Shiny Broken Pieces (10 page)

AFTER A SESSION WITH MADAME
Yuli, I'm standing at the bottom of the basement stairs, working up the energy to go back upstairs.

“Bette,” Justina calls down, “your mother—”

“Coming.” I steel myself, then I climb the stairs. I walk through the kitchen and into the foyer. The space is lit up and warm, and there's laughter. It makes me think, just for a second, that I've walked up into the wrong house.

But the laugh—bright and deep and rough—is Alec's.

It takes all my strength not to run into the living room. Instead, I compose myself at the foyer's wall mirror, wiping the sweat from my brow and pulling my ballet sweater down a little on my shoulders. I make a few settling noises so they know I'm out here.

When Adele finally calls out, “Is that you, Bette? We've got company!”

I smooth down my damp hair and finally poke my head into the living room.

“Well, actually, you've got company.” Adele giggles, the same sweet, little girl laugh I've always wanted. “I've just been entertaining Alec with ARC horror stories while he waited.”

Fall Alec is my favorite kind. He always wears fancy, grown-up pants and cozy, oversize sweaters that are always roomy enough for me to climb right into, not an inch between us, his long arms wrapped around me like a scarf. The craving for him is so sharp, so elemental, tears prick my eyes.

“Hey.” I try to keep my smile in check and fail.

Alec stands immediately. I can tell he's happy to see me from the way his ears go pink.

Adele rises, taking her teacup. “Well, I guess I'll let you guys catch up. I'm headed back to my apartment.”

I smile gratefully, and she points to another cup on the table. “Chamomile, Bette.”

“Thanks,” I say, then she leaves.

I sit across the coffee table from Alec, who's still grinning and blushing, although he probably doesn't realize it. I'm a safe distance, so I can trust myself not to let my hands roam over those familiar shoulders, that buzzed hair. From here I can absorb him without scaring him off.

“How have you been?” he asks, taking a sip, which clearly scalds. He doesn't drink a lot of tea. “You, uh, you look great.”

Now I'm blushing, which is silly, and makes me feel like we haven't had a million moments like this. It's Alec. I've known him my whole life. “Thanks. Private ballet lessons. You know how it goes.”

“Yeah, I do.” He looks at me. “So is it okay being back here with—” He nods his head up toward the ceiling where my mother's bedroom is.

The way he looks at me then, that mix of worry and pity—and maybe, just maybe, still a touch of love—unravels me.

Just like that, I'm crying. All the things I've been holding in—the hurt, the loneliness, the stress, the struggle to prove myself innocent, the need to be back at school, the fear that I have no ballet career to start—all of it comes gushing out in a cascade of sobs. He's only really seen me cry a handful of times. I don't like showing him this tiny broken piece of me.

He immediately crosses the small space between us and wraps his arms around me.

I inhale his familiar scent and let him just hold me for a few minutes, the tears soaking his new sweater, although he doesn't complain. He rests his head on top of mine, the weight of it comforting. I could tilt my head up right now and be kissing him in a minute. He tightens his arms around me more. I take it as the answer to my unspoken question. He misses me.

“I was worried about you,” he whispers, so soft, the words landing in my hair. I want to close my eyes and fall asleep there in his arms.

“I missed you.” I sit up.

“So.” He shrugs. “Gigi told me you all settled it.”

The sound of her name stings. “Yeah, it's over.”

“Does that mean you—”

I stand and move closer to the fireplace. “I didn't push her, Alec. And I don't think you'd be here if you really thought I had. I admit to doing some awful things,” I tell him, trying to stop
the bleeding before it starts. “Like the lipstick and the naked pictures of us. I wanted to scare her, to psych her out. Honestly, if I thought she deserved to be there—”

His face flashes with emotion—anger, sadness, frustration.

I take a deep breath, trying to find the right words. The words that will make him believe me. Because he has to believe me. “Honestly, I never meant to hurt anyone—not Gigi, and definitely not you.”

He just stares down at the floor, and I can sense I'm quickly losing whatever goodwill he'd managed to build up for me.

“Then why did you do it? And why'd you have Will drop Cassie?”

