part 3

So here goes another part. I hope you're enjoying this so far, I'm enjoying writing. I'm hoping to keep up some kind of pace, but it is hard when school gets really busy, so just bear with me and don't give up. Also, for anyone who is reading, leave me a comment with a link to something you've written. I'd love to read it! Or leave me a comment with what you really think of this. I've written a lot before, but I'm always too nervous to really put it out there. Thanks! And happy reading! 

I couldn’t sleep that night after work either. I danced instead. I stretched and practiced different positions and moves for hours, then worked with the music I was hoping to use for some college auditions. At one point, around four a.m. I thought I heard my door close, but I shrugged it off, Bobby’s room was next to mine, and he seemed to be the only member of the family that kept stranger hours than I did, so I just assumed it was him and kept dancing. I lost track of time and ended up dancing until I heard the shower come on upstairs and realized that it was seven a.m. and everyone else in the house was getting up. The little boys had summer camp, my dad had work and she would eventually be going to work as well.

It wasn’t the first time that I’d danced through the night. I was more careful during the school year, but this was summer and I’d had a lot on my mind that I was trying to think through, although the dancing usually helped to keep my mind off of everything. I didn’t sleep much anyway, even when I tried, and usually it just resulted in my lying in bed for hours, unable to calm my mind.

This had all started when I was about twelve, four years after my mom had died. I wasn’t sleeping much to begin with, and then my dad started staying up late as well and began drinking. I was worried about him and wanted to keep an eye on him, so I started staying up later and later. The dancing was just to avoid boredom. Although I had no idea what had happened, something that year had caused him to escalate his drinking. I didn’t tell anyone, but a few mornings I had woken up to find him passed out on the sofa, cans lined up on the coffee table. Somehow, knowing that I was awake always kept him from drinking, and that was all that I cared about.

After a few months of this he began to sleep again and stopped drinking, but I never bothered. Sleep always brought me strange dreams about my mother, so I preferred to dance. I danced until I was sore, danced until I felt dead on my feet, and when I felt like I could no longer dance I would stretch and exercise. I did push-ups, jackknifes, and leg lifts before moving on to planks and then in high school I added a five mile run through the neighborhood. When I was younger I would only stay up a few nights a week, but the older I got it seemed to more I stayed awake. All of the late night dancing and running may have seemed too much for my body, but it had been good for me. I had become the best dancer in my class and I was already working on applying for a dance scholarship to college. I knew that I could use the money, although I had no idea where I wanted to go for college or what I wanted to study.

I knew I wanted to continue dancing, although the thought of dancing without Jess seemed a bit overwhelming. We had been dancing together since second grade, when we’d met and become friends, and having someone to dance with was very helpful. Dancing the way we did was difficult to understand if you did not do it. As dancer we pushed ourselves to our limits and it did not always pay off. I’d watched other girls dance at the same level that we did without getting a scholarship or membership in a company. We spend most of our waking time away from home, either at the gym, studio or at school. We had nearly zero body fat and neither of us remembered what chips or ice cream tasted like. We had more muscles than we knew what to do with, yet we were still both very thin, a size three in pants. It wasn’t just the physical aspects though, there was also the mental aspect. We were required to focus all the time, whether it was focus on dancing or focus on our diet, our workouts and school. The mental stress had made us both seem older than we were, although this was also partially due to our parents.

Neither of us had much of a childhood, mine stopped suddenly when my mom died and I had learned to take care of myself, and any hope of regaining that childhood had been extinguished when I was twelve and had started staying awake all night.

My thoughts were suddenly interrupted by Bobby, my oldest stepbrother.

“You’re up early!” he said cheerfully. “I heard you dancing at five.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“No, its okay,” Bobby said. “I was up and studying.”

“At five?” I asked. “In the summer?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” he said. “And Organic Chemistry is kind of kicking my ass.”

“Oh,” I said, pretending I even knew what organic chemistry was, I was smart but I took regular classes, no honors, no AP, just the general college prep curriculum, so organic chemistry was definitely out of my range.

“What were you doing up so early?” he asked. “Just dancing?”

“I needed to practice,” I said. “College auditions and scholarships are coming up soon.”

“From what I understand you’re pretty good,” he said. “I hear about you sometimes at the university. You’re not even in college and I hear you’re the best person there.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “And I can always get better.”

“If you say so,” he said. “Personally, I’d take my sleep over practice, but I guess if you’re that dedicated then good for you.”

“Thanks….I guess,” I replied.

“No problem,” he laughed. “Well I have to go, see you later!”

And he was gone. Bobby was like that. Here one minute, gone the next, always on the go. I was also always busy, but I only did three things, dance, school and work. Bobby had two jobs, took summer classes, was a member of the student government at the university, did research for his honors project for graduation and was part of the acting community. So far I’d seen him in four different plays at the university. Bobby was always busy, always moving. His blackberry never stopped vibrating and more than once I’d seen him pack two huge thermoses of coffee when he left for school. I knew I was not the poster child for a healthy lifestyle—the late nights took care of that—but at least I didn’t drink close to ten cups of coffee to start my morning.

