Chapter Text
I can’t believe I’m looking at Jackson Avery’s face right now. The last time I saw him was at my 13th birthday party; when he officially moved, he didn’t come to say goodbye.
Seeing him now, those barely-teenage feelings come bubbling to the surface. How, at my party, I was so sure that I loved him and he loved me. We kissed on my bed – no matter how cringe-worthy that is now, it still happened. I can still remember how gently he spoke to me and how carefully he held the ballet bear, the gift he brought me that day. How can I still remember that stuff? Why is it still taking up space in my brain?
It doesn’t matter anymore. What matters is that he messed up my solo and I’m going to pay the price for it.
“I fell out of my turn thanks to you,” I say, glowering at him.
An incredulous smile sneaks onto Jackson’s face. “Sorry,” he says. “You still looked great.”
“Whatever,” I say, shoving past him and leaving the hallway as fast as I can without running.
I don’t look over my shoulder to see if he’s following me as I bluster away, but I hope that he’s not. I need to be alone. My pointe shoes make a racket as I pick up the pace, making hollow, echoing sounds as I try to find somewhere secluded.
I want to cry. I want to cry for so many reasons that I’m not sure which one to land on. But, no matter how badly I want to, I can’t. I’m still wearing stage makeup that has to stay on until after awards, and those don’t happen until after the group dances, which are going on right now. I can’t mess up this makeup or I’ll look even stupider than I already do in this costume that shows way, way too much of me.
Curling into myself, I close the door to the dressing room and sit in front of the long mirror. The room is dark since I’m the only one in here, and it’s quiet, too. This is what I need. Just some time alone to recenter and calm down.
I hug my knees to my chest and hold tight, taking deep breaths to keep the tears away. I puff out my cheeks and rock back and forth, opening my eyes as wide as they’ll go to stop the moisture from falling over the edges.
It’s stupid to be this affected. I guess it’s normal to be upset over messing up a solo that I know like the back of my hand, but that’s not the only reason why I’m tucked away in a dark dressing room when I should be watching my studio dance the group.
I never thought I’d see Jackson again. The fact that he’s here, at this competition, close enough to smile at me from the wings and tell me that I looked great dancing, is disarming and it’s done a great job of knocking me off my foundation. It’s the last thing I need.
I don’t care about love. I doubt I’ll ever find someone for me, and that’s fine. Dance is my life. I understand and fully accept that no man could ever keep up with this lifestyle, anyway, and no one would care to try. That’s okay. I’m good at being alone.
So, why is his presence making me so upset?
I don’t want to think about it anymore. I’m better than this. I can cope more effectively than this. I’ve been fine without him, my only friend, for five years. After we leave today, I can easily forget about him, just like I did when we were 13 and he moved away without ever contacting me again.
That would mean not forgetting very easily at all. But I’m choosing to ignore that and rewrite history for my own wellbeing.
I stand up from the chair and flick on the light, intent on coming down from the state I’m in. I lean on the counter in front of the mirror and meet my own eyes for a long moment – it’s a moment I want to hold, but I can’t do it. Without my permission, my eyes trail lower until they reach my stomach, bared by the bandeau top I’m wearing, as it hangs and slouches over my costume skirt.
I quickly stand up straight, disgusted with myself. I glare at my midsection, bloated and puffy as it is, and try to cover it with both of my hands. It’s so huge, though, that my hands don’t come close to hiding it, which ignites such a fire of rage within me that I use my fingers as claws and clamp the skin of my stomach as hard as I can.
I twist and grab at it until the pain is white-hot. I keep my eyes on it and wish that I could just take a knife and saw it off. I would be so much better without it.
I turn to the side and suck in, skimming my hands over it, then push it back out. With a snarl on my face, I pinch the skin between my first finger and thumb with both hands and pull to either side, hoping to make something – I have no idea what – happen.
