The Shimmering State

by Meredith Westgate

  Sophie slowly leans into him, tilting her lower back until it presses against his lap; she touches her hand to his thigh, and he continues stroking her neck, then down her arm, and she has forgotten the way an urge of her own could overwhelm her. This one threatens to consume her, but she doesn’t mind. Her heart pushes against her chest.

  She relaxes into the thought of him in charge of her pleasure as well. Eager to match his attentiveness with her own. Lucien’s breath on her neck quickens, and she turns to find his mouth with hers. Electricity. She shifts to face him on the bed, but Lucien slides away.

  “Are you,” he whispers, so sweetly unsure. “What if you’re not ready for this?”

  “What do you mean?” she whispers back. “I am. Finally, something I’m sure of.”

  She leans in, desperate for him. The more concerned he is for her, the more she wants him. But Lucien puts his hands up against her shoulders and holds her firmly at a distance.

  “I just don’t think we should do anything that—what if what happened that other night happens again and we’re…” He trails off. “I care about your friendship too much to…”

  Lucien is still talking, but Sophie’s pulse fills her ears. She fights back tears. He does still think about that night, then. She’s humiliated that he saw her like that. Does he pity her? She must be repulsive to him, writhing like some monster in this same room where they sit now. Look at the other people in this place; of course she’s the one he talks to, and he doesn’t even want to fuck her. Friendship, she thinks, in physical pain.

  What if he sees the vileness oozing from her? The things she’s felt and can’t forget, wearing them now as if they’re her own. Sophie once attracted people she couldn’t lose, and now the one person she wants looks at her like the worst thing possible, a patient. A friend.

  Lucien squeezes her hand, still resting on his leg.

  “Hey.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not that I don’t, I think you’re—”

  “Just get out of here, okay? I thought we could have some fun. Forget it.”

  Sophie tries to brush it off, but she wants him gone so she can cry. Worse still would be him comforting her.

  “Sophie,” he says, and her name sounds like a curse. “I care about you, I didn’t mean—”

  “Like you’re so stable. You’re a patient, too, right? I can’t quite remember.”

  “Of course I am,” Lucien says. “I don’t know what you’re implying. Look, I’m as messed up as anyone else in here.”

  Sophie covers her eyes. Then she stands up and turns away.

  “I mean, not that you’re—can you just calm down for a minute? Can you sit back down?”

  “You think I’m messed up?”

  “We all are! Sophie, you don’t know what I’m thinking, what I’ve been thinking—”

  “I don’t care, okay? I don’t care what you’ve been thinking. Both of us are going to leave here and go back to our lives. And we’ll never see each other again and that’s fine.”

  She feels like an idiot for thinking this was more than a distraction for him. For imagining a future outside of this place. She paces the room, unable to sit. Unable to be so close to him. She is less angry than humiliated, and she wishes she could go back to a moment earlier and linger there in its potential. Never leave.

  “I know you,” blurts Lucien. “I don’t know if you remember. You haven’t said anything, so I wasn’t sure. I’m sure they don’t know, here, or we probably wouldn’t be allowed to even talk to each other, so I just didn’t want to—look, Sophie, I didn’t feel like we could, or like I could let you do anything without…”

  Lucien keeps talking, unable to stop. How, where, what does he know her from? Sophie can’t hear him anymore, or make sense of the words, until finally he says something that sticks.

  “…haven’t talked to Liv, but she…”

  Liv. Her long, perfect hair. Her laugh that makes Sophie feel good, warm, but also small. Like she could never have it that way. Be that way. Effortless. Confident. Seamless.

  Sophie blinks as the memory moves through her. How did she not remember? Of course. The person she has feelings for is taken, by someone she’d never want to hurt. Her friend who has everything and now has this, too. Whenever she pictures Liv, she’s smiling. Lit by sunshine, but somehow never squinting. Sophie turns again toward the gray-shadowed, once-white wall.

