Hurt

It was Miss Katherine who told me it was too late. By sixteen I should have more control of my hip flexors, it was surprising I didn’t, alarming actually.

You weren’t trained well at your old studio, she said, in a soothing voice that made it worse.

I nodded. I’d gotten into this studio on scholarship and they’d given me a swag bag and a duffel with my name on it and then placed me in the lowest class. The flat tip of my pointe shoe was gray in the mirror, the satin rubbed away. She’d said I was hard on my shoes, I relied on them too much. I didn’t know what that meant. She corrected me in ways I couldn’t interpret, about things I didn’t know how to feel.

We’ll talk more tomorrow, she said.

Mia and Hope sat in the dressing room hunched over their phones, laughing at something definitely not funny. I knew they weren’t funny because they’d planned a prank during pre-show ritual in the spring. The ritual was that all the girls circled up onstage before recital and breathed deeply. Then someone blasted “Like a Prayer” and we yell-sang the lyrics while slowly stripping our leotards down to our ankles, tights only, tits out, and if you didn’t you got bad luck, the senior girls said, your meniscus tore, or you pulled an Achilles, but mainly you just marked yourself as a little lame. Then, as if to affirm that everyone’s boobs were beautiful, we clasped hands and jumped up and down, in sync, chanting: I carry my heart! I carry you in my heart! I carry my heart!

When the time came this year Mia and Hope had said: Everyone close your eyes! All of us murmured, nervous. I felt something cold and wet slide down the backs of my thighs. Silly string.

Apart from not being that funny, Mia and Hope just acted young. They fawned over the pre-professional men in unitards, watching them rehearse through plexiglass, men with massive quads and quadruple pirouettes, coveting them not just as dancers and also not sexually, but in an immature third way, the way a little girl longs to be closer to a pony, to touch it, to brush its hair.

They whispered now, about me, I thought. I dug my bag out of my cubby hole, wanting just to go home.

Matthew zipped his duffel. He’d just finished solo rehearsal. All the boys got solos, since there were only ten across all levels. Everyone was always saying Matthew was gay but also that he had a crush on Alexa Ivanov.

Are you ok? he asked.

No, I said. If I talked more, I’d cry.

I felt the girls notice us, the male-female interaction, felt a small thrill.

Did Katherine say something to you?

No. He loved to gossip and I didn’t care to indulge.

What did she say?

This was the most we’d ever talked. She’s such a bitch, I whispered. I tossed my shoes in my bag, not caring to slip them into their drawstring sack.

Tell me what she said. Matthew was at least half Eastern European, I could hear it in the way he spoke words from the front of his mouth. Come on.

There was always the prickle of competition. You knew what not to be too vulnerable about.

She doesn’t think I’m doing good, I said.

He waited a couple seconds, considering.

It doesn’t matter, I said.

Well. Katherine thinks she’s the authority on everything.

Yeah.

I guess that’s what happens when you’re ABT company by 18.

Right.

She doesn’t even know you. You just got here.

It’s been six months, and I haven’t moved up.

Matthew was a good dancer, I’d always assumed he’d want to go professional because it would be a waste if not. Katherine had instilled in us a fear of waste—Sometimes talent grows and grows and then it just dies on the vine, she’d said, which made me think about stories of women carrying around their dead twins for twenty years in their abdomens, dormant. But you could dance six hours a day and talent still may never bloom in you. I felt so wholly responsible for my body, alone with it, lined up with everyone at barre, locked inside my head. I’d rise to relevé, watch the indentations of my calves form in the mirror. I’d make eye contact with myself, as if to convene, to affirm that my body was connected to the me in my head—Stop looking at yourself, Miss Katherine would snap. Don't be vain.

So I would watch Alexa, two years younger than me, whose leg could go as high as Miss Katherine gently coerced it, whose hip could squarely adjust. Alexa, pliable, wearing a sweet, weary smile through the end of class, then swiping her forehead, as if to always be saying Wow, that was a tough one.

I’m going to see a movie if you wanna come, Matthew said.

Right now?

Yup. At Century 8.

It’s kind of late.

He shrugged.

I had no reason to decline, I took the bus home, nobody was waiting for me outside.

Come. It’ll be good. More fun not alone.

Everything had become so banal. I’d forgotten what had ever mattered about an arabesque, about a sculpted, pointed line, or about the energy, which they said should travel straight through you, down your leg and then off into space.

I followed him out back to the parking lot, into the gas station light, unflattering, I thought, with my hair pulled back. I only had a couple hours before my mom got home, saw I wasn’t there.

He had a fluorescent orange security lock on his steering wheel. It’s been stolen before, two times, he grumbled, grabbing both sides, trying to pry it free.

He’d already had his hands all over me during pas de deux, when the levels mixed. Not that that meant anything. That kind of thing wasn’t hot, it was just shapes. He’d hooked one hand around my inner thigh and held my waist, and I’d leaned all my weight into him and brought both legs up as he dipped me nose-down. I’d sent my arm out into a smooth presentational arc. Fish pose. Then I’d flinched and we’d fallen out of it.

