Tiny Pretty Things and Shiny Broken Pieces
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The way down is slippery and hot. He lowers me so that my body meets his, our torsos kissing. I am all tingles in my spine, my stomach, my heart. The beat pulses all over me, and I’m embarrassed. If he touches my skin, he’d feel it, and know how excited he makes me. We do the lift a few more times until his thumbprints are permanently indented in my back, and little raw blisters have started to form. I don’t let him see the pain as he slides me down for the last time.
I stand below him, my head still back so that I am lost in his eyes. And while I’m distracted by the way blue meets green meets black at the very edge of his pupils, he surprises me by touching my face. Letting his fingers linger along my cheek and down my neck, like he’s drawing shapes on my skin, leaving a burning a trail behind.
I want him to kiss me. I want to know what his mouth tastes like. I want to know how his tongue would feel. I inch back because standing there, framed by the glass panels, peering in, breath fogging the glass, is Eleanor.
I pull away from him.
“What’s wrong?” he says.
Eleanor disappears down the hall. I don’t say anything about her. “What about Bette?”
He scratches his head and shrugs.
I chew my bottom lip, and have to stop myself before I split the skin there again. “Aren’t you together?”
“We were always on and off. Hot and cold. Like in a cycle, sort of. One that’s off. But now”—he touches my cheek again—“I want something different. Like you.”
I hold his gaze as excitement flushes through me. I feel the cheek he’s touching grow warm, and I hope his use of the word different isn’t related to the color of my skin, and just that Bette and I have opposite personalities.
He cups the back of my neck, and wraps a loose curl around his finger. I try not to flinch, and fight the urge to not want him to touch my hair. What if it’s all sticky from the product I put in it? What if the curls feel rough to the touch, and not smooth and silky like Bette’s perfectly straight blond hair?
“I’m going to talk to her. Tell her it’s over. It kind of has been, these past few weeks.”
I fight away a smile. “How are we different, besides the obvious?” I rub a finger over my forearm to highlight the color.
“When I saw you helping one of the little girls with her first pair of pointe shoes, I knew,” he says. “I watched you outside of studio A.”
“Oh, Celine,” I say, remembering catching the little one, struggling to break in her first pair of pointe shoes.
“You were late for class, and didn’t care.” His comment causes my cheeks to redden again. “Let me show you something.” He pulls me forward and out of the studio. We climb all ten flights up to the eleventh floor, and he won’t tell me why we were taking the stairs instead of the elevator. I work hard to keep my breathing calm and even. I’m nervous about him being so close to my room or, worse, Bette’s. We duck through the hallway exit door. There isn’t an RA doing hall rounds yet. We slip past slightly open doors and the bathroom. He tugs me forward. I try not to laugh. I try not to get us caught. I hear only a few girls. Mostly everyone is getting a postrehearsal snack in the café. We go to the very end of the hall.
“Have you been to the Light yet?” he asks.
“The what?” I say.
“You haven’t then.” We step into a dark closet at the tail end of the hall. I always thought it was just a storage room. He pretends to fumble for the light switch, and rubs his hands along my neck and over my bun.
“Alec,” I say, not really wanting him to stop. He clicks on the light. The small space is collaged with pictures: Anna Pavlova, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev, and others. Quotes about ballet. Quotes about dance. Perfect bodies, perfect feet, perfect costumes. Conservatory graduates. Company members. Dancewear ads featuring up-and-coming primas. All white faces, startling as first snow. I try to suppress a sudden pang of homesickness, of wanting to belong somewhere.
“What is this?” I say.
“June didn’t tell you about this? It’s been here as long as the school’s been open. No one knows who started it.”
Of course she didn’t. She hasn’t been talking to me much at all lately. No matter how much I’ve been trying to connect with her. He tells me more as I run my fingers over the walls, trying to soak up each quote, studying each image.
I see my name and lift up on my tiptoes, but can’t reach. “Alec,” I say.
He comes up behind me. I feel his hips press against mine and it flushes me with warmth. There’s barely an inch between us. I can feel the warmth of his body through my leotard.
He reaches over me, takes down the note, and scans it before crumpling it up. He’s about to toss it on the floor, but I take it. “I shouldn’t have brought you in here,” he says. “I should have known they’d be at it again.”
