Loud Awake and Lost, page 19
“Not your favorite part—the next two days of denial.” Lissa was right. I loved to cook, and I loved to eat—a simple pleasure, but any appetite, for a dancer, was a problem with a world of consequence.
Then I remembered something else. “So that was why we started saying ‘waffles, waffles’ to mean a spontaneous, off-the-radar new plan.”
“Yep.”
“Ha. I love it,” I said. It felt great to have it again, too—it was a small, happy gift, like finding ten dollars in the pocket of my jeans.
Lissa stared at me over her mug. “Is this like a brain-damage-memory-loss thing you’ve got, from the accident? Sorry, not to imply you have brain damage. I mean, because you don’t, do you?” She squinched her nose. Lissa relied on her innocent adorableness to save her from her innocent tactlessness.
“I think of it more as missing pieces. Not damaged pieces,” I explained. “And I do get jolted back into memories. Like when I saw you at the club back on Halloween, I could feel these—sparks, I guess I’d call them—of what we did last New Year’s Eve. We hung out together that night, right?”
“New Year’s Eve, sure.” Lissa sighed. “You came over to my place before. We got dressed together.… Let’s see.… Oh, and that’s when I saw your leather jacket for the first time; you’d just bought it. And I made us mozzarella sticks, do you remember that? No? Or what about that stand-up mirror in my room at home that makes everyone look like they’re in a fun house? It was definitely shooting down our confidence, that mirror.”
“You’re from Williamsburg.”
“Uh-huh. I am.” Lissa gave me a quick double take. Probably astounded that I could misplace such a huge fact. But nothing was clicking with mozzarella or the fun-house mirror, and I had only a dim recall of Lissa’s home of old-fashioned furniture and flocked Victorian wallpaper and sconces that threw off blotted light.
“Okay, okay. Moving on to Areacode, which was where we went next,” continued Lissa, all business. “You’d been joining me on the club scene for a little while, and this dude—or wait, no, it was his brother—had given you a flyer earlier that week, up in Manhattan. You were dying to go—but you didn’t really know the dude. And you were kind of shilly-shallying about it, hoping he’d be there but trying not to get too excited.”
“Did the guy have a name?” I braced myself. “Anthony, maybe?”
Lissa shook her head. “No. I’d remember that because that’s my dad’s name. Who’s Anthony?”
“Just someone…” I breathed out. It was a relief in a way, every time I slipped a link to Anthony Travolo. It unnerved me to brush up against possible connections that I couldn’t recall. It also seemed disrespectful to his memory.
“No, I don’t think you knew this guy’s name. But I think you knew his brother’s name? Which is failing me. Now, I’d know that name if you said it.”
“How about Kai?” I said it just to say it, the way Rachel endlessly brought up Jake.
Lissa’s face stayed blank. “Last name?”
Did Kai have his dad’s last name? “Kai Ortiz?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
I shrugged. “I’m all out of names.”
“Okay. Well, anyway, we were super happy to get into Areacode. The sound was so hot, and I wanted to meet the DJ, or—whatever he called himself—sonoric artist. He was sublime.”
Where did Lissa get these expressions? Not even my parents said sublime. “So did it work out? With you and Sublime?”
“For that night, it did. Although it seems that now I’ve blanked. What was his name? DJ London, Londoner…” Lissa shook her head and sipped her tea, leaving an electric red–lipstick smile on the rim. “And you found Romeo Late-Night, he was no slouch, following you around, acting pretty love-struck.”
“On New Year’s Eve,” I said, “I guess everyone wants to be a little love-struck. But it feels like such an epic night for me to just…lose.”
“Don’t look so sad. Most people don’t remember New Year’s Eve.” Lissa snapped her fingers. “But there was one other thing— at some point, you told me you were going out onto the fire escape, and you didn’t want me to think you’d left. Because I remember thinking that it was crackers of you. I mean, since it was freezing. The coldest night of the year.”
Blood rushed to my head. “Oh my God, Lissa, you can’t believe how strange that is! Because it must have triggered me to return to exactly that spot a few weeks ago. Wow, so I guess that wasn’t a total coincidence.”
