—I let go. The orchestra punctuated the moment with a dramatic crescendo, and when I dipped you into the fish dive, the applause started rolling like thunder. I spun you into me and we locked eyes, both breathless but beaming; we had destroyed the performance and we both knew it. It was glorious. The clapping didn’t stop until after five curtain calls.
It was the best moment of my life.
• • •
We got swarmed backstage—Mom and Miggy and Emilio, your parents, Mr. D, who looked like he’d actually been crying, and even Ms. Adair, who kissed us both on the cheeks, double-French-style, and called us “exquisite.”
“You know, you might be onto something with this dance thing,” your dad said, handing you a bouquet of roses.
“Say what now?” you asked, laughing and hugging him. I’d never seen you look so proud.
“That jump when you slid on the floor was badass,” Miggy said. “Can you teach me to do that?”
“If you’re anything like your brother, I’ll teach you myself,” Mr. D laughed.
It was a crazy whirlwind of congratulations and thank-yous and high-fiving. Everywhere I looked, someone was clamoring for someone’s attention, holding up their phones and cameras, balancing flowers and balloons, pushing through the packed crowd. So when a skinny older dude in a blazer stopped in front of me, I figured he was trying to get past, and moved aside.
“Diego, right?” he asked, holding out his hand.
“Um, yeah.” I shifted the teddy bear with the CONGRATULATIONS! heart that Mom had forced on me into my left arm and shook.
“My name is Jefferson Bloom. I represent the Miami City Ballet, and I was just blown away by your performance.”
“Um.” I elbowed Mom away, who had straight-up turned her back on a conversation s
he was having with your mom to eavesdrop. “Thank you.”
“Listen,” he said, “we’re always looking for strong male dancers, and I think you’d be an incredible fit for our company. We take a couple of apprentices every fall, and we’d like you to be one of them.” He handed me a sleek business card. His name was printed in silver letters, raised up off the shiny surface. “I hope you reach out once you’ve had the chance to think it over.”
“Wow,” I said, instinctively searching the room for my constant. I found you about ten feet away, standing next to a tall, willowy woman with glasses and a waterfall of braids. While she looked for something in her bag, you turned to me and excitedly mouthed, “Alvin Ailey!”
“All travel expenses paid, of course,” my guy said.
“Of course,” I repeated, dumbstruck.
It happened twice more, with reps from Atlanta and San Francisco. They came over, told me they’d like to have me as an apprentice, handed me a card, congratulated Mom, and talked a big game about how I was gonna go far. I wish I could say I enjoyed it, but after the initial euphoria of the actual performance, I’d gone kind of numb. The words floated over my head, hanging there like sky writing. The Atlanta rep had wanted you, too, so at least for that one, we were together. You broke away from your own fan club and hobbled over, your expression hovering between a grimace of pain and a grin of relief.
“I landed kind of hard out there,” you whispered apologetically. “I didn’t even feel it till I got offstage.”
“Well I hope you can rest it now,” the Atlanta rep said. “I have a feeling you’ll be dancing on that foot for a good long time.”
You grabbed my hand and I squeezed it.
We were so close to our happy ending. We got so close.
• • •
After the Atlanta rep said goodbye, we just stood holding hands, looking at each other like, What just happened? while our parents loudly debated in the background about combining parties and changing dinner reservations. That was when Dave Roth made his untimely entrance through the backstage curtain.