The question heats me up more than the fireplace at my back. Over the summer, the lawyers asked me this same question a thousand times, and I snapped back with quick answers about how they were just pranks and I didn't mean anything serious by them. But coming from Alec, it finally has weight.

“I—I—” I stutter, like the words are stuck on the roof of my mouth and I can't quite scrape them out. The word
jealous
bubbles up from my stomach, but I'm too proud to say it.

“Why did you do any of it?” He starts to repeat more slowly, like I'm not processing what he's saying.

I sit back down in the chair next to him. I pull my knees up onto the seat, trying to get comfortable. How do I explain everything to him in a way that might make sense—inside my head and out? I smooth the hair along the sides of my bun, even though no hair is ever out of place.

It's just Alec. But that's the problem. It's Alec.

“I got caught up in it all. I got nervous that I wasn't good enough anymore. Not in contrast to Gigi or Cassie.” The words sound disgusting out in the air between us.

“So you messed with her, instead of working harder. You—”

He starts to stand up, and I grab his arm—catching a handful of that too-large sweater. He doesn't pull away, but he doesn't sit down again either. “Alec, you know me. Do you really think I'm capable of hurting her? I didn't push Gigi—you know I didn't. With Cassie, I asked Will to just mess up the lift a little. Not to drop her so hard that she needed surgery. I might not be perfect. But I wouldn't do something like that. I wouldn't try to permanently injure someone, and I certainly wouldn't try to kill them.” I jump up.

“I came over here for answers.” He seems torn—between the lies and the truth, between me and Gigi.

“Alec,” I whisper up to his ear, on my tippy toes. “I'm sorry.” I repeat it until the words become only a rhythm of breaths. I want him to know that I'm still the same Bette and he's the same Alec.

He shushes me. “Things haven't been the same at school.”

I pretend he's said that things haven't been the same
without me
.

“It's all a mess,” he says. “We're all a mess.”

I can hear the pain in his voice, see the cracks beneath the brave face he's put on. He pulls away from me, a bit of a blush still warming his cheeks, and sits on the sofa across the way. He looks down at his hands, the ones he just had wrapped around me. “It feels off that you're not there, Bette. You've always been there.”

I walk toward him. Before I can touch him again, though, he gets up and walks straight out of the room. The front door slams a little behind him.

In the hall, my mother's grandfather clock strikes midnight. I grab my laptop and open my bedroom door. Moonlight pours through the large window across from my mother's door. I know it's locked. She'd always made sure neither my sister nor I could get in, not even when lightning rang out or thunderclaps shook our windows, and we wanted to climb into her sprawling king-size bed.

I go into the dining room and turn the lights up just a little. I turn on my laptop and pull up the camera app site, but Gigi's room is empty and dark. I scroll through the backfeed quickly to see if there's anything relevant, but it's just her and Will giggling, or her and Alec kissing—and I don't want to torture myself with that.

Closing the tab, I open another and search online, typing in the key words—ballerina, ballet, ABC, Gigi Stewart, taxi, accident, SoHo.

Several dozen of those trashy articles pop up—“Ballet School Scandal,” “Killer Competition,” “Bullying Ballerinas Shock ABC Sponsors.” I make sure my eyes don't zone in on any that could mention my name. Girls from other ballet schools have created get-well memes and pictures for Gigi. A knot hardens in my chest. People love her, now more than ever.

I click on videos, and scroll. Some of them are past ballet productions, secret snippets of the conservatory's auditions, or more love outpourings for an injured Gigi. But one on the bottom is called “
Girl Gets Hit by Car
.” I click it and while the little circle
shows the video content is buffering, I read the video description:
Worst thing I've ever caught on film.
The date is Friday, May 16.

My heart starts to pound as the video plays. I see the club exit. Girls parade in front of the camera. I see myself. The person filming taunts us about our skintight dresses and too-high heels. Then I think I see someone who looks like Henri slip out of the club. He runs his hands through his shaggy hair and steps behind me.

The things I've been keeping calm start to rebel: I can't stop my hands from shaking or from sweat dripping down my back.

I wait for the push. I wait to see Henri shove her. I wait for the relief of all this to be over.

