How It Feels to Fly (8 page)

ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, I GET UP EARLY SO I CAN shower and get dressed in peace. I head down to the kitchen, where Yasmin is setting out bagels and muffins and other things I'm not supposed to let tempt me. I help her chop fruit. I peel clementines, and I eat one, slowly, because that worked yesterday. And then I sit in the Dogwood Room and listen to Dr. Lancaster lecture about not being so hard on yourself.

You
should
be hard on yourself,
my inner voice sneers.
You deserve it
.

“And on the topic of giving yourself a break, I have a surprise for you!” Dr. Lancaster announces. “I'm so glad the sun is out, because we've gotten permission from the campus to spend the rest of the morning swimming in the lake.”

She keeps talking, but I don't hear a thing after “swimming.”

I can't.

I won't.

I'll say I don't know how. Or that I forgot my suit. Or that I'm afraid of fish.

I'll say anything.

But not right now, because everyone looks so happy. I force myself to smile. To cheer along with them. When the others run upstairs to change into their swimsuits, I go too. I'm on autopilot, rooting around in my suitcase until I find the black one-piece my mom bought me last week. I never intended to wear it. I almost didn't pack it.

I rip off the tag with my teeth.

I change in a bathroom stall. Slowly.

“We'll see you downstairs!” Katie calls, letting the door slam shut behind her.

I count to sixty once. Twice. Three times.

And then I open the bathroom stall to look at myself in the mirror.

No no no no no no no—

“It's not any different than a leotard,” I whisper. I spin, taking in all the angles.

Cellulite. Stomach rolls. Boobs that are about to escape from their halter.

Suck it in. Suck it up.

The suit is getting tighter and tighter. The ties are strangling me. I'm tingling all over, losing circulation, losing air.

I want to curl up in the fetal position on the floor. That's what I did last month, the last time I put on a swimsuit.
Bianca decided to have a pool party to celebrate the end of the school year. An hour before the party, I tried on last year's swimsuits, one after another, growing more and more anxious. The bottom one in the stack was a high-waisted, bright yellow, polka-dotted two-piece. I loved that suit. I thought I'd saved the best for last.

But no. I was a sausage escaping its casing, skin and flesh bulging out all over.

I turned into a puddle of tears and snot on my bathroom floor. It wasn't as bad as the
Paquita
incident . . . but it was close. I called Bianca and told her I was sick. I asked whether I could take a pool-party rain check. Not that I ever planned to cash that check.

Now I stare at myself in the mirror. When my mom handed me this swimsuit, she told me, “Black is slimming.”

If this is
slim
, imagine what you'd look like wearing a color—

“Sam?” Katie calls from downstairs. “You coming?”

I poke my head out the door. “Almost ready!”

Why are you doing this? What's wrong with you?

I'm fine. I don't even have to get undressed when we get there. I'll just sit in the sun and watch everyone else swim. It'll be fun.

Liar liar liar liar—

I throw on shorts and a tank top and force myself out the door.

The whole walk across the lawn, along the trail through the woods, toward the lake, I'm a ball of nerves. But I keep my face neutral.

Everyone can tell. They see everything you're hiding.

I rub my hands up and down my arms, suddenly cold despite the typical North Carolina heat and humidity. My teeth are chattering. I clench my jaw shut to muffle the sound. The fabric of my swimsuit feels like a cheese grater on my skin. Everything hurts.

This is going to end badly. You know it is.

I push forward, feeling like my feet are stuck in cement blocks.

I can get past this. I'm stronger than this.

No, you're not.

We reach the lake. I hear the splash first. Dominic's in the water. Omar jumps off the dock next, followed by Andrew.

Jenna is undressing. So is Katie. So is Yasmin. I stare at them, unable to avert my eyes even though I know I should. Jenna's reed-thin silhouette. Katie's compact body and defined muscles. Yasmin's flat stomach.

I don't have any of those things.