I scramble to read it. It says Gigi should watch her back. I trace my fingers over the words. Suddenly, I’m angry. “See anything else?”
He points to a picture to the left. It’s of me and Henri stretching that night in the basement studio. I rip it off.
“I can’t believe it,” is all I can say. “We were just stretching. He kind of crashed my alone time.” I’m fuming, and trying to keep it from showing on my face.
“Do you like him?” he says.
“Who, Henri?”
“Yeah.”
“No,” I say, wanting to add that I like him. But I don’t.
Alec doesn’t say anything, but I can see a small smile in the corner of his mouth. He takes the picture down, crushing it in his hand.
“I’m sorry I brought you here. All that stuff has ruined it.”
“No, I’m glad you did,” I say. “I should know what I’m in for, right? The enemy you know, and all that?”
“They did the same stupid stuff to Cassie,” he says, finally. “It started just like this. Notes left in her room or bag. Even stuffed in her shoes.”
“Who’s they? What exactly happened to her?” I ask, while still combing over the walls for anything else, my stomach churning with anxiety. His warning echoes Henri’s.
“It’s hard to be on top here. It’s even harder to be great and still have friends. Especially for the girls. The boys like the competition. We thrive on it. Makes us work harder. The girls make it dark, full of drama. The competition brings it out. They let it get to them and act crazy.” He tucks one of my curls behind my ear, and I try not to cringe, hating that he touched my hair when it’s all sweaty and has a ton of product in it. “Cassie had to take a rest. Well, she’s still resting.”
“A rest?” I say.
“Yes. While she was here she got hurt, and it affected her badly. So my aunt put her in an institution. My dad calls it a rehab center,” he whispers. “Please don’t tell anyone that. No one at all.”
“Of course not. What did they do to her?” I ask, the words careful and soft.
“All sorts of pranks,” he says without elaborating. “Then it all got to be too much.”
“Who did it?” I ask, unsure if I should bring up the fact that Bette left that message on the mirror.
“I don’t really know. A lot of different people. Making it hard for teachers and Mr. K to figure it out. Bette and her were close, and even she couldn’t find out.”
I try my best not to frown. Or think that Bette must’ve had something to do with it. She seems like she’s at the heart of everything in this school. He tells me about how they all used to hang out.
I nod, and turn away from him. A white page sticks out on the wall of colorful cutouts, folded over, inviting. I missed it before. Curiosity pushes me to look at the page while Alec looks at the opposite wall and talks about growing up with Cassie.
I gulp. It’s my medical report from late September. My latest EKG. The line’s spikes and dips go up and down like a kindergartner’s artwork, exposing my weird heartbeats. I rip it down and crumple it into an angry ball.
“What’s wrong?” Alec says, making his way to me.
“Just shocked about what happened to Cassie.” I feel horrible for lying, but he can’t know. No one can know. How did this get in here? Who would be able to find something like this? I tell myself to calm down, to breathe easy. I can’t get my heart to slow down, though. The stress. Or maybe it’s Alec.
His arm brushes mine. I let my hand slide into his. He leans forward, and I know we shouldn’t be in here, we shouldn’t be standing this close to each other, I shouldn’t like him. He surprises me with a kiss. A real one. Warm and wetter than I had expected and so deep I’m scared he will find out all my body’s terrible secrets just from the exploration of our mouths.
We kiss for so long my lips go numb. So long I forget to wonder whether he is Bette’s or mine or just his own person. So long I forget to protect myself, forget to control my breathing, forget to be afraid of anything at all. So long I don’t care about what things were put up on the walls around me.
And just when all the fear has drained from my body through the opening and closing and exploring of our mouths, it floods me again. I push him away a little. My heart is thumping hard, and I can’t catch my breath. This is wrong. I want him so much, but he’s not mine. Not yet.
“Bette,” I whisper as light as I can, not wanting the weight of her name to fill up the small room.
He tells me that they’re done. He tells me that he’ll tell her. He tells me how much he wants me. I press myself against him, kiss him first this time, letting the feeling of his lips and the taste of his mouth erase all the secrets and lies that are swirling around me.
