Shiny Broken Pieces (17 page)

I CAN
'
T WAIT TO SEE
Eleanor's face. I moved in earlier this week, but she's been too busy, apparently, to welcome me back. I can't wait to plop down with her on the sofa, pop in
Breakfast at Tiffany's
, and fall asleep under the same fuzzy blanket. I can't wait to hear the soft, consistent up, up, down rhythm of her snores, so familiar to me they're like a lullaby. I feel like I'm finally home.

When I open the door, the room is dark, quiet. Empty. She's not there. It's 11:30 now, way past curfew, way past lights-out. I flip on the lamp. I walk around “our” room, trying to get comfortable.

This year, Eleanor's definitely claimed her space, draping the little sofa with a teal throw and pillows, scattering piles of dog-eared dance mags on the floor near her bed. There's an open, half-eaten tub of hummus—that she definitely shouldn't be eating, not after the peanut incident—sitting on top of the
minifridge. In my absence, Eleanor's inner slob has come out. I thumb through her dance notebooks, with the Odette and Odile movements marked out lovingly, as I wait for her to come home.

Settling in on the couch, I shove Eleanor's tattered copy of
Wuthering Heights
to the floor. There's no space for me here. Maybe that means there's no space left for me in her life either.

Thirty minutes pass. Then an hour. I've had enough of the waiting. I stand up and gather the book and the magazines. I stack them neatly on her desk, mopping up crumbs with my disinfectant. I empty two of the dresser drawers—still annoyed that she thought she could just have the whole thing, that she didn't realize this room was also being saved for me and put her bras and underwear in a laundry basket on her bed. Underneath them, though, are a few lacy ones that definitely look like they've come from a lingerie catalogue, that are meant to be seen. A panic hits me.

I remember that night at the hospital, the kiss I wasn't supposed to see. I scroll through the pictures on my phone to the ones from that day. I zoom in on Mr. K kissing a sleeping Eleanor. I click off my screen, shuddering. I have to talk to Eleanor. I practice the words in my head, how I'll ask her.

I grab my toiletry kit and robe and head into the bathroom. I need to wash the weight of today off. When I come back out, an Eleanor-shaped lump is in the bed across from mine, the covers pulled from head to toe, her deep snore cutting through the quiet.

“Eleanor?”

I'm answered by a whistling snore.

“El?”

I push down the lump in my throat. I climb into my bed, and let that familiar rhythm soothe me to sleep.

Gigi's all over me before class. We're at the barre and she keeps turning her head to look at me, as if every moment is surreal. I guess it is, because no one thought I'd be back, especially not her. Even after I told everyone the truth and Will had to leave, it's like they're still waiting for that to somehow be untrue.

I hold my gaze straight ahead, which only makes her crane her neck more, like if she gets her face right in front of mine I'll give her whatever it is that she wants. Morkie's calling out orders, so I'm in military mode. If necessary I'll salute her. I'll do anything to get my old life back.

“Is it weird to be back?” some new girl behind me whispers while Morkie grabs June's arm and pulls it practically out of its socket to get it into position.

“No.” I say it under my breath. She should know better than to have a conversation in the middle of class. We turn to face the other side of the studio. With June's arm in place, Morkie goes back to yelling out positions, and I watch myself in the mirror on the opposite wall as I move through each order. I've missed the way we look all in a line, reflected in the mirror. It's almost meditative, getting lost in the swish of toes brushing the floor, the bending and straightening of knees in perfect time, the triangle of space between all our thighs making a distinct pattern in the mirror.

Mostly, I like the way my own body fits into the perfect
synchronization in the mirror. When I am truly focused on the precision of the movements, I can forget which legs belong to me, which feet are mine, and the fact that I almost lost all this.

I'm just about in that state when Eleanor's feet get out of time with the music and with Morkie's staccato demands. Her feet flex when they are supposed to point, the left foot drags on the floor instead of the right.

I let out an aggravated huff of breath, but it's too late to get back in the zone. I'm a beat behind. I trip over my own feet just in time for Morkie to catch me. I don't just slip up; I catch my left foot on my right ankle and my knees bend and I have to fight a full-on drop to the floor.