Bianca does. Her body is amazing. And she's talented, which would be infuriating if she weren't also so nice. We've been friends for eight years, since she moved to my hometown from California. We used to have sleepovers where we'd watch ballet movies and flip through my mom's back issues of
Dance Magazine
. We talked about joining American Ballet Theatre together one day. We'd be roommates in a tiny apartment in New York City and rise through the company ranks side by side.

It didn't seem too far-fetched. We were both good
dancers, but with different strengths. Bianca loves adagio work, moving through space with slow control. I love turns and jumps, spinning and soaring. But then my body changed, and hers didn't. The unitard piece I was cast as an understudy in? Bianca was one of the leads.

As I stare at Katie and Jenna and Yasmin in their swimsuits, and as I think about everything that now separates me from Bianca—and from our shared future—my vision gets cloudy.

You'll never look like them. You'll never
feel
like them, at ease in your skin—

“Okay over there, Ballerina Barbie?” Zoe is leaning against a tree, tucking her braids up under a swim cap. She smirks at me.

I open my mouth and close it, like a fish.

“Seriously, you look like you saw a ghost. You know this isn't one of those haunted summer camps, right?”

I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe.

I sink to the ground. I close my eyes and put my hands over my ears. I rock back and forth, willing my pulse to slow down and my lungs to work.

I hear, through the pounding in my skull, someone shouting my name. I feel hands touch my shoulders, jerk away, touch me again.

I ignore it all. I go into my tiny, dark, quiet place. The place I discovered the first time this happened. Where I'm small and safe. Where no one and nothing can reach me or hurt me.

Arms around me. Thin. Bony.

A voice, soft and close, in my ear: “Hey. Sam. You're okay. Shh. Shh.”

I open my eyes and am vaguely surprised to see that it's Jenna who's got me. Our eyes meet, and she gives me a small nod.

“Excuse me, Jenna.” Dr. Lancaster comes into my field of vision. She sits in the dirt next to me. Jenna scoots away. Dr. Lancaster leans in close. “Do you think you can walk with me back to the house?”

I look around. At Katie's scared eyes and the furrow between Jenna's brows. At Zoe's wrinkled nose—like what just happened to me smells bad. At Dominic, who's gaping, and at Omar, who's bouncing in place and muttering to himself: “I don't like this. I don't like this. I don't like this.”

Me neither.

I nod in answer to Dr. Lancaster's question, and it's like the blood and the air rush back into the vacuum of my body. It feels so overwhelming and amazing that I start crying. Loud, gulping, heaving sobs.

Dr. Lancaster stands and lets Andrew help me to my feet. His grip is firm, solid. “I've got you,” he says. It makes me cry harder.

“Let's go.” Dr. Lancaster wraps one arm around me. “Andrew, Yasmin, do you have everything under control here?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Andrew says, and Yasmin echoes him.

I go with Dr. Lancaster, leaving a shocked silence in my wake.

THE PANIC FADES
fast.

Usually, after something like this, I'm so drained that I can barely function. But this time, it's different. Maybe it's Dr. Lancaster's arm across my shoulders, weighing me down with her concern and care. Or maybe it's the fact that I am now, indisputably, the craziest person at Crazy Camp. I can feel anger building inside me. It's a hot, sharp, vicious thing.

I want to throw something. Or hit something. I want to lash out.

This is new.

It feels horrible and satisfying, all at once.

“Can you tell me what happened back there?” Dr. Lancaster asks.

“You tell me.” I drop onto the sofa in her office, arms crossed like a shield.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Oh, so
yesterday
, you're somehow able to see every little thing about me, but today, you completely fail to notice when I'm about to have a meltdown.” My voice is jagged. “Excellent therapy camp you're running here.”

“Can you tell me what triggered the panic attack?”

“If I could tell you, I wouldn't have to be here!”

“You seem angry.”

I jump to my feet. “Yes! I'm angry! I'm angry at you for not realizing that I might not want to wear a freaking swimsuit when I hate how I look. When all I can think about 95 percent of the time is how people are staring at me and judging me.”