“Speaking of triggering.” Lissa was studying me. “Have you been back to any dance rehearsals at school? Dropped in to see Birdie or anything?”
“No.” I could feel myself get tense. “I keep meaning to. It feels so complicated, seeing her.”
“She’s a person, not a jigsaw puzzle. Go see her. She’d love to see you. What about Bowditch Bridge? Have you been there?”
Bowditch Bridge. Even the name made me think of a blade, recarving my scars. “I’d definitely brave seeing Birdie before I went back to the bridge.”
“It might not be a bad idea, Ember. Especially if you want to reboot.” Lissa’s voice was soft with care. “There’s a term for it, right? ‘Exposure therapy.’ Like the fire escape. Or you sit in on your old dance class, or visit your old dance teacher. Or you drive to the bridge, the place where it all happened. Even if, psychologically, it’s like running back into the burning building.” She tapped her temple. “Because these blackouts that you’re talking about—they’re all in there. They might be hiding in a really dark spot, Ember, but they’re not lost.”
“Right, I know.” My mind wouldn’t stop the whirligig of imagining Bowditch Bridge again. I was acutely conscious of my heart’s acceleration, the idea clenched like a fighter’s stance in the core of my body. “I don’t know. What if I freak out?”
“And so what if you do? Revisit the dance, step by step. That’s what a dance teacher would say. You were going somewhere upstate, right?”
I nodded. “I was on my way to see my aunt. I guess it must have been a kind of thrown-together plan. I’d called her a few days before. And I’d been up there a few times in the fall, a couple of times before that in the summer. So I knew the route. But it was a really bad storm that night. And…I wasn’t alone.” I exhaled a shaky breath.
“Right, I know. You want my advice?” Lissa paused. “Drive it.”
“What? Drive to the bridge?”
She nodded. “That’s the real burning building. I’d go with you, if you want.”
Drive it. “I’m not sure.” I shivered.
Coney Island was one thing. The prospect of this drive was terrifying. And yet, if I were going to do it, I’d have to do it alone. No Kai, no Mom, no Smarty, no Holden or even Lissa. This would have to be my journey.
Reflexively, I checked my texts just to see if Kai had left me anything. No. But it wouldn’t stop me from checking again, in the next half hour.
“Maybe you’d find the flow of what happened,” said Lissa. “Or maybe you’ll find the flow of all of these other moments that you’re missing. But jeez, you look white as a ghost, Ember.”
“It scares me,” I admitted. “Terrifies me.”
“Look, I don’t think you should do any of this before you’re ready. Go see Birdie first, maybe? Touch in with what you know before you head out into something you don’t. Just to make sure you’re strong enough, physically and mentally. You’ve got to be careful with yourself.”
“You’re right. I get it.” I nodded. “Actually, you kinda sound like my mom,” I told her. “In a good way, I mean.”
“It’s been my experience that moms usually mean it in a good way,” Lissa answered.
26
Ember Was Here
I sent Birdie a note late that same night, once I got back from Lissa’s—after hanging out a while longer in her apartment, we’d located the closest IHOP uptown, where we ordered silver dollars with whipped butter and strawberry syrup.
“You’ll come watch me in the pageant? And then in the spring, I get to dance as a witch and a bridesmaid! Who could ask for more, right?” Lissa seemed homesick as she hugged me good-bye.
“You’re incredible, Lissa. Of course I’ll come clap for you.”
She pulled away, her face unguarded pleasure. “Seriously? I’m not too far away?”
“What are you talking about? You’re eight stops on the L.”
Independence was a process, it seemed, and it struck me that Holden was just the same as Lissa in that way. Sometimes he’d seem incredibly independent, and then other times he’d reach out for me as if he were stuck out alone in a field and needed that quick reassurance of cover. “Nutcracker’s opening night is December fifth,” Lissa said softly, “and then it’s March twelfth for La Sylphide.”
“Promise, promise to both. I’d love to come see you.”
