I grimace. “I hate hummus, and I don’t need your help.”
“Well, I could just—” She hands me a packet of carrots. She smiles a little, but it doesn’t hide her worries. “I mean, things just feel different this year, like a fresh start, right?” She dips another carrot, and a small dollop of hummus lands on my tights. I flinch, but she doesn’t notice. Then I flick it off and onto the studio floor. “I’m excited about all these new opportunities. But it is lonely sometimes, you know?”
She looks up at me, eyes brimming a bit, waiting for me to agree, to sympathize. But I don’t have that to give her. Not anymore. I shrug. “Not really. I’m busy all the time.” I wonder what she does with all her time now that Bette is gone. “Like right now.”
The extra Sunday Preparatory 4 class lets out. Parents trickle through the hall with their petit rats. The little ones wave at us through the glass. They’re a blur of hunter-green leotards and pink tights, wide grins, bright teeth, and innocent eyes. We wave back. I hear them say my name so loudly it sounds like a thwack against the glass. Parents grin at us.
“They really love you.” Eleanor looks wistful, disappointed, like she’s just realized something big. “You’ve got something special. More than charisma. It’s—”
Cassie walks in then, and Eleanor leaps up and away, like a kid caught stealing a cookie.
“You ready?” Cassie says to me as Eleanor gathers her stuff, that panicked expression still exaggerating her soft features. “I got us a table at ten.” She turns to Eleanor, her face stone cold. “Still snacking instead of squeezing in those morning workouts, huh, El? Guess you can’t teach an old dog—”
I jump up. “Let’s go,” I say, grabbing Cassie by the arm and leading her out. I don’t need to look back to see that Eleanor’s still standing there, frozen, devastated.
“I was just getting rid of her when you came in.”
“That’s exactly what she deserves. I should’ve said even more.” She’s walking so fast and furious, I race to keep up. “You’ve got to stop letting her fool you with those crybaby antics. She’s not nearly as innocent as she looks.”
“Oh, I know.”
Cassie stops short. “No, after everything you’ve been through, you still don’t get it. She’s always been a sidekick, a lapdog. With Bette gone, this is her big chance. You better believe she’s going to take it.”
I fill in the blanks. “And she’s learned from the best.”
Cassie nods solemnly. “Exactly. So no hanging with the enemy.” Then she adds with a smirk, “Unless, of course, you plan to set a trap.”
12.
June
“A PICNIC?” I ASK, LAUGHING. “In November?”
I feel shaky as I sit with Jayhe, and not just from the cold. A part of me panics, wondering if he can see the scars Sei-Jin’s words left on me last night. After that fight, I had to see him, had to reassure myself that this is what’s real, not those dead butterflies that will haunt me for the rest of my life.
“Chicken wings. Dumplings, too.” He gestures from one dish to the next, all spread out on a red-checked blanket in the park. He unwraps a pristine white box and sets it in the center of the blanket. “And coconut cake for dessert.”
“Ballerinas don’t eat dessert.” I try to make it into a joke. He doesn’t laugh.
“I’ll eat it myself.” He’s got a doofy grin on his face, like he’s just realized his mistake. “You can enjoy the show.” He starts pulling out napkins and boxes of food and bottles of the calorie-free fizzy water we had on a beach day in Brooklyn last summer. He holds one out to me, and I realize it’s watermelon—which they no longer make. “Your favorite.”
I grin, taking the bottle from him and popping it open. I take a few sips, letting the fruity bubbles settle the anxiety that’s filling me up. I pull my peacoat tighter around my shoulders, wishing I’d brought a heavier jacket.
“I know it’s cold,” he says, wrapping me up in a bear hug. I try to let the warmth envelop me. It’s only the beginning of November, but you can already tell that this winter will be brutal, the chill settling into you like an anchor. “I brought us layers.”
We both sink down onto the blanket, and pull another checked wool one on top of our laps. He starts piling food on to a plate, careful that each thing gets its own space, no touching, just the way I like it. Then he makes a plate for himself, everything smushed all together, and drizzles it all with chili sauce. He tucks himself in next to me and digs in.
