Up to This Pointe (20 page)

“Why do you do that?”

“What?”

“Take all the blame. Belittle your sadness.”

“Because…other people have real problems. People are sick. And starving. And they have terrible families. I'm in perfect health with a family who loves me, and I'm moping about
ballet.
And not just moping—I'm fully
agonizing.
I'm destroyed. I don't know what to do without it, and that's…” I'm getting worked up to cry. Again.

“Okay,” he says. “Yes, you're lucky you're middle-class and white, and you've got a great family, and they paid for classes when you were little—fine. But it's not
luck
that you've worked your ass off for the past fourteen years. If you were Chinese, my mom would be in love with you. She'd be planning the wedding.”

Drums and bells crash in the street below.

“That's the second marriage reference you've made in the space of an hour.”

“Harp, it's a huge, catastrophic fuck-up you're getting through. It's okay to be sad about it.”

“Can we ever talk about you?”

“There's nothing to talk about.”

“You were premed. Now you make games. Your mom seems kind of racist. That it?”

He puts a bunch of rice into the vegetable container.

“I love science. I thought I wanted to be a doctor. My parents
really
wanted me to be a doctor. But it turns out? I also really love sitting around in my boxer shorts playing
Halo.
”

“I thought I made that up. Is that a thing?”

“Hell yes. It's just reality.”

“Okay.”

“And there's
my
guilt—I could be dedicating my life to helping people, healing them. And I choose
video games
?”

“So go back to med school.”

“Yeah,” he says. “You'd think. I was going to take just a semester off when Lucas first offered. Then it turns out that nearly every single minute of every day, I am so happy at work. Even when it's really hard—especially when it's hard.”

“Wow.”

“I know! And they do this thing, with Make-A-Wish—you know, where kids are really sick and they can have a wish granted, like the thing they love most in life to happen just once?”

“Yeah?”

“So, some of the kids choose to come see us making games. That's their whole wish in the entire world—to watch us drawing, or see how we build the levels or whatever. A kid came in a few months ago, and she's bald and super little, and you just think—if you could trade places. But the whole time she was there, she was
so happy.
And I thought, that's a worthwhile thing; making something that makes people happy—that matters, too. That's a life.”

The parade is starting. It is crawling along the wide streets below us, music and lights, convertible cars with political candidates waving from jump seats. Firecrackers.

“This is the Year of the Sheep,” he says.

“Oh yeah?”

“It's a really good year. Fortune-full.”

“It's going great so far.”

He smiles kindly, puts his hand on my knee. “And you were born in the Year of the Tiger.”

“I know. I've seen the paper placemats in restaurants.”

“So you know you're spazzy and can't settle down in relationships, but you're an incredibly hard worker?”

“You're making that up.”

“I'm a Rat. Cheerful. Impatient. Supremely talented in a million ways.”

“Of course.”

“Harper.”

“Owen.”

“Tell me this is none of my business and to shut the hell up and I will, but—running away to Antarctica…doesn't seem like it's going to solve anything. I mean, isn't the whole issue that you love to dance? Isn't that the point? Why can't you just…
always
dance?

An enormous flatbed goes past, covered in little kids and poster-paint signs reading,
WAH MEI SCHOOL
.

“My mom,” Owen says, pointing. “She jumps on midroute. That's her school. Mom!
Mom!
” She waves, smiles, looks up, and see us. Sees me and frowns.

“Don't worry about it,” he says. “She'll love our kids—the Chinese half at least.”

“Not even a ring on my finger and you've got me popping out kids. Plural.”

“I sent you to Tiffany. There could have been a ring, but nooo—oh, look, there's Josie! There she is!
Josie!
”

“Where?”

“There, right there below us!”

“I can't see past the Miss Chinatown float. I don't see where you're pointing.”

Miss Chinatown looks up, sees Owen, and waves.

“Oh…,” I say. “Right. Okay.”

“And she's still premed.”

“Of course.”

“Plus her boyfriend is totally Chinese.”

“Well, sure. And you brought me to your childhood home to meet your family because you like to stir the pot.”

“What pot?”

“It means I think my being white is a thing with you.”

“A
thing
?”

“A novelty. A way to stay the black sheep.”

“ ‘Black sheep'? Now
that's
racist.”

“No, it isn't! That's a saying!”

“Oh my God. Okay.”

“It
is.
”

“Harper,” he says. “Do you
have
to do this?”

“I need to.”

“Why?”