The strip mall sat at the edge of the valley. Starbucks - Arby’s - Beautiful Nail - Thai Massage - Thai Kitchen - Sephora - Walk-In OBGYN. Century 8 at the end, where the parking lot was. A woman walked into Sephora wearing a black-and-white striped fur coat that kind of looked like Sephora, and that felt wrong to me, like God ran out of ideas for strangers so He turned Sephora into a woman. Like one of those AI videos—What if Sephora were a woman, McDonald’s, Starbucks. What if God was one of us, I thought, almost inadvertently, staring. She wore a matte black lip and talked discreetly into her phone.

I watched the big brown mountains above Ventura Boulevard, spotted with dry green shrubbery. I watched girls walk with linked arms in denim cut-offs and hoodies, and I realized it had been a while since I’d gone out and done something with another person, and the thought seemed sort of sad, like if it were someone else’s, Matthew’s, for example, he’d do something about it. The sun flared orange, a time of day that reminded me of staying late after elementary school to watch the pumpkin parade, the pure anticipation of waiting for the man in a pumpkin head to roll past on a tissue paper float and wave at me.

I come here a lot, I said absently.

Which place? he said, parking.

Never mind.

I’d gotten my legs waxed at Thai Massage and didn’t know why I’d mentioned it.

Arby’s?

No.

My mom had taken me before Homecoming, so I could wear my teal dress and eat sheet cake with my friends while the band played Uptown Funk.

It’s embarrassing, I said.

Oh. I know what it is, he said.

What?

He pointed to the clinic sign. An abortion, he whispered.

What?! No.

Ok sorry.

Jesus.

Ok sorry sorry.

Now I’m definitely not telling you.

I thought the leg waxing would’ve been more embarrassing than an abortion, as an abortion would’ve indicated I wasn’t a virgin, which I was.

He reached across my lap to his glove compartment and pulled out a flask, then shoved his seat all the way back to get out—long legs—and slammed the door behind him. I followed.

The tickets were for some limited showing of a movie from 2002, about teenagers who ride freight trains in rural Oregon until one of them falls off and dies. He ordered a jumbo Diet Coke at concessions and asked for an extra cup, and then I realized he’d paid for my ticket. I was so distracted by trying to seem cool and removed that I was barely there at all.

The seats were way up near the front. I quickly understood it was his intention to get drunk fast, and nobody else sat so close. He poured half the coke out into an extra cup, then poured the whiskey into that big cup. There was something hasty about it. Without ballet as a conduit there was something sloppy about him, no prescribed choreography through which to channel his energy.

An older couple neared us, debating over where to sit.

Make sure they don’t see, I whispered.

I thought he’d make fun of me, but he just glanced around, nodded. Course, he said.

They walked back up the aisle. A few people filled in nearby rows and Matthew sank in his seat.

He sipped every few minutes, offering me some, then sipping again. Maybe it was just the easiest place to do it, here, in the dark. I can’t remember who finished the cup. I can’t remember in the movie if the old woman died, which is the important part. I remember during the neo-Nazi sex scene this little boy across the aisle, watching with wide eyes, rapt.

In the light of the movie I saw the lower half of the boy’s face, his lips blue-lit. His tiny, pudgy hand circled the bucket, rustling around, digging for buttery pieces, then popping them into his mouth, chewing open-mouthed with his molars, indulgent. That is what it’s like to really feel into things, I thought, to not be afraid that something is going to hurt. Alexa moved like nothing hurt, stretched her leg up into arabesque behind her, then forced it higher as if to feel as deeply into the pose as possible, to fulfill it the absolute maximum amount she could. Then she lowered it, moving through passé, breathing.

I’d watched her warm up her arabesque, both legs sheathed in pink knitwear. She’d lift one behind her and shove it against the studio wall, back arched in half, heel scuffing plaster. I felt bunion pain in my shoes now. My hip clicked as I crossed one leg over the other and watched Matthew’s thigh shake. My hips which were inflexible, my glutes which trembled trying to hold the turned-out position, like trying to pry and perpetually hold a clamshell open. Everything in ballet had to be done turned out and my body just wanted to snap me back shut.

I often wondered what it felt like to be Alexa, fluttering soundlessly except for the soft thud of her shoe boxes against the stage, her shoulder blades spread flat, arms winged back as she assumed starting position. One of her eyebrows was higher than the other, a genetic anomaly I’d noticed after staring at her for so long, her hairline slightly higher over that spot as if to compensate. It gave her this inquisitive look, like she was emoting when she wasn’t, curious as she raised her arm and peered beneath it at the audience. Up close, her knuckle skin was loose and discolored and for some reason reminded me of rotisserie chicken. Several big brown-red freckles pocked her biceps. I knew her body better than my own.

We were drunk when the lights came up. My head felt padded with cotton and I didn’t care about Alexa, I just wanted him to put his hands on me. So much more seemed possible, now that I knew I could quit.

My parents are out, he said, his eyes a little red, a little glazed over, and he parked askew in his driveway. He told me to be quiet. My mom would be calling any second. I silenced my phone.

