Not Otherwise Specified Read online

  “Yeah, that sounds right. Uh, how have you been?”

  “Oh, same old, same old. One of my girls broke her ankle, so I’m sending a whole bunch of them over with flowers and they’re being catty about it.”

  “Catty dancers? I never.”

  “How’s BN?”

  Uggggh. “It’s great. It’s really great.”

  “I miss you like hell here, but you know what? Seeing you in Cinderella in August made me so glad we let you go!”

  “Oh. . . . You came to Cinderella?”

  “Of course! I didn’t see you in The Nutcracker, though!”

  “Right, I had to drop out, kind of last minute. It was a medical thing.” This is so valid that it shouldn’t even be a lie, except that it is.

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Are you doing better now?”

  “Yeah, I am.” All right. Not lying still feels good. Maybe I’m not going to hell or whatever.

  “Will I see you in Alice? When’s that, April?”

  “Oh, maybe. I haven’t auditioned yet.” Half lie! That’d be that “yet.” There will be no Alice audition in my future.

  “I’m sure you’ll get in. You’re still the most talented girl I’ve taught, Etta.”

  Oh God this is the most awkward thing I’ve ever experienced. This is Crowning Moment of Awkward. “Thank you, Miss Michelle. I really appreciate it. I need to get going. . . .”

  “Right, of course. Merde!”

  “Ha, yeah. Merde.”

  I usher Bianca, James, and Mason down the hallway and down the stairs.

  “Did you just say ‘shit’ in French?” Mason says.

  “Yeah, it’s . . .” A ballet thing. “Not important. Let’s get out of here.”

  We pile into James’s pickup truck with Mason’s motorcycle in the bed. I sit in the backseat next to Bianca and swallow, and swallow, and swallow.

  “You okay?” she whispers.

  I nod and close my eyes and tell myself what I’m hearing in my head is Mendel, or Sondheim.

  Is anything but the damn “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.”

  6

  “HELMET,” MASON SAYS, SNAPPING HIS into place.

  “Please, I know. This isn’t a Lifetime movie.”

  We’re on a silent road by a cornfield, like that’s at all descriptive when you’re in damn Nebraska. The town has started to grow in the past thirty years, hence the snobby girls’ school, as a lot of rich people are moving here for some reason I still haven’t figured out—my mom runs social work which is probably why she’s weirdly supportive of my goals to be a destitute Bohemian—but the town is still like 95 percent cornfields. This time of year, it’s just a corn graveyard, dried-up creepy stalks and dry dirt. No snow yet.

  Bianca and James are waiting by his pickup truck. Well, James is, leaning against the hood, looking up at the stars like he’s counting them. Bianca’s inside the car shivering and looking at the dashboard.

  “All right, climb on!”

  I haul myself onto the seat and press myself into him. I’m suddenly all conscious of my body, how my boobs and stomach must feel against his back.

  So I’m a person with aspirations of being in a motorcycle gang who has never actually been on a motorcycle before. He takes off, and I wasn’t prepared for how much I would feel it through my whole body, vibrate with it, somehow feel like I’m causing it to happen.

  It’s pretty amazing. Way to go with those based-on-nothing dreams, Etta. Good taste.

  I squeeze him around the waist a little tighter than I need to as we speed up and the dead corn blurs into gray-brown wallpaper. The headlights make the road look blue, and the helmet hushes everything, and as much as I’m enjoying being wrapped around him, a part of me wishes I were alone, that it were just me and this thing that I have no idea how to drive, yeah, but besides that just the road and me and however many stars there are.

  But being here with him, this cute boy I just met yesterday, this cute boy who knows I’m not good at food or ex-girlfriends and still wants me pressed against his back . . . I am just not really complaining, is the thing.

  Especially when he pulls over the motorcycle and tugs me into some dead corn and kisses me, hands big around my ears and neck and pulling me close.

  Not complaining, not at all.

  I like him.

  • • •

  “So. Um.” Bianca’s out of the car now, wearing James’s coat and Mason’s and my scarves. The boys are drinking beers by the trunk. Like one each, this really is not going to be a Lifetime movie. But what up, good little Christian boy! Iiiinteresting.