“I'm a Scott.”

“Are you scared?”

The dragon music is starting. The gorgeous silk-and-paper dragon puppet is snaking its way around the street, undulating and dancing.

An empty stomach makes a fierce dog,
Scott said. My
life
is empty.

“No,” I say. “I'm not scared. At all.”

He leans close to me. “It's obvious the biggest competition I have for your affection is San Francisco, and believe me, San Francisco doesn't want you to go.”

“Don't,” I beg. “Please. This isn't easy.”

“I'm sorry. I can't not say this. Please don't leave. I don't want you to go. You can figure it out here. Your family will help you—
I'll
help you.”

“I'm trying to save myself. I'm so lost. Please don't—”

“I am completely selfish. Stay with me.”

My head is light. Tingly. I'm barely breathing. Firecrackers explode in the street below us. I tilt my head up to the sky. No stars; too many lights.

“I wish I could,” I admit.

“You can! I just found you. Please don't go.”

“I have to,” I say. “Already gone.”

“Stay. Please.”

Nothing to say to that. So I don't.

I only kiss him back.

In the San Francisco airport there is a yoga room, and also there are therapy dogs walking around with trainers, and the dogs wear vests that read,
PET ME
. These things are supposed to calm anxious travelers. But I am not anxious. I am eager. Mom, on the other hand, has been in the yoga room for forty-five minutes, and the last time we saw her, she was practically French-kissing an Australian shepherd and holding on to his coat for dear life, and then the trainer awkwardly eased him away from Mom's grip, while Dad backed Mom slowly toward the Cinnabon.

Luke is here. And Hannah, and Willa. Who has not forgiven me. She keeps asking if she can “help” by “holding” my boarding pass and ticket while eyeing the garbage can.

An unread letter from Owen, delivered by Luke, is in my backpack, but Owen is not here.

Because I asked him not to be. Because being near him would make it impossible for me to leave.

Kate is in New York.

I am alone.

“So, when does the last mail flight get to The Ice?” Mom asks for the bazillionth time.

“End of March. Don't send anything later than next week. I won't get it till August.”

“And you'll be there when?”

“Three days. I'll call from the hotel. And then I'll email. Okay?”

Hannah and Dad and Luke hug me, Mom clutches me once more, and then I have to get in line. I take off my shoes and pull out my phone and passport. Willa makes a last dash to put her arms around my legs.

I pry her arms apart. “I have to go,” I whisper. “I'll bring you a penguin, okay? Willster?” She's crying. “I'm sorry,” I tell her. “I'm sorry. I'll come back. I promise. Okay? I
promise.
”

“Bring me a polar bear.”

I get on my knees and hold her tight. “No polar bears,” I whisper. “That's the
North
Pole.”

North in the
Arctic
—a word derived from the Greek
Arktos,
meaning “bear.” So
Antarctica
means “no bears.”

An entire continent named for what it lacks.

I am nothing now. I am only what I lack.

No bears. No ballet.

Willa runs back to Hannah, who picks her up, and they wave and walk away.

I am going. To be in the dark and quiet. To be frozen. To Winter Over.

There are some hard-core veteran Winter Overers who
would love it if the Internet had never been invented. “Antarctica has lost its sense of isolation,” they complain, isolation being the reason so many people come here year after year. Solitude. Escape from the rest of humanity. From life.

I'm starting to sympathize with them.

It took moving 3,000 miles away to New York City for Katherine Grey to realize, “San Francisco is my home. It's where I'm meant to be. This city is in my blood!” She laughs, as some of this San Francisco blood spills from an open blister on her foot and onto the studio floor of Grey's lifelong ballet teacher, Simone Beaulieu.

“Kate could never be anything else,” Beaulieu says, intently watching Grey's lightning-fast turns across the floor of her West Portal dance studio. “She was born to this.”

Which makes it no surprise the seventeen-year-old was chosen earlier this year by New York's world-famous American Ballet Theatre to be an apprentice company member, a coveted position most dancers only dream of.

“But as soon as I got there, though the training was wonderful, my homesickness turned to something deeper,” Grey says.

Oh, really. Perhaps it's the
deep
realization you've betrayed your best friend and lied to her for ten years. Or it could be you got a bad street-vendor pretzel. Who knows.

“I can dance anywhere. But I couldn't belong everywhere,” a feeling Grey says she was willing to ignore, and she threw herself fully into participating with daily rehearsals at ABT.