WHEN I GET BACK TO my room after rehearsal, Eleanor’s there in her flannel pajamas with her eyes closed, deep in one of her visualizations. I hear her chanting each movement of the Snow Queen variation. I slam the door hard to snap her out of it. It’s Friday night, and I’m itching for some fun, but she’s already in pajamas. As usual. I try not to be furious.
“Alec came by,” she says, without any hint of irritation. She thinks we can talk about Alec like he’s a movie star or my prom date, but what I have with him is so much bigger, so much more serious, than any of that. “Looked sad you weren’t here. He said he texted you, and waited an hour in the stairwell for the RA to leave the hall.”
A smile starts inside me and turns itself outside. My heart squeezes and I hope she’s not just adding that “looking sad” bit to make me feel better. Alec and I haven’t been right since the last time he was over here. It feels like it’s been months. I squeeze my phone. Sometimes I don’t answer his texts right away because I want him to know that I’m busy. I want him to wait a little. I want him to know that I am a serious ballerina and life doesn’t stop for him. Even though it kind of does.
Eleanor’s phone starts to ring. She clicks it to silent. It starts up again. She tries to talk over the annoying pings.
“Who’s that?” No one ever calls her. Unless it’s me. Her mother’s even too busy to call her with all her starving siblings.
“No one.” Her face turns redder by the second, and her voice buzzes when she’s nervous, and it’s going crazy now, shaking and speeding up. “Did you like Morkie’s new additions to the solo? She’s moving away from—”
“I don’t care about rehearsal,” I say, eyeing her. I push again about the phone call and she won’t tell me, so I change the subject. “You tell Alec where I was?”
“I didn’t know where you were. Where were you?”
“Who was calling you?” I snap back.
Eleanor sighs. “My older brother.” She’s lying. She doesn’t make eye contact and her bottom lip does a little quiver. I know her too well. When did we start keeping secrets from each other? I can’t let her know it bothers me, though. She’ll need me soon. That’s for sure. It’s always that way.
“Anyway, Alec left you a note,” she says.
I am a crush-struck twelve-year-old when she hands me the ripped sheet of notebook paper with Alec’s familiar handwriting on it. My heart surges, the way it used to when we were thirteen and just learning how to kiss each other.
B, Koch Theater? I’ll be on the steps. —A
I tell Eleanor not to wait up and to cover for me if anyone checks, which they won’t. As long as we’re at rehearsal, at classes, and making weight, the teachers and RAs and nurse don’t actually care what happens to us.
Once or twice a semester, we take what Alec calls a “field trip” to the Koch Theater, late enough at night that the curtain has already fallen on whatever show is happening there, and the janitors will gladly take a few hundred bucks to ignore us. Alec’s got access, his parents are on the board of everything, and he has a way of learning security codes and passwords. It’s just one more thing I like about him. Good guy, but still interesting.
When I get to the theater entrance, he’s there, in his red-striped scarf and gray wool peacoat. His eyes flutter across my face like he’s really not looking at me.
“Hey, stranger,” I say, resting my hand on his forearm, familiar and safe, trying to warm things up. I’m thinking about Thanksgiving break looming and being alone in his room at home and making up for lost time. That big, plush king bed and his freshly washed sheets that always smell like lavender.
“Come on, it’s cold,” he says, not pulling me in for a hug or kiss. He taps in the right security code and we enter the backstage area. It’s pitch-black, so we search for lights by running our hands all over the walls. They startle on, or at least a few bulbs do. The stage is half-lit, the auditorium is all dark, and Alec and I are alone at last. The wings are empty and the curtains hold the familiar smell of velvet, of dust, of something I can’t describe.
Alec climbs onto the stage, does a few quick but precise jumps and turns, and then sits on the polished floor with a distinct lack of reverence. I approach the stage more carefully. It’s my church. Even when I forget what it felt like to be a tiny dancer, the expansive and imposing stage makes me feel small and light and alive again.
I lie on the floor and stare at the high ceiling and imagine myself in costume, perfecting the most complicated and intricate choreography Morkie or Mr. K could possibly conjure. I want to sleep onstage, and always feel the warmth under rows and rows of lights, twinkling like faraway stars. Usually, Alec and I would roll around a little, his hands in my hair, mine in his, the wood creaking under us and the lights warming us up even more. But today all he does is frown down at me.
