The Boy and Girl Who Broke the World Page 21

  And I know the trap of letting him in. Once I tell him something, he wants more. He’s never satisfied. The problem with Billy is he wants to talk about everything all the time. Like, you mention one thing one time in a moment of weakness, and he thinks that means you want to start talking about every little thing that goes through your head, and the more secrets you share, the better your score is as a friend. It’s like that app that’s got everyone’s eyeballs glued to their phones; the longer they stare, the more points they get. It’s like Billy’s keeping a tally of my friend points according to some impossible relationship grading system he learned on those therapy shows, and I am constantly failing.

  Or is this actually how friendship is supposed to work? You just share all your personal shit back and forth until you don’t have any secrets left, and then you win?

  At lunch I say nothing. I just sit there listening to Billy rattle on about how he thinks his relationship with his uncle is improving, and how it’s nice to have someone you love as a prisoner, and I don’t even have the energy to explain to him how fucked up that is.

  So needless to say, I definitely am not my best self when Natalie finds me at my locker after the surprise early dismissal for “Liberty Day” and asks if I want to come to her house to practice before class. I can’t think of a good excuse in time, so now here I am, sitting in the passenger seat of Natalie Morris’s car as she drives through the neighborhoods of Rome Hills, and I have no idea how to define what I’m feeling.

  Being with her makes me feel better, and for some reason that makes me feel guilty, like I’m stealing something I have no right to. The farther away we drive from the flats of Rome and Carthage, the less anxious I feel. When we break out of the fog and into clear sky, for a moment, I can almost believe it’s that easy, that I can just drive away from my problems.

  Despite living just a few miles away my whole life, I’ve only been up here a handful of times. But when I was little, sometimes Mom would get in one of her moods to “see how the other people lived,” and we’d drive slowly through the winding streets, the houses getting grander the higher we went in elevation, until we reached the top where the Rome Mansion—now part local history museum, part event space for ritzy weddings—overlooks the whole town out to the ocean. I remember being confused by how, from up here, Fog Harbor looked like a completely different world than the one where I lived, how all you could see was the beautiful stuff like the sparkling ocean and forest and river and sky, but none of the details of boarded-up houses and crumbling businesses, which were really all you noticed when you were down in the flats.

  Mom would examine the fancy houses and their immaculately kept gardens with squinting eyes, showing a strange thrill of satisfaction whenever she’d discover a blemish in the perfect facades. By the time I came around, the logging and fishing industries had already been kaput for half a generation. Fewer and fewer people could afford to live up here, and many who stayed had a hard time keeping up appearances. Now, several years later, driving through the same roads with Natalie, the decay is even more apparent. Whole blocks full of FOR SALE signs. Abandoned mansions with boarded-up windows, unruly rhododendrons, and overgrown lawns. The streets are eerily quiet.

  “It’s like a ghost town up here,” I say.

  “Where have all the rich people gone?” Natalie sings to the tune of that old folk song, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”

  For a moment, the car is silent as I stare at Natalie, as my brain tries to compute that this girl I always thought was stuck-up just made a joke and that joke was in fact very funny.

  Natalie meets my eye and we bust out laughing.

  Just when I thought I couldn’t be more surprised by this girl, I am.

  “My house is up here,” Natalie says. “We have, like, two neighbors.”

  Because there is a total of zero male dancers at Fog Harbor Dance Academy, and because Natalie and I are the school’s strongest dancers, Mary decided that, in addition to featured solos in the group routines, we would also costar in a modern pas de deux together, choreographed by Luz. The old me, after getting over the high of being chosen for this honor, would have been pissed to have to share the stage with a ballerina faking her way through my style of dance. But the new me was excited to dance with such a good dancer.

  Since when is there a “new” me?

  Natalie pulls in front of a two-car garage attached to a beautiful old house with two lion statues guarding the front door. It’s not the biggest house on the block, but it’s the best kept. All the hedges and trees are perfectly trimmed. All the withered plants of winter have been cleared and covered with fresh mulch.

  “Here we are,” says Natalie as she turns off the engine.

  “Are your parents home?”

  “No. My dad’s at work, and my mom’s at church volunteering at the blood drive.”