“The managing director of the San Francisco Ballet was in town. He'd seen me at a competition earlier in the season and liked what he saw.” Then came San Francisco's unique move of facilitating negotiations to get Grey out of her nine-month contract with ABT and offering her a two-year corps position contract with the San Francisco Ballet instead. Which Grey was “thrilled to gratefully accept!”

“Everything I've ever loved has always been here in San Francisco, in West Portal. Now I can say that for certain.”

“Harp?”

Charlotte is awake but still in my bed, beneath every blanket I could find. I close her laptop and reprimand myself yet again for being weak—I have got to stay the hell off Google and stop dumping entire containers of rock salt onto these wounds.

I go to the chair I've set up beside her. “Hey,” I say. “What do you need?”

She closes her eyes, her arm over her face. “It's a million degrees in here. Can I get some of these covers off?” She shoves them aside and I fold them at the foot of the bed. “Thank you for staying. You don't need to. I'm used to it—I'm so sorry I ruined your night.”

“You saved my night,” I sigh. I'm nursing a huge headache, my eyeballs are parched, I'm wrecked recalling alternately first how impossibly close I came to spending the night with Aiden and then plunging my thoughts right back into how much I love Owen's laugh, his beautiful eyes, his intelligence, his kindness, his voice, sitting together by the bridge above the ocean and the lights and sounds of the New Year parade—

Poor Charlotte moans pitifully from the covers, sick and miserable.

“I'd almost rather have anything—strep throat, bladder infection—than nausea. I hate it so much!” she whines.

There's a tap at the door, and I step into the hall, where Aiden hands me saltine crackers, a liter bottle of flat ginger ale, and a cup of ice.

“She okay?”

“Just the flu. She'll make it. But I'm staying with her, okay? Sorry.”

He pulls me to him, hugs me in my far-less-sexy sweatpants and T-shirt ensemble. “Me too. I'm really sad our slumber party got hijacked.”

I nod into his chest, thinking miserably of Owen, awash in guilt, deserving of how awful my head feels, and so grateful I found Charlotte when I did—but then look what Aiden does. Brings her soda and crackers, kindness and care for us both.

“Thank you,” I say. “This will really help.”

“Here, I've got these,” Vivian says, suddenly standing beside Aiden, her face hidden behind an armful of folded blankets she's found in Charlotte's room.

“Oh my gosh, Vivian, thank you.”

Aiden's eyes are wide. “Is
this
Tickle-Fight-in-Panties Night?!”

“Perv,” Vivian says, and shuts the door.

“Sorry!” I whisper to Aiden. “Thank you, thank you, call me later!” I slip into the room and lock the door behind me.

Charlotte sits up.

“I found these,” Vivian says, and piles them on top of the stack at the foot of the bed.

Charlotte falls back against the pillows. “I am the worst mentor ever. Holy crap, I'm going to get sued. I'll be thrown in jail for contributing to the delinquency of minors, and I'll deserve it. This is
so
bad….”

“Oh, relax,” Vivian says, dropping onto her bed. “You're a science teacher, not a den mother. No one's going to find out.”

Charlotte and I stare at her.

“What?
Harper, you're not going to tell anyone here. You're not telling your parents, right?”

“Of course not, no!”

“Me neither,” she says to Charlotte. “It was nearly impossible to persuade them to let me come here. I'm not about to prove them right about how McMurdo pretends to be a science station but in reality is nothing more than a sex den of debauchery. So there you go. No one will find out Charlotte's a South Pole dancer, and no one's going to know Harper got drunk and made out with some dude in the hallway. All is well, and the world will go on turning.”

“Vivian,” I say, “I
like
you in a crisis.”

“This is not a crisis!” Charlotte wails. “Wait—oh God! Harper, did you tell me in the bathroom that you're drunk? Are you
drunk
?”

“Not anymore.”

“Oh, sweetheart, please,” she begs. “You can't, you cannot do that. Promise me you won't—”

“Trust me,” I say. “I feel terrible. I hated it. And my parents will never find out about that, either.”

“Please just let your brain develop some more before you screw with it, okay? It
is
my fault; I'm your supervisor. Your mom would never forgive me. But also, Harper, my God! You know better! You've got to use the common sense I know you have. Was Aiden, too?”

I shake my head. “I don't think that guy can
get
drunk.”

She rolls her eyes. “I'll talk to his supervisor. This is why no one wanted to offer these grants. You can't have teenagers in this kind of situation. Where the hell did he get the drinks?”

