How It Feels to Fly (22 page)

I'M FLOATING ON MY BACK, WATCHING THE CLOUDS blow across the sky. They hide the moon and the stars. Change the night's deep blue to a deep gray. It's darker tonight than it was on Tuesday, and I'm glad for the flashlights Andrew and Yasmin brought. They're positioned on the dock like spotlights, pointing out over the water. They light up the area where we're swimming, but the rest of the lake is a dark void.

Yasmin is singing, accompanying herself on the guitar. It's a soulful ballad I don't recognize, and I wonder whether she wrote it herself. Her voice ebbs and flows like the water lapping around my head. A lyric jumps out at me: “our fingers intertwined like vines, yours and mine, catching the sunshine.” I like that image. I picture myself walking with Andrew, holding hands. It makes me smile.

When I'm tired of floating, I paddle over to the dock and
climb up. I wrap my towel around my body fast. I'm still not ready to sit there in only my swimsuit.

Baby steps.

Jenna swims over to join me. As she hoists her body up onto the deck, her tankini shifts, revealing a wider swath of midriff. And something else, on her hip bone, peeking out over the top of her swimsuit bottoms. A row of thin, raised scars. Spaced so uniformly apart, it's like they were drawn in with a ruler. Jenna moves the flashlight as she comes to sit next to me, and without the light hitting them, I can't see the scars anymore. But I know what I saw. I can guess what it means.

Jenna looks at my face, then down at her swimsuit bottoms, and immediately puts her hand across her hip.

“Oh,” she says.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to . . .”

“It's fine.”

I can tell by her voice and her expression that it's not fine. She sounds like cold, brittle Jenna from day one. Not the girl who's finally begun to thaw toward me, toward this place.

“I'm sorry,” I say again.

“I don't want to talk about it.”

“Okay.”

Katie shrieks as Dominic picks her up and throws her into the lake, over Omar's head. Zoe swims so far away from the dock that Andrew calls for her to come back. Behind us, Yasmin switches to a happier-sounding tune, something
about falling in love on a rainy summer afternoon. Jenna and I sit side by side in silence.

Seeing those scars has me thinking about my secrets. The things I don't want to talk about. The things I wish I could erase from my own memory.

But then Andrew swims over, climbs onto the deck, and starts toweling himself off, and it's hard to think about anything other than him. The T-shirt he pulls on, damp and clinging to his skin. His wet hair sticking out in all directions. His smile. He sits next to me. He claps when Yasmin finishes her song. I clap too.

One by one, the others join us on the dock. We chat as we dry out in the warm air. Soon the conversation turns to horror stories. Not like the movies Zoe watches—our own, real-life horrors. It's Omar's fault. He tells us about the time he fell flat on his face playing Gavroche in a local production of
Les Mis
. He was climbing the barricades, missed his footing, and tumbled down. “They had to stop the whole play because my nose was pouring blood.” Omar laughs. “It was
everywhere
.”

“Dude, that's gross,” Dominic says, giving him a high five. “But I've got you beat. I puked my guts out on the fifty-yard line in front of a college scout.”

“Ew!” Katie squeals.

“What happened?” Zoe asks, leaning forward.

Dominic frowns. “Like you care.”

“I care, okay?”

Dominic sighs. “Whatever. It's a short story. My coach
invited the recruiter from Florida State—my top choice—and I pushed so hard to impress the guy that I guess I got dehydrated. I booted all over the field.”

“That is gross,” Jenna says, “but I can top it.”

“Oh yeah?” Dominic says.

“I once got so anxious before a competition that I threw up during the practice skate,” she tells us. “Two words: frozen vomit.”

We all groan.

“It had to be scraped off the ice. They had to postpone the start to clean it up.” Her face falls. “That was probably one of my lowest points.” She meets my eyes, then looks away, and I think again about what I just saw. The scars on her hip.

I shift a half centimeter closer to Andrew, for courage, and speak. “I've never gotten a bloody nose or puked onstage, but I can tell you an embarrassing story.”

“Bring it, Ballerina Barbie,” Zoe says.

