I sit bolt upright and stare up into the deep blue and the sparkling stars overhead. I look around and find myself alone on top of a grassy hill surrounded by forest. I know where the parking lot should be, where the golf course should begin just beyond a thin range of trees, but neither exists in this place. Instead, at the bottom of the hill, I see a few buffalo lying stretched out in the grass, their thick eyelids soft in sleep. Some are clumped together in twos so that their enormous heads rest on one another; others slumber a few yards off on their own. I hear myself laugh.
It sounds a little bit like I’m being strangled, probably because all the air has left my lungs. I stand and turn in place as all of me is filled with simultaneous dread and awe. My stomach settles and, like that, the library’s back, as if the whole thing never happened. Except that now I’m alone in it. The other girls aren’t there. Neither are the chaperones, the sleeping bags, or any of the duffel bags except for mine.
“What’s happening to me?” I whisper to the empty room.
The clock above the doors reads 4:34 A.M. The library is too dark, too quiet. I’d take the sleeping buffalo over this any day. For a few minutes, I just turn circles, waiting for everyone to snap back into place. Eventually, though, I’m too anxious to sit still any longer. I need to think. I need to figure out what’s going on. I grab my duffel bag and dig through it. Megan had planned on running this morning around six, and I’d brought a sports bra, shorts, and running shoes on the off chance she could convince me to get up with her. Good sleep is so rare for me that, when it comes, it trumps everything. Especially early morning exercise.
I dress as quickly as I can, conscious the whole time that the building could disappear or the people in it could reappear without any notice. Then I slip into the hallway and wander through its emptiness, my footsteps echoing. The front doors are locked from the inside, but Officer Delvin is nowhere in sight, and, squinting through the darkness, I see the parking lot’s empty too. I let myself out, prop open the door with a stopper, and sweep my hair up into a ponytail as I make my way across the asphalt. At the edge of the lot, I break into a jog and turn down the sidewalk toward the football stadium and field houses, momentum carrying me fast past them to the intersecting street beyond. I don’t know where I’m going—whether I’m going to run the six miles home or turn back to the school at some point—but moving has always let me get out of my head a little bit, and when I return, it’s usually clearer.
Dance used to do that for me too: a place where there was nothing to do but be me and let everything else fall away. For a lot of the girls on the team, it was all about the performance, but for me, I think it was always about communication. I know I was supposedly too young to remember those tantrums Dad brought up the other day, but I do. I remember feeling like my throat was closing up. I remember feelings so big and unnamable that all I could do was cry, or sometimes scream. The smallest thing could set me off, anything I thought was unfair or intimidating. When I was a little bit older, I remember fighting to hold those unfocused emotions inside, and sometimes feeling so aimlessly frustrated that I’d shriek into my pillow at night. And then I remember taking my first dance class, a ballet-inspired workshop for kindergarteners, and how everything changed.
For one hour each week, I’d toddle around in a ruffly black leotard and pink tights, skipping across the floor in pre-chassés, spinning around in preludes to cha?nés. We imitated animals and growing trees and whirlybirds falling from branches, pantomimed holding beach balls and swimming. We made ourselves as big as we could, and then as small as possible.
But most of all, I remember the great bodily relief I felt as I sank into the passenger seat on the drive home after my first class. I felt empty, in a good way. Like the things I couldn’t find words for had found a way out, and now I could relax. Now I could enjoy the warm, cozy silence between me and Mom.
Probably my favorite thing about that class, and dance in general, was seeing the way the same movements could look so different when performed by different bodies. When I joined the dance team in middle school, I learned how to manipulate my natural inclinations so that I could be exactly in sync with everyone else, but when I lost Grandmother, my talent for blending in began to make me sick. It felt more like hiding than syncing.