The video feed cuts off and an error box appears. I almost scream before clicking a thousand times, and restarting my computer. But every time I reopen the video, it cuts out in the exact same spot. I keep clicking, over and over again, until it's no use.

A sob looms large in my chest. I try to hold it in. Thoughts scream in my head. The impossibility of this, the gigantic shift it has caused in the shape of my life, the desire to have this all over with.

But I can't let myself give in to it. I have to do something.

I leave a message for the videographer with my phone number and email, even though he hasn't posted anything since that date. I wonder if the account is still active. I bookmark the page and make a plan to find out who posted this. I have a deep headache now from too much concentration, one too many Adderalls, and staying up too late. But I know I'm close. I just have to find that last piece.

ALEC
'
S LEGS HANG OFF THE
edge of my bed. His lanky frame swallows up the whole thing. I can barely see the swirly pattern on the comforter Mama bought me. He keeps reaching for me to come lie on the bed with him. With all the new rules and more RAs on staff, we've been trying to be careful. Neither of us can afford to get in trouble. But even as I remind myself of this, I still like being with him in my room and the scent his skin leaves behind on my blankets and sheets.

“So what do you think? About the magazine?” I asked Alec if he'd want to do a couples story for
People
magazine, but he's been blowing it off. “We have to let them know this week. The publicist has been calling me and my parents.”

He shrugs, lying back down. “I dunno.” He's frowning, staring up at the ceiling. “I mean, isn't it a tabloid? Serious people who love dance don't read that stuff.”

We've already argued about this twice already. “It's a media
opportunity. It's exactly what we need to lock our apprentice spots in the company—they love that stuff. The school needs good press. And the magazine has done all the big names.”

I know what he's thinking. It's what
I
need. He's a legacy, and clearly the best male dancer the conservatory's trained in years. He's definitely getting a contract at ABC at the end of the year. I don't have that certainty. I should plan to audition for the Hamburg Ballet and the Dutch National Ballet when ABC hosts their US auditions in January. I should plan to tour the country auditioning so I can have a backup plan.

“Why don't
you
do the story?”

“They don't want me, they want us.”

“Then they suck.” He rests an arm over his eyes, and I know he's done talking about this.

“You just need to focus on ballet class. Show them your technique is still strong. Better even.”

His phone buzzes. I crane to see the screen. I spot Bette's name, plus smiley faces and hearts.

I flush with heat and frustration.

“You should come lie down.” He strokes and pats the spot beside him on my bed. “Be little spoon.” He turns on his side, carving out a sliver of space for me to curl into. My heart does a little flutter—in a good way. He begs a little more, and I finally sit down beside him. “We'll go back downstairs soon. We will have to go sign in at the café, eventually.”

I nibble at the inside of my cheek, trying to find the right words. He lifts my hair and kisses my neck. I try to shake out the tiny trembles in my hands as I rub them over his buzzed blond
head. A twinge of guilt flickers through me. I think of June's hair, and what I did to her. If I'd cut it any shorter, she would've had to buzz it all off like his. What would Alec think if he knew what I did? Would Alec understand? Would he like the new me?

He kisses me. I try to sink into it, but all I can hear is the ping and vibrate noise his phone makes. I kiss him harder, so it'll erase whatever strange feeling is spreading inside me.

“I missed you,” he murmurs into my neck between deep kisses and tugs on my newly straightened hair. “I feel like we barely get to see each other.”

The phone vibrations get louder.

I lift my shoulder and push his face away. “I need to ask you something.”

“I told you I don't want to—”

I put my finger to his lips. “Just shut up for a second.”

He props up on one of my pillows, looking at my face. “Okay.”

“Have you been talking to Bette?” I grab my phone, tighten my grip around it, ready to show him the pictures of Bette that he liked on social media. Maybe I'm making too much of this. But I can't stop thinking about it.

He frowns. “No, not really. Why?”

“Is it a no or a yes?”

His fingers graze my leg, but I dodge his touch. “What's going on?”