Or they’re in the main house, he said. It doesn’t matter.

Matthew lived in Sherman Oaks, not too far from me. The guest house was dark and glowed turquoise from betta fish aquarium lights. He flicked the overhead on. The fish swerved, alarmed, flexed its plumage, though there were no other fish to see it. The room smelled like a basement, like tank water and plywood. Several primary-colored beanbags sat around looking punched into position. A Playstation and a flatscreen. Throughout the room were model airplanes, all over, seemingly from different eras, strung from the ceiling with clear string. Propped up was a framed image of Matthew in front of a mottled blue and white background, posed in a neatly squared off lunge, probably thirteen, around four years ago, in his tight white t-shirt and black tights. He turned on Family Guy and started searching through the liquor cabinet.

Did you make these? I asked, about the planes.

Matthew scoffed. Why in the hell would I make those? he said.

It seemed hilarious suddenly, the idea of him constructing model airplanes. We both cackled.

When in the hell, he said, would I have the time? You see me every damn day in studio.

Who then?!

My dad. He’s really into aviation.

Oh, cool.

Not really. He tapped the nose of one and it swayed back and forth gently.

Gay, I said, pointing to one with a rainbow propeller.

That wasn’t a question here, between us, his gayness, that was studio talk. This was instinct. It was happening so I tried to pretend like it wasn’t, to not interfere. He handed me a glass of tequila. The glass smelled like wet dog, the way other people’s freshly-washed dishware smells to me, like they hadn’t properly scrubbed themselves off it.

I haven’t been on a plane in a long time, I said.

I go every month.

Really?

My uncle lives in Denver, he said. I always watch a war movie on the plane. It’s my routine.

I feel like they always choose war movies as plane-watch options. It’s only ever war movies.

It’s a 9/11 thing, he said.

Huh?

It’s because of 9/11.

Why would it be because of 9/11?

I sat in one of the beanbags with my cup.

People feel patriotic on planes. They clap for the pilots when they land. They're thinking about worst-case scenarios in their heads, about terrorism and war, about fighting terrorism. So Delta gives the people what they want. War movies.

They clap because they’re happy they didn’t die, I said. Because flying feels like you might die. It’s not natural.

Matthew slumped into a beanbag next to me. It was so easy for men in ballet, they gave them permission to be sloppy if it meant being impressive and pushing for more, if it meant leaping ten feet in the air or going for five turns.

Why are you looking at me? he said. What?

You’re looking at me. He sipped his drink.

This was it, I thought. I watched his sternum, his steady breathing.

So, I said.

So what?

I don’t know.

He smiled, understood. Ok. He leaned in. Why don’t you do something about it?

I felt the sizzle of liquor in my stomach.

No, you, I said.

If you want to be better, he said, why don’t you do something about it?

Better?

Why do you listen to Miss Katherine?

He was suddenly serious, pointed.

At a certain point you can’t do anything about it, I said.

The slosh of the tank filter, the sad fish gulping.

You could stay after class for hours, he said. You could suck up to Miss Katherine, suck her clit the way Alexa does. Miss Katherine, she’s so prissy. She’s like a cat. Prissy priss.

The mention of Alexa made my stomach hurt.

But you don’t. You don’t want it. You don’t even like it. You’re always, like, rolling your eyes.

He had this wry look that annoyed me, like he thought he was right.

Alexa’s amazing, I said sharply.

Alexa sucks Miss Katherine’s clit.

Ew. Stop saying that.

Matthew didn’t know what it was like.

You’re gonna let her make you quit? he said.

I could picture it in my head. I would be one of those girls who you start to see less of in class, who the rumors form about, that she’s partying, that she’s gained weight, that she’s soft and slovenly. Then she turns up again for a one-off class the way a girl turns up to her old high school classroom for a visit, and though she seems older and wiser, like she’s done things, like she’s freer, you also feel sorry for her.

You just don’t really want it, he said.

It was that I didn’t think I’d been allowed to want it. It was that to want it further would bring about pain, that it was easier to sever off the want now, to clip its wings and tie the wound off and move on.

He placed one hand on my thigh. My heart beat. Finally.

He jumped. Fuck, he said.

What?

Then I saw his dad through the window, squinting out at the yard, maybe trying to figure out if his son was home, and what he was doing in the guest house.

Silent laughing, he pulled me up by my arm, both of us trying to keep quiet, and shoved me right in the lower back toward the door, and knowing he’d wanted to was better than actually having to do it.

What do I do?

Shut up, he said, laughing. There’s a gate back there. Just go. Run. He won’t see. Go for the gate. Run.

I ran through a wet grass patch, soaking my ankles and pant cuffs all the way down the driveway, which wrapped around the house and led me back to the front. I unlatched their gate and jogged down their lawn to the dark street, all crickets, jogging between his house and mine, and I wanted to stay jogging, it felt good on my body, easy, light, natural, and I knew I should take my time. I knew that back home there was my mom’s screaming and yelling, asking what the hell was wrong with me, but just the sprinkler sound now hushed everything into silence.