River: A Novel (2 page)

 “I don’t
know what to do,” was my reply. I had no volume, yet the voice seemed to hear me
just fine. It was familiar. A confidante. 

 “
El-ooo-dieee… DANCCCCCE…
El-ooo-dieee
,”
it hissed, as if furious that I didn’t comprehend its instructions.
“
Dance
with us… Elodie…
come home
.”  
The words were very inviting—
home
. 

 “But I
can’t,” I whispered pitifully.

 My name was
clear in the water, and the voice became even more familiar. “Elodie
dance…
”
Barely audible at the end, the words began receding into the dense wood.

 “No, don’t
leave,
please
.” I drew in a ragged breath and exhaled in defeat. But I
couldn’t let it go—because this was what I wanted… what I needed. When the
light of the moon reflected from my little pool, I saw stars in it
. Don’t
black holes consume
stars?
I shivered violently. My teeth chattered
so hard that I lost the ability to talk to myself or to strange alien voices. It
was balmy in the dark circle, and I splashed a little water on my face. It
hardened to frost while cooling my fevered cheeks. As the steam formed a
ghostly pas de deux off my fingertips, the icy vapors dissolved with the silver
moonlight. The voice had disappeared. I decided that maybe I could hear more
words if I just touched the water; it was like warm rain on a hot, humid day.

 Drowning
had always been a fear of mine, but it felt as if all the dread I carried in
this world had been turned off, and
I was free, above it. Not bothering to remove my boots, I
watched as my limbs moved on their own, turning amorphous within the steam floating
above the surface of the water.

 Slowly, my
leg lowered itself into the mystery. It was the damaged one that went under as
I held on to the ice with my hip lodged against the edge. And then I let go. Even
though I couldn’t think straight, I felt there was no choice—this was it. I did
not feel buoyant in the pool, and it was thicker the deeper I went, like warm
syrup. My body was swallowed slowly
as it resisted and pulled me at the same time. For a brief
second, I thought of Ophelia, but had no idea why. I wasn’t killing myself—I was
going home. The notion was gone as quickly as it had come, along with the
feeling of being suspended. Before my head went under, I heard my name being called
in the distance and low laughter closing in.
How strange,
I thought
fleetingly. My mind blanked as I sank into honeyed quicksand
.

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

 
I had not
known anything was wrong until I had tried to stand. After shifting my weight,
I’d cried out before stumbling back down to the floor. It had been a semi-difficult
combination: several fouetté rond de jamb en tournant into sauté arabesque, landing
on left knee. I had brushed it off at first—
No… it’s just a sprain, a pulled
muscle.
But the X-ray had confirmed it: a shattered patella. The recovery
had not been a success. Several pins had been shoved into my knee to hold it
together, and after contracting a serious infection, my way of life had ended. The
head of the company had only shrugged. Having recently turned eighteen, I had
been long overdue for an injury. 

 “You can
teach or stage, become a choreographer
.
This doesn’t have to end your life in
the dance world,”
she had finally
said after noticing my sullen reaction.

 No, I couldn’t
have been around ballet. If I had been forced to watch others move to the music
in my head, it would’ve been torture. It hadn’t had anything to do with ego; I’d
always just found joy in my own world, often dancing in empty studios without judgment.
My decision hadn’t been a matter of pride, but of heartbreak. I’d never fit in very
well with most of the other dancers at The Studio, anyway. My best friend
Petra had been the exception.

 “I’ll
think about it,”
I’d
mumbled, though I had already known the answer.

 That had
been an hour before I had cried in the shower.
This must be what it feels like
to lose the love of your life.
My next thought had been a vow to never love
anything again, if I could help it. 

 Now, many weeks
later, I was lining up job interviews. Well, one interview. Staying at Dan’s
was completely transitory, especially since I was feeling vulnerable. I didn’t
want to do anything stupid. Well,
excessively
stupid. Dan’s job on the
side was an amateur deejay, and he’d talked the manager into giving me a shot
at waitressing. Combined with a day job, I could possibly afford my own place
somewhere. I was better off on my own; growing up in foster care had caused me to
love solitude. Reading a book in a quiet room with a fireplace, even a fake
one, was all I wanted out of life. 

 The first
thing I noticed was one of the worst headaches in memory. While beginning to
wake up, I was irritable because I had to go to the job interview. The fog of
dreams still clung to me, and I tried to embrace the calm, drifting sensation. Wishing
I could go back to sleep, all I fathomed was the pain that consumed my skull. I
braced myself to move and hopefully ingest some kind of pain killer. My body
felt extremely heavy, as if weights had been attached to every muscle. Cursing
myself for the foolishness of once again being Dan’s pharmaceutical guinea pig,
I attempted to crack an eye open. A millimeter into it, my eyelid snapped shut.
Without trying to recover myself, I was unconscious.

 Time was
acting strangely. Feeling as though it should be morning, it was still dark. Not
just nighttime, but midnight-black. How could there not even be a sliver of
starlight? Reminding me of daylight reflecting across the snow, the moon had
been incredibly bright earlier. That was another thing—shouldn’t it be cold? I
had dipped my body into a frozen lake, hadn’t I? I should at least
be
chilled, if not succumbed to hypothermia. But I could feel
nothing except the slow, throbbing waltz in my aching skull. No frostbitten
fingers, no aching patella full of pins. Nothing.

 I must
be dead
.

 For some
reason, I’d always thought I would know it when I died, or at least be aware of
some sort of change.
Congrats, you can’t even die right. No angel wings for
you… idiot.
It dawned on me that suicides didn’t enter into heaven,
according to what I’d heard, though that had not been my intention. I attempted
to bargain with the universe:
I was just following orders, not
of my
right mind…
druggie, remember?  Suggestive voices were telling me to go
home
—
that’s
all I’d wanted. So, this is what I
get for
infinity? Dark
matter eating me alive and nothing
except my
thoughts to keep me company
?
Great.
No more escaping my own brain with
pharmaceutical assistance. Getting what I deserved. But it had felt so right, disappearing
into the molten pool of melted ice, warm and numbing comfort. How could I have been
entirely wrong?