I inhale the salty pork and chives of the dumplings, made by hand in his dad’s restaurant. I can’t bring myself to take a bite. My stomach churns with bile and anxiety. Instead, I lean into Jayhe and listen to him talk between bites—about his little cousin, whose first birthday is coming up, and how different she’ll look a year from now. He lifts my plate up, noticing that it’s still full. “Try the chicken,” he says. “It’s delicious. My dad started adding a touch of honey to the sauce to make it less hot.” He holds up a piece. “The white people love it.”
I take the piece and chomp down, trying to drown my worries in grease and home cooking. “It’s yummy,” I say, then reach for the chili sauce. “But I like it hot.” I don’t eat all of it. Just enough to get him to stop focusing on food.
I can feel him watching my mouth, and then our eyes lock like magnets. He smiles and there’s a gleam in his eyes, and before I know it, we’re both sprawled out on the blanket, food tossed aside. It’s all play at first, a roll onto the grass, me giggling, a button flying off my peacoat as he tries to pull it open. I feel his hot, calloused hands climbing under my sweater and up my back, wandering in places we’ve left unexplored. His tongue goes farther into my mouth, and I push back, wanting to erase last night. The goose bumps spread wherever his touch goes, the cold and the hot conflicting, strange and familiar. It’s like the odd pleasure and pain a new pair of toe shoes brings.
I don’t know how long we lie there, frozen in time, letting the world fall away, but a shrill whistle knocks us out of our daydream and scrambling back into our coats. A group of kids zoom by, their teacher—blowing her orange plastic emergency whistle—trying to get them to line up and hold hands. “Everyone find your partners,” she keeps shouting, and I blush, thinking maybe I finally found mine.
He watches my face and then grins, reaching for the dumplings. He eats one and then a second, offering me some, too. They’re cold and congealed now, and I can feel that familiar bile rising in my throat. I tell him I’m full. He frowns but lets it go.
“Just one more month until the new Brooklyn restaurant opens.” He dips another into that salty soy-chili-scallion sauce his dad is famous for. “I think my dad will want me to take over that one.” His voice is low, as if someone might overhear. But aside from the kids, the park is really quiet for a Sunday afternoon, probably because of the chill. I’m so absorbed in my own worries that it takes me a minute to realize what he means.
“It’s a lot,” I say, ever the supportive girlfriend. “Can you handle that along with your classes?”
He starts talking about the college-level figure drawing class he’s been taking on Thursday nights. “We’re two months in, and she still hasn’t even approved my sketch.” He reaches into his backpack and pulls out one of those familiar black sketchbooks. He opens it up to the middle, and there’s one of the first drawings he did of me as I pirouette in the center of the studio, with echoes of me reflected in the mirrors. He keeps talking about the color and the shading. To me it just looks beautiful, so I say so. But he sort of shrugs it off.
I guess that’s the thing—it’s not me he needs to hear it from. It’s the same with me and ballet. To Jayhe, what I do is beautiful and perfect. He doesn’t see the flaws in my pirouettes or that my leaps are not quite high enough.
“I asked Professor Tadeka for a recommendation for RISD. The Rhode Island School of Design. She went there, so she might have some pull.”
“That sounds great. Is it a good school?”
/>
“One of the best. I don’t know if I’ll get in, but it’s like you always say, I have to try.” He’s lost in thought for a minute, then finally says it. “But I’ve been thinking. Rhode Island is five hours away, you know. We hardly see each other now, and we’re forty-five minutes apart. So . . .”
“I’ll miss you.” I reach across, putting a cold hand on his warm cheek. “I miss you now.”