  Lucien doesn’t say anything, and Sophie hates that in the silence she now imagines him thinking about Liv. His loyalty, to Liv. She was even more wrong than she thought. All this time, in every moment spent with Sophie, he has been thinking about Liv. Missing her. Helping Sophie, for her. Wishing he could get out of here to be with her. In the moments Sophie most cherished, his mind was with someone else.

  “Get out.”

  She turns to see him. Adorable. Ashamed. Cheeks flushed.

  “If it’s about Liv—”

  She points to the door and suddenly there he is, in her memory. Halloween. His now perfect face neutral, his voice not yet attached to her heart. She mostly sees Liv, her happiness, her excitement. Her hand lingering beside his, her body close to him. Back when Lucien was a passing person who meant something to Sophie’s friend, not her. A momentary jealousy, perhaps. An attraction, maybe. But not yet tied to her survival.

  The memory is so clear, the red Solo cup in her hand, the smell of Casey’s house. She knows it is progress to conjure a memory all on her own. But, of course, it’s the one that might just break her heart.

  Chapter 22 BEFORE

  Sophie’s first full night’s sleep since the Woods comes courtesy of the pills she bought in Venice, plus two pot gummies from her regular rotation. She never usually takes more than a sliver of the gummies; never enough to necessitate chewing, just enough to sleep. Certainly never enough to clump along her back molars and sink slow down her throat. But this time she needed to loosen the part of her that was too afraid to see whatever these new pills held. She needed the courage, if that’s what it was, to try again what almost ruined her once.

  The memories were more pornographic than anything, a series of sexual encounters with various partners: one woman facedown on a hotel mattress, fingerprint bruises across her pale plump thighs; another, skin slick with spray off a hotel shower, her dark curly bangs dampened into her eyes, droplets running over her supple lips. However explicit, the memories were flecked with the mundane; a mini shampoo bottle falling then rolling toward the drain, a tiny square of soap following it. When he leaned down for them, the water stung his eyes. His butt rattled the glass shower door; the smell of bleach in the hot mist filled the bathroom. Sophie almost felt bad for him, even from inside. Until he grabbed the girl hard to stop his nerves.

  At one point he lost his erection and the woman rolled her eyes when she must have thought he wasn’t looking. He caught it in the bathroom mirror. Only the latent mortification under each encounter surprised Sophie; she never would have imagined or expected it when in bed, not as a man. It surprises her even more than the sensation from his side, her body learning how it feels to push, not just accept. Sophie came when he finally did and it felt almost transcendent, this two-sided understanding of pleasure. The man’s gaze was misogynistic and cripplingly self-conscious, sure, but there was relief in losing herself entirely in someone else, in following the impulses of his body, shamelessly unconcerned with the other.

  Sophie hears two girls laughing outside and recognizes them as the new neighbors from across the courtyard who spend every day sunning on the grass. One of them keeps shrieking. They have no idea why other people need and deserve peace. A little quiet. Their voices, even loud, sound scrunched and cute. They would drop the baby talk if she made them scream.

  Just like that the stranger returns, his sickening pleasure rising at the thought of their harm. For the first time in her life, the mind feels circular, not linear, but desperate for patterns to fall into and return to, over and over. Sophie’s a
nxiety only seems to reinforce these thoughts, revisiting them like a problem to be solved, more fully understood, until no thought is free from the stranger’s consciousness.

  His memories, hers. His hands covered in red, her own.

  The pills she bought did nothing to dislodge him, then. All that for nothing. The lingering pleasure from last night’s pill now feels far away. She needs more time. No, she needs to skip ahead, to a time when this is over, if it ever is.

  * * *

  Sophie grabs her car keys and runs out the door wearing a long-sleeved black leotard and a short transparent wrap that barely covers her thighs. She’s late for rehearsal; it is already the afternoon. One leg warmer is rolled down to her ankle, the other above her knee. She passes the girls still sunbathing in the courtyard, averting her eyes from the one with a high ponytail that she’d like to use to whip her down to the floor. Sophie glances at the other girl, wearing cat-eye sunglasses she must think flatter her bitch face. Their laughter follows her to the street, and now Sophie is nearly running, a bomb ready to detonate.

