Tiny Pretty Things (36 page)

I remember the tears in Aunt Leah’s eyes at the hospital when she saw my foot. My parents threatened to fly across the country, to come and take me home. I had no answers for their frantic questions. And now their questions have become mine. Each time they march through my head, I feel sick. My stomach twists in on itself, but my brain can’t stop trying to piece it all together. The list of stuff is getting longer if I really look at it closely.

I know Bette put the message on the mirror. She admitted to that, and putting up the picture of me and Henri in the Light. But the pictures of her and Alec in my basement studio, she refuses to own that. She’s the only one who would have them. Does she expect me to believe that Alec did that? Or Eleanor? She didn’t say she wrote that I should watch my back on the Light wall, but it feels like her style. I don’t know who sent that disgusting cookie, or who put the glass in my shoe, which I should be most worried about. But the medical file haunts me the most. Even though it happened back in October. Someone saw my EKG report. They think I’m weak because of my condition.

I wasted the day away in bed. My mind a fog of medications. I hobble around the room. Mostly everyone is spending their Thursday evening in the studios, doing homework, or making runs to the store. Even June’s not around. I wish I could talk all this out with her. She’s so logical, I bet she’d easily figure out who is doing this stuff to me. There has to be more than one person. It can’t just all be Bette.

I text Alec to see if he wants to hang out after his rehearsal, then go down to the basement Pilates room to stretch, to make sure I’m staying strong. I’ll be out of ballet class and rehearsal for at least a week, and we’re five weeks away from the show. All the last-minute corrections and stage direction changes, I won’t get to actually do. I’ll have to watch them.

The room’s full of mirrors and squishy bouncy balls and purple and blue mats and a few weight machines. It’s empty. I get myself situated on a machine, the same way the physical therapist showed me. I lie on my back, sinking down onto the cushions. I put both feet on the foot bar, even though I shouldn’t put pressure on my injured foot yet, and I push. The steel carriage under me slides up and down with the promise of helping me keep the strength in my muscles. After five minutes on the machine, I can feel the stitches in my foot and pain shoots up my leg.

“Should you be doing that yet?” a voice comes from the door.

I crane my head, and see Will standing in the doorway, all sweaty, with a towel across his shoulders.

“No,” I say, but try a few more pushes. He stands over me and extends his hand like we’re onstage and ready to start a
pas de deux
. I stop, sit up, and take it.

“You could mess up your foot even more,” he says.

“You sound like one of our teachers,” I say. Or even my mama.

“Good.” He sits on the mat and starts stretching. “So what can you do? What did they say?”

“Stretch and light weights and floor barre.” So basically, nothing.

His eyebrows lift in that pitying way.

“Can we talk about something else?” I say, tottering over to get weights from a corner rack. He runs ahead of me and carries them back. I grumble at him, but eventually smile and say thanks. We sit on the floor together.

“So I shouldn’t ask you if they’ve figured out who put that glass in your shoe?” he says.

“Not unless you already know,” I quip back.

“I don’t. I’d usually blame Bette,” he says, rolling his eyes, “but I’m not so sure this time. She definitely has it in her. Seriously. Don’t buy into the stuff Alec tells you about her. She’s got him fooled, and everyone else.” His eyes get all big, like he’s scared of what he’s saying. “She put a lot of people through shit. If it was her, she deserves to get what’s coming to her.” He inspects my foot. “You should be careful with her.”

His words mimic what Henri told me at the beginning of the fall term and in the notes he keeps sending me, and that stupid Valentine’s message. “I don’t want to talk about it. And you told me that before.” Especially not with him. “How are things with you?” I ask, for lack of anything else better.

“Really good,” he gushes in a way I’ve never seen before, then leans in. “I might have my first ever boyfriend soon.”

That’s news to me, but I try to keep the surprise off my face. “Oh really?” I say. “Do I know him? A dancer?”