He puts his hand on mine, then moves them both away from his face. In that moment, he’s not the same, sleepy-eyed boy I’ve always known. His seriousness leaves lines across his forehead, down his cheeks. He looks older. Weary. “I was just thinking. You always seem so miserable there.” I know what he’s about to say, and I’m already shaking my head. But he plows forward. “This summer, you were doing so well. The intensive was less stressful. You were eating a little more, you were going to that therapist, you were learning Korean, you were hanging with family—even your mom. And now, you’re—”
“I’m what?” I can’t listen to all this. Not now. Not when I’ve worked this hard and come this far. “You know I can’t give up dancing. I’ve got a real shot—”
“Really?” He’s completely pulled away now—there are only a few inches between us, but they might as well be miles already. “It just seems like you’re unhappy whenever you go back there. So I thought maybe you could come with me. Or we could both go somewhere closer. Together.”
It feels like I misheard him for a minute.
“There are a lot of universities nearby. You could study almost anything. Can you imagine it? Taking classes together, hanging out.”
I think about the picture he’s created for us: college, dancing, being with him on weekends. It would be so easy. Like a normal girl.
I could have everything I’ve ever dreamed of.
Except professional ballet. Sure, there’s the Boston Ballet and the New England Ballet. But there’s nothing like dancing in New York at the American Ballet Company.
He waits for an answer. I try to calm myself down before I speak. I want this—I want him—more than I’ve wanted almost anything. But he makes it seem too easy.
“I can’t do that.” I don’t let my voice waver. “You don’t get it. You don’t have to. But if you love me, you’ll accept the fact that I need to dance. To do that, I need to be in New York.”
He smiles. “Okay, I thought you’d say that, so I’ve looked into a few places in New York, too. Could you do the same?”
He reaches down into his backpack and pulls out pamphlets for schools in Boston and New York and everywhere in between. For a minute, just a minute, I can’t be mad. He’s really trying to make this work. It feels so strange because my life looks so different from the way it was last year, facing this type of decision, having someone who wants me to factor him in. Right now, it seems like I’ll have to choose one or the other, Jayhe or ballet.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll think about it, I will.”
But I can’t make any promises.
I’m standing at the barre between Gigi and one of the new girls, in perfect formation. My arms are up, my leg extended, my right foot swishing back and forth, in unison with the others. I’m invisible and yet perfectly in tune, exactly how it should be. But I’m not thinking about the music, or the perfect line my leg makes when I lift it straight up to my head. Jayhe’s words absorb my thoughts, every moment. Knowing that it might have to be over, that I can’t give up ballet or New York.
Morkie’s shadow drapes over me, and I remember her lecture about focus from last week, so I straighten up even more.
“Legs in grand battement. Hold.” She stands beside me, waiting. I lift my leg to the side, trying to ensure a solid turnout. Her bony fingers stretch out and touch the inner part of my thigh. Her fingers pinch at the tights until they grab part of my skin, burning through the thin material, sharp and mean, with a firm grasp. Tears prick at my eyes, but I swallow hard, determined to hold them back.
“Too much,” she says.
I’m drowning in shame, the heat of it threatening to melt me as she continues to pinch that excess flesh.
“Now it’s time to be long and lean. It’s almost audition time.” Morkie pauses for effect. “Because this will not do.”
Everyone freezes. No one breathes at all. But in my ears, I can hear the snickers, the laughter they’re saving for later. She moves on to Riho. “Extend, extend.” She’s shouting now, and Riho kind of ducks, as if she’s about to get hit. Morkie pulls her out of the line and lifts an arm, indicating that Riho should kick to the side, into grand battement. When Riho does, Morkie lifts her leg even higher, and the girl lets out a little yelp of pain. For a moment, I feel bad for Riho. She’s too young, too small, for such harsh treatment. Then again, we all were once.
When class is over, I wait until the hallway outside the studio is clear. Then I head straight down to the physical therapy room, where the PT therapist will contort my body in a dozen directions, pulling me apart and putting me back together again. Pretty much all of us go to PT, but some need it more than others.
I lie facedown on the therapy table, my head supported by the headrest, a towel covering me even though I’m wearing a tank top and shorts. The shooting pains I’ve been having in my shins could mean the beginnings of a stress fracture. I don’t tell her that. She’ll tell Nurse Connie and Morkie, and I’ll be out of ballet class for at least a week.