  I tuck her under my arm a little and rub her head to warm her up. She leans into me. “Yeah?” I say.

  “Is Mason maybe gonna be your boyfriend?”

  “Ha! I don’t know. Aw, I’m not laughing at you. I just don’t think that much about boys.”

  “Or girls?” She’s totally interested. Sweet girl.

  “Or girls. Not with dating, anyway.” Anymore, my brain goes all melodramatically, but really it’s not like I lost my faith in love after Danielle or something. To quote Rent, “It’s not that kind of movie, honey.”

  The boys come back around to stand with us and start talking about something singing-related with words I don’t even know, so I drift away a few paces and twist my feet up on the ground. I get up on my toes and look down at my ankles. I haven’t been en pointe in months. I don’t know if I can go back to it, that I have the ankle strength anymore. Not that I would. I don’t do that anymore.

  But it feels good, having this extra half inch, holding myself up. I go to the cornfield and dig my toe in and turn a few pirouettes. It’s hard to do in the dirt, but I kind of like the give. Makes me feel strong. I focus on the side mirror of the truck to keep from getting dizzy. I like how my dreadlocks feel when I whip my head around; I always used to get in trouble for those unless they were pulled up in this tight little bun, and sometimes even then. Black girls aren’t supposed to be ballerinas, and I guess if they are, they’re supposed to have their hair relaxed. (My mom’s always suggesting I do that, since she does and Kristina does, and she’s like wouldn’t you like to look less “urban”? Like she would know urban if it bit her in the ass, and I’m like wouldn’t you like to fuck off? and it turns out we would not, thank you!) But conveniently I’m not a ballerina, so I’ll just enjoy my dreads hitting me in the face for these impromptu pirouettes.

  I turn three before I realize they’re watching me. Mason laughs and says, “What are you doing?”

  “Pirouettes,” I say, and what the hell, I turn a few more. It’s painful in my bare feet, but I haven’t tried one in at least two months and I sort of can’t believe I can still do them. I feel warm and terrified all at once.

  “So that’s what that was, right?” James says. “You do ballet.”

  “Hey, I told you I danced.”

  Bianca is little-kid excited. “You said ‘danced.’ You didn’t say you were a ballerina!”

  “I am so incredibly not a ballerina.” I sit down in the dirt. “I was once a ballerina. Sort of. I was once a person who did ballet. Now I do occasional pirouettes in cornfields, apparently.”

  Bianca says, “I watch those girls practice all the time. They’re so good.”

  “What, the ones in the community center?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The ones we just saw get out?”

  “Yeah!”

  “No no no. I mean . . .” Great, there’s nowhere I can go without sounding catty. “I mean, they’re fine. I was their level when I was like . . . I don’t know. A few years ago.”

  “So . . . that wasn’t your class?”

  “No, it was, and then I did private with Miss Michelle, and then she told me to audition at BN.”

  Mason says, “What’s BN?”

  “Ballet Nebraska. In Omaha.”

  “Is that like a big deal?” he says. “That sounds like a big deal.”

  I shrug and sift dirt through
my hands. “I quit in October.”

  “Why’d you stop?” James says.

  “Look at me.”

  He’s quiet for a second. Then he says, “You’re beautiful.”

  Bianca nods.

  God, I missed friends.

  “My choreographer at BN told me I needed to lose some weight, and, like, no shit. Look, I’m really not hating on how I look. I’m just saying that objectively and honestly I do not look like a ballerina. Being five feet tall doesn’t help much, and not being skinny doesn’t help much either. So my . . . I decided it would be a good idea for me to quit. For my mental health and stuff.”

  “That must be so hard,” Bianca says quietly. “Not being able to do it.”

  “We plow on.”

  “Yeah,” she says. “We plow on.”