I sit up. “I’ve kind of missed rehearsing with you,” I say, widening my eyes. I try to lean my head on his shoulder, but he scoots away. “I love you, you know.”
He doesn’t say it back, so I just let the words sit in the almost dark. They echo. We are too small and too uncertain for such a majestic space.
“Bette?” My name sounds good in his mouth. Sweet. He barely hits the t at the end.
“Mmm-hmm?” I make the sound as sleepy and sexy as I can. The hum vibrates and my lips are stirred from the sensation. I want to kiss him desperately.
“Look, I brought you here,” Alec says after a brief pause, “to tell you face-to-face that it’s over.”
I don’t think I heard him right. But then he starts again.
“We can’t be together anymore. We’ve always done this on-off thing. We just can’t anymore.”
Each word punches my chest. I shudder away from him, wondering if I’ll ever take a full breath again. My eyes, my lungs, my heart all sting.
“Over?” I start, knowing if I yell the sound will be magnified and echoed back to me with terrible accuracy. “You think that’s it?”
I want to control my voice so badly, but my insides are pounding with emotion and even my bones seem to be throbbing from the hurt.
“You’re still one of my oldest friends—”
“Friends?” I say. The word is way too little to fit the bigness of Alec and me inside it. I am so small on this huge stage. I want to be wrapped in a blanket and curled into a cozy space, not lost in the magnitude of the history here. It doesn’t feel safe. And his words hit like bullets.
“It’s just time. We’ve kind of been off for a while.”
“Off?”
“It’s just been weird this year. It’s time. Even Will noticed—”
A white-hot hate for Will explodes in my chest. “Will’s in love with you.”
The words come out bitter and spiteful and obviously I have lost focus, because as much as I hate Will, I never wanted Alec to know that. The reason Will and I aren’t friends, the betrayal of your best friend saying he’s in love with your boyfriend and expecting you to sympathize, to be kind about it. He asked me to stop being so affectionate with Alec, because it hurt him. It still makes my heart pound with anger. And now he’s told Alec to break up with me. What else has he told him? What else will he tell Alec?
“What about Will?” Alec says with shock, as if he didn’t hear the words. The truth.
I don’t repeat the words that changed everything between Will and me this summer. “You heard me.”
We sit in silence.
“I shouldn’t have even brought him up,” Alec says. “Please don’t say stuff like that about Will, though, okay? He’s my best friend. Aside from you. Let’s just … Let’s forget this part of the conversation.” His eyes look watery, like he might cry. Alec is too soft, Adele has always said. But it’s part of what I love about him: the secret soft space that isn’t too far below the surface.
“I need us to be okay even though we’re not the same us anymore,” he says. “It’s just time, I think.”
But it will never be okay. It’s broken, whatever we had. And things will never be the same.
I don’t let him walk me back to school. Instead, I go to Adele’s. One avenue west of school. The cold freezes any tears welling up inside me, and I take two pills. I’ll have to text my dealer for more after my mother gives me my weekly allowance. I’m running low. Adele’s place is a decent doorman building with marble floors in the foyer and pretty fake plants. A lot of the dancers live here, usually together. It’s nothing like the town house we grew up in, but Adele calls it cute. The doorman lets me in. He’s seen enough of me, and probably way too much of my mother.
I take the elevator up to the seventh floor. I knock light at first, then harder. She doesn’t like unplanned visits. If we could schedule our phone calls and rehearse our chats, she’d be even happier. The door opens only a slit. Adele’s sleepy blue eyes stare back at me. Her thick blond hair falls around her shoulders perfectly, like she hasn’t just gotten out of bed. Willowy white legs stand in flawless formation. Even just standing in the hallway in the middle of the night, she’s a model of grace and the perfect ballerina.
“Bette, what is it?” She doesn’t move to the side to let me in. “It’s late. Everyone’s sleeping.” She lives with three other American Ballet Company members.
“Can I come in?” I ask. “It’s only eleven.”
“And tomorrow’s opening night for our Nutcracker season. Or did you forget?” Her eyebrow lifts, and she leans forward just like our mother to inspect me.
The fog of Alec’s breakup and losing the Sugar Plum Fairy is distracting me from things I’m supposed to know. I should have the company’s opening nights and closing nights memorized if I want to be part of them one day. I should’ve remembered that she does eight ballets a season as a soloist, so she’s perpetually tired and distracted.