Of course, nothing does. I’m left standing there with the same hideous, fat, ugly body as before, now with red marks all over my skin. I sit down, forcing myself to look away from my reflection, and hate the way my stomach rolls when I’m not standing. I pinch it again, even harder this time, and dig my nails in as deeply as I can.
“Hey,” Scottie says, bursting through the door and sounding out-of-breath. I pull my hands away immediately and cross my arms over my middle, lifting my head to look at her instead of the lard on my midsection. “You’ll never guess who I was just talking to.”
“Jackson Avery,” I say, without inflection.
Scottie lifts her eyebrows high. “You saw him?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say, looking over to meet her eyes as she sits in the chair beside mine. “He messed up my last turn.”
Scottie frowns. “With the fouetté?” I nod. “It looked good to me,” she says.
“You weren’t watching.”
“Yes, I was! It looked really good.”
I shake my head. “It looked like shit,” I say. “I haven’t fallen out of a turn since I was 12 years old. I can forget first place.”
“I literally don’t think anyone noticed,” Scottie says. “None of the girls said anything. Miss Nicole didn’t even say anything!”
“To you,” I mumble. I know I’ll get an earful from Miss Nicole in class on Monday. I’ll be on the bottom row of the dance pyramid, I’m sure of that. She hates stupid mistakes, and this counts as one of the stupidest.
“You’re freaking out over nothing,” Scottie says, then pats my shoulder.
I shrug her off, forgetting to cross my arms when I do – and that means that the red marks on my stomach are on full display for my sister. “April…” she says, frowning and bending in half to get a closer look at what I did.
“Stop,” I say, standing up to escape her eyes. I cross my arms again and back up; this is exactly what I didn’t want with her coming in here. It’s why I needed to be alone.
“You need to chill out with yourself,” Scottie says. Her voice is uncharacteristically gentle, which I can’t stand. She’s never soft and sweet with me. She only gets out the kid gloves when I do something that scares her, and I hate it. She thinks I don’t have things under control, but I do.
“I’m fine,” I say.
“You’re too rough,” she says. “You’re hurting yourself. When you grab and pinch your skin, it-”
“I don’t do that!” I say. “They’re bug bites. They itched, so I scratched them. Is that a crime?”
She looks at me while wearing an unamused expression. “And you just so happened to be upset and sitting in front of a mirror?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“You’re beautiful,” she tells me, which makes me want to throw up. I’m the most disgusting person here, and hearing her call me beautiful just feels like I’m being made fun of. “You’re a gorgeous dancer with this amazing dancer’s body. Why do you do this to yourself?”
“Stop,” I say, blinking hard. “Stop talking.”
“It’s true, though!” she says.
“I don’t want to talk about this,” I say, avoiding eye contact with her and with myself in the mirror. “Let’s go to awards.”
Scottie doesn’t put up more of a fight. We walk to awards together, my pointe shoes announcing our arrival once we get to the stage. We stand in the back and, when it comes time to announce the winners for Advanced Teen, it’s all I can do not to curl up in a ball and plug my ears.
Even if I did do that, though, I would probably still be able to hear the emcee. He announces fifth and fourth place, neither of which I win. “Now, in third place, we’ve got Linnea Malcolm!” he says, and a girl from a studio across town walks over to receive her trophy. “And, in second place, Hannah Trainey!”
As Hannah goes to collect her award, my face flames. I’ve never received lower than fifth place before but, apparently, my performance was that bad today. Miss Nicole is going to tear my head off on Monday.
“In first place for Advanced Teen soloist, we have April Kepner with “Silver Girl!””
At first, I don’t even realize that it’s my name that he said. I stand there, unmoving, until Scottie nudges my shoulder and all the sound in the room comes rushing back.
“Come on up, April! Grab your trophy. You deserve it.”
I stumble through the crowd of dancers, some standing, some sitting, and take my trophy. Into the microphone, I announce the studio that I dance for and, on the way back, I blink for the first time – and take my first full breath, too.
