How It Feels to Fly (5 page)

“Oh. Okay.” I stand, glad not to have to force down any more food. I had six bites. Barely enough to get me through the afternoon, but maybe I can grab a snack later.

“Good luck!” Katie squeals. “Tell me how it goes! If you want. . . .”

I nod, and I square my shoulders, and I follow Dr. Lancaster through the kitchen. We pass Andrew, who's filling his plate at the buffet. He gives me that same meaningful look from earlier. The don't-forget-to-tell-her-about-your-panic-attack look. I avert my eyes. Dr. Lancaster leads me down the hall to her office. She holds the heavy wooden door open. I step inside.

“TAKE A SEAT, SAM,” DR. LANCASTER SAYS, POINTING to the couch at one side of the room. She circles around the large wooden desk to get a yellow legal pad, then settles into a wood-and-leather armchair across from me. She smiles. It's the same gentle, welcoming smile she's been giving us since we got here. It's so consistent, I'm starting to wonder whether she practices it. I picture her standing in front of her bathroom mirror in the morning, doing her exercises: smile, and release. Smile, and release.

That's what I do sometimes. Just to make sure it still works.

“Are you getting settled in all right?” she asks. “Do you need anything?”

“I'm fine.”

You're not fine. You're nowhere close to fine—

“Wonderful. I know it can be difficult being away from
home, especially in a situation like this. Please know that you can always come to me, Andrew, or Yasmin with concerns.” She writes my name on the top page of her pad in loopy cursive. When she sees me looking, she angles the pad up and away from me. “Before we get started, I wanted to remind you that after dinner, I'll be collecting everyone's cell phones.”

She mentioned this at orientation last night. How in order to really dig into our work here, we need to be untethered. Her word, not mine.

“Your mother knows to call the main number if she needs to reach you. You'll have this afternoon to send any messages you want to friends. Or a significant other.”

That last part is almost a question. She looks at me, raising her eyebrows, and I shake my head. Nope. No significant other. Not anymore.

“Part of the benefit of being here is the isolation,” she goes on, while I try to wipe Marcus's face from my mind's eye. “You've all been removed from the intense training and competing environments where your anxiety manifests most strongly. Here, you'll get perspective, as well as a chance to—”

I stop her midscript. “I'm not going to fight you for my phone. Don't worry.”

She leans forward in her chair. “You won't feel disconnected from your friends and family?”

Trust a therapist to read too much into every comment. “Like you said, my mom knows how to reach me. And I told
my friends I wouldn't be in touch much, if at all, until I get to my ballet intensive in three weeks.” Only a few people outside my immediate family even know I'm here. Miss Elise. The director of the intensive in Nashville. Bianca. And Marcus—because we only just broke up. I doubt he's planning to call or write. Everyone else thinks I'm on a road trip out West with my dad. Noncustodial-parent bonding time, complete with limited internet access and bad cell reception. “I'm not that tied to my phone, anyway.”

She makes a note on her pad. Then she looks at me intently. “So tell me, Sam. What do you hope to get out of your stay here?”

I gulp and give her the answer I've been rehearsing. “I would like to learn how to stop having panic attacks.”

“We'll certainly work on coping mechanisms for your anxiety,” Dr. Lancaster says, “and I'm glad you're open to doing that work. But we also want to tackle your anxiety issues at their source. Can you tell me a little about the circumstances that surround your panic attacks?”

This is the perfect time for me to mention what happened earlier, with Andrew, but I can't help deflecting. “My mom and I filled out your giant questionnaire a month ago. Don't you already have a file on me or something?” I don't mention the fact that I wasn't entirely honest in that questionnaire. How could I be, with my mom looming over my shoulder?

Dr. Lancaster smiles patiently. “I'd prefer to hear it in your words. Maybe you can describe a recent panic attack.
How you felt just before it hit. Where you were, what was going on.”

I think about Andrew's promise to let me tell Dr. Lancaster in my own way. He put a lot of trust in me by agreeing not to talk about what happened until I did. “There is something. . . .”

Stop. She doesn't need to know. No one needs to know.

Dr. Lancaster waits.

