Leap (6 page)

We heard voices, thank God, and that made him stop. He threw his towel across me and rolled away. Otherwise … I hate to think what might have happened. I lay on the dock taking deep breaths and fumbling with my leotard. When I made it home, I told Mom I was sick and escaped to my room. Dizzy with sunstroke and beer and kisses. An underage drinker and worse. And none of this would have happened if Sasha hadn't called me a slut.

Saturday, July 10th

How to erase yourself: lie on a chaise longue and cover your face with a baseball cap. Keep a pitcher of iced tea beside you and balance a glass on your sternum. Drink from a bendable straw. Don't move. Don't talk. Don't obsess. (Forget about that guy's mouth on your neck, his hand on your leg, his weight on your chest …)

“Let's sleep under the stars tonight!” Paige said.

I groaned.

“What's the matter? Don't you think it would be fun?”

I didn't bother to move the cap. It had built-in ventilation holes but still smelled like sweated-in canvas. “I just can't get excited about anything today.”

“Fine.” Paige hates teenage apathy. “I'll call Jessica.” She stamped inside.

But Jessica can't make it, so it's back to me. I wish I didn't feel so low. I've taken two baths and brushed my teeth five times, but it's like washing a window that won't get clean. Fingerprints stay smudged on the wrong side of the glass.

Night

“Cassiopeia is supposed to be a woman tied to a chair,” Paige said. She learned constellations on a rainy day at her softball camp last week.

“Really?” I studied the pinpricks of light overhead. “It just looks like a
W
to me.”

We lay side by side in our sleeping bags on the balcony over the garage. The smell of resin wafted from a pair of fir trees that brushed the house. I breathed it in deep.

“It was her punishment for bragging about her and her daughter and how beautiful they were.”

“I can't imagine Mom bragging about us, can you?”

Paige thought about it. “I guess not.” She paused. “I'm sure she's proud of us, though.” Her statement hung in the air. “Aren't you?”

I had to struggle not to poison Paige's view of our parents with my own doubts. “I'm sure she's proud of
you
, Paige.”

Stargazing made my problems shrink, anyway: I was just one miniscule life form in an infinite cosmos. Every time I exhaled, the night air absorbed a little of my worry and left behind sweet fatigue. We spotted the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, and the North Star. Paige claimed to see a constellation called Lyra.
That would make a pretty name for a girl
, I thought, as I drifted further along the Milky Way.

When I woke up in the middle of the night, the stars had swept into different positions. It made me dizzy to think of the earth moving that fast underneath them. Next month, the meteor shower happens, and I wish Paige was staying so we could watch it. Or better yet, that I was going to Ontario with her. Maybe I can still get Dad to change his mind.

Sunday, July 11th

Mom, Paige, and I picnicked at Thetis Lake today. Mom regaled us with the plot of
Tess of the d'Urbervilles,
which she just finished re-reading. It was a bit much for Paige, and she went off to get a Popsicle at the concession stand. Mom was worked up about the way Tess's fiancé treats her once he discovers that she had a child without being married: as a used, impure woman. And even worse, Mom says that Tess only gets pregnant after being raped! Mom was really angry about the whole situation. She wasn't blaming the author; she says he was exposing the “hypocrisy and sexism in Victorian society.” (I think I'm quoting her right.)

My gross feeling lifted as she talked about it. For a few moments, nothing that happened this week mattered. Everything shifted perspective. That's the thing about Mom. She's so clueless that I could never tell her about fooling around with Kevin, or being called a slut, but sometimes she creates these mental viewpoints that give me a new way of seeing things. I dove into the clear green lake and swam to Goose Island—which was, as always, carpeted with turds.

Monday July 12th

As I approached the change room this morning, raised voices inside made me pause with my hand on the doorknob. Tension pushed Sasha's voice up half an octave. I heard Kevin's name and yanked open the door. Sasha had her back to me and was pulling on bike shorts, which Ms. Kelly allows instead of tights in hot weather. She spun around when she heard me and snapped her mouth shut. Jamie, never the most sensitive person, bulldozed ahead. “So what happens now? Will he go to jail?”

I couldn't hold back. “What happened?”

Jamie said, “Kevin was driving under the influence and he got into an accident.”

“Oh my God!”
How much of that beer did he drink at the lake?

“I'm not discussing this with her.” Sasha turned her back to me and rummaged in her knapsack.

Jamie glanced from Sasha to me and back. She looked almost smug, which confirmed my suspicion that she'd always resented our friendship. I waited to see whose side she would take, but I should have known. Jamie stepped up to Sasha, slipped one arm around her shoulders, and murmured words I couldn't make out—she was either building Sasha up or tearing me down, maybe both at once. Either way, my presence obviously grated on them. I bolted and, as I flung open the outside door, crashed into Lisa.

“What's wrong?” she said.

“Sasha's brother got into an accident and she won't talk to me. I've got to get out of here.”

She touched my arm. “Wait—I'll come with you. I heard Kevin's okay.”

Lisa guided me to Con Brio, a café on a corner a few blocks from the studio. It has two walls of windows, counters filled with newspapers and magazines, and long wooden tables where you can play chess or backgammon. I'd never been in. Sitting in cafés was for grown-ups.

Grown-ups.
Luckily, I didn't say that out loud. Older people, I meant. We crossed the threshold and entered the shop. Lisa—who
is
older, after all—ordered two iced lattes and chose a table for two in the window. The sun at her back made her dark hair glow with auburn highlights. She pushed one of the tall glasses across the table to me. We faced each other, stirring in sugar.