“Hey, you did it,” a voice says. I look around and then up – of course, Jackson is right there. Somehow, he found a way to slip through the crowd and steal this moment from me, the one he almost ruined. “Congratulations.”
I narrow my eyes and glare at him, then find the way back to my sister without saying a word.
…
That night, I can’t fall asleep because my stomach is trying to eat itself. If the pain wasn’t keeping me awake, the growling would be, and food is all I can think about.
I had half a Caesar salad for dinner, which I thought would fill me up. It did at the time, but now my stomach feels like it’s never had anything in it – ever. When I turn onto my side, the cramping gets worse and doesn’t go away when I wrap my arms around my middle.
I’m staring out the window, thinking about the ice cream that Scottie and my mom had for dessert. I was offered some, of course, but I didn’t want any. Not then, at least. Now, it sounds like the best thing in the world. I would literally kill for some ice cream right now, but it’s all gone. They didn’t save any for me because I told them not to.
It was different when my dad was around. He and I would always share a bowl of ice cream, but he’d only take a few small bites in the beginning and let me have most of it, pretending that he didn’t really want it. I bet he did, though. He was just that kind of guy, always putting me and Scottie first in a way Mom could only dream of doing.
Not like that’s something she dreams about, because it’s not. It’s definitely not.
I sit up in bed, doubled over, and grit my teeth as my stomach continues to fill the room with odd sounds. Sitting here, I think about the eggs Scottie made for breakfast that I passed up, the granola bar at the competition that I should’ve eaten all of instead of just taking a bite, and what I can get my hands on the quickest downstairs.
I don’t want to get up and go to the kitchen. I don’t want to eat something when I can just wait until the morning and make a smoothie or eat a cup of yogurt. It’s not worth it and I know it’s not worth it, the way I looked in my “Silver Girl” costume today lets me know it’s not worth it, yet I find myself getting out of bed and sneaking downstairs anyway.
I barely breathe as I descend the steps, and I slip across the tile in my socks once I reach the kitchen. I slowly pull on the fridge door even though I want to rip it open, then grab the first thing I see – a loaf of white bread. I tuck it under my arm and fill up a glass of water, then stand at the counter and rip open the bag.
I don’t make a conscious choice to start eating. It just happens. It starts with one bite of the first slice of bread and, suddenly, when I look down, half the loaf is gone and I have a hunk of it in my hand, soaking it in the water I’ve been drinking. Soaking it in water helps it go down easier, I’ve learned that by now, but it’s such a gross thing to do. If anyone saw me right now, they’d be horrified.
My stomach is as tight as a drum, it’s that full. But, still, I don’t stop. I shove bread into my mouth by the handfuls in the pitch-darkness of the kitchen, my eyes focused on nothing, just staring straight ahead. I’m not even sure if I’m chewing. I’m just inhaling wet bread like someone else is controlling my brain, and my phone ringing is the only thing that gets me to stop.
I’m still operating on autopilot when I answer. If I was of sound mind, I would never pick up a call from an unsaved number. But, right now, I do.
“Hello?” I say, still chewing. The hinges of my jaw ache, but I can’t stop.
“Hey,” a male voice says. “Can you come pick me up? I’m at Streeter’s and they’re kicking me out.”
I scrunch up my eyebrows and swallow an especially large chunk of bread. “Who is this?” I ask, taking a big sip of water.
“Sorry,” he says, “it’s Jackson.”
My eyebrows shoot up to my hairline and I check the clock. It’s just past 1am. “Jackson?” I echo.
“Jackson Avery,” he says. “Can you please pick me up? I know I should’ve called my mom, but I called you…and I really need you to come get me.”
“Why?” I ask, wiping my mouth. “How do you even have my number?”
“They caught me with my fake,” he says. “And your number…Scottie gave it to me.”
Fucking Scottie.
“Please?” he says. “I’m not even that drunk.”
