This would be my first afternoon since seventh grade without dance class. No scooting across the street to the Fine Arts building, no boomerang gossip, no yoga warm-ups in mirror-banked dance studio J, no Birdie Tallmadge stepping behind the dance line, the flat of her hand adjusting a spine or realigning a pelvis, or changing her Pandora on a vote. No more rehearsals, no more fleeting exhalant moments of landing a perfect step or mastering a sticky sequence.
I missed Birdie. Could I handle a visit? In my imagination, I saw myself opening the door of studio J, clumsy and leaden, my presence interrupting the dance line. Birdie turning, her heart-shaped face splitting with her surprised smile—“Oh, Ember! Stay awhile!”—as the other dancers broke file, shifting to murmur with one another. Some familiar faces. Others not. All in a whisper…She’s done, she can’t dance…wrecked…if you actually saw her body…ruined for life.
No, I wouldn’t go see Birdie. Not yet. I could handle my new scarred, warped self, but only in increments. I tuned in Claude. Crazy Claude. At least he was just the same. Slurping up pasta and spewing his opinions in a million different directions, though most of today’s lunchroom topic was pretty tame: homecoming and college applications. Not that I was dealing with the second. Part of my handshake agreement with Dr. P had been not to rush the whole get-into-college thing.
“You guys want the truth? The admissions process is a scam,” Claude decreed between his fork attacks on Mount Tortellini. “You gotta save the dodo bird with one hand and invent a flu vaccine with the other. And that’s just to get in to your safety school.” His eyes fixed on me. “But your college applications are cake, Ember. Survived the jaws of death. Got some cool stories out of it, huh? Frickin’ good read.”
“Shut up, Claude. Don’t even go there.” Rachel aimed at Claude’s blandly handsome face with a carrot disk, then pegged one neatly off his nose.
“Leferrier knows what I’m talking about.”
“The dodo bird’s been extinct for three hundred years.” I stared down at my grilled cheese. Greasy margarine and Kraft singles. I used to flip great ones at home, on thin rye bread with Gruyère cheese and apple slices. “Anyway, I’m not applying this semester—or maybe even this year.” I looked up. “The plan is to take everything slow.”
Claude nodded. “Nice. Although, I’d apply and then defer. You better strike while the iron’s hot, Emb. While you can work the pity angle. You got pictures of the car? Before and after?”
Bing. Another carrot bounced, this one off the tip of Claude’s chin.
“Cut it out, Smarty. I’m just saying.” He shrugged. “A sympathy vote can make the difference.”
Typical Claude. Cold, right on point. That was why his bookshelves were crowded with a gold-plated plunder of Lafayette’s debate-team victories. He could be dickish, but we all loved him anyway. Either that or we just loved to hate him.
“Thanks for the advice,” I said. “I’ll file it.”
“Under Useless Crap,” muttered Rachel.
Claude pointed a finger at me. “Don’t listen to Smart-Ass. I’m giving you good advice. You shouldn’t play down what you went through, or your injuries, or the whole survivor’s-guilt thing. That’s one powerful essay, if you’ve got a handle on not overdoing the self-pity tone.”
I was staring at him as he said this, and yet at first Claude’s words didn’t make any sense, outside an excruciating feeling that the entire table had gone silent. My brain gnawed at it, working to peel back layers of memory—what guilt? What had I survived, that someone else had not? What—who—was Claude talking about?
Survivor. Survivor’s guilt. Because I…Because there was someone…
Brutal as a nail gun to my brain, I remembered. But I couldn’t rip my gaze away from Claude’s. I must have looked a touch intense, because now he was faltering.
“Easy, girl,” he mumbled. “You can stop with the evil eye anytime you want. I haven’t said anything you don’t already know.”
“I…” I might be sick. My vision blurred. I hadn’t known. Or maybe I had known on some level, but somehow it had slipped…somewhere…I…The table was waiting for me to say something. Anything. “I should pay you to write the pity angle for my application, Claude,” I said. “What’s your rate? Don’t pretend you don’t have one.”
“Is it more money than what you pay Lucia to hang out with you?” deadpanned Sadie.
I felt the too-quick thrust of laughter. They all wanted to get off this subject. Talk moved back to homecoming. Claude bowed his head to focus on his pasta. I could sense the table’s relief that the moment had passed, along with a lingering over-awareness that it had happened at all.
“’Scuse me.” Holding my tray, I stood up, dazed and unsteady— my low blood pressure, Dr. Pipini had warned, would kick back if I did anything too quickly.
Rachel stood, too. “You need me?”
“No. I’m fine, thanks. Stay put, finish lunch. I’m…just…” My vision blurred again, my legs were clay, propelling me in a crude, choppy animation from the lunch table, toward the tray drop, and then toward the exit doors.
Upstairs, in a quiet hall of the pre-renovated science wing, I sank down to sit beside a row of chunky metal lockers, and with trembling fingers I stuck in my earbuds. Weregirl. I’d searched them last night—they were a newish band out of Cork, Ireland, with only one studio album, Half-Life, to their name. I’d finally dropped deep into one of my bottom-of-the-sea sleeps before the download had finished. And then I’d completely forgotten about it.
Now I pressed play on the title track. The effect was instant, stunning. The grace and clarity of a simple vocal melody skated the surface of deep-rumbling bass drum strength. The music spun me out of the moment and washed me onto calmer shores, burying me for its duration in a safer place that my conscious mind couldn’t dredge. Caught on the hook of this song, I was holding it, and it was holding me, and I was still here.
I listened once, then twice, and then I let go of the song, and I was left with the hard fact of him. I could even feel his name, even if I couldn’t have said it.
Finally I stood, and somehow, like some wandering nomad who’d never been inside this school, I got to the front lobby, past security, and through the doors. Outside, the air was almost warm, one of those fall afternoons that was just a touch too muggy to be pleasant. My body matched it, a dull thudding, and my head ached. My hands didn’t speak the same language as my brain; it took four tries of my fingers to key up Mom’s cell phone number.