Alex smiled. “It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do,” he said, and now it was my turn to raise my eyebrows. “Well, not the only thing,” he amended, and I laughed, loud and rowdy. The thunder crashed over our heads.
The girls went for frozen yogurt after rehearsal that afternoon, dashing through the fat Florida raindrops and piling into Kristin’s shiny white Volkswagen. “You should come,” Olivia told me, and it seemed like she meant it, but I found myself shaking my head. I still felt weird around all three of them together, like they blamed me for what had happened with Guy even if they weren’t saying it. Like I was dragging them all down.
Olivia left me her car and I meant to head home and get in the bathtub, maybe see if Alex was around, but I dawdled as I packed up my dance gear, and soon the whole studio was quiet and empty, my footsteps echoing on the shiny floors. I liked it like this, I realized, peering at myself in the wall-to-wall mirrors. Everything felt very calm.
On a whim, I started working through some of the dances Charla had had us learning earlier that day, turning pirouettes and popping my hips even though there was no music to guide me. I felt stupid at first, but it was easier to get into the groove of things when nobody was watching, and as I started the routine over again from the top I realized I was kind of enjoying myself. More than that, I saw as I watched myself in the mirror—I actually looked really good. Maybe Alex was right, that I could possibly belong here. Maybe he was right that I could have what it took.
I don’t know how many times I went through our dances that afternoon—I stopped counting the minutes, lost in my own body and the rhythm of the steps. I would have kept on indefinitely, might have danced straight through dinner, but the next time I glanced in the mirror there was Charla standing in the doorway, watching me wordlessly with an expression I couldn’t read on her face.
I froze cold, then hot, feeling my whole body flush not with exertion but with intense, bottomless embarrassment. I felt like an idiot. I felt caught. The last thing I wanted was to make myself vulnerable to her like that, for her to have the chance to find me lacking in a moment when I was actually giving it everything I had. “Uh, hey,” I said, pushing my hair out of my face and trying not to breathe too heavily. None of this was real, I reminded myself. “I was just—” I broke off.
Charla nodded, and now I did understand the look in her eyes, or at least I thought I did. She looked excited, I thought as I stared back at her, cheeks still flaming. She looked . . . pleased.
“Lock up when you leave” was all she said.
EIGHTEEN
“Is this our training montage?” I asked one afternoon as we headed out to the grassy patch of parking lot where we usually ate our lunches—Subway sandwiches today, turkey with lettuce, tomato, and light mayo that tasted weird and fake. “It’s like freaking ‘Eye of the Tiger’ should be playing every time I walk down the hallway.”
Olivia grinned, put her fists up. “Feels that way.”
We were rehearsing a song called “Higher and Higher” today, which I’d been dreading—I had a solo in the bridge section, and whenever we practiced it always turned into a three-hour odyssey, during which Lucas felt it was his duty to promulgate a long and comprehensive list of everything I was doing wrong both in performance and in life, including the way I stood on the floor and breathed oxygen.
That section was one I’d been going over a lot in my spare time, though, working on it with Alex’s help, and today it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting—in fact, Lucas didn’t stop me at all. I made it through the rest of the song in skittish anticipation, waiting for him to realize he’d missed his chance to embarrass me, but he was quiet until the end of rehearsal, content to correct Ashley’s vowel pronunciation and leave me out of it.
“‘Unreal’ tomorrow,” he called as we were leaving, which was Kristin’s solo. Then, almost as an afterthought: “Nice work today, Dana.”
“Dana?” Olivia repeated, sounding surprised, as my head whipped around in disbelief.
“Me?”
“You,” Lucas said, sounding immediately annoyed again, which was how I knew he’d meant it. It was the first thing resembling praise he’d had for me since I got to Orlando, and I felt my face warm with pride. It didn’t mean anything, I told myself, trying to tamp down the big dumb grin I could feel spreading across my face. I was still unequivocally the worst one in this whole group. But for the first time, it felt like maybe I really was making progress. For the first time, I didn’t feel like I had no hope at all.
I couldn’t sleep again that night, lying in bed watching the shadows cast across the ceiling by the yellow lights outside the window. I was still having trouble like this a few times a week, my nerves too jangly, my brain too busy to rest. I thought about heading over to Alex’s apartment to see if he was still awake, but I didn’t know how I’d explain that away if Olivia woke up and caught me gone. Finally, I got out of bed anyway, easing the door open and heading into the kitchen for a glass of water.
I felt like I’d been lying in bed for a long time already, but Charla was still up, sitting on the couch in her Houston Ballet T-shirt and watching the TV on mute, clutching a mug of what smelled like ginger tea in one hand. “Did I wake you?” she asked, when she saw me come out.
I shook my head. The sight of her there in the half-light made me unexpectedly homesick: my mom had never been particularly strict about bedtimes, and I’d spent probably hundreds of nights curled beside her as she watched 90210 and Melrose Place, soaps giving way to the news giving way to the late shows. Sometimes she’d get up and make us a snack, Ritz crackers with peanut butter or a sleeve of off-brand chocolate chip cookies. I’d barely called her at all since I’d been here. I promised myself that I would tomorrow. “I was already up,” I told Charla softly. “Besides, you’re not making any noise.”
Charla smiled at that. “I like to make up my own stories sometimes,” she told me, motioning to the screen. “My mom always watched in Spanish when I was a kid, so I got in the habit.”
I nodded. It was weird, but sometimes I actually forgot that Charla was somebody with a family, the same way I’d forget that Kristin had three sisters or how sometimes I’d go all day without thinking of my mom. It was like all of us existed in some weird vacuum in Orlando, like the rest of the world was in faded, muted watercolors and what was going on here stood out in sharp relief. It had taken a surprisingly short amount of time before it was hard to imagine a life outside this one.