“Earlier, during the blindfold exercise, I kind of had . . . okay, I did, but it wasn't that bad, not compared to . . . and Andrew was there, so I was fine, and anyway, it was over fast.” I stare at my hands. They're shaking. I tuck them under my thighs.

Dr. Lancaster lets the silence stretch out, until every other sound is amplified. The ticking of the clock on the wall. The whirring buzz of her computer. The branch of the tree outside blowing in the breeze and knocking at the window.

After what feels like an eternity, she says, “Sam, are you trying to tell me that you had a panic attack this morning?”

I force myself to nod. And I parrot what I said earlier: “I would like to learn how to stop having panic attacks.”

“What were you doing when it happened this morning?”

“Um. I was blindfolded. Andrew was leading me across the lawn. And he—I stepped in a hole. And it set me off.”

“Set you off?”

“I started thinking about what would happen to me if I got injured. That's how my mom's dance career ended, and
for me, I'd be done before I even got started. This summer is really important. For my future.”

“And what happened when you thought about all that?”

“I—I couldn't breathe.”

Dr. Lancaster writes something down. “How were you feeling before you stepped in the hole?”

“Okay, I guess.”

“Describe ‘okay.'”

I look at her. “What do you mean?”

“What does ‘okay' mean to you? What does it feel like?”

“Oh. Um, anxious, but not terrible.”

Her pen
scritch-scritch-scritch
es on her notepad. “Can you tell me why you were feeling anxious during the blindfold exercise?”

I remind myself that this is her job—and that mine, right now, is to
stop having panic attacks
. But my heart is beating faster. And I'm sweating, despite the office's arctic AC. I shiver and wipe the beads of moisture from the back of my neck.

Dr. Lancaster is still watching me.

I blurt, “Can you turn around or something?”

“I'm sorry?”

“I can't think with you staring at me. Or writing things about me.”

She puts the pad on her desk and turns to look out the window. “Is that better?”

Now I feel stupid. But it does help. “Sure.”

“So, why were you feeling anxious?”

“I, um, didn't like the blindfold. He could see me, but I couldn't see him.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I don't like it when people look at me behind my back. And this felt like that. It made me . . . uncomfortable.”

“Uncomfortable?”

“If I can't see someone's face, I don't know what they think of me. I can't see if they're judging me, or whatever.”

“Do you generally feel that when people are looking at you, they're judging you?”

“I guess so, yeah.”

Because they are.

“Even when you can see their faces?” She turns to look back at me, meets my eyes, and then returns her gaze to the window.

“I just don't like being looked at, okay?”

“Do you want to say anything more about that?”

“Nope.” I want this to be over.

And I'm drowning in memories.

I auditioned for a bunch of summer intensives this year. There was one audition I knew I'd aced. I danced so well. Everything felt effortless. I was practically levitating in the final series of leaps across the floor.

And then, in the hallway outside the studio, I got that neck-prickling feeling you get when someone's looking at you. I thought maybe I was being paranoid, but I turned around anyway. And someone
was
staring. Two someones. The teacher who'd led the class I just took, and the director
of the summer intensive. They were frowning. At me. The program director shook his head, and the teacher shrugged and said something I couldn't hear.

That's when I knew I wasn't getting in.

At my next audition, we had to fill out a form with our personal information—including our current weight. Below that question, there was an asterisk:
*Dancers who are deemed over- or underweight may be put on probation.
But how heavy was too heavy? What was the exact right number? If I told the truth, would they discount me before I even got a chance to dance? If I lied, would they know right away? Would they laugh me out of the building?

I decided to lie. And I had a terrible class, worrying the whole time about whether the number I'd written matched what the adjudicators saw in front of them. Whether I'd made the right choice. I didn't get into that program, either.

Both of those auditions were in February. Four months and eight pounds ago.

Imagine if they could see you now.

The audition for the program I'm going to attend was in January. Five months and eleven pounds ago—

“Sam? Is there anything else you'd like to get out of your time here?”

“Not unless you can help me lose fourteen pounds. . . .”

It's a joke. Sort of.

Dr. Lancaster doesn't laugh.

“But since that's not going to happen,” I add quickly, “at least, not without me doing something drastic . . . not
having panic attacks is enough.”

