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Authors: Kathryn Holmes

How It Feels to Fly (7 page)

BOOK: How It Feels to Fly
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“Oh, I'm not here by choice.”

Dr. Lancaster gives her a considering look. “You filled out the paperwork, along with your parents. Are you telling me you didn't consent—”

“Yeah, I filled out your stupid questionnaire. I signed the forms. It was this place or tennis camp. I chose to come here. But that doesn't mean I want to be here. Or that I
need
to be here.”

The way she says “need”—like the rest of us are irreparably screwed up in a way that she isn't—makes me cringe.

“Does anyone want to respond to Zoe?”

No one speaks except for Jenna, who says, “Pass” in a voice that's like a slap of icy air to the face.

“I know Zoe will appreciate your support, just as you'll appreciate hers.”

Zoe snorts.

“Now, let's discuss your collages. Katie, would you mind going first?”

“I guess not.” Katie holds up her picture. It's a balance beam over a red mat. There's a crying baby sitting on the beam, and lots of people around the edges of the page, watching. “This is, um, exactly what it looks like. It's what I told you yesterday. How I'm afraid of falling.” She pauses. “I'm not exactly an artist.”

“No kidding,” Zoe says, and Katie shrinks back into her chair.

“Zoe.” Dr. Lancaster closes her eyes for a second, breathing in and out through her nose. “Apologize to Katie.”

“Sorry, Katie,” Zoe says.

“Thank you. Katie, great job. Do you want to say anything else?”

“No,” Katie says quietly. “That's it.”

Dr. Lancaster moves on. “Sam?”

I prop my picture up in my lap, looking down at it. “I guess I went more abstract. The person in the center of the picture is being stared at.” I hesitate, then add, “She doesn't like it.”

No one speaks for a second. And it's such a long second. With their eyes on me. Eyes upon eyes upon eyes.

“Weird,” Zoe says.

“It's cool?” Omar says, like he's not sure. “But it also kind of freaks me out?”

“It's very evocative, Sam,” Dr. Lancaster says. “Nice
work.” The way she's looking at me, at my picture, I know we'll be talking about it in my private session later. But for now, thank goodness, the focus moves off me. I put the picture under my chair and breathe in deep to stop the shuddering in my chest.

Jenna created a scoreboard out of precise black and white squares. When Dr. Lancaster prompts her, she explains, “Figure skating has such a complex scoring system. It can come down to hundredths of a point.” She bites her lip. “I spend a lot of time thinking about those hundredths.”

Dominic used pictures of people: professional football players, but also executives in suits and men driving expensive cars. “It's, like, the future,” he tells us. “Where I wanna be. Where I'm
gonna
be.”

Omar filled his page with cameras and theater seats and bright lights. “It's supposed to be about the first time I got really anxious, and I didn't know what was happening to me,” he says, frowning at it. “It's not very good.”

“It's great, Omar. All of you did a wonderful job,” Dr. Lancaster says, ignoring Zoe's silent, gagging face. “Can everyone hold your pictures up one more time?”

I pull my collage back onto my lap.

“Take a look around. What can you learn from your fellow campers' artwork? Is it possible that you have more in common with each other than you realize?” Dr. Lancaster smiles. “I promise, it will be easier to make the most of your time here if you consider yourselves allies rather than adversaries.”

Jenna narrows her eyes. “But we compete alone.”

“Not all of you,” Dr. Lancaster counters. “Remember, Dominic's on a team.”

“Yeah, but I'm QB,” Dominic says, grinning. “So I'm kind of a big deal.”

“How is what's helpful for Dominic possibly going to help me?” Jenna asks. “And how will arts and crafts help
at all
? This isn't why I'm here.”

“Would you like to tell us why you are here, Jenna?”

She opens her mouth and then slams it shut. “No, thank you. I don't see how it makes a difference if
they
know”—she gestures at all of us—“when you and I will be talking about it in private every afternoon.”

