Tiny Pretty Things (14 page)

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 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.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

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 action, 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 at last, 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 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. I can’t say a word.

“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 and wonder 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.