He’s slurring his words, which tells me he’s at least a little drunk. I could tell him no, I won’t come and he can take the train home like everyone else who gets caught using a fake ID, but he just moved back to the city. He might not even know the train routes anymore, if he ever did.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll be there soon.”
I hang up the phone and, in a newfound state of clarity, I look at the mess I made on the counter. In front of me is a swarm of breadcrumbs, puddles all over the counter, a deflated bread bag, and an empty water cup.
My stomach is full to bursting. I know Jackson needs me, but the bar he’s at is only a 10-minute drive away. I have time to go to the bathroom and throw all of this up, so that’s what I do.
I feel much better when I get behind the wheel and leave to go get him.
…
If I woke Mom up to ask her if I could go pick Jackson up, she would undoubtedly tell me no – and to tell Jackson to call his mother. That’s the reasonable answer, but I’m already in it now, so there’s no way I’m asking Mom. I just slip out the back door, snag Mom’s keys, and leave.
I don’t listen to any music on the way to Streeter’s, so the car is quiet. I hope, on the way to Jackson’s house, it stays that way. It’s 1:30am; I shouldn’t even be awake right now, so he’ll have to be okay with riding in silence.
Either way, he’s not exactly the first person that comes to mind when I think of who I want to spend time with. I almost lost my trophy thanks to his stupid grin from the wings, so it’s not like he deserves my cordiality. I’m coming to pick him up in the middle of the night – that’s more than enough, way more than I should be doing.
I see Jackson sitting on the curb as I pull up to the bar. He doesn’t have any idea what car to look for, but he’s not looking up anyway. He’s staring at his feet with his head in his hands, and I have to honk the horn to get his attention. He jumps violently, practically falling over with how badly he sways, then gets to his feet.
But he can barely stand upright. He stutter steps to the right, then to the left, then has to grab a nearby tree for support – a tree that’s way too skinny to do any kind of supporting. He stumbles and wraps his arms around it and I watch him try to stand up straight again, fail, try again, and fail, before I get out of the car in an angry huff and wrap one arm around his middle and sling the other under his armpit.
“Thanks,” he says, leaning his full weight on me as I pull open the passenger’s side door. My knees buckle and his lean almost sends both of us to the pavement, but I’m stronger than I look. I show it, too, when I shove him into the seat and shut the door behind him.
“I hope you can get yourself buckled,” I say, both hands on the wheel as I look straight ahead. I curl my fingers around it, uncurl them, then curl them again while I wait to hear the telltale “click” of the seatbelt, but the sound doesn’t come.
“Sorry,” Jackson says, fumbling with the buckle. “It’s a tricky little guy.”
“Give it here,” I say, nabbing it from him and clicking it easily.
I shift the car into drive and start down Chicago Avenue, going a few blocks before I realize I have no idea where I’m going.
“I need your address,” I say, handing my phone to him. “Plug it into Google Maps.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see him turning my phone this way and that in his hands. “You have such a little phone,” he says. “I like the charm.”
Scottie and I have matching phone charms. I think the idea is a little stupid, but I put it on to make her happy. Mine is a pair of pointe shoes on a pink beaded chain and her charm is a pair of pink bows.
I don’t say anything in response because I don’t want to make conversation. That’s not why I came to get him. I actually don’t know why I came, but I did, and I want this to be over as soon as it possibly can be.
“Will you put in your address?” I say, drumming my thumbs against the wheel at a stoplight. “I need to know if I’m getting on Lakeshore Drive. Or can you just tell me?”
He’s quiet for a long moment, then he lets a long, slow sigh out from his nose. “You wanna know why I got piss drunk and called you to come get me?” he asks.
I close my eyes for a long moment while we’re still stopped. “Not really,” I mutter, but he continues like my words don’t even register.
“My dad was at the competition today,” he says, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. His hands are covering his face, so his voice is muffled when he speaks. “You know, my deadbeat dad. The one who left me and Mom to fend for ourselves way back when.”