After Bobby left I tightened up my running shoes, reset the stopwatch on my favorite running watch and took off down the sidewalk, preparing myself for a three mile run, hoping to finish in twenty-one minutes, but knowing that after staying awake all night and drinking a cup of coffee I would be lucky to finish in twenty-six minutes. The trick for me was to focus on the time. If I focused on something-anything-other than running I didn’t think about how tired I felt or how much my muscles ached. This time though, my mind kept drifting to Jess, which didn’t really help.

When I got home my heart was pounding and all of my muscles were sore. I turned on the shower as cold as it would go and emptied the ice bin in the freezer into the bathtub for a short ice bath. Unfortunately, even the teeth chattering ice bath did not take my mind off of Jess. I just kept thinking that she must be wrong, she couldn’t actually be pregnant. All those years of dance were just gone. All of her muscles, her careful diets, her hours and hours of practice, all ruined. I knew that this eventually happened to most dancers, even I wanted children at some point, but not until I was much older. I’d worked too hard and too long to throw it all away.

The run and ice bath somehow made me tired enough to sleep, so I went into my windowless room, shut the lights off and slept until noon. The house was still empty when I woke up, the silence was a bit eerie compared to the usual chaos of lunchtime. I ate a quick lunch and starting getting ready for dance. Class was at one and I had to work right after, at five. Usually I was a very organized person, but as I tried to shove my work clothes into my dance bag I realized that it was so full I couldn’t get it closed. Unwashed tights and leotards filled up most of  the bag, along with discarded athletic tape, old hairspray cans and empty bottles of hydrogen peroxide which we used on our blisters.

Just as I was tossing all the trash into the can near my desk and putting the dirty clothes in the basket my phone vibrated. It was a text from Jess.

Not coming today, sorry.

This was the first class since seventh grade that we would not be attending together. That was just one more aspect of being a high level dancer. You didn’t miss class. Vacations were out of the question and sick days weren’t even considered a real thing. Part of me didn’t want to go to class without Jess, but I knew I didn’t really have a choice. Madame had already been kind enough to offer me a teaching position at the studio for the summer, and I knew I could use the money. Skipping class would be a sure way to lose the position. I also didn’t really know how to respond to Jess, so I took the easy way out and just ignored the message and drove to class. Unfortunately, things did not really improve at dance. Because of our advanced level we danced with the university during the school year, but in the summer Madame continued her classes at her private studio. This meant that in the summer our class was very small, and Jess’s absence was noticeable. Then Madame proceeded to give the same lecture that she gave every time someone quit dance, but I had never really listened until it was Jess that she was talking about.

“As you can see one of your classmates has left us,” she began. “But she did not leave us because she was bored or ready for another career or because she could not take the pressure, she left us because she was not careful with her body. She was careless. She gave herself away and now she must pay the price.”

Madame continued on, but I tried to tune it out. I tried to think about anything else, but before I knew it she was ordering us to begin class. I had no choice but to dance, but my heard wasn’t in it. As Madame led us through a series of moves I found myself stumbling on even the easiest turns. This, of course, did not go unnoticed. When we took our water break Caitlin pulled me aside. I’d been dancing with Caitlin almost as long as Jess and we were friends, although we weren’t particularly close.

“Hey, are you okay?” she asked. “You seem kind of off. This thing with Jess is really upsetting you, isn’t it?”

“I guess,” I said. “How do you know?”

“David told me,” she said.

David was Caitlin’s boyfriend, and a friend of Alex’s.

“I didn’t realize everyone knew,” I said. “I kind of thought it was a secret.”

“You know how fast news travels around here,” she said. “But don’t worry, I’m not telling anyone. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m okay,” I said. “I just can’t believe it. I don’t know.”

“Yeah,” Caitlin said. “To come this far? And then just quit.”

“She might still come back,” I said. “At least that’s what she told me last night.”

“Yeah, David said they hadn’t decided what they were doing,” Caitlin said.

But our conversation was cut short by Madam calling us back to the floor. When class ended Madam also pulled me aside to discuss my dismal performance.

“I know she was your friend,” she said. “But you cannot let her leaving affect your dance. You have potential. You have a future. Don’t let her end your future as well as hers.”

I wanted to shout back that Jess wasn’t ending her future, she was just changing it, that this wasn’t the end of the world, just the end of Jess’s dancing, but I kept my mouth shut and just nodded.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” she asked. “You can’t let her mistakes run your life.”

“I know,” I said. I wished she would just hurry up and finish her lecture. I was already cutting it close to make it to work on time, but I didn’t dare tell Madame that I had a job. Although there was no rule against it I knew that Madame would consider it a distraction from my dance. She continued to lecture me for another ten minutes, by which time my only chance of being on time to work involved me arriving in my dance clothes, something which I had hoped to avoid. I was good at changing while driving, but tights were beyond my skill level, so I just tried to drive as fast as I could.