On the Lincoln Center subway platform, I’d absently checked again for messages from Kai—none. But I knew it was knee-jerk, that I’d only looked as a way of making myself feel better. The rhythm and tempo of Kai had been established. He happened when he happened, he answered to no rule, and I was coming to an understanding that no matter what I did, I couldn’t control him.
As the train pulled into the station, I saw the letter spray-painted on the column on the opposite side of the platform. The casual sideways A, in gunmetal silver. My heart leapt—what did it mean? It was like a silent wave, or a smile, the signal of his presence. How many of them were here in the city?
The thought troubled me all the way home, where for once—probably due to my scrupulous texting—my parents were pretending that they’d been tucked up peacefully in bed. Dad reading, Mom knitting.
“How’s Lissa?” asked Mom.
“Fun.… Committed,” I said. “She’s really in it.”
“Well, I don’t envy her. Dancing is such a hard life.”
“Not if it’s the only one you’d ever understand.”
Dad, who slept closest to the door in old-fashioned protector style, now reached out his hand to cover mine. “Was it difficult for you? To see her? To be there, around all those kids?” If Mom was right that Dad’s voice was the window to his soul, I could tell from the way he asked that a small, quiet part of his soul had been crushed I’d given up dance.
“Not as bad as I thought. Good night,” I answered softly, leaning down to kiss him quickly on the forehead before I turned and left the room.
Birdie’s reply to my question was immediate, pinging my in-box by the time I’d come back from brushing my teeth in the bathroom.
Hi, Ember—
Hooray! I was so happy to get your email message. I’ve really been hoping that you would come on over to the Fine Arts building and say hello. It’s not the same—and for sure quieter—with you and Lissa both gone.
Also, Ember, I have something to show you that I think you will want to see. Drop by tomorrow after rehearsal—but not too late.
I would love to reconnect. Sooner the better. xx B.
I clicked and reclicked the message like a lighter all the next morning, during and in between classes.
Then I let my fingers send a quick ok see you then! at lunch.
Walking out of the cafeteria, Rachel and I made a plan to hang out this weekend, which was a step in the right direction—but things between us still didn’t feel exactly perfect, so I nixed asking her to come with me for support, for my very first visit back to the dance studio. Dance wasn’t Smarty’s cup of tea, anyway. What we needed most was some real time together out of school. No Jake and no Holden; in fact, nobody else at all running interference. We’d make our way back to the right rhythm, because we always did.
I also called Jenn to reschedule my physical therapy. My afternoon was now clear, and with the school day over, I killed the next ninety minutes in the library. Schoolwork was not the same this year—I could feel teachers giving me leniency on papers and quizzes. I’d never been a spectacular scholar, or even a scholar at all, but now I struggled for my B-minuses and C-pluses. It was trickier, since the accident, to lower myself deep enough to reach those hard, fixed places of concentration.
Paris. My conversation with Lissa kept nudging at me. I’d wanted to take off even before last February. The land of shiny copper pots, of soufflés and flambés, and recipes that needed careful, close instruction. I’d have been in a country where I didn’t know the language and didn’t have any friends, and far from my parents. Was that what I’d been dreaming about, when I’d confided to Lissa?
At half past four, I gathered my books and left the main building, then headed down the block to the converted church that Lafayette used as its Fine Arts Center. The place of my old dreams.
It was the first time all year that I’d walked up the worn steps and through the arched front door. The entrance was the only place where you could smell the building’s previous holy days. That dry-papery, ancient-wood, furniture-polish churchy smell. On the way through, I pressed my hand to the scar ridged beneath my bangs. It gave me courage—I was older, I was different, I was returning to the studio not in failure but with resolution that my past was my past.
I’d heard a rumor that some new hit TV show about ballet dancers had caused a major uptick in Lafayette freshmen taking dance as an elective, and the front hall of locker banks did seem extra crowded with girls in wraps and leg warmers, packing up and heading out. But from the deep cream walls and the lost-and-found basket at the front desk to the corkboards crammed with local auditions, everything looked the same as it always did. It was both exhilarating and strange to be here again.
Stranger still was that I was all but unrecognized by the freshmen and sophomores.