I inhale the scent of her rubber gloves, melding with the nutty scent of almond oil as she rubs my scalp. She stretches out my limbs and massages the tension out of them.
“You’re all set,” she says in her chirpy tone. “You can stay for another few minutes. Try to relax.” She always says that. She puts a hot, wet towel on my back, the warmth of it seeping into my sore muscles. I hear her rubber soles squeak as she leaves the room.
My brain is a tangle of stressors: Jayhe, Morkie, Cassie, ballet class, food, and Gigi. But eventually I drift off to sleep.
I wake up, pull the towel off my back, and slide off the PT table. My bare feet feel soft furlike piles beneath my toes. I fumble around in the dimly lit room. Clumps of black hair make a trail between the treatment table and the door. My heart thuds. My hands find their way to my head—the once long strands now end abruptly by my ears.
I start to scream, the rasping, gasping sounds scraping their way up and out of my throat. Tears stream down my face like fat raindrops, ominous and endless. I cry out of confusion, out of anger, out of pain. The hair is all over the floor and the PT table.
The therapist’s sneakers make their signature squeak as she skids back into the room. “June, June! What’s wrong?” She turns the lights all the way up. “Oh, no. Your hair. How did this happen?”
I know exactly how it did. I watched it all happen to Gigi and didn’t say a word. Now it’s my turn.
13.
Bette
AFTER A SESSION WITH MADAME Yuli, I’m standing at the bottom of the basement stairs, working up the energy to go back upstairs.
“Bette,” Justina calls down, “your mother—”
“Coming.” I steel myself, then I climb the stairs. I walk through the kitchen and into the foyer. The space is lit up and warm, and there’s laughter. It makes me think, just for a second, that I’ve walked up into the wrong house.
But the laugh—bright and deep and rough—is Alec’s.
It takes all my strength not to run into the living room. Instead, I compose myself at the foyer’s wall mirror, wiping the sweat from my brow and pulling my ballet sweater down a little on my shoulders. I make a few settling noises so they know I’m out here.
When Adele finally calls out, “Is that you, Bette? We’ve got company!”
I smooth down my damp hair and finally poke my head into the living room.
“Well, actually, you’ve got company.” Adele giggles, the same sweet, little girl laugh I’ve always wanted. “I’ve just been entertaining Alec with ARC horror stories while he waited.”
> Fall Alec is my favorite kind. He always wears fancy, grown-up pants and cozy, oversize sweaters that are always roomy enough for me to climb right into, not an inch between us, his long arms wrapped around me like a scarf. The craving for him is so sharp, so elemental, tears prick my eyes.
“Hey.” I try to keep my smile in check and fail.
Alec stands immediately. I can tell he’s happy to see me from the way his ears go pink.
Adele rises, taking her teacup. “Well, I guess I’ll let you guys catch up. I’m headed back to my apartment.”
I smile gratefully, and she points to another cup on the table. “Chamomile, Bette.”
“Thanks,” I say, then she leaves.
I sit across the coffee table from Alec, who’s still grinning and blushing, although he probably doesn’t realize it. I’m a safe distance, so I can trust myself not to let my hands roam over those familiar shoulders, that buzzed hair. From here I can absorb him without scaring him off.
“How have you been?” he asks, taking a sip, which clearly scalds. He doesn’t drink a lot of tea. “You, uh, you look great.”
Now I’m blushing, which is silly, and makes me feel like we haven’t had a million moments like this. It’s Alec. I’ve known him my whole life. “Thanks. Private ballet lessons. You know how it goes.”
“Yeah, I do.” He looks at me. “So is it okay being back here with—” He nods his head up toward the ceiling where my mother’s bedroom is.
The way he looks at me then, that mix of worry and pity—and maybe, just maybe, still a touch of love—unravels me.
Just like that, I’m crying. All the things I’ve been holding in—the hurt, the loneliness, the stress, the struggle to prove myself innocent, the need to be back at school, the fear that I have no ballet career to start—all of it comes gushing out in a cascade of sobs. He’s only really seen me cry a handful of times. I don’t like showing him this tiny broken piece of me.
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