“Hmmm . . . maybe,” is all he says. “Tall, dark, and handsome.”

It’s so hard to meet people outside the ballet world. Spending your time in and out of studios, at rehearsals, stretching, and fretting about every little motion of a variation doesn’t leave much room for anything else. The prom and homecoming invites come, and are left unanswered or declined, and they eventually stop coming. It’s easier to date someone inside ballet.

“Details? A kiss? Hanging out?” I parrot Mama when she’s poking Aunt Leah about her dating life.

“I’ll never tell!” he says, a blush making his face match his hair. “Well, at least not yet. He’s kind of shy. Anyway, so what’s the prognosis on your foot?”

“Wait a minute,” I turn to look at him, giving my best “spill it” face. “You’re not getting off that easy.”

“Well, let’s just say he’s really hot.” Will smirks, and is about to say more. But Alec steps into the doorway, and all of Will’s excitement and laughter zips right up, like a bag that’s closed. He clears his throat, and pretends to smooth his perfect hair in the mirror.

“Hey,” I say to him, and he steps into the room like it’s full of land mines.

They don’t speak, and I’m not sure what’s happened.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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FOR THE FIRST TIME IN
my life, no one’s listening to me. Even Eleanor has started putting in her earbuds and humming along with the
Giselle
music when I start talking about Gigi and Alec, and Gigi’s obsession with stealing everything from me, and Gigi’s obvious psychotic breakdown after her incident with the cookie.

But today, I pull her earbuds out while we’re getting ready for morning ballet class. “Are you listening to me?”

“I’m trying to focus,” she says. “And it’s kind of like you have an obsession.”

“No, I don’t,” I say back.

“Then why do you keep talking about her?”

“Just trying to loop you in.” I feel like she just spit in my face.

She starts to put her earbuds back in. “I don’t know if I want to be looped in anymore,” she says.

But I run right over all those words and keep talking. “I even talked to June about it. We both
think Gigi and Mr. K are having an affair. That’s the way she got both of these roles.”

Eleanor’s hand freezes beside her ear before she can jam the earbud in.

“I kind of threw myself at him, too, a few weeks ago,” I admit, wanting my best friend back, wanting to be able to share everything again, no matter what. “Just to see.”

She turns red, and not the pretty flush you get after a long ballet class. It’s the kind you get when you’ve fallen down a flight of stairs with everybody watching. Or discovered you have a booger in your nose while talking to someone you like.

“Why would you do that?” she says.

“I thought I could get my role back.” I start gathering my hair up into a bun. “It’s not like that hasn’t worked before. Adele told me.”

“He doesn’t go around randomly hooking up with his dancers,” she says, her tone snappy. “Don’t you think he’s too smart for that? He could get in trouble.”

“Adele says—”

“I don’t want to hear about it.” She gets up and grabs her dance bag. “I need to get ready for class.”

I take a pill to try to erase those thoughts, and the embarrassment of having my own best friend walk out on me. I try not to think about how many pills I’ve taken, or the fact that in the last few months I’ve almost doubled the amount. Instead, I slick down every piece of hair, making sure it’s perfect, and go downstairs for ballet class. I dodge Henri’s gaze as I slip into studio C, suppressing memories of skin on skin, his lips on mine.

I keep to myself. The girls are watching. Gigi is on a chair, her swaddled foot perched on a pillow on a chair, like it’s a glass slipper. I dance harder now that she has to watch from the sidelines. I hope she feels like I did when I had to watch her dance the Sugar Plum Fairy, or watch Cassie dance the sylph-fairy spirit.

Ballet class ends and Mr. K visits to tells us that tonight’s rehearsal is cancelled. It’s Alec’s father’s birthday party. All the teachers are attending, and the board members, and other important people in the city who love ballet. My mother is pulling me out of afternoon academic classes so I can get my hair blown out and a new dress. She thinks I need to win Alec back. She thinks I am a mess. Maybe she’s right.