“I just saw—” I turn over my phone. Bette's grinning face stares up at us. She's documented every bit of her quarantine at home, like she's on some glamorous vacation. “You liked her photos. I—”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.” I click the phone off. “And I just saw her name flash on your phone. It's weird. If you aren't friends anymore, and you aren't together 'cause you're with me, then why would you like them?”

“They're just photos.”

“It's confusing. Makes me think you don't really like me.”

“You know what's confusing?” He sits all the way up and moves away from me. “You stalking Bette's social media and going through her likes.”

“But—”

“You know what else? It's weird you spend so much time with Will. That you let him talk you into this magazine stuff. I know this was all his idea. It sounds just like him. The old Gigi wouldn't—”

I stand up now. “He's your friend. Or he was. And now he's my friend, too.”

“He and I haven't really been close since the end of last year. You know that. It's been weird. He's been weird. I just—he's just changed a lot. So have you.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“That you're different.” He shrugs. “I didn't mean it in a bad way. I don't want to talk about this anymore.”

We didn't really talk about this at all
. “Okay.”

He plays with my hair again. It's a habit I used to find charming, but now it's annoying.

“I'd rather be kissing you,” Alec says, leading me back to my bed, pulling my legs on top of his, rubbing his hands up and
down them. He finds the nook of my neck again and kisses it. I want to fall into it all, but my mind buzzes with more questions and worries.

“But what does it mean?”

Alec untangles our bodies. “I'm not going to have this pointless argument with you about nothing. I liked her picture on social media. So what? I've known her forever. Does it have to
mean
something? I'm here with you. I'm with you.”

“I don't want to fight.”

“Then let's drop it.”

“Fine,” I say.

“We should probably go to the café now.” He's halfway out the door. “You coming?”

“Not hungry. I'll meet you after ballet class.”

“Okay.” That four-letter word stretches out long and hard. He rushes out the door, leaving it wide open.

I just sit there, stunned by the weirdness of our half argument. Minutes go by.

“You all right?” Cassie stands in the doorway.

“Yeah. Alec and I had an argument.”

She closes the door behind her. She walks around my room and grazes her hand over the barre I have set up. “I wish I had one of these in my room. Well, I wish I had a single. You lived with June last year, right?”

I jump at the sound of June's name. “Yeah, I did.” I offer her something to drink so she'll stop asking questions about June. I go to my minifridge and open it. “Do you want—hmmm.” There isn't much in here. “Fizzy lemonade?”

“No, I'm good. That has a ton of calories in it.”

I set the tiny bottles back inside and make a mental note to tell Mama to stop sending them. “Okay.”

“Alec can be a bit of a pretty little princess sometimes.”

I nearly choke on my laughter.

“He used to throw a tantrum when his nanny wouldn't cut his carrots into shoestrings and his PB&J into triangles.”

I think about what he might have been like as a child, how much they know about each other. I wonder if I should ask her about Alec and Bette, about him liking her photos, about whether I'm being paranoid. But I'm afraid she might tell me I am, so I don't say anything.

“There must be something going around because June just threw a tantrum when trying to put her hair up in a bun for class.” She squeezes her eyes shut the way June does when she's upset. She pretends to work with her hair. “What a terrible haircut.”

I let out a nervous laugh. “Oh, I didn't notice.” But of course I did. June got it done professionally after the incident, but it still looks awful, like a kiddie bowl cut gone awry.

“Um, that's a lie.” Cassie makes the sour face June does when she's upset. I burst out laughing. “Everyone's saying it was a prank. I asked her, but she denies it. Says it was just a slip of the scissors during a haircut. But now she cries herself to sleep at night.” She mimics the sniffling and low crying.

The desire to see June suffer overwhelms my body. I think about the tearstains on her silk pillowcase and how she looks like a three-year-old now with her bowl cut, flat chest, and frowning
face. I push down any feelings of remorse. She deserved it. She killed something so valuable to me. Her hair will grow back, but my butterflies won't come back to life. “She deserves it.” I don't realize I've muttered those words until I look at Cassie's face.

“You did it.”

I open my mouth to tell a lie.

“I had a feeling—” Her mouth curves into a little smile.

“I didn't.”

“Ha! That's awesome! It's about time. By the way, the streaks in that new girl Isabela's hair? That was me.”