Yes, I remember. Of course, I do. But I still don’t say a word. Him talking about his dad makes me remember the way he cried during our first and only sleepover. Him talking about his dad makes me think about how we told each other about our dads. Him talking about his dad makes me think about my dad, the final image I have of him where he’s slumped over on the couch with a blue face and foam coming out of his mouth.
I don’t want him to keep talking about his dad. I don’t want him to keep talking at all, but there’s no good way to say that.
“But don’t get it twisted,” Jackson says, “my old man wasn’t there to see me. No way. No fucking way.”
He shakes his head dramatically, laughing humorlessly. He scrubs his hands through his closely-cropped hair and sits up, his head thunking back against the headrest as he does.
“No. Of course not. He was there with his new family. Sitting there with his perfect wife watching their perfect kid dance. They have a little girl. She’s on the Mini Elite team at Momentum.” He chuckles again, though nothing is funny. “And good for her. She gets to have her dad around. I’m happy for her, honestly. Even better, he’ll never have any reason to call her dancing gay. Because she’s a girl! Isn’t that great?”
Again, I don’t say anything. Not because I’m trying to prove a point, but because I have no idea what to say to fill this sad, stagnant silence.
Somehow, he can still read me like a book. He says, “You don’t know what to say. I get it, and it’s fine. Really.”
I blink hard and stare out the windshield at the traffic light in front of us. I still don’t know where we’re headed, and that’s kind of an important part of driving. So, to avoid having to say anything about his dad – or, god forbid, have him bring up my dad – I ask, “Your address?”
He tells me, finally. He and his mom live in Lincoln Park now, about a twenty minute drive away from my house in Rogers Park. I plug it into my GPS and I’m glad to have a destination; we couldn’t exactly meander Streeterville all night.
We’re quiet as I get on Lakeshore Drive, headed south. It shouldn’t surprise me that Jackson speaks again, though, before long.
“I wasn’t stalking you, or anything, today,” he says. “I hope you know that. It wasn’t like…I wasn’t there to be weird.” I glance over at him for only a second, then concentrate on the road again. “You don’t have to believe me, but it’s true,” he continues. “I wasn’t even sure if you still danced with Studio Blue. But when I looked at the program and saw your name…I can’t lie, I got so excited. It’s kinda wild that it took so long for us to end up at the same comp, actually, ‘cause I’ve been back in Chicago for a while.”
I want to ask how long, but I shouldn’t care. It doesn’t matter. I don’t know him anymore and he doesn’t know me.
The car hums as we cruise down Lakeshore. I keep a good grip on the wheel and think that I’m in the clear, that he’s done talking, but I’m wrong. Of course.
“You didn’t come say goodbye to me,” he says, “when I moved.”
That shocks me. It comes completely out of left field and shocks me. It’s not just his words that throw me for a loop, it’s the tone he uses, too. He sounds genuinely heartbroken over something that happened five years ago – something that I was sure he would have forgotten about by now.
But that wasn’t how it happened. He was supposed to come say goodbye to me and he never did. I’ve never forgotten that. No matter how immature it is to hold onto the memory, it’s stuck around.
I frown, still facing forward, and avoid his question. I answer it with a point of my own. “You never called me,” I mutter. I hadn’t wanted to engage, but that ship has pretty much sailed.
Moving quicker than he has all night, he picks up his head and turns to face me. “What?” he says. “Yes, I did.”
I don’t return his gaze. I’m driving, so I can’t. At least, not safely. And I am a very safe driver. “No, you didn’t,” I say.
He stammers for a moment, struggling for words. “I-...yes, I did,” he claims. “I called you so many times. Every time, your mom would tell me that you were in the shower or at dance or doing homework, and that she’d tell you I called. She said you would call me back, and you never did. So, I just stopped trying after a while.”
