by S. M. McCoy
And why was my heart pounding like I’d just signed my own death warrant?
Your mom is a powerful woman, they want that power, even if they have to go through you. Why did I believe the man in my dreams? It was just my subconscious dreaming about who my mom could be…wasn’t it? Who she might have been today…he told me she was held prisoner, trapped in another realm only I could get to. Only a dreamwalker could get to.
“Why would they?” I hesitated with my own protest but refused to think anyone would still be checking on the state board for whether anyone asked about my mother. It’d been sixteen years. Sixteen years! My real birthday over a week away, November 9. No one pays attention to something for that long. Except me. I did.
“Besides”—I thought this through before sending the letter—“I gave them the studio’s address, not mine.”
Victor grabbed my hand, his eyes turned aside. Shaking his head lightly in resignation he continued, “I’d go with you, you know.”
“I’m not going anywhere!” I cried out pitiful and meek, which shocked even me. Feeling like a helpless child dragged by a forearm to the dentist, to the doctor, to anywhere I didn’t want to go. Because I didn’t. Didn’t want to go anywhere, so I cried out, but not at him, into the universe maybe. I had Aislin, I had a home here. I wasn’t leaving, I didn’t have anything to worry about. No one would be coming for me.
I rested my head on Victor’s shoulder, realizing that I wasn’t enough steps ahead. The studio could be traced back to me. It wasn’t that long after I sent the letter that the shadows became clearer. The mirror showed me the bags I had under my faded green eyes.
Letting one last thump of my fist on his chest to vent my frustration, I prepared myself with a hardened resolution that whatever threat I thought there was, was just that: a thought. Only a thought.
“I’ve found you.” I heard a man’s deep voice in my head, and I pulled Victor in closer to me. I thought I heard him growl, like he heard it too, but I merely pressed my face into his shoulder, pushing that thought out of my mind.
CHAPTER FOUR
Life Bites
“Hmm.” I looked up, everything seemed more fuzzy than usual. Reaching out for the corner of the front desk, I used it for stability as my vision returned to normal.
I hovered over the receptionist’s computer waiting for my brain to kick start again, before moving dance lessons off myself to the open time slots on Ryan’s and Monica’s schedule.
Aislin was the manager; she hired enough dance instructors to take care of things on their own, and convinced me in the last week that I needed to focus on school work. She didn’t let me get away with not at least getting my G.E.D. online. Though I seemed to be spending more time sleeping than anything else, thankfully I never remembered the dreams anymore.
I’d been passing out, nearly standing up with my eyes open, a pizza pocket in my hand and the other on the doorknob. Aislin noticed, demanding I take care of myself, or lessons from my work schedule wouldn’t be the only thing lost.
With how much work was needed it made me wary of spending my time hanging out at one of the many Pennsylvania State Parks to watch locals, tourists, and the changing shrubs and flowers revolving around the weather, while Aislin toiled away to keep mac n’ cheese in the cupboards.
I felt more like the shrubs and flowers than the people enjoying them. Existing, noticed occasionally, and changing only when the weather said it was okay. But sometimes I thought that was better than letting anyone know why I’d been in such an odd mood lately.
Shifty could be a good descriptor, if it didn’t hold a certain negative connotation toward others. The negativity was more toward the circumstances, but around those were people, people affected by the negativity…so shifty could still work, though I wish it didn’t. I didn’t know how much time I’d have to be “taking it easy” per Aislin’s orders. And who takes it easy on their birthday anyway?
Time was a precious commodity, more so when you knew there wasn’t much left. At least that’s what my dad would always say, “Make sure you invest in yourself, not in things that make life easier, those will fade away with time, but what you do will live on forever.” I suppose he kind of sounded like Yoda from time to time, except without all the prepositions. He usually bought me a lemon cupcake with a candle in it from my favorite bakery.
One candle was all I needed, he’d say, you don’t need multiple flames to burn away the years, one should last you a lifetime. He used the same candle every year. I no longer had that candle—one was not enough.
Time wasn’t on my side. After that day in the park with Victor I couldn’t stop myself from wondering who my dad was talking about, who would be after me? I couldn’t get this nagging feeling out of my head that he’d told me why before, and now it was gone. I didn’t remember why I left Seattle, why my mom was gone, or why I felt so scared all of sudden. But I wasn’t going to leave, not again.
Nobody is after me, nobody is after me. I’m not insane, there is no conspiracy theory. The mantra repeated itself in my head to prevent me from fleeing at dawn. I couldn’t decide whether I was lying to myself, or if I was just trying to keep hold of my sanity. I couldn’t even remember yesterday.
“Crystal?”
“Yes?” I blinked a couple times to realize I was staring at the screen like a cog waiting for its turn to click into place.
“I think your four o’ clock is here. Let’s get together later, okay?” It was like Victor was finishing a conversation I didn’t even know we had. I didn’t remember making up with him about before, to remove the awkwardness. But there he was, casually standing there, and talking as if nothing had happened. As if he didn’t suggest running away with me, or sending me a letter about a secret he didn’t revealed to me, or about how I made him wait in the rain for me.