“
Bette!
” Morkie says. Then she's right up in my face, her nose almost touching mine. Her breath smells like coffee and cough drops, but I stop my nose from wrinkling.

“Sorry.” I try to just enter the movement, the pattern, without another word. Morkie stands directly in front of me, though, so I can't see myself or anyone else in the mirror, and my heart thumps with awareness at her singular focus on me. “You are making a mess. Too much time out of my classroom.”

I can't get my breathing under control and my limbs don't seem to be listening to Morkie at all. I should've taken a pill before ballet class. I can't trust my brain or my body anymore.

“Sit this one out.” Morkie has a curl of disgust in her voice.

I slip out of line and don't argue. But I do let my gaze land hard on Eleanor. She bites her bottom lip and her eyes go wide. She won't look back at me though.

Morkie turns her attention to Gigi's feet, not touching them,
but rather conducting them, the way one would an orchestra. Her fingers dance in the air, and Gigi's flawless feet align themselves in response. Morkie grins, like she herself is making Gigi's delicate movements happen.

I look away. Gigi doesn't exist to me. That's what the lawyers said. You don't even look at her. She is a ghost.

The piano music stops when Morkie stops calling out orders, and we exhale as a group, except I am on the sidelines and everyone else is at the barre, working their legs through slow movements and experiencing the momentary euphoria of having driven through hell. Morkie releases them to stretch.

“Bette, you come,” she yells, which means I'm going to have to work on technique with her whispering in my ear and the other girls watching as they cool down.

I nod and approach the barre. It is my best friend and my nemesis. We spar and we make up.

“Toes!”

I rise up, gripping the barre with the hope that today it will be a lifeboat. I tell my mind to stay quiet so that I can hear Morkie and respond with my body without a hitch. Eleanor wisely stays out of my sight line, and June is in her corner, lifting her leg to the ceiling as usual. But Gigi is right in front of me. Her legs are spread and she keeps inching them farther and farther apart until they are practically a straight line that her long, lovely torso grows from.

I fight looking at her, but my gaze drifts to the dark ringlet of hair that's escaped from her bun and the beautiful way her neck meets her collarbone. I can see Alec's fingers on the symmetrical
bones, his palm fitting perfectly around the curve of her shoulder. I feel like I'm back in that same place I was last year. What is it about this girl?

“You want to be a ballerina again?” Morkie breaks into my thoughts and grabs my thigh with both hands. “You want to dance, again, yes?” She isn't as gentle as Yuli as she forces a turnout, making the bones and muscles spread more than is physically possible. Her fingers are tight on my flesh, and I'm aware of the imperfections I've developed the last few months: the slight shift in ratio from muscle to fat, the extra few fractions of an inch that the costume mistress will measure in our upcoming fitting, the laziness of my hips not wanting to turn all the way out, the half-second lag in my feet. An almost invisible change, but not to someone like Morkie who has been poking and prodding every inch of my body since I was six. “This is not the way a dancer moves,” Morkie says at last.

My muscles scream with pain. Her hands move to my hips, forcing them open. Then she puts a palm to my shoulder blades, pressing until they touch behind my back. “You work harder.” Everyone can hear her. Their faces all light up, dozens of pairs of eyes twinkling at my humiliation.

“Yes, madame.”

I do not blush. I do not tremble.

“One more time.” The edge in her voice is cutting, but there's kindness in her eyes. Or if not kindness, then certainly generosity. She wants me to do well.

She claps her hands, the music starts, she calls out what she wants my body to do, and I do it. I watch my body in the mirror
like it's someone else's, and for a full three minutes, I am a prima ballerina again. I am long limbs and a blond halo and alabaster skin. I am a series of perfect shapes, slipping into each other: a curve to an arrow-straight line to a wide V shape to an impossible slope in my back. Morkie claps again when she has seen enough of this series.

“There she is.” A smirk plays at her lips, and her eyes betray what her touch will not. I know I'm back. And that at least one person is happy about that fact.