  • • •

  Bianca is singing later, just gently to herself, still sounding like it’s the easiest thing in the damn world, twirling around on Mason’s back. James is watching all fondly, and I think about how much I’ve always loved seeing Kristina and Rachel get along on the brief occasions when they do, and how awesome it would have been long-term to see my two favorite people just enjoying each other’s company. What’s holding Bianca and Mason together, presumably, is how much they love James, and what an amazing mind-trip that must be, to be loved so intensely that it brings other people together.

  I go and stand with him and he hands me a beer. “I’m kind of surprised you drink,” I say.

  “Just with Mason. And he doesn’t drink all that much either. But you know, warmish night, what the hell, right?”

  “Ooh, look who curses.”

  “Just not in front of her.”

  “I love how close you guys are.”

  “Yeah, she’s my universe. Stuff was never great with our parents. We kind of glued together.” He takes a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. “Want one?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Mind if I do?”

  “Go for it.”

  “Awesome, thanks. She hates it.”

  “She’s, uh. A good girl.”

  He laughs. “That she is. I mean, I try. Jesus and all that.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “I don’t think it’s that I don’t believe it as much as she does, because I think I actually do. It just means more to her, you know? It’s been really good for her these past few months, something to cling to. She needs something.”

  “How’d she get into recovery?”

  “I’d been begging for a hundred damn years, but finally Mom kind of broke down and cried, and that pushed it. My dad’s still acting like it doesn’t exist.”

  “My dad likes to act like I don’t exist.”

  “Ooh, they should get together. Racquetball.”

  “You really are gay.”

  He groans. “Gaaawd. You can tell?”

  “I’m kind of an expert in my field. Mason’s the first straight guy I’ve talked to in, like, six months, excluding the one I slept with.”

  “I don’t really hide it, y’know? But I haven’t . . . told anyone.”

  “Whoa, not even Bianca?”

  “No. I don’t think she has any idea.”

  “Wow.”

  “She’s . . . I mean, obviously stuff’s rough for her right now, and I don’t want to . . . shatter her. This gay stuff, it’s complicated for her. She obviously thinks everyone has the right to be happy, and she obviously knows that everyone’s picking and choosing parts of the Bible all the damn time. But . . .”

  “I don’t really know any religious people.”

  “We’re not all assholes.”

  “No, I didn’t think you were.” Except maybe I kind of did. I’ve been raised in this science-above-all-else family, so even though I know that religious people aren’t all holding signs outside abortion clinics or whatever, sometimes it’s easy to forget. Maybe I watch too much TV.

  I say, “So you’re, what, never going to tell her?”

  “Well, she doesn’t eat, maybe she’ll die soon.”

  “You’re a horrible person.”

  “You can only lie awake crying about it for so many nights before you have to make jokes about it, you know?”

  “Yeah, my best friends and I had so many starving jokes near the end of it. Sometimes you just have to pretend your life is a dark comedy.”

  He takes a pull on his cigarette. “Sometimes life is a freaking dark comedy. Near the end of what?”

  “Oh. I don’t know. Un-recovery. Our friendships. Whatever.”

  “Not friends anymore?”

  I shrug. “It’s complicated.”

  He doesn’t push. “I think people overthink things,” he says. “I think stopping being friends is a really weird concept. Why is it something you’d give that much thought to? I don’t even understand breaking up with boyfriends. How do you wake up in the morning and just analyze something to the point where you decide it’s over?”

  “Well, sometimes people treat you like shit, I guess.”

  “Like your friends did.” Apparently he is pushing.

  “Complicated. In their opinion I hurt them first. Vomited on their belief or whatever.”

  “I thought you were against vomiting!”

  I finish my beer. “Yeah, well, maybe that’s why we’re not friends anymore.”

  “You miss them?” he asks.

  “I miss being part of something.”

  “Well.” He looks out at Bianca and Mason. Mason is putting her down. She’s blowing on her hands and complaining that she wants coffee. “Maybe now you are,” he says.