“Your fellow campers can empathize. They can make you feel less alone, even if you'll be competing alone when you return home. They can brainstorm with you. Support you.” Dr. Lancaster finishes, her voice gentle, “The whole point is that you don't have to go through what you're going through by yourself.”

“No one here can help me,” Jenna mutters darkly, so quiet, I barely hear her.

No one can help you, either,
my inner voice whispers
. Enjoy being alone.

seven

INSTEAD OF WAITING TO GET TRICKED INTO EATING lunch with everyone else—in front of everyone else—I slip into the bathroom the moment Dr. Lancaster lets us leave the Dogwood Room. I wait a few minutes, then poke my head out the door to check that the hallway is empty. I sneak into the kitchen, relying on all my dancer's grace not to make a sound. I grab a six-inch turkey sub and head outside to sit on the front porch.

I down it in nine huge bites. It's the first thing I've eaten since I got here that's actually satisfying.

But then Dr. Lancaster finds me. “Sam,” she says. “We need to discuss why you're avoiding meals.”

“I'm not—”

“Did you eat?”

I show her my empty plate, complete with bread crumbs.

“Then we'll start your afternoon session a few minutes
early. Come with me.”

We go to her office. She shuts the door and points at the couch. I drop into it, the feeling of peace I got from my private lunch evaporating.

“You need to eat, Sam—in the dining room, with everyone else.”

“But—”

“It's not negotiable. Part of my job here is to keep all of you safe and healthy. For you, that means making sure you're eating.”

“I eat! I promise, I do.”

Too much. And too often.

“I don't have a problem with food.” Frustrated tears prick at my eyes, and feeling those tears makes me even more frustrated. “Why do I have to prove it? Why can't you trust me?”

“Because—” For a second, I think Dr. Lancaster is going to pull a
Because I said so
, but instead she says, “I see your reluctance to eat. I see you counting what's on your plate. Forcing yourself to eat more than you want—or less.”

The fight drains out of me. Shame settles in. “You see all that?” I whisper.

“I'm trained to see it,” Dr. Lancaster says patiently.

I curl up on the couch, the sandwich I wolfed down becoming a knife in my gut.

“Do you want to tell me about the eyes?” She pulls out the collage I left under my chair in the Dogwood Room. “What do they symbolize?”

“You're the therapist. You tell me.”

“Can you tell me about a time when someone was looking at you and you didn't like it?” She's quoting my own words back at me.

“Want me to make a list?”

Dr. Lancaster looks thoughtful. “Actually, yes.”

I sit upright. “I was being sarcastic.”

She smiles. “I know. But you're all going to get journals tomorrow anyway. Maybe I'll give you a head start.”

“Great.” I wait a beat. “That was also sarcasm, by the way.”

Dr. Lancaster rummages around in a desk drawer and pulls out a selection of spiral-bound notebooks. “Blue, green, or purple?” she asks, fanning them out.

“Um. Green, I guess.”

“Excellent choice.” She hands it to me. “Before tomorrow's session, I want you to write about at least three instances when you struggled with being looked at.”

“Three? By tomorrow?”

“You don't have to write a novel about each one. A few paragraphs will do.” She crosses her legs, giving me a keen look. “Do you want to go ahead and get started, or would you rather keep talking to me?”

An easy choice. “I'll take the extra writing time.”

“All right. But I need you to take this assignment seriously. And I think
you
need you to take it seriously too.” She motions to the door. “I'll let you get to work.”

I SET UP
camp in the gazebo Andrew and I explored yesterday. I lean back into a corner, legs extended out on the wooden bench, ankles crossed, with the notebook in my lap. There's a breeze blowing. I feel it rustling my ponytail. And while the sun is blazing down, it's cooler in the shade of the gazebo's roof. I can see waves of heat radiating in the distance, but I'm not even sweating.

I doodle a flower in the margin of the paper. I add some swirly spirals around it and then shade in the petals.