“From the bar, I'm guessing.”

“Was that him out there just now?”

I nod, pour the ginger ale over the ice, and it foams up a little.

“You tell him it's the flu?”

“Of course!”

She closes her eyes again. “This is so dumb.”

“None of his business. No one's but yours. Drink this.”

“Well, mine and the medical staff who aren't equipped for childbirth.

“How many…like, how far along…?”

“Five, maybe six months.”

“How long have you known?”

She counts in her head. “Eight…teen weeks? My period is never regular in the winter. Sometimes it never comes at all. Core temperature can get so low it messes with it. But apparently not enough.” She pulls the covers back up around her.

“Girls at my school got knocked up all the time,” Vivian says, reaching for some saltines. “At least you're an adult.”

I frown. “They
did
?”

“Sure. I mean, two or three a year, but there were only, like, five hundred kids in the whole school, so that's a lot. Statistically.”

“In
Minnesota
?”

She rolls her eyes. “Yes, in
St. Paul.
People have sex there. Haven't you seen
Purple Rain
?”

“I thought that was Minneapolis,” Charlotte says.

“So,” Vivian says, “aside from the barfing, are you…okay? I mean, what are you going to…Does the father know?”

She shakes her head. “No.”

“You gonna tell him? Is he here?”

“It was
one
time, the stupid New Year's Eve party. He left on the Last Plane Out. Flight-scheduling guy. I need to figure out how to not let this ruin my entire life before I bring a guy who couldn't care less into it.”

“How do you know?” Vivian says. “Maybe he would care…more.”

“I don't even know his last name. He may not have known my
first
name.”

“Oh.”

“In my defense—once you've taken a million hikes and watched all the movies and gone to the library and played air hockey, there's only so many recreational activities a person can fill their time with here. Also, we were completely drunk, so all I can say is, heed this life lesson—drunken sex with a guy you barely know? Not the best idea. Also? McMurdo serves perishable food from boxes with expiration dates in the previous decade. Condoms have a shelf life, too.”

“Gross,” Vivian mutters.

“Yeah. Well. And now I'm awake night and day freaked out about unsavory diseases…Oh God, I can't think about it!”

“So get tested!” I say. “You're having regular visits anyway, for the baby, right?”

“Harp,
no
…they can't know.”

“Who can't?”

“I've got to stay and finish. I'm being dramatic. I'm sure it's fine disease-wise. The battery of tests they put us through to get here…but I can't see the doctor for
any
thing, because if they find out, they'll make me go back at Winfly.”

“Which of course you will be doing…,” Vivian says. “Going home at Winfly. Right? Because you aren't stupid?”

“What's Winfly?” I ask.

“Viv,” Charlotte says, “haven't you ever seen that
Oops, I'm Pregnant!
show? Or whatever it's called? People carry babies to term all the time, and they don't have any idea they're doing it till they're peeing or taking a bath one day, and
Whoa!
”

“Charlotte,”
Vivian sighs.

“I'm not kidding! People smoke and drink and climb really high stepladders, and here come these perfectly healthy babies. I'm not doing any of that. I can't handle booze, I hate smoke, I feel perfectly well except for all the throwing up—which is a
good
sign, by the way—and obviously I'm gaining enough weight. I'll see the doctor the second the Winfly plane takes off, I swear. I'm a biologist—that's practically a doctor anyway.”

“It is not!” Vivian shrills.

“Okay, well, it's science at least! I have to stay and finish. If I can keep it quiet till after Winfly, they'll have to let me stay.”

“What is Winfly?”
I ask again.

“Seriously?” Vivian says. “I thought you were an ‘Antarctica-ist.' Did you read anything in the manual at all?”

“Winter Fly In,” Charlotte says. “NSF's got to get McMurdo set for October Main Body—resupply, get the labs and rooms ready. At the end of August, there's this predictable tiny window when the weather clears up just enough while the ice is still firm and they can land a plane with a crew of, like, two hundred people to prep the station, and they bring all kinds of stuff with them. We'll have lettuce again, and eggs and milk. Oh, and mail! Then the next day, the plane takes off, before the weather traps it here. It's Santa Claus for Winter Over.”

“And when Santa goes home, you'll be with him,” Vivian presses.

Charlotte frowns. “Winter's not over till the end of September, your contracts and mine.”

“Who cares! You've got a really good reason to get off The Ice. They'd
want
you off, right?”