“There was this older girl at my studio, Eliana Diaz. She's with The Washington Ballet now. When I was a freshman and she was a senior, she kind of took me under her wing. She called me her protégé. Gave me private coaching. I was the only freshman she did that for, and it made me feel so special.” Everyone knew Eliana Diaz was going places, so if she thought I was going places too, then clearly I was.

“Fast forward to this past spring. The Washington Ballet's tour was passing through Tennessee. My mom bought tickets, and I emailed Eliana to tell her I'd be in the audience.
She wrote right back and said she'd meet me by the stage door afterward. She'd introduce me to her friends in the company.”

Bianca had a family reunion that weekend, so even though she'd already gotten into The Washington School of Ballet's summer intensive, she wasn't able to go with me to see the company. That turned out to be a good thing.

“After the show, I waited outside for half an hour. And then there she was. But it was like Eliana didn't recognize me. She saw me, and she clearly knew it was me, but she wasn't seeing the person she thought she'd be seeing—if that makes sense.”

I remember her eyes widening, her long lashes blinking a few times, her lips drawing together. And then a pasted-on stage smile.

“She walked over and said, ‘Hi . . . Samantha, right? Do you want me to sign your program?' I was too mortified to do anything but hand it to her. While she was signing it, her friends from the company showed up. One of them was like ‘Oh, is this the girl you were telling us about? Your Mini-Me?' Eliana said, ‘No, that's someone else. But Samantha also dances at the school where I trained growing up.' And she handed me back my program and said, ‘Thanks for coming!' and walked off.”

“That is messed up,” Dominic says emphatically.

“Yeah, beats my bloody nose,” Omar admits.

“It's awful,” Yasmin agrees, “but you know she was being a snob—right?”

“I guess.”

I never told Bianca what Eliana did. It occurs to me that since they're both in DC right now, I probably should. I make a mental note to add it to tonight's email.

“So beat
that
,” I finish, looking around at the group.

“I can top it,” Zoe says right away. But then she goes quiet. Her silence feels charged. It's the calm before the lightning strike. The buzz before the bug zapper takes another victim. Zoe looks in my direction. I wait to be zapped. But all she says is, “I don't really think your problems are stupid. I get that you're having issues. I just get so mad. At all of you.”

“Mad at us?” Katie says softly. “Why?”

“You're so freaking lucky, and you don't even know it.”

“Lucky?” I echo. “You want to feel the way I feel? You can have it. I'm built completely wrong to do the thing that I love most in the world, and every day”—I let out a long breath—“every day it breaks my heart.”

“At least you know what you love,” Zoe shoots back. “Hearing you talk makes me so jealous. I practice and work out so I can get better at the thing I hate. My parents are only happy with me when I do well at this thing I hate. I'm bored, and I'm exhausted, and when I go home, they're gonna expect me to jump in like nothing's changed, and—”

She wipes at her eyes.

“I'm not like you guys. You love what you do. You love it so much, it makes you crazy, and that's a problem, but it's also incredible. I want to love something that much.”

“Why do you hate tennis?” Katie asks.

“God, so many reasons. I've done it since I was five. I'm not saying I know everything, but . . . I kind of feel like I know everything. I want to learn something new. And I don't know what that is yet, so I want to try lots of things. I want to find something I love doing, not just something I'm good at. And tennis takes up so much freaking time! I leave school early so I can get in extra tennis practice. I've missed every school dance for tennis, either for practice or because I had to get up early for a match the next day, and my parents didn't want me to be too tired. I don't have any friends who don't play tennis. I have friends at school, kind of, but we don't hang out. Everyone hangs out without me. And my parents—”

She breaks off, and I remember her face when she tried to get sent home and they'd refused to come get her. The catch in her voice:
They said no.

“I hate being their little trophy winner. They make me feel like without tennis, I'm worthless.” She turns to Andrew. “But I have to be worth
something
more than this thing I don't even like doing—right?”

“Of course you're worth something,” Andrew says. “You'll find the thing you love. If your parents truly care about you, they'll support you on that journey.”

