“My beauty spell affected my brain,” I said (and I had the D in chem to prove it), “but this hook—what department does that steal from?”
She hesitated a second, I thought she might not tell me, or she might lie. She already had my money—what did she care? But when she answered, it sounded like the truth.
“Hooks are about location and control. It’ll keep your loved ones near you, using luck and coincidence and chance. They’ll see you every three days; they’ll go no farther than fifty miles away, no matter what. You might find that other parts of your life . . . dislocate.”
“What does that mean?”
“The hook stays hooked. Other things unhook.”
“What things? What do you mean unhook?”
The hekamist shrugged. She wouldn’t—or couldn’t—explain any more.
I tried not to worry about it and instead thought of all I’d given Mina—years of my life, my every thought or hope or wish—and how when she’d recovered she’d immediately left me behind. The cancer hadn’t taken her like I’d always thought it would, but she surgically removed herself from my life anyway. And she was my sister, who said she loved me. If she could do that, anyone could.
I ate my cookie in two bites.
People who went to hekamists were desperate. I couldn’t argue with that, Mina. But it’s easy not to hate yourself when you’re beautiful and when you have friends. It wasn’t my fault I hated myself. I needed to be fixed before I could be lovable—like Mina’s chemo. I didn’t see a difference between chemo and the cookie. Chemo did even more messed up things to your body than hekame. So did Mina hate herself when she went in for treatment? No. She hated cancer, I know she did. And I hated my face and my loneliness.
Luckily for both of us, there was a cure.
At the funeral, it wasn’t difficult to look stricken and severe, and to feel like I’d lost something important. No one could tell I was mourning dance and not Win.
If they could’ve peered behind my red eyes and grimace, they would’ve seen me leaping and spinning in unison with the corps, elegantly romantic in a pas de deux, shimmering like a mirage in a solo. They would’ve seen me replay over and over the fall I’d taken in class, humiliating, inexplicable. They would’ve seen me catalog each of my muscles one by one, knowing I couldn’t control any of them the way I needed to.
But they couldn’t see inside my mind, and so I let them believe that I was sad about Win. I faked it.
I had thought I would tell Diana and Jess the truth about the spell, but then I’d gone to class and fallen. When I got home, Jess looked up from her book and asked me how it went.
“Fine,” I said. In the past, class had sometimes been painful or joyous or exhausting or boring, but at its core, it had never been anything other than “fine.”
My mouth didn’t know how to form the words to explain how not fine I really was.
“I’m glad,” Jess said. She took a deep breath as if steeling herself. “Do you have class Wednesday afternoon?”
“I have class in the morning and the Sweet Shoppe in the afternoon. Why?”
“I made an appointment for you with a therapist.”
“No,” I said.
“You’re going through something tough.”
“No, no—dance will help me. You shouldn’t be spending money on something like that anyway. We need it for New York.”
Jess worried the fraying fabric on the back of the couch. “Maybe we should think about whether it’s the right time to move.”
“Of course it’s the right time. August first. The date’s set. The Manhattan Ballet chose me. They invited me.” My voice shook, too loud, and I couldn’t stop talking. “They might not want me in another year—I’ll be too old. I’ve learned everything I can from Rowena, and I need to get professional training now so that I don’t develop bad habits, and you know they cast most of the company from the junior corps, so I could get a real job there in a year. I don’t want to wait. I can’t sit here rotting away for another year. Jess, please. We have to go. We have to.”
During my speech I stepped closer to where Jess was sitting on our old velvet couch. A lamp stood a foot or two away, hardly close enough for me to reach, if I’d even thought about it at all, but of course I didn’t and I banged one gesticulating arm on it then tripped on the edge of the carpet. Jess stood up and put her arms around me, catching me out of my stumble. I stiffened and twisted out of her grip.
“We’ll move, Ari. We’ll do whatever you need to do.” She half smiled. “But you still have to go to therapy.”
“I won’t have anything to say.”
“I’m sure you’ll think of something. Talk about dance if you don’t want to talk about Win.”
“The therapist won’t understand.”