  “That’s nice of her.”

  Natalie rolls her eyes. “Yeah, my mom is the queen of nice.”

  She seems nervous as she leads me quickly through the house. “This is the living room,” she says without looking at the huge space to the left of the entryway, with lush carpets and furniture that doesn’t look like anyone’s ever sat on it. Inoffensive paintings of landscapes and floral still life line the wall. Silver candlesticks hold candles that have never been burned. But when we enter the kitchen, there, standing at the counter island in the middle of the vast space of white cabinets and shiny marble and chrome, is a petite woman with a perfect blond bob, matching baby blue cardigan set, and pearl earrings.

  “What are you doing here?” Natalie says, with a sharp edge to her voice that surprises me.

  “Hi, honey,” says the woman I assume is Natalie’s mother. “Who’s your friend?” Her voice and smile are perfectly friendly, but friendly like someone told her to be, maybe not like she actually means it.

  “This is Lydia,” Natalie says, sullen-faced and monotone, so much like a caricature of a teenager I have to fight the impulse to laugh. “She’s a dance friend. We’re going to practice before class. Aren’t you supposed to be at church?”

  “I heard about school getting out early, so I came home to see if you wanted a snack,” she says, then smiles at me. “Hello, Lydia. It’s so nice to meet a friend of Natalie’s. She doesn’t bring many friends home.”

  “Jesus, Mom!”

  “Honey, you know how your father and I feel about you using the Lord’s name in vain.”

  “I can get my own snack.”

  “It’s nice to meet you too, Mrs. Morris,” I say. You have to be as polite as possible with these people. You can’t give them any reason to think you’re trash.

  “Are you hungry?” Mrs. Morris says. “Can I make you a snack?”

  “No,” Natalie snaps, already moving toward a door on the other side of the kitchen.

  “No thank you,” I lie, and my stomach rumbles as soon as the words leave my mouth. I don’t want Natalie, and certainly not her mom, to see me eat. It’s never been something I cared about before, but I’m suddenly overly conscious of the fact that I’ve grown up eating most of my meals from a microwave or take-out container in a run-down bar, while Natalie and her family have eaten most of their meals here.

  You can’t let these people know how hungry you are.

  “This way,” Natalie says, opening a door off the kitchen.

  “It was nice to meet you, Mrs. Morris,” I say as I follow Natalie.

  “You too, Lydia,” she says, her straight white teeth sparkling. She looks like she’s in a commercial for something expensive and unnecessary. “Come back anytime.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say. I fight the urge to cringe. Being this polite hurts.

  I follow Natalie down a narrow stairwell. Houses in the flats don’t have basements. If they did, they’d immediately fill up with water.

  Natalie turns on the light, revealing a dance studio that’s even nicer than the one at Fog Harbor Dance Academy. “Whoa,” I say.

  �
�It’s ridiculous,” Natalie says, looking genuinely embarrassed. “I mean, I’m grateful and everything. But my mom had this built when I was six.”

  “What if you’d turned out to want to be, like, a drummer instead of ballerina?” I say, kicking off my boots and placing them carefully on a custom shoe rack by the door. I hang up my coat on a shiny gold hook.

  “Yeah, no,” Natalie says, pulling her sweater over her head. “That wasn’t an option.”

  I feel awkward as I take off my many layers of clothing. Somehow being here alone with Natalie is a completely different experience than being in the locker room full of girls. I’m suddenly self-conscious. My skin feels hot.

  Natalie scrolls through her phone. “Any music requests while we warm up?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. I fold my arms over my breasts, then drop them to my sides, then put one hand awkwardly on my hip. “What kind of music do you like?” God, I sound like a loser.

  “How about this?” A song starts playing on the custom stereo system. It’s definitely rock, but a pretty and melodic twist on rock, with a guitar and cello and simple drums.

  “This is cool,” I say.

  “It’s not really what you’d expect a ballerina to listen to, is it?” Natalie says with a smile.

  “Yeah, aren’t you supposed to listen to classical music all the time?”

  “You know there’s such thing as avant-garde ballet, right?”

  “That’s an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one,” I tease.