Before I had a chance to even say anything in return, he was wiping his chin with his sleeve, raspberry donut jelly disappearing into the black long-sleeve shirt, then opening the door to leave. His blond-brown waves fluttered in the uptake of wind and I tried to remember if we’d hung out earlier, or if somehow I’d warped into a different dimension where I accepted a reality of going back to before things were awkward between us.
The idea of dating him didn’t seem to repulse me, it rather made my knees feel weak, but half of me was still trying to remember why I was so evasive with him to begin with. My thoughts distracted by the firmness of his butt as it walked away in those ripped jeans, pops of blue boxer briefs peeking from the stressed threads.
Internal struggle writhed between, around, and through me about thinking that very thought, or pushing it deep down in the dark crevasses of my being, never to think in the light of consciousness ever again. But there he was walking away, wearing those jeans on purpose, no doubt to change my mind about things.
My only question surrounding that struggle was why? It was all so fuzzy, inhibition sent to the grave—I smiled at the thought and let it live. The appointment he referred to was sitting on the bench, their names were in the computer, but all I could think about was Victor. I shook my head and tried to concentrate.
“You’ve got a fine boy there; you should hug him back next time, no need to be shy around us.” The woman winked back at me. It took me a moment before I realized she meant Victor. I nodded at her politely and walked toward the dance floor, confusion muddling my mind.
I tried to take my thoughts off of a hug I didn’t even remember receiving, and all the while, sounding out the beats for them, I kept thinking to myself, Wouldn’t it be nice if when they missed a step they’d swear and then laugh. Just swear out loud and then laugh about it. That’s what I felt like doing myself. Swear. But I wouldn’t be able to laugh about it, just swear and wonder out loud, “What is going on with me?”
What the hell? What the hell was going on with me?
It wasn’t long before they got the beat down packed, all that muscle memory playing its role, then Ryan rushed up to us to take over
the lesson. No one swore. No one laughed. Aislin had the whole studio in on her plans to sabotage my work schedule. Wouldn’t even let me finish a full lesson without someone swooping in to take over.
This time I was thankful for it. I couldn’t focus…my eyes kept drifting. Staring off beyond the feet, beyond the smiling faces…even the music seemed to fade in and out of my ears.
I waved to them, and as I took my leave from the floor I avoided a collision with a Viennese waltz couple plowing around the line of dance. I didn’t even notice they were there.
It’s a gorgeous waltz but dangerous as well. Few people knew how many times a heel stabs your calf or smashes your toes in the process of learning the choreography or while dancing with someone who is learning. I’ve known people who had broken their toes or had a bruise that lasted a week due to the casualties; then again those are misfortunes that could happen during any dance, I thought.
I wasn’t sure if it was the thought of broken toes or the ridiculous tie that one of my co-workers was wearing to work, but I felt like the floor was moving around me. Having people moving around you was pretty natural in a dance studio, but the floor seemed a bit like being on a boat…a small one, against a slew of waves.
Not only was my vision a kaleidoscope, but all the sounds I might have heard, and had come to expect on a regular basis here, were gone…jammed, it was like falling down a psychotropic tunnel. I saw the receptionist’s mouth moving as she zigzagged toward me. Or maybe she was rushing on a straight line, but none of that was something I had any authority to judge right then. I couldn’t hear the music behind me, but that was the least of my concerns.
I needed to concentrate to figure out what the receptionist was saying so that I could escape the lobby and analyze the situation in private. I just needed to get away. I couldn’t see anyone but her through my tunnel vision, but I knew…I could feel that people were staring. And even her…I was supposed to know her…I saw her nearly every day. But what was her name?
Concentrating, I tried to study her moving lips as her head bobbed from one visual field to another. Looked like a “you” with a “what,” along with an exceedingly fast transition of movements that blurred past recognition as she stood next to me with a look of anxiety washed across her face.
Looking down at the spinning floor I noticed that she was grabbing me as I leaned over her arm. I didn’t feel her touch me. I was experiencing a sensory shut down as if my battery life was on empty, and I was placed on automatic standby for energy conservation.
Next thing I knew I was in the manager’s office slumped in a rolling office chair. Not necessarily a good choice when everything seemed like it was moving already without the help of a chair on wheels. I continued to blink repeatedly as if to reboot my visual field, just in case things would stop moving once I opened my lids the next time.
Soon I heard my own heartbeat, one beat, then another, but it seemed slow. Slow like coagulating honey oozing through a sieve, and all I could feel was the pressure in my arteries working like a ripe pig going for a piece of corn while coming out of sedation. In a situation like this, one would assume my heart should be racing, but it seemed to be at rest or maybe slower than resting. I closed my eyes and tried to think about the beating of my heart, the only sound vibrating through my ears.
Bump…bump…bump bump…
Any normal person would be getting a shot of uppers to activate the survival mode, but even that backup system seemed out of order. I tried to look around, as if there was a repairman just around the corner. There could’ve been—who says repairmen don’t buy ballroom dance lessons?
A wrench there, screw that back on, take that piece out, and glue it all back together. With my luck they might use the crazy glue and place a nerve in the wrong spot. Maybe I would laugh when someone poked my eye and cry when someone touched my hand.