 As I contemplated
my non-existence, something peculiar began to occur. Unaware of it at first, I
slowly noticed needles pricking my dead flesh until they demanded attention. Blood
returned to my limbs, painfully in the beginning. The atrophied appendages were
shocked back to life. I visualized a river rushing through a long corridor of
dry, cracked canyons, whose dusty fissures hadn’t seen moisture in eons. As
circulation began to flow in a warm gush, my senses were coming back to me as
well. There was a muffled thump, yet my eyes were still glued shut. I realized
with a jolt that I wasn’t breathing. That I
couldn’t
breathe. I was
underwater. 

 Suddenly,
my body was moving. I was gliding in a direction I couldn’t pinpoint while
something hooked my arm. Sloshing water and noises echoing in circles were making
me dizzy. I was slowly dragged up and out, then sprawled onto a hard surface. My
right ear was clogged, making sounds weak on that side. Maybe I was suffering
from hypothermia. It didn’t seem cold, though I knew it had to be. I felt my
body being covered up. Exposure was the very least of my problems, because I
still couldn’t breathe. My lungs wouldn’t listen when my brain screamed at them
to be useful. The heaviness in my chest, full of liquid, not air, was all I
could focus on as the realization hit that my limbs had gone dead again. 

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

Cold.
It was my first thought in what felt
like a long time.
Cold. Weird dream.
I had been dreaming endlessly. Then
there was nothing but arctic air. I heard a rustling in my thrumming, frozen
ears, and abruptly knew I was not in my borrowed bed at Danny’s. It felt very
open and exposed.
Crap. What am I doing outside?
I pried apart my swollen
eyes. My clothes were stiff, as though they had been wet and forced to dry in
odd angles draping my body. While blinking, my vision blurred. I was facing a
concave line of trees, curled up in frozen dirt. 
 

 My folded glasses
were next to me. Not askew, but as if someone had carefully placed them. The
shuffling noise when I moved startled me. The only other sounds were the slight
crackle of dry leaves whenever the wind knocked them and a stifled waterfall. Turning
my head to the right, I was
surprised I could hear out of that ear, though I couldn’t place the wayward
thought’s origin. The sound on
that side of my body was an iced-over lake; the edges a bit thawed. That was
where I lay, almost touching the frozen mud. 

 Unsteadily
sitting up, I desperately attempted to force my memory to work. My thoughts
were gridlocked in an impenetrable knot while circles of near memories eluded
me. I’d never been great at remembering names and always wanted to call people
someone else, especially the other dancers. Without really paying attention, I had
told them to go with it. The other kids would roll their eyes at me. “Crazy
orphaned chick
”
had been my nickname
when I’d first arrived at The Studio. 

 I’d been
looked after by Nanette, the director. Once Petra Loiscvich had joined my side,
the behind-my-back whisperings subsided. At The Studio, Petra was royalty. Her
parents had been principals in various companies and carried a world renowned
last name. Our friendship had bloomed out of nowhere. Or maybe it had been the
love of a TV show neither of us ever missed. Every week, it had been the two of
us commandeering the tiny dorm commons to
watch. At first, we had just smiled shyly at each other, and then
we were having conversations about the show over pizza, before finally divulging
our life stories.

 Though
completely different in our backgrounds, we were equals in our love of kick-ass
spy shows. Later, Petra had told me that she could’ve watched it on her laptop,
of which I didn’t own, but she liked to watch the show with me. This revelation
secured her place as my best friend—something I’d never had before. I’d kept
everyone at arm’s length in my youth. Being abandoned when you are a baby did
that to a person. 

 The walls
went back up after she had left on tour with the
NYC Ballet. We would e-mail sometimes, but Petra was
married to the stage now. I didn’t tell her about my injury; she would have only
become paranoid that something similar would happen to her. She had always been
a bright ray of sunlight while I was a dark storm cloud, threatening her
horizon. I didn’t want to be that, and the wall had gone up between us slowly,
brick by brick. As soon as I’d begun attempting to kill the pain by using, the
bricks were in front of my eyeballs. I didn’t need to add my baggage to hers. Petra
wasn’t coming home any time soon, anyway. 

 “I wish you
were here now,” I whispered. 

 Talking to
myself brought me back to my predicament. A recollection snapped into place, one
of very few coherent memories in my newly conscious mind. The last thing I
could remember was Danny at the party.
Did he give me something that erased
my short-term memory?
I considered with annoyance. Doubtful… but then I
wouldn’t remember any warnings. He could’ve written some instructions in
permanent marker on my hand or something
helpful like that.

 Danny had always
at least told me the basic downfalls of his creations, typically after I’d
ingested them, but still. “
Here’s the rub,”
he’d said once
, “this one
makes you really
thirsty
and you might cry when
you
hear
show tunes
.” After that particular disclosure, he’d just happened upon a mountainous
playlist of Broadway hits. It had been awhile before I’d regained composure
enough to unplug his computer, and then force him to take me out for gourmet
coffee and jazz.    

 Still
unable to enjoy an evening of musical theater without freakishly bursting into
tears, I usually took the consequences of Danny’s little experiments seriously.
It was always worth it, though, for the numbness, escape, stimulation, etcetera.
In my heart, I couldn’t believe he would have intentionally violated me; an action
like that just wasn’t Danny
.
He was more the
court jester than evil villain of the
story. And I
knew
the memory of what had happened to me was tucked away somewhere
inside my fried brain.