I stay after everyone’s left the studio to stretch a bit longer. My knee doesn’t hurt as much when I cool down longer. Other dancers head off to lunch and afternoon academic classes. It always amazes me how sudden the transformation is: from chaos to stillness, from suffocation to solitude. I never thought I’d ever want to be alone.

The studio door opens, not with a creak or a knock but with a bang and a breeze. Someone who knows I’m in here and who doesn’t give a shit about startling me or interrupting my stretching.

Mr. K is back.

“Just the girl I was looking for,” he says.

The words give me a shiver—they twinkle with his threat of calling my mother and setting up an
appointment with the school psychologist.

“Hey there,” I say, trying to sound casual, standing up, even though the pain in my knee screeches a little. I just need a few Advil and maybe a secret trip to the physical therapist. Then I’ll be fine.

“Morkie’s been pleased with your work the last week,” he says. His words have weight: what he means is that I was blowing it for a while, and now I am finally clawing my way out of the hole. I nod my head because really, it’s not exactly a compliment, and we both know it.

“You’ve been letting Gigi get the best of you,” he goes on. “You can’t always be on top at every single moment. But you can still be great.”

“Or I can be the best,” I say.

“You spend much time with her?” Mr. K says after clearing his throat. He’s not one for small talk, so the casual tone sounds forced. “She’s been having a rough go of it lately, as you know.”

“Gigi?”

“Yes. Your competition. Are you listening?”

“As much time as I spend with anyone.” I can tell he needs me, but he’s uncertain how to proceed. In some strange and unexpected way, I’m in charge. He knows I’m the heart of this school. I know what’s really going on with his dancers.

“She ever mention any rumors about who is behind all this nonsense? Have you heard any rumors? You know I don’t like gossip to affect my dancers. . . .” Mr. K shifts his weight. I have never seen him standing in anything but a straight and perfect vertical line, but now he’s leaning against the barre a little. Like a regular man and not a great dancer. Not like the man who controls our futures. My future. He reaches out his hand to me. I take it, and he pulls me closer to the barre. Last time he withdrew, but this time his touch is warm, inviting. Like maybe things would be different if I just tried one more time.

“You look remarkably like your sister up close.” He lifts my chin, his eyes climbing over my face and neck and even cleavage. All of a sudden, all I hear in my head is the conversation I just had with Eleanor about him. All I can think about is how Adele said she used to let Mr. K kiss her neck and run his fingers along the bottom edges of her leotard when he’d show her how to correctly let her
pas
partner lift her. God knows what else they’ve done together.

“I thought I was getting her back. With you coming up the ranks. I thought you’d dance more like her,” he says, deadpan. With no regard for any feelings I might have about my sister. I don’t blush often, and I can feel the disgusting red heat radiating from my face. And the tears that usually come with it.

I swallow it all down, packing it inside. “I don’t have time for rumors,” I say, making my voice sound calm and unaffected. “And I definitely don’t have time for idle chatter about Adele. Even if she was your
favorite.
”

Mr. K pulls his hand away from me, like I’m a piece of trash dropped in a basket. He clears his throat again. “I wonder if maybe Gigi got the wrong impression. Sometimes you girls get quite confused,” he says after a pause that I think might swallow me whole. He’s retreated, but he doesn’t
take his eyes off mine. Our eyes are the same—light blue and brimming with challenge. I can’t let him dismiss me again, like he did in his office last week. The threat of the school psychologist still rings in my ears, and that same flush of embarrassment crawls up my skin.

I don’t reply. He rubs his hands together, like they are two sticks making a fire. Mr. K is so heated and so powerful, I wouldn’t be surprised if flames sprung from his hands. I take a tiny step back.

“I really don’t know,” I say at last. I miss when his loaded statements had to do with his interest in me and my career, and not his worry about Gigi. “I can ask around?” I say. We both know it’s a threat and not a favor.