  She can’t remember where on her block she parked. She follows the sound of her car beeping, clicking the key repeatedly, until she sees it parked across the street, next to a tree she’s never noticed before. Once inside the car, she admires the trunk through the window. The smooth skin—bark—looks plump underneath, dimples just like flesh. Supple like it might give to the touch. Like it could bruise. She turns the air-conditioning to high and points it directly at her face. Finally, with her eyes stinging from the cold, she can see clearly enough to drive.

  * * *

  Sophie drives loops around the parking lot of the Los Angeles Ballet Company, looking for an open spot. When she finally approaches one, the space turns out to be blocked by another car parked at a hard angle. The carelessness sends another rage through her. The guy is still there, exiting his car. Dangling one foot out as he changes shoes. Taking his fucking time.

  She wants to roll her car over his body, slowly, then rest on top of him until he stops breathing. Her foot waits, ready to push the gas pedal until her toe hits the floor.

  Another car honks from behind.

  Sophie turns to see a male dancer leaning over his wheel. As he passes, he waves in solidarity for the parking struggle. Sophie smiles back at him, muscle memory. When she turns back to her near-target, a familiar face is staring back at her.

  It’s Antoine. Antoine, her partner in La Sylphide. Antoine who gave her a ride home from rehearsals every morning for a week during Sophie’s first month in the company, before she had her own car, even though he lived in Culver City. Antoine who makes his famous champagne punch for every closing night party, even though none of the dancers drink it. Antoine, who had just months earlier become a father to a beautiful girl, who they named Sophie, too.

  He taps his watch, clenching his jaw for dramatic effect.

  Sophie speeds off. Through the windshield, dirty from leaves and sprinkler water, Sophie sees figures already stretching behind the frosted studio glass. She wants to run inside and apologize for missing two rehearsals, but she is afraid to, should the darkness rise again. She still feels that prickle in her chest, waiting to spread. She pulls her keys out of the ignition and fingers through them while her eyes stare blankly out the windshield. Her fingers rest on the smooth, oblong shape of her tiny Swiss Army key chain, purely for decoration. She flips the last lever to expose a miniature blade, then rolls the fabric of her leotard up to her elbow. Scabs delicate as hairs crisscross her forearm. Sophie rubs a finger over the marks, hard from healing.

  Then she closes her eyes and slides the blade across their tracks.

  When she opens her eyes to the stinging, a thin trail of blood runs down her arm. The sight of blood used to make her stomach turn, but now it’s the only thing that settles her. Her mind—her very soul—might be tainted, but this blood is hers.

  * * *

  Her friend Jacqueline runs over as soon as Sophie enters the studio. Two bobby pins dangle out of Jacqueline’s mouth, her hair half coiled into a bun.

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  Jacqueline reaches to hug her, but Sophie steps away. Jacqueline tilts her head to meet Sophie’s eyes.

  “Are you okay? Oh my god,” she whispers. “I thought you were dead.”

  “Is he mad?”

  “Auguste? I mean—mad? I don’t think he… It’s unfathomable to him that you’re not in the hospital or something. That you just haven’t been here.”

  “So he doesn’t hate me?”

  “He was about to call your family.”

  Sophie feels panic at the thought of worrying her parents. Of them ever knowing what she’d done, what she’d seen. She winces.

  “Did he?”

  “I said about to—he’s been concerned, but he’s still Auguste.”

  “Where is he?”

  All around the mirrored rehearsal studio, dancers wrap their toes and make small talk in groups on the floor, while others stand stretching at the barre. Sophie feels their eyes on her, in the mirrors looking past themselves, dissecting her every movement.

  “I think he’s in back with Nathalie,” says Jacqueline. “She’s been filling in.”

  “That cunt.”

  She notices Jacqueline’s eyes, concerned, on her in the mirror.

  “Sophie, are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You seem a little… off.”