“Your pupils are all dilated.” She reaches a hand for my locket before I can step back. “Chill with these, okay?”
I pull away. I thought my pills were a secret. “With what?”
“You know what I’m talking about. I can tell.”
I’ve never been quite good at lying to my sister. “I’ve just … it’s just—I just—”
“Go back to the dorms. Take a hot shower. Until you’re pink. Until you’ve gotten it together. Then call me. Tomorrow.” She closes the door before I can say anything else, and there I am, alone again.
The next day, Mr. K cuts rehearsal short, and if I was the kind of girl that sent thank-you notes, I’d send him one. Being around Alec after the news he dropped on me is too much. So I choose to not deal with it. Instead, I focus on the glitter. It’s all about the glitter. Red lips, eyes lined in purple, glitter on my cheeks, my shoulders, my collarbone, any part of me I want them to look at.
“Whoa,” Eleanor says when she opens the door to our room. I haven’t chosen a dress yet, so I’m mostly naked, except for heels and layers of makeup and my locket.
“Get your ass in gear.” I’m dragging her out tonight for a little fun and distraction. It’s Saturday, after all, and normal sixteen-year-olds in New York City would be out.
“Rehearsal sucked, huh?” Eleanor says, stripping off her leotard and tights. Her hair’s still in a bun and I reach over to undo it myself. “Alec joining us?”
I flinch, signaling to her that I don’t want to talk about it. I haven’t told her or Liz anything. I don’t even want to picture his face: his smile full of pity while watching me dance the Snow Queen variation and not the Sugar Plum Fairy, the sound of his whistle after Gigi danced. It’s probably for the best he won’t hook up with me right now. I don’t want someone looking at me like that when we’re kissing, touching, having sex. I’ll just wait until he wants me again. Until he sees I’m still better than everyone else. I think he’s just confused about his feelings right now. Has to be. He’s never danced a pas with anyone but me. I’ll forgive him for not knowing what to do. And for us not having our usual amount of time together.
“Just me, you, and Liz tonight,” I say, clipping the words.
“Alec was being too nice to Gigi,” Eleanor starts. “I even saw—”
“We’re not talking rehearsal anymore tonight. Or Alec. And most of all Gigi,” I order. “Get your hair down and your boobs out.”
I’m a little giddy from coffee and pills and all the adrenaline of dancing for the last five hours. Eleanor pulls away from my hands in her hair. It’s a mess of congealed hair spray and sweaty strands, and a shower of bobby pins rains from her scalp to the hardwood floor. We’ve been playing with each other’s hair and helping each other in and out of costumes since we were little girls. There’s really no distinction between her body and my own. Backstage, she’ll help me pull my costumes on and off for quick changes, and I’ve always helped her perfect her makeup.
“You’re cleaning those up.” She gestures to the spilled bobby pins. Already she’s pushing her hair back into a less structured but still painfully tight ponytail. As she pulls it back, her eyebrows rise. Her face is too chubby; the whole thing makes her look fat. “I’ll clean them up while you get ready,” I say.
“I’m tired, and so many parts of my body hurt. Do we have to go out?” Eleanor says, but even as she whines she grabs her towel and turns toward our private bathroom, because she knows I’m not taking no for an answer. “And is our laundry back?” she asks, like it’s her housekeeper who washes, folds, and delivers our laundry to the front desk every three days. “This is my last towel.”
“Yeah, it came today. Your bag is in your closet.” I riffle in the bright pink laundry bag on my bed. “Found these, too.” I dangle a pair of frilly black panties that are straight out of a lingerie store. “They aren’t mine. Are you hiding something from me, El?”
Her mouth drops open. She grabs at them and starts to stutter out a million reasons why she has something other than her usual cotton underwear. How it’s nothing. How they were a gift.
“You want someone to see those, don’t you?” I say.
She tries to change the subject. “I should just go to bed. So tired.”
“It’s Saturday night. No Pilates tomorrow. We’re going out! You can wear the silver dress.” I take out the shiny minidress I bought over the summer, the one she fell in love with, hanging it on the closet door for maximum effect. Eleanor walks up to the dress with religious reverence and touches the fabric.