“Who else are you angry at?”

I start to pace the room. “I'm angry at everyone who saw what just happened. Nobody should get to see me like that. Nobody. And I'm angry at my dance teacher for convincing me to talk to her about how I was feeling and advising my mom to send me
here
.” I infuse that last word with as much contempt as possible.

“Anyone else?”

“The costume designer who made my new tutu too tight, on purpose, so that I'd have a reason to lose weight. Like I wasn't trying to do that already. And all the girls at ballet who gave me diet tips with these fake-helpful smiles, like they were doing me a favor. And the choreographer who wouldn't cast me in his piece because of how I might look in a costume. Like he couldn't possibly pick a different costume direction. Like his
vision
was more important than the dancing.” I pause. “I would've kicked butt in that piece.”

“I'm sure you—”

“And I'm angry at George freaking Balanchine!”

“Because?”

“Because it's his fault the ballet world is obsessed with who can be the skinniest. It's his aesthetic. He's the reason
girls like me can't—of course, he was a genius, but this is all his fault. If I could time-travel, I'd make it so ballet was always about the best dancer, no matter what she looked like.”

Dr. Lancaster is nodding. “Who else?”

Marcus
. His name floats into my mind, taunting me. I shake it away.

Bianca
. No, that doesn't make sense. She's my closest friend.

I'm not angry with either of them. They've actually been there for me through most of this—at least, until Marcus dumped me. So maybe I am mad at him. But not Bianca. And anyway, I don't want to tell Dr. Lancaster about my breakup.

“I'm angry at my brain for not being able to handle, like,
life
,” I finally spit out. “For screwing up
everything
I care about. I am so, so mad at myself.” Saying it out loud makes me shake with emotion.

“All of this is good,” Dr. Lancaster says.

“Good?” I turn on her. “Nothing about this is
good
.”

“Expressing your anger is good.”

“How does it help me?” I answer my own question. “It doesn't. At all.”

“It will. I promise.”

“I don't want promises. I want results.” Now I sound like my mom. And thinking about how she'd feel, seeing me like this, makes my voice crack. “You're supposed to fix me. Not make me even more of a wreck! Two panic attacks in three
days—at therapy camp!”

“So what can you learn from those two panic attacks?”

“Not to trust you! Or this place. To keep doing what I was doing, because that works better than anything you can tell me.”

“Do you really believe that?”

I nod fiercely. But the anger is dying down. I drop back onto the couch, hugging the nearest pillow to my stomach.

“I'll tell you one thing I think you can take away from what just happened.”

She waits for me to respond. I don't.

“You need to tell someone when you feel overwhelmed, rather than bottling it all up. If you'd mentioned to me, or Yasmin, or Andrew, or even one of your peers that you were having anxiety about swimming, we could have done something to prevent that anxiety from becoming a full-blown panic attack.”

I grunt at her.

“Also, now that your panic is out in the open with your peers, I think you'll find it easier to talk to them and rely on them going forward. You don't have to be a brick wall. You're allowed to be vulnerable.”

“Being vulnerable won't help me become a professional ballerina.”

“What about Juliet?” she counters. “What about Giselle? What about Ophelia?”

“Ophelia?”

“From
Hamlet
.”

“Oh.”

“Or Odette,” she goes on.

“I wasn't talking about that kind of vulnerability,” I argue. “I can be strong in real life and still dance a sad role.”

“Yes. Exactly. I agree.”

“So why do I have to let everyone see how I'm feeling all the time? What if I want to keep my anxiety to myself?”

“There's a difference between being a private person and being so bottled up that it's harmful to you.” Dr. Lancaster leans forward in her seat. “Picture yourself as a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke that is tightly sealed, and someone starts shaking it. And shaking. And shaking. The minute you open the bottle, even if you turn the lid oh so slowly, it's going to explode, right?”

I nod.

“You don't have to share everything with everyone. But you have to know when to let some of that fizz out.”

“Fizz. Right.” I yawn, suddenly incredibly tired.