Zoe doesn't look convinced. “Just because your dad eventually came around doesn't mean my parents ever will. They genuinely think I'm going to be the next Serena Williams.”

“Remember what we talked about,” Andrew says, and they share a look I can't decipher. I move even closer to him, feeling territorial.

“So what would you want to do, if you didn't play tennis?” Yasmin asks.

“I don't know. Professional poker? Astrology? Or curling—that sport where they sweep the ice with brooms?”

“You could take up pizza tossing,” Katie says.

“I could.” Zoe nods. “Or I could sing opera.”

“Can you sing?” Jenna asks.

“Nope. But why should I let that stop me?”

“Dream big,” Dominic says.

Andrew checks his watch. “I hate to break this up, but we should head back.”

And then we're all a shuffle of movement, finding cover-ups and shoes, squeezing water out of shorts and T-shirts, bumping into one another on the narrow dock.

I don't want the night to end. And when I look at Andrew and he smiles at me, I think maybe he doesn't want it to end, either. The group starts walking away, and I chant Dr. Lancaster's advice to myself: Take the leap. Take the leap. Take the leap.

I gather every bit of courage I have and touch Andrew's arm. “Hey.”

“Hey, yourself.”

“Can we hold back a second?”

He looks after the others. “Sure, Sam. What's up?”

I wait until the last member of our group disappears down the path. I can still hear their voices, but I can't see anyone. Which means they can't see us.

I'm so, so nervous. Do I just . . . ask him? How?
So,
Andrew, do you like me as much as I like you? Should we do something about that?

“Um,” I say, stalling. The moon breaks from behind the clouds, and the light catches his face just right. I see the scar on his chin. “How'd you get that scar? Football?”

He laughs at the question. “Sledding crash.”

“Sledding?”

“Yeah. I was nine. It was the first good snowstorm we'd had my entire life—like six inches—and so me and my buddies decided to go sledding. But we didn't have sleds. Why would we? We'd never seen real snow.”

“Never seen real snow?” I tease. “You're from Georgia, not the Sahara.”

“I'd seen snow. Just not, you know, accumulation. You gonna let me finish?”

“Sorry. Go on.”

“We took the lids off some trash cans and went to the top of the hill at the end of my neighborhood. Got in and pushed off. Turns out trash can lids are hard to steer. Mine went sideways, out of control, and I hit a bump and flipped. Cut my chin on the curb.”

“Ow!”

“No kidding. I cried like a baby. My friends never let me live it down.” He grins. “Is that really what you wanted to ask me?”

“Oh. No. I just, um.” I take a step closer. I feel his body tense up, even though we aren't touching. He suddenly looks as nervous as I feel.

I want him to kiss me. I want that
so much
.

But he doesn't move. He stands completely still.

“Sam,” he says softly. “I don't think—”

Take the leap.

I rise up onto my tiptoes and touch my lips to his. It's everything I'd imagined—until I realize he isn't kissing me back. In fact, he's pushing me away from him. Backing up. Hands lifted to ward me off. Face pleading.

“Sam, I don't—I'm not sure—why—I didn't mean to give you the wrong idea—”

I blink at him, trying to process what he's saying.

“I told you, I have a girlfriend. And I'm your peer adviser—your counselor. And—we can forget this ever happened, right?”

Forget. Right.

I want to melt into a puddle and seep into the ground. I want to jump in the lake and stay underwater. For once in my life, I want to be so, so heavy.

“Sam? Please say something.”

There are no words. I run.

I HIDE BEHIND
the gazebo, gasping for air. I'm crying and panting and I have my hand clapped over my mouth like that will keep the sounds inside me.

Stupid, stupid, stupid—

I don't understand.

He rejected you. What else is there to understand?

But I thought—

You thought wrong.

Andrew runs by, calling my name. I duck farther into the shadows. I watch him slow to cross the lawn. His shoulders are slumped. His feet scuff at the ground. He looks broken and sad, and I want to hug him and make it better except that clearly he doesn't want that, not from me, anyway, and how could I have been so—