  “Oh my God!” Natalie says. “You’re such a snob.” She’s smiling. I wonder if she knows what people say about her.

  We spend the next two songs stretching in silence. I try to focus on my body, but my head keeps getting in the way. I have so many questions, but I don’t have the guts to ask any of them.

  Then all of a sudden Natalie starts laughing. She’s sitting on the floor, stretched forward over her widespread legs, and her back is heaving with laughter.

  “What?” I say.

  Natalie sits up and folds her long legs against her chest. “We’re like the Fog Harbor High diversity club down here. This can be our first official meeting.”

  I start laughing too. In addition to a handful of Native kids and a few Latinos and Asians who mostly keep to themselves, Natalie and I represent a good chunk of the racial diversity at our school.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Can we have a club with only two members? Maybe we should invite my friend Billy. He can be the token white guy.”

  “He’s gay, right?” Natalie asks. “So he should totally be in our club.”

  “Actually, he’s not,” I answer, relieved to see no hint of judgment in Natalie’s face. “But he gets that a lot.”

  “Oh,” Natalie says, with a look that almost seems like disappointment. “Is he your boyfriend?”

  “No!” I say, a little too forcefully. And just like that, the moment of ease during our laughter is gone, replaced by a new, intense awkwardness. “We’re just friends,” I say, looking away. “He’s like my brother.”

  “That’s cool,” Natalie says, looking away too, bending into her stretch. But we accidentally catch each other’s eyes in the mirror, and somehow it is more comfortable to hold contact there than face-to-face.

  Miraculously, the little girl’s not here, not staring back at me from the mirror, not dancing around trying to distract me. I don’t feel that tug at my heart, that seizing in my chest that’s not quite pain but the memory of pain. I don’t hear the voice in my head, that begging whisper: “Look at me.” Somehow, being here with Natalie has silenced the child, at least temporarily.

  “Should we practice?” I finally say. I need to dance. I need to stop thinking.

  “Okay,” says Natalie. She cues up the music on her phone.

  The choreography’s smart. It plays on each of our strengths and lets us bring our own styles to our characters. Luz knew it was a hopeless endeavor to try to get us to match. There are so many reasons I like Luz, but one of the main ones is how all her choreography tells a story, even the simplest practice routines. In this story, two alien girls from different planets meet for the first time. The dance is a scene of them sizing each other up, Natalie’s movements fluid and upright, mine jerky and close to the ground. We start out at odds, but by the end we are dancing in tandem. It’s a little out there, I’ll admit. But somehow pretending to be an alien dancing modern feels a lot more natural than being a human dancing ballet.

  The routine is only four and a half minutes long, but we are soaking with sweat after the first run.

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to look at me that early,” I say.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re supposed to avoid eye contact at the beginning. Pretend to ignore me. It isn’t until we touch hands the first time that you look me in the eye.”

  “Oh, I get it,” Natalie says. “That makes sense.” She glides over to a watercooler and gets us each a paper cup of water, even though there are perfectly fine glasses upstairs.

  “No offense,” I say, sipping from the cup, “but I totally didn’t expect you to be any good at modern.”

  Natalie laughs. “No offense taken. That was a kind of a compliment, right?”

  “I guess,” I say. “That’s about as close as I get.”

  “Well, thank you.”

  “I thought you were just a ballerina.”

  “Just a ballerina?” she says, raising an eyebrow.

  “You know what I mean.”

  Natalie’s quiet for a moment, and my chest constricts. Why did I say that? Why do these things always come out of my mouth that hurt people I don’t want to hurt?

  Finally, Natalie locks eyes with me. “Thank you,” she says.

  “For what?”

  “For seeing that. For thinking I’m more than a ballerina.”

  “You’re an incredible dancer,” I say.

  Natalie’s smile seems almost sad. “It’s more than that.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I know.” Maybe I don’t know all of it, but I’m starting to. I know that Natalie is way more than a ballerina. I know that not a whole lot of people see that.

  We should run through the routine again, but neither of us moves. I take another sip of my paper cup of water because I don’t know what else to do.

  “Can I ask you something?” Natalie finally says, turning to throw her cup into a small trash can.