  7

  THE BOYS AREN’T INTERESTED IN coffee, so they drop me and Bianca off with my car and we go together. She was thinking Starbucks or something, but come on, sweetie, hasn’t she heard of the only cool place in all of Schuyler? It’s this retro little coffeehouse, so of course the Dykes loved it even though it isn’t technically seventies, just some hodgepodge of decades with fifties music and neon chairs. It’s always loud and full of the fifteen people in the town who have piercings. Bianca, for all her quiet good-girlness, curls up in a chair like a cat and cups her coffee to her chest and looks comfortable.

  “Did you have fun?” she asks, which is so cute, like it was a little night planned for my benefit. I hope it wasn’t. I hope we can do that a lot.

  “I really completely did.”

  “Yay!” God, she’s a baby.

  “How’s the coffee, you warming up?”

  “Mmm-hmm. It’s good. Starbucks always burns mine.”

  “What the hell, Starbucks, what good are you. Uh . . . that’s okay, right?”

  “Insulting Starbucks? It’s kind of like insulting my third parent, but I think I’ll recover.”

  “Ha. ‘Hell.’ ”

  “Oh, yeah, of course. I don’t mind what you say. I just try not to.”

  “You don’t think I’m going to hell?”

  “I make it a rule not to decide who’s going to hell. I think if I were God I’d have a cool beard or something.”

  “You’re cute.”

  She smiles.

  “Not sure how cute you’d be with a beard, though.”

  She closes her eyes and hums a few measures of “Unchained Melody” with the jukebox. (Not even fifties, why does this place even try, so adorable.) Then Bianca opens her eyes and says, “I love that there are so many snow globes here! I love snow globes. And I love this song.”

  “Me too. My mom sings it while she bakes.”

  “I wish my mom baked. Etta. Etta. What are you singing for your audition?”

  “Uh, shit, I don’t know. You’re doing ‘Let’s Hear It for the Boy’?”

  “Uh-huh. I’ve done it every audition since I was, like, sentient. I don’t even like Footloose.”

  “Yeah, who does.”

  “Right? Just that song.”

  “That’s how I feel about— Okay, I don’t want your look of horror, so brace yourself.”

  She
grips the armrests.

  “That’s how I feel about Wicked.”

  “What? No. No!”

  “It’s so overrated. I’m sorry. It’s not bad, it’s just so incredibly overhyped.”

  “Noooo.”

  “I’m forgiving for musicals too, I swear! I like Avenue Q even though it’s stupid as hell. I like Rent even though it’s a white construction.”

  “What’s your favorite?”

  “Billy Elliot, maybe.”

  She groans.

  “Yeah, I know, not much in it for a singer. Plus . . . Wait, have you seen it?”

  “No, just heard the sound track.”

  “Oh, yeah, the sound track is so shitty. You have to see it in person. It’s all about the dancing.”

  She shrugs. “I don’t really get dancing, I guess. I mean, I want to . . .”

  “Ever seen a ballet?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Ohhh God, okay, we need to table this discussion. I will accept your dismissal of Billy Elliot after you’ve seen a better dancing show. Right now it’s winning its category just by, like, default.”

  “I like My Fair Lady.”

  “Boooring. Just choose Sound of Music, why don’t you.”

  She laughs with her head tipped back. It’s pretty and so much older than she is. Rachel laughs like that.

  “Did you always love ballet?” she says.

  “Yeah, ever since I was tiny. I was this little overachiever in my class, it was ridiculous. But I ended up changing ballet schools all the time, following different teachers.”

  “Stage mom?”

  “Oh, hell no, just an indulgent one, I guess. By the time I was like eight she was letting me tell her what the best programs were and just following my lead. You?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I guess. My parents never performed or anything, but my mom has this really nice voice, so I guess they pour it all into us.”

  “Gotta love that non-pressure.”

  “Right? So . . . you quit because they told you to lose weight? They shouldn’t have done that.”

  “It’s not like it was this constant spoken thing, you know, everyone telling me to lose weight or whatever. It wasn’t like that. My teacher said something this one time and I went crying to Rachel about it and . . . I don’t know, we talked about it, and she was right, it wasn’t just this one teacher saying something. It was the whole system of ballet, the . . . I mean, the discipline of it. I didn’t fit. Depressingly literally.”