In H studio, I peeped in on a couple of mirrored dancers lingering at the bar. The floor was dusted in cornstarch, and Birdie’s favorite Café Europa radio station was playing Charlotte Gainsbourg in a remix. Laughter drifted from the more casual “green room” next door. And even though there was no reason for it, the sound left me feeling unsure of myself, as if I’d been deliberately left out of the joke.
I walked down to J studio, where most of the one-on-one choreography happened. The protocol of J studio was silence, no music, and it was usually more intense, too, a controlled randomness of small groups and individuals working piecemeal through routines. Some of the dancers were beating out their eight-count combinations, while others performed in pairs. In back was a nest of freshmen stretching through their end-of-practice cooldowns.
With no Birdie in sight, I sat in a spare folding chair by the door.
“Ouch!” The seat was too hard; I winced as pain jolted up my spine. It was like a reminder that the place where I really belonged was in my physical therapy class—not here.
“Ember! You okay?” Marianne Polzone, skimming past, paused to check me over.
“Hey, Marianne. Fine, I’m fine.”
She nodded and resumed the complicated steps of a floor routine. Marianne was a senior, and she’d always been somewhat robotic in her style, but she’d really changed this past year. As I watched her, I had to respect how far she’d come from “Marianne Plod Zone,” Lissa’s smirking name for her.
After a minute or so, Marianne even dared a small, pleased glance at me, as if hoping that I’d noticed how much she’d improved. I smiled back. Yes.
Wade Adams, working on some difficult choreography on the other side of the room, was just as rubber-bandy and intuitively brilliant as always. His older brother, Chester, was a principal with the ABT, which is where Wade himself very likely would end up. Wade and Chester both looked like young, tall, redheaded Woody Allens. Not exactly leading-man types, but you forgave them their shortcomings in the looks department when they started to move.
I relaxed deeper into my seat, as Hannah Thwaite bounced into the studio. Hannah! I’d hardly seen her at school—she probably lived in the Arts building. Hannah was one of the best dancers at Lafayette, a natural despite her round, blow-up-doll figure that she liked to emphasize. Today she’d been highlighting her assets with a plunge-neck leotard, and as she sprang to the corner of the room to retrieve her shrug, she noticed me.
“Eeek! Ember! A little Birdie told me you might drop by today. But you’re so late, you missed practice. You look amaaaazing with your hair like that—I saw you the other day in the hall and totally meant to tell you.” Did Hannah speak like that on purpose? Or did her fake sweetness sound okay in her own ears? “You’ve been such a stranger here! We were all starting to feel offended! But I guess you keep away because you miss it so much. It’s incredibly brave of you to come by and show some support.”
I gave Hannah’s boobs a quick smile. “I always think of you as having plenty of support.”
Hannah pulled her shrug across her chest and raised her eyebrows. I wasn’t usually bitchy, and I was annoyed that I’d sunk to her level, but of course now Hannah had her claws out. “Well, if it’s any consolation, it’s been hugely competitive this year. So it would have been really hard to make the cut.”
“Then I guess it was pretty smart of me to stage that debilitating car accident.”
Hannah looked only slightly embarrassed. “Oh, Emb, I’m obviously not trying to be—I mean, I feel incredibly sorry for you. For what happened, I mean. We all feel bad.” Her smile was awkward—she wasn’t being fake now, but her sincerity didn’t come easy, either. “You used to put in so much time here. Jeez, I feel like after one thousand or so hours, we should each get to tag the J studio wall, you know?” As she pretended to shake a can of paint and spray. “Like, ‘Hannah was here!’ ” She snorted. “ ‘Ember was here!’ ”
“Right…”
Just then Birdie swept through the door. Her eyes lit brightly on me. “Ember, oh good. I thought I saw you come in!” When she hugged me, the buttons on her long-underwear thermal shirt met the buttons of my long-underwear thermal shirt in a compatible click. “Wow.” She smiled as she pulled away. “As I live and breathe. Okay, come on upstairs with me.”
“See ya, Emb.” As Hannah shot off, I stood to follow Birdie out of the studio and then up a flight of stairs to her cramped dormer office, the site of many late afternoons for some of us, after dance practice.