It's way past midnight and Eleanor still hasn't come to the room. She's avoiding me again. She's been mostly missing every night this week since I got back, doing her homework in the hall lounge, dancing late into the night, crawling into bed hours after I'm asleep. She's pulling the same thing tonight, creeping in now, quietly pulling on her pajamas, not even brushing her teeth for fear of waking me. For fear of having to even speak to me. For fear of confrontation.

But I'm not sleeping. Tonight, she's going to have to talk.

“What the hell, Eleanor?” I sit up in bed. She startles, stumbling as she gets the nightshirt over her head. “You've been avoiding me for days.”

I'm halfway across the room when she rushes to the bathroom, locking herself inside. I just don't understand it. I didn't push Gigi, and even Gigi knows that; most of the other girls have been cordial, if not friendly. But here's my best friend since we were six, avoiding me like I'm the most disgusting person on earth.

I bang on the bathroom door. “Open up. We have to talk.”

“Why wouldn't I avoid you, Bette?” Her snappy voice is one I've never heard before. It radiates through the door. “You come back here—with your big surprise—and think everything's going to be the same again.”

“Why can't it be?”

She comes slamming through the door, and I can see she's shaking. But I'm right in her path, and I'm not letting her walk away. Not this time.

“I'm not your friend anymore. I'm not that person you can boss around again.”

“I tried to fix it all. I tried to tell you what was happening. You wouldn't answer my calls.” I'm balling my fists. “Even the lawyers—”

“I don't want to hear about you and your innocence and your lawyers. You knew you'd be fine. You're Bette. You're always fine. Before you're even back, you land Odile. I've worked for years and do everything I can, you don't even know—”

“I know.” I let the words stand and take on a life of their own.

“You don't know. You don't know anything—”

“No, listen, I'm telling you. I know.” She's staring at me hard, desperate, trying to erase what I've just said, its implications. “I know everything.”

I hold her gaze. “I know about Mr. K.”

A thousand emotions wash over her face: anger, sadness, confusion, disbelief. And finally embarrassment. “You can't. How could you? Did you—”

“I saw you with him. On Halloween. And then again at the hospital.”

“Did he see you?”

“No, he didn't. I didn't let him. Eleanor, you've got to—”

“It's nothing. It was just . . . You don't know anything. He's like a father to me, he worries, ever since—it's nothing at all.” She turns her back to me, her shoulders shaking with sobs.

“I don't believe you, Eleanor.” I'm just inches away from her, and I want to hug her, but I can sense that it would be the wrong thing to do right now.

I step closer to her. My hand touches her shoulder. Her panic rises again. She's shoving me away, then lunging at me. She's full of rage, her nails clawing the flesh of my wrists, digging deep enough to draw blood. I back up all the way near our beds, until there's no place left to go.

“Listen to me.” I grab her hands, her shoulders, making her stop, trying to get her to focus. She shoves me all the way to our room door. My head bangs against it. The pain shoots through me. “I know. It's okay. I told you, I'm not going to tell anyone. I'm not going to say anything.” She's crumbling to the floor, so I go down with her. “It's okay, Eleanor,” I whisper into her hair. “It's over, right? It's done with? So no one has to know.”

As much as it might thrill me to finally get back at Mr. K for all the years of torture he's put me through—and everything he still has planned for me—this time, I mean it. I'll keep Eleanor's secret as if it were my own. I need her to need me. I need her to want to be my friend again. “It's me, Eleanor. It's Bette. You know I wouldn't—”

“Oh, but you would. You will.” She's still shaking, snot running down her tear-streaked face. “You don't know what it's like to have to work this hard, to have to give all of yourself over to
get just a tiny fraction of what you want. You've never known that, and you never will.”

She stands, her fury fueling her as she storms past me, bumping against the chair and the desk as she throws her body toward the bathroom again, slamming the door behind her. I can hear the cries on the other side of the door, the shattering sound of tears no one can stop, and all the power I felt the last few days, weeks, years, drains out of me. All this time, I'm realizing now, I was so focused on me. Even today, even just now, as Eleanor devolved into an ocean right there in front of me. I was worried about what this meant for me: my hold on Mr. K, the safety net of my friendship with her. I wasn't thinking about her at all. I never do. And that, I realize, could just cost me my best friend.