I don't know what to write.

Andrew and Dominic come out the back door. Dominic has a football in one hand. He laughs at something Andrew says and then gives Andrew a friendly shove. Andrew shoves him back. Then they go to opposite ends of the lawn and start passing the ball back and forth. I watch the way Dominic launches the ball into its smooth arc. I watch it spiral through the air. I watch Andrew jump to catch it, cradling it close. It's like a choreographed dance: pas de trois for two men and a football.

You're stalling.

“I know,” I tell my inner voice.

So get on with it. Write out each and every humiliation. Live it all over again.

I tap my pen on the page, thinking. Remembering.

Then I start to write about the day the cast list went up for our spring performance. At my studio, we do a mixed-rep show in the early fall,
Nutcracker
in December, and then alternate between a full-length story ballet and a mixed-rep
show every other spring. This year we did the variations from
Paquita
, a Spanish-infused classical tutu ballet, along with two new ballets by guest choreographers.

I got a solo in
Paquita
. The variation that begins with all the leaps from the upstage left corner and has the arabesque and attitude pirouettes in the middle. My favorite, the one I'd always dreamed of performing.

I wasn't so lucky with the other ballets. I was cast in the corps de ballet in one and was an understudy in the other.

This was mid-February—my body was already well on its way to being the disaster it is now—but I was still surprised. Still hurt. And then I went upstairs to the lobby, where I found my mom talking to Tabitha's mom.

“Are you disappointed?” Mrs. Hoyt asked.

“Of course. Samantha and I had obviously hoped for more this spring,” my mom said. “But Giorgio's piece is going to be in unitards.”

It took me a second to realize what she was really saying: that the choreographer didn't want my body, in a skin-tight costume, dancing his work. But did Mom know for a fact that that was why I wasn't chosen? Or was she guessing?

Both options hurt—just in different ways.

“In the meantime, I've already adjusted Samantha's diet,” Mom went on. “We'll have her unitard-ready by the next show.”

“It's great that Sam has you on her side, with all of your experience,” Mrs. Hoyt said. “Tabitha looks up to you so much.”

“That's so sweet. Your daughter is a beautiful dancer with a bright future. And—” That's when my mom noticed me standing there. “Samantha!” She stood up. “A
Paquita
variation! Well done! I danced that one in school too.”

“Thanks.” Better to pretend I didn't hear a thing. Otherwise I'd never make it out of here without falling apart.

“Are you ready to go?” Mom asked.

“Are you?” This was before Mom had started working at the studio, but it still felt like she was there as much as I was. Never mind her full-time job—

“Hey. Aren't you supposed to be with Dr. Lancaster?”

I jolt out of my memories to discover Andrew standing outside the gazebo, leaning against the railing next to me. I close the notebook fast, hiding my scribbled words. “I, uh . . .” I feel breathless. Off balance. “She gave me homework.”

“Ouch. So much for summer vacation.”

I let out a small laugh at that. “Like any of this counts as summer vacation.”

“So how's it going?” He walks around the corner and up the steps. Sits down on the wooden bench across from me.

“Okay, I guess.”

“You looked like you were concentrating pretty hard. I didn't want to interrupt you. But then I realized what time it was, so I figured I'd check in.”

“Oh.” I wait for him to go away, now that he's done his peer-adviser duty. But he doesn't. And when I look out into the yard, Dominic is now playing catch with Katie.

Andrew follows my gaze. “He'll make a wide receiver
out of her yet,” he jokes.

I laugh again. This time, it's a little louder. A little more real. “I'd agree with you, except I have no idea what a wide receiver is.”

“Oh. It's the guy who catches the pass and runs it in for a touchdown.”

“Got it.”

A few silent seconds go by. I look down at my notebook, thinking about my unfinished story—and the two I still have to write. And then Andrew clears his throat. He leans forward, elbows resting on his knees. “This morning, when we got interrupted—I just wanted to tell you I think you're doing great here so far.”