“Something drastic. Like what?”

“Um. You know, like starving myself, or whatever.”

“Have you ever tried doing something drastic?”

“No. I mean—no. Of course not.”

She glances at the notepad on her desk, and then at me, without responding. Her silence only makes me more nervous.

“Other than—”

Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up!

I make myself study Dr. Lancaster instead of speaking. Her oatmeal-colored cardigan is paired with a white top and crisp khaki pants. Her gray-blond hair is pulled into a low bun and wrapped in an off-white scrunchie. Her wardrobe, on top of her calm, soothing voice and her gentle, reassuring expression—she's the definition of bland. But maybe that's on purpose. So we focus on ourselves, not on her—

“Well, our time is almost up. I think we're off to a great start. We have a lot to unpack, and it won't be easy, but I know you can handle it.” My skepticism must show on my face, because she goes on, “You're training to be a professional ballet dancer. Is
that
easy?”

“No.”

“I'm confident that we'll find some of those answers you're looking for. But I need you to work with me. I can't offer you coping mechanisms that are specific to your needs until I know what those needs are. It's like cross-training—not every type of exercise is right for every person. If it
makes it easier, you can think of me as your emotional personal trainer.”

I wonder how long she's been saving that line.

She stands, so I do too. “Thank you for talking with me today. Can you send Omar in next?” She guides me to the door.

Hand on the knob, I remember something else I need to say. “Dr. Lancaster—about this morning. When it happened, when I had my . . . you know. Andrew wanted to get you right away, but I asked him not to. I wanted to tell you. Well, I didn't
want
to tell you, but I wanted
me
to tell you more than I wanted
him
to. . . . Anyway, I thought you should know that.”

“Thank you, Sam.”

I escape out into the hallway. I lean against the wall, closing my eyes. I am so, so tired. It's early afternoon, but I feel like I'm at the end of a marathon dance day. And I can't rest now. I have calories to burn. It won't do me any good to fix my panic problem if I'm so fat by the time this is over that my dance dreams are done.

They already are. You know that, right? You're kidding yourself if you think, with how you look, you can—

I push myself to standing and go to find Omar. After I track him down—on the front porch, showing Yasmin how to play a game on his phone—I stop in the kitchen to grab a granola bar. Then I head upstairs to change into yoga pants and a T-shirt.

My bedroom is empty. I peek out the window and spot
Zoe outside, lying on the lawn in a hot-pink two-piece. Off to the side of the house, Dominic is teaching Katie how to hold a football. He guides her arm back, then steps away and lets her throw. It almost hits the tree she was aiming at. To celebrate, she does a roundoff back handspring and then gives Dominic a high five.

I'm wondering where Jenna is when I hear strains of classical music coming from the next bedroom. I press my ear to the wall. It's Tchaikovsky, muffled but unmistakable.

I consider going over to knock on her door. She'd probably dance with me again, even if she doesn't care to know a thing about me as a person. But she left lunch so fast, after Zoe insulted her. Maybe she wants to be alone.

I know something about wanting to be alone.

I put in my earbuds and crank up Prokofiev's
Romeo and Juliet
. I drop to the floor and start doing Pilates exercises. When my muscles feel warm, I do a ballet barre, holding on to the closet door for balance. Then I go into the center of the room and jump: sautés in first, second, and fifth, then changements, then échappés, and on and on and on. I do every exercise I can think of that fits into a three-by-six-foot space, including a mega crunch series, push-ups, and jumping jacks. I don't stop to rest until I'm pouring sweat. Until I'm gasping and my muscles are screaming.

It's not just about staying in shape. It's also that, after the day I've had so far, I need the release. Only when my body is sore and tired and trembling can I turn off my overactive brain.

I skip to the track for the balcony scene, where Romeo whisks Juliet away to dance in the moonlight. I mime Juliet's breathless leap into Romeo's waiting arms. He catches her, lifts her, guides her through a series of pirouettes en pointe, and pulls her into a passionate embrace. Of course, I'm embracing myself, and the only thing to catch me when I fall out of my pirouette is Zoe's bed. I bounce off it, bumping my thigh on the corner of her nightstand. That hurts enough to knock me back to the here and now.