“I'll tell you what I know,” Lisa said. She didn't use the excited tone that Sasha reserves for juicy gossip. She was matter-of-fact. Her boyfriend and Kevin have friends in common, soccer players. They'd held an after-game party on Friday night. “The accident happened on his way home. He ran a red light and got sideswiped.” Lisa twisted her glass in her hands. The barista was hammering at the espresso machine.

Kevin didn't sustain serious injuries, but his license was suspended. He has to go to court and will miss the second half of tree-planting season. “His parents are so angry that they want him out of their place, like, yesterday.”

I stared at the tabletop.

Lisa touched my hand. “It could have been a lot worse. And I've seen other guys smarten up after an accident like that. In the meantime, I wouldn't take anything Sasha says too personally.”

I frowned at my glass and poked at the ice cubes with my stir stick. “Did you hear her call me a slut when I walked up to you guys at lunch on Friday?”

The roaring of the espresso machine drowned out Lisa's response. A young woman struggled to push a stroller into the café until a man entering behind her held the door. I chewed my lip and waited for the grinding, hissing, and banging to cease.

“No, I didn't,” Lisa said.

“I'm sure I heard her say it, and then I figured you'd all been talking about me.”

“I wouldn't have joined in that kind of gossip, Natalie.” The warmth in Lisa's face convinced me. Sasha may have her issues with me—maybe she even hates me right now—but that doesn't mean everyone at the studio sides with her. “How's your latte?”

I'd forgotten to try it. I took a sip: It tasted way more like a milkshake than I was expecting. “Delicious.” Being a grown-up might not be so bad.

Before I knew it, I was telling Lisa about seeing the fireworks with Kevin, the phone call asking me to sneak out, the trip to the lake—and the pain of having to keep it all from Sasha because of the Gina Incident.

No one had ever listened to me like Lisa. She radiated compassion like a heat lamp. It made me dissolve. My torso jerked and tears streamed down my face, warm and wet. I can't remember the last time I cried in front of someone. I let my hair fall forward to hide my face.

I wanted to ask Lisa so much more—was she having sex with her boyfriend, Luke? Had he pressured her into it, or did she really want to? When they were making out, did her skin ever feel numb, like it belonged to somebody else?

On second thought, there was no way Lisa was a “Doing it to stay together” sort of girl. I grinned at her and wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.

“Feeling better?”

“A little.”

“Why don't you rinse off your face, and we'll head back for ballet?”

As we approached the studio, Lisa grabbed my hand. “
Merde
.”

“Hm?”

“That means ‘good luck.' Dancers say it to each other before going on stage.” She chuckled. “But really, it's French for
shit
.”

Recorded piano music was drifting out the window. We were late for class.

“Then
merde
to you, too.” I returned Lisa's hand squeeze. “We'll need luck, 'cause we're in shit.”

We slipped into the studio when Ms. Kelly's back was turned. Without even turning around, she snapped, “Have you girls decided to grace us with your presence? How lucky we are!” Some of Lisa's strength must have rubbed off on me because Ms. Kelly didn't really get to me. I just took a deep breath and sucked in my belly.

At lunch, Sasha and Jamie left and didn't return for the afternoon. The way everyone keeps skipping classes, Ms. Kelly must think it's mutiny. She'll probably sit us all down for a lecture tomorrow.

Tuesday, July 13th

She walked into the studio like she was riding on wind. Her pants, cropped at the shin, billowed around her legs as she moved. Her torso bloomed out of her waist and branched into long, expressive arms. “Hello girls, my name is Petra. Welcome to Advanced Ballet. We'll start in the center.” Her voice rang with silvery tones: church bells, waterfalls.

We raised our eyebrows at each other, and not only because of her voice and her posture. No. We were shocked because every ballet class in our collective memory had started at the barre. Not Petra's. She led us in a series of arm swings and shifts of weight from leg to leg—to establish range of motion and center of gravity, she explained. She circled the room, oozing enthusiasm, and asked each of us our name and our favorite ballet step. As the class progressed, she worked each person's choice into the exercises.

At the end of class, Petra said, “It was my pleasure to teach you this morning, girls. Thank you for sharing your energy so generously. I look forward to working with such a gifted group of movers over the coming weeks.”

We gaped at each other as we filed into the change room.
It was my pleasure. Thank you for sharing.
No one had spoken to us like this before. We were all in so much shock that the tensions from yesterday were forgotten for the moment. We gathered on the lawn to eat lunch and pool our knowledge: Petra studied with Ms. Kelly up until five years ago. She belongs to the Vancouver company Ballet Now. She also creates and performs her own work as an independent choreographer. Ms. Kelly persuaded her to come and teach us on her summer break.

Sasha was half lying down, propped on an elbow. “She seems kind of fake to me.” She pulled up a piece of grass and chewed it.

“Yeah,” Jamie said. She was holding herself in plank position, balanced on forearms and toes, her elbows and ankles at right angles. Her biceps bulged.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I don't know,” Sasha said. “Kind of airy-fairy.”

“I think she's great,” Lisa said. “She's really encouraging. We could use more of that around here.”

“What do
you
think?” Sasha looked straight at me. It felt like she didn't want to soil her tongue with my name.

“It's too early to say for sure—”

Jamie sneered. “Cop out!”

“But so far, so good.”

Sasha spat out the chewed piece of grass.

Lisa looked at her watch. “It's almost time.” Our break lasted only forty-five minutes. “What's happening after lunch?”

I pulled out a crumpled paper schedule from my bag. “It just says, ‘Rehearsal.'”

In the studio, Petra was trying out some movement and consulting a sheet of handwritten notes. Ms. Kelly carried her observation chair to the front of the room and said, “Petra has agreed to set a piece on you senior girls for the showing.” She sat down and folded her hands. Her eyebrows arched in anticipation.