  Sophie focuses on her feet as she wraps tape around the places that blister. The sunlight casts shadows across the matte studio floors. Three other dancers sit close, gossiping as they peel off their layers of sweats and thick socks. Sophie’s mind wanders with a single piece of tape left dangling from her pointer finger. She studies one of the dancer’s necks. So long, delicate. Jacqueline takes the tape from her and lays it across Sophie’s big toe. Then she smooths it for her and rubs her calf to warm it up.

  Sophie pulls her leg into herself to stop the torrent opening inside her. Unexpected touch incites a rage. But Jacqueline slides closer and starts pinning Sophie’s bun where it sits lopsided.

  “Is it a dude?” Jacqueline smooths the top of her hair, and Sophie flinches again. “Seriously, I don’t get it. Where have you been?”

  Sophie lifts her arm to push Jacqueline’s away. “Can you give me a break? You don’t know, okay?”

  “Well, I’m asking.”

  Then Sophie is at the barre, swinging her leg up and down in a stretch. She rises en pointe with one leg high and her torso bowed low. Even if Sophie told her, Jacqueline wouldn’t understand. She couldn’t. And if she wanted to help, Sophie wouldn’t let her. Jacqueline should stay away, protect herself. Sophie extends her leg into a standing split. She closes her eyes and finally feels her thoughts, all thoughts, slipping away.

  She lowers her standing heel and rises again, but the tape on her toes begins pulling. Over and over she rises to relevé, warming up her calves. The pain along her pinky toe feels like fire, but she tries to separate herself from it, as she was taught from age ten when she first began her pointe work, when she learned to deal with the dead toenails, to disengage as though it were not her own pain to lessen. She rises high again, then drops her torso, finding another standing split.

  The deep stretch feels good, and she closes her eyes and exhales while the blood rushes to her head, dangling upside down. She wraps both arms around her standing leg, pulling her chest into her thigh. The loose hair from her bun sweeps the dusty, scuffed floor. Her head fills with more pressure the longer she rests upside down, and its pulsing unlocks something she has been suppressing since leaving her car, since running from those girls in the courtyard, since drinking Ray Delaney’s tainted potion.

  She jerks upright again, both hands to her face.

  The greasy red blade, wiped against his stomach, T-shirt stained, until he starts again.

  Jacqueline is there beside her, a hand on her shoulder, but Sophie pushes her a
way. She can hardly see straight, let alone think straight. And then she hears the studio door open and close. The shuffling of feet to attention.

  “Sophie,” calls Auguste, his accent stronger when annoyed. “Well, La Sylphide was written in 1832, I guess it can wait a little longer for your busy schedule.”

  Sophie wraps her hand around her forearm and squeezes the fabric where she covered her fresh cut with a folded tissue. She squeezes until she sees clearly.

  Then something surprising happens. Nothing. Auguste faces the rest of the dancers, his back turned to her. It’s worse than being scolded. She, the favorite, no longer exists.

  “We’re rehearsing the final pas de deux today. The sylph will meet her lover one last time, he will give her his scarf, a gesture of love—to control her, to consume her—and in turn it will destroy her. Nathalie, mon chou, are you ready?”

  Nathalie looks to Sophie, a too-late attempt at deference. She seems to hold her breath. Astrid, standing beside her, squeezes Nathalie’s hand as if that movement isn’t reflected ten times behind them in the mirrors.

  “Okay, let’s go!”

  “Auguste?” Sophie says to his back. Her voice sounds small. “I remember the scene. Every step.”

  “Two rehearsals.” He turns to face her. “Not a word?”

  “I never would have missed them, if it hadn’t been important.”

  “More important than this?”

  “No, important is the wrong word. Inescapable. I swear to you—”

  “I’ll tell you what’s inescapable. If you miss rehearsals as the principal, without a word, you will no longer be the principal. We have an entire company ready to dance. All held up, by you. I’m not sure what you’re doing here?”

  She remembers Ray Delaney’s veiled threat, how vulnerable she felt. How everything she worked so hard for still didn’t feel certain, or safe. She was afraid he knew Auguste. He didn’t need to.