“Let me hold your hand?”
A flash of Victor’s face with that raspberry jelly oozing down his chin startled me. It seemed so real and his grin was mischievous, revealing several razor-sharp teeth like a shark. I flinched then heard the voice again.
A voice?
It was so soft; I could barely make out the words.
But the words themselves meant nothing, just the articulation of noise formed to relay a message. It was the music behind them that was heard clear as a cloudless sky. Like the pleasant rustling of leaves lifted by the serene whistle of the wind carrying the sound to my mind as it blew my hair in to caress my face.
“Let me hold you.”
It was not the music behind the words. The music was within the words, a part of them. I didn’t remember the last time I felt this connection. Opening my eyes, I saw nothingness, just dark.
“Let me…”
Let you what? I thought. Hands. I saw my own blurred in front of my face; I turned them back and forth like they weren’t even mine.
I saw it then as I closed my eyes—I saw me. Ghostly holding out her hand to me and her mouth moving like she was trying to speak with me, but her voice was beyond her control. She looked older, those eyes deep and thoughtful, and sad.
I grabbed her hand, and felt a flood of feelings I didn’t know I had. I had to find her, I didn’t know how I knew, but she needed me to find her. Trapped, in a realm only I could find…
And I laughed at how ridiculous that sounded to my own ears. What did that even mean? A realm only I could get to, my brain throbbed trying to remember. I knew something, and it was gone.
The connection I felt grew distant. The soft whispered voice gone, the residual feeling of sweet music from the words faded, but the calm, almost eerie docile feeling dripped out from its container like an experiment gone wrong. One of those test tubes filled with water as your lab partner spills it over the counter before you add the next ingredient.
I felt like when the words stopped, so did I.
Water would always be water, an unfinished experiment waiting for its next ingredient patiently upon the table top. Only to be disposed of as the mess was cleaned up. That was the bland calm within my life. Something was off, and I couldn’t say for how long it’d been that way, though it felt like it’d always been that way. Something had changed in me.
A little melodramatic—but so was Romeo when he killed himself over a sleeping Juliet, and you don’t see anyone calling them melodramatic, except maybe me. But they did it for that feeling inside them that felt better than anything their lives had ever provided them with before. I felt my heart skip, and my blood ran hot.
I gasped remembering the pull to find something. What was I supposed to find again? The memory was fleeting, and all I could think of was the pain searing through my veins.
Blinking again, I saw the movement of feet between the shade of fingers. A slow step forward then two quick steps to the side and suddenly it made sense. I blinked again and my visual parameter increased to see two sets of feet. Blinking once again, the picture expanded, and I looked into the steamy faces of two people staring into each other’s eyes.
As a small forced giggle escaped the lady’s mouth the noise of the music then flooded into my ears. Like heavy metal music when you’re trying to sleep, the rumba agitated my ear drums. My lips twitched momentarily, and I expertly transitioned it into a smile. Can’t let go of my defenses yet. There were so many questions to avoid. As the music changed to a waltz, my ears adjusted and the ringing from the sudden sound faded.
“That was terrific, let’s cool down with a foxtrot.”
I looked over to where the voice came from and it was that one guy. My co-worker, that guy, what’s his name. Brian or something was his name. He wasn’t dancing with the couple earlier. The light from the window was darker, night was already looming. Which led me to thinking about a breakdown of all events remembered. Problem was, I didn’t remember anything. I was handing off a lesson to Brian. No, his name was Ryan. And then nothing. What did I miss? And why was it already nightfall outside?
The students smile
d at me sitting propped up in a swivel chair, and I tried to open my mouth to speak but nothing escaped. Instead I transformed my heavy hand into a thumbs-up symbol and smiled to acknowledge their accomplishments of the day.
Except, I didn’t remember seeing those students before just now. And I had no idea what accomplishments they had made. Ryan followed beside them as I followed their movement from the sitting room with my gaze.
My body couldn’t do more than act like a thousand-ton statue fixed in place. Like I was surrounded by hardened cement and molded to a nail in the ground.
“Slow down the second forward step so that you stay on beat with the music. So, two even slow steps forward instead of speeding up that second step so then it looks and feels better. Slow, slow forward then quick, quick to the side. That’s the way!”
He tinkered with the schedule as he laughed with the students; in that instant as if I had turned into butter my legs wobbled and the cement barrier around me broke into a million pieces.
It would have been more convenient if it broke into more manageable chunks around the joints to maintain some sense of stability, but then that would ruin the consistency of the horrid luck I’d had so far.
The world as we perceived it would cease to exist if such blasphemy were to grant me even a granule of good luck at that specific moment in time. Time elusive yet abundant.
I looked around again and there were new people on the floor warming up. I needed to move so I didn’t catch attention with my blank staring at the crowd.
Good thing about dancing was that as long as I fell gracefully I could transition across the floor without too much concern drifting my way. Taking a tombé, bending down on the front knee and extending out the back leg, then collect the feet into a small chasse, and end on a rise into a turn being able to then exit off the floor smoothly. Maybe it would all seem like the original fall was on purpose.