“I never got your messages,” I say.
“Yeah, ‘cause she never gave them to you!” he exclaims. “Your mom never liked me, and this is proof. She sabotaged us.”
“That’s dramatic,” I mumble, flicking on my turn signal to exit the Drive.
“She did, though. Why else wouldn’t she tell you I was calling? She didn’t want you to know.”
It’s not hard to go back to that time, waiting by the phone for Jackson to call. He had said that he would call my landline so I’d have his new number, and I held onto that promise. Since the day he left, I waited for him to call. I missed him so much that it hurt. With him gone, I had no one left.
But he never did. I waited and waited by that phone until Mom got irritated enough to ban me from hanging around it.
“She wouldn’t do that,” I say, shaking my head.
He opens his mouth to say something, but no words come. Just a small sound, half of a syllable, before he shuts his mouth again. Then, the car is silent again – for a while this time.
But it doesn’t last. As I maneuver the streets of Lincoln Park, Jackson shifts in his seat to look straight at my profile. I feel him studying me and I don’t like it. It’s making me self-conscious because I know he’s scrutinizing my double chin or the way my upper arms are practically bursting out of the shirt I’m wearing. From this angle, all of my flaws are so clearly put on display, and his eyes burning into me makes me squirm.
“Stop it,” I say, my voice coming out frustratingly quiet. I turn to him for a quick second before looking back at the road. “Stop.”
“What?” he says.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I say.
A beat of silence passes, a thick one, before he asks, “Why are you so angry?”
His question makes my face flame. Thankfully, the car is dark and he can’t see – because it’s not from embarrassment. It’s from irritation; the fact that he can barge into my life after five years and say things like he still knows me, when he clearly doesn’t.
“I’m fine,” I say, clenching the steering wheel hard.
“You’re pissed off,” he says. “Just tell me why.”
I exhale a puff of air through my nose and shake some hair out of my eyes. “Because,” I say, “you fucked up my turn today.”
An incredulous-sounding laugh comes from his throat and echoes throughout the small space. “That’s it?” he says. “You’re still hung up on that?”
“I’m trying to get a scholarship for Joffrey,” I say. “I don’t have a chance with technique like that.”
“You still won first place, dude,” he says.
“I don’t care,” I say. “I messed up. I do not mess up.”
“I get that,” he says. “But have you ever considered relaxing a little? It might make you better.”
My eyes flash. “What do you mean, better?” I say. I wonder if he saw something in my dancing that I’m blind to at this point – that, maybe, Miss Nicole is even blind to.
“Chill,” he says, chuckling. “Your solo looked great. I just mean in general. Going with the flow might make you a better dancer in the long-run.”
“No,” I say firmly. “That’s not how it works. You know that.”
“Sure,” he says, though he doesn’t sound convinced. I don’t really care, though.
As I turn onto his street, I can practically hear him thinking. So, when he speaks again, it doesn’t surprise me at all – but his words practically send me slamming into the car in front of us.
“You’re not gonna get that scholarship, anyway,” he says.
With wide eyes, I swivel to face him. “Excuse me?” I say.
He laughs and I hate him. I feel like the butt of the joke, which makes me consider slapping him across the face.
“You’re not,” he says, “not dancing with Studio Blue.”
“What are you talking about?” I say.
“They’ve taken you as far as you can go,” he says. “Miss Nicole is good, but she’s not great. You know who’s great? Madame Alarie at the Grand Academy, where I dance.” He lifts his eyebrows. “You want a ballet scholarship? You’re not gonna get one with a teacher who doesn’t sleep, eat, and breathe ballet. Miss Nicole doesn’t specialize in it. You know that.”
I shift the car into park in front of a house that the GPS tells me is his. With my eyes still trained on his face, I take a slow, deep breath. “So?” I say. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying,” he begins, “ditch Studio Blue. Come dance The Firebird with me at my studio and give yourself a real chance.”