  “Of course.”

  She keeps her back to me for a few moments. I see her shoulders tense. I don’t want to be responsible for that tension.

  “Why do you hate ballet so much?” she finally says, turning toward me. “Be honest. You never really answered the first time I asked.”

  “I don’t hate ballet.”

  “Don’t bullshit me.” She takes half a step forward, and without thinking I take half a step back. She is still several feet away, but she feels too close. Suddenly, I want to run away. I want to hide. I want to undo this whole conversation.

  I look up briefly. The little girl is here now, staring at me in the mirror, but not the evil version from the chaos of this morning. Her eyes are sad and full of yearning, but for what, I don’t know. For a brief moment, I’m filled with rage. How dare she come here? How dare she saddle me with the burden of her feelings? What the hell am I supposed to do with her sadness?

  But Natalie’s eyes bore into me too, and their kindness cools my anger just enough for me to keep talking.

  “It’s not so much that I hate ballet,” I say, looking down at my feet. “It’s just, I know it’s not for people like me. Modern is. It reflects the real world, how real people live, all of our emotion and messiness. It can be raw in a way ballet can never be. As soon as you put on pointe shoes, you’ve made dance elitist. You put on classical music from hundreds of years ago, you dance these old stories about fairy tales and princesses—they’re not real. Those aren’t my stories. That’s not my life.” I look up, and her eyes are there waiting
for mine.

  “It’s not my life either,” Natalie says. “It’s not supposed to be. It’s just supposed to be beautiful. It’s magic. And magic isn’t elitist. We all deserve some magic.”

  “Some people can’t afford magic,” I say.

  Natalie doesn’t argue. She doesn’t get defensive. She just lets my words fill the room. She gives them space with her silence. “Let’s dance,” she finally says, after the words settle onto the floor, sharing space with the expensive polished wood and our raw, naked feet.

  The little girl wanders off, and we get ready to dance again.

  BILLY

  EVERYONE AT SCHOOL IS TALKING about the upcoming Unicorns vs. Dragons festival, even though usually most people over the age of thirteen and under thirty pretend to hate it, but I guess people forget to be cool when confronted with the possibility of getting on TV and dressing up like magical creatures for a weekend. Carthage replaced their vandalized street signs, but now they all exclusively feature vicious-looking dragons, and Rome commissioned their own even bigger signs, and of course theirs are all of sparkly and disturbingly Aryan unicorns.

  It’s been a few days since the whole guitar fiasco, and Caleb and I have barely talked. Lydia’s been more distant than usual too. I keep asking her what’s wrong, but she keeps saying “nothing,” and maybe she’s telling the truth, but I just can’t tell anymore, because all my usual psychic senses seem to be malfunctioning. And then this weird thing happened at lunch where all of a sudden she said, “Didn’t Natalie Morris used to have this lunch?”

  “I guess her schedule changed after winter break,” I said.

  “Huh,” she said, then kind of smiled, but it wasn’t a smile meant for me, it was for some inside place only Lydia can see, and why won’t she let me in there?

  Of course she has practice after school, so I’m on my own again, which shouldn’t bother me because being alone is my only talent besides helping people, but apparently I’m forgetting how to do both of those things, so now I have exactly zero talents.

  Everyone’s lives seem to be getting better all of a sudden, and mine’s just getting more confusing. I try to remind myself to be grateful. I repeat my mantra: It could be so much worse. But then one of the Braydons yells, “They catch your fuckup uncle yet, Billy Goat?” and one of the Katelyns says, “God, why doesn’t he just die already?” and when I get outside I take a deep breath but it tastes like farts, and the fog’s so thick I can just barely see what’s across the street, and there are those crows again in a tree and now they’ve got a few seagulls with them as extra muscle, and there’s that black car that’s been following me, and now its doors are opening and a man and a woman in suits are getting out and they’re staring at me and the woman is on her phone and I bet she’s calling a SWAT team and any second now a helicopter is going to swoop in and someone’s going to swing down on a rope and grab me and we’re going to disappear into the fog and they’re going to blindfold me and torture me until I tell them every bad thing I’ve ever done.