“Really? She's telling people she went to the salon.”

“Ha, such a liar.” She nods proudly. “Isabela thought she was going to talk shit about me, try to ruin my reputation with Morkie, and think it didn't have consequences. I told myself I wouldn't be a victim this year. I refuse to be one.”

“Me neither.” I hold her gaze for a long time. “Yeah, I did it. I cut June's hair.” It feels good to say it out loud, to have someone smile back at me like I've won for once, like this is ballet class and I've just finished a million perfectly clean pirouettes and Morkie is beaming at me. It feels good that Cassie's smile erases a little of my guilt.

“What did June do to you? I need to watch my back.”

I take a deep breath, my eyes drift over to my window where my butterfly terrarium used to be. The succulents Alec gave me sit in little clusters inside the glass terrarium. “I had butterflies. She killed them.”

Cassie looks genuinely shocked. “She's super messed up. That's like killing someone's cat.” Her lips purse together. “When
I was first here, they tortured me.”

“What did they do to you?”

“What didn't happen?” She sighs. “They slipped purple hair dye in my shampoo. Put up terrible pictures of me in the Light closet. Hacked my private emails from Henri, and printed them. Spread rumors about me. Cut up my performance tights. They wrote shitty things on my pointe shoes—”

“They wrote things about me on the studio mirror.”

“Lipstick?”

“Yep.”

“Bette!” She clenches her teeth. “And June was part of it, too.”

“Yep.” I want to ask Cassie how she hurt her hip, but I know I shouldn't. I can't even find the words to form that question.

“We're going to get back at each and every one of them. It's time to stop being victims. This is our year.” The way she says
our
feels empowering and sweet. She goes to the door where her bag sits, and she riffles through it. “I need you to do something for me.” She returns with a tub of hummus, fire-roasted red peppers and garlic.

“I hate hummus.” I examine the labels. “Reminds me of a facial mask.”

“It's not for you. It's for Eleanor. I need you to get her to eat it.”

I quickly hand it back to her, like there's poison seeping out of the plastic. “What's in it?”

She pushes it back into my hands. “It's her favorite. I just added a little bit of peanuts to it. Makes her lips get all puffy and gives her a small rash.”

“Peanut allergies are dangerous.”

“Hers isn't. When I was here, I remember her gorging on peanut brittle that Bette's grandmother would send from Boston.” She bats her eyes at me, like I'm so kind for being concerned about poor Eleanor and her slight allergy. “You know she used to do things for Bette all the time. She was her little minion, the one who put the hair dye in my shampoo and printed out the emails I got from Henri.”

“She sent me a moldy old cookie last year. Complete with dead roaches.”

“See?” She taps the lid. “She deserves it.”

“Then why don't you do it?”

“Because she knows I don't like her. She still thinks you're her friend.”

“I don't think she'd call us friends.”

“But you talked to her for more than five minutes, so she probably knows you don't completely hate her.”

I think about that for a second. Eleanor and I haven't hung out since that day in the studio. But she doesn't realize how much I really know about her and about Bette. About all the things they did. I'm the only way she'll fall for it.

“Okay,” I say. My hand shakes when I put the tub of hummus in my refrigerator.

We stretch out our muscles in Studio B waiting for Morkie and Pavlovich to begin our first
Swan Lake
rehearsal. It's every dancer's dream. The story—a princess falling under the spell of an evil sorcerer and being transformed into a swan—is one of the
most famous. Long before I knew any of the variations that made up the ballet, that story replayed in my dreams.

To be cast as Odette or Odile would mean I'm on track to be a principal and earn those roles. It shocks me, deep down inside, how much I want it. The endless hours of physical therapy, the extra rehearsals in the old basement studio. They've completely blocked it off now and padlocked the Light closet. There are no secret spaces here anymore. But still plenty of secrets.

Madame Dorokhova comes to the front of the room. A hush falls over all of us. She walks back and forth. Her little heeled ballet shoes click ever so lightly. We all look around for Morkie and Pavlovich. The frantic energy stretches between us like a web.

“Most of you know me, I hope,” she says. “I am Madame Dorokhova, and I will run your class today.”