Sarcasm. Lies. Great is the last thing you are.

I stare at him. “Yesterday I had a panic attack right in front of you. Today Dr. Lancaster chews me out for not eating in the dining room and then gives me extra work to do as punishment. I don't think I've earned a therapy gold star.”

“Chews you out?” Andrew says, cocking his head to one side. “For not eating?”

I snort. “Yeah, no pun intended.”

“But seriously,” Andrew goes on. “You're trying. Not everyone is. I'm working on Dominic, and Zoe's a whole other situation, but—” He checks himself, like he realizes he shouldn't be talking about them to me. “I remember what it felt like, the first few days here. It's tough. Emotional.”

“Yeah,” I say, looking down at my knees.

“I hope this isn't presumptuous or crossing a line to say,
but—I feel like I
get
you, Sam. What makes you tick. With your mom and my dad, I think we have a lot in common. So I want to help you make the most of your time here.”

“Okay.”

He's looking at me. His eyes should scrape at my skin. They should bruise me. They have before. But in this moment, they aren't.

He's totally judging you. What is he looking at right now?

I duck my head again, second-guessing. Does sitting like this make my stomach pooch out? And what about my thighs and butt, squishing into the wooden slats of the bench? I can't bring my knees to my chest or sit cross-legged in this sundress, so I swing around to place my feet flat on the floor. Problems solved.

But changing positions doesn't make me any more comfortable.

“Um, I have to get back to work.” My voice is too loud. “Thanks for the pep talk!” I give him my best stage smile. Lips pulled wide, showing all my teeth.

And then I flip my notebook open and frown at it, pretending to think. I wait. I hear him stand and walk down the gazebo steps. When I finally lift my eyes, he's back with Dominic and Katie, talking animatedly, one hand on each of their shoulders.

I put my pen to the page. I try to pick up where I left off.

JENNA FINDS ME
an hour or two later, when her private session is done. She knocks on the side of the gazebo. “Ready?”

I look up, surprised to see that she's been crying. Her eyes are red and she has a raw spot on her lower lip, like she's been gnawing on it.

When I don't answer right away, she starts smoothing her already-slick hair back from her face. “You don't have to dance with me. Never mind.” She turns to go.

“Wait. I want to.” I close the notebook and get to my feet.

Those are the only words we say to each other, aside from coming up with barre exercises. And honestly, that's fine by me. I don't want to talk. I just want to
move.

I head into dinner feeling okay. I burned enough calories to justify eating a proper meal. Dancing did its job. Dr. Lancaster will be thrilled that I'm not running away from the fajita buffet Yasmin has set up. I watch Jenna make her plate and copy her exactly: two fajitas, three chicken strips in each tortilla, no cheese or sour cream or guacamole. As I'm spooning a bit of fresh salsa over each fajita, I realize that this could be my new plan to get through mealtimes. Jenna looks like she lives low-cal, and yet no one's accusing her of having an eating disorder. If I eat what she eats, maybe Dr. Lancaster—and everyone else—will leave me alone.

But when I talk to my mom later that night, she stops me as soon as I say “fajita.”

“You know you shouldn't be eating tortillas, Samantha,” she says. “Did you ask for a salad alternative, like I told you?”

The guilt hits—I totally forgot. I lie: “I have to eat what they provide, Mom.”

“Well, then you need to do a better job of adapting.” It's the start of a lecture I've heard so many times over the past few months. One I'm usually able to sit through. Even tune out. But tonight, by the end of it, I'm crying silently into the phone.

“Samantha? Are you there?”

“Yes.”

“Were you listening?”

“Yes.”

Mom's voice softens. “I love you. I'm so proud of you.”

“I love you too, Mom.” I wipe my eyes with the heel of my hand and smile into the phone, because I don't want her to hear the tears in my voice. I'm supposed to be better than this.

There is no “better.” Not for you.

BOOK: How It Feels to Fly
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