Tiny Pretty Things (29 page)

“A thing?” he says, his mouth now finding its way to the back of my neck. “You have lots of beautiful things. Like your neck.”

The sensation flickers over me like a warm rain, and I can’t concentrate to get the words out. He nibbles and kisses the back of my neck and my heart couldn’t slow down if it wanted to. I want him to kiss me all over, in places I’ve never let anyone see, places he’s not supposed to touch.

The monitor buzzes again, yanking me out of the moment. I squirm away a little, needing the distance to help me speak the truth.

“There it is again,” he says. “Your watch.”

“I need to tell you something,” I say, my insides now kneading and twisting with fear. “It’s not a watch.” I practice the words in my head a couple of times as we sit in silence. Everything stops as his blue gaze fixes on me. “It’s a heart monitor,” I whisper, each word barely even a real breath.

“A what?” he says.

“Heart monitor,” I repeat, making the words heavier. I’m trying not to look in his eyes, trying not to cry.

“Why do you need it?” He reaches for my wrist and I pull it away.

“I have . . . a condition,” I start.

“A what?” he interrupts, but I clamp my hand over his mouth before he can finish. I need the quiet Alec right now, the one that would wander through Central Park in the snow just listening to me tell him about home, the Alec who sits to the side while I practice my solos and doesn’t give any
advice on how to make them better.

“Let me get this out, okay?” Tears creep toward the corners of my eyes and I fight them off. I remember all the times I’ve had to tell someone about my heart condition—how their faces have arrested in shock, how afterward they’ve treated me like I’m fragile, how beneath all their words and actions has always drifted a current of pity.

I don’t want Alec to look at me like that. To treat me like I’m broken. I gulp, then spit it out. “I was born with a hole in my heart. It’s called a ventricular septal defect.”

Alec’s eyes widen as I repeat the scary scientific words. “What does that mean?” he asks.

“My heart’s messed up,” I say. “And I have to be aware of it.” I hold up my wrist to flash the monitor. “Always.”

“Oh,” is all he says, then strokes my hand.

“I’m fine,” I say, and feel like I’m saying it one of the thousand times I’ve said it to my mama and dad on the phone.

“So . . . ,” he says.

Before he can finish his sentence, I blurt, “I should be wearing it all the time, but I don’t. I hate it. When I get too excited, it beeps or buzzes to alert me that my heartbeat has changed. It’s like an alarm.”

“It sounds serious. Is it?” His eyes flood with worry. “And you should be wearing it, if you’re supposed to.”

“It can be serious . . . but I’m fine,” I say again. “You sound like my mama.”

“Can it be fixed?”

I shake my head no. “It was fixed when I was a baby. But it’ll never be perfect. So I’ve always just dealt with it.”

I search his face for a reaction, but I can’t read it. I feel like he’s inched away from me. He must think I’m a freak. My hands start to quiver while he asks me more questions. He’s going to break up with me now. I know it.

I prepare myself for the words. Sweat collects behind my knees. My head feels a little light. And my monitor buzzes again.

Alec stops staring at me. “Why did it do that again?” He reaches for me. “And you’re shaking. Why?”

“I thought . . . thought you’d . . . ,” I start.

“Thought I’d what?” he says, and then he looks at me, like really looks at me, all hard and deep, and my tears finally come pouring out. He pulls me down next to him and I rest my wet cheek on his chest. He wraps me up tight in his arms and I feel like I’ll never fall. I let the tears rush out until there aren’t anymore. He is that quiet Alec again. The one who strokes my back, hums in my ear, and squeezes his arms tight around me.

Just as I start to drift to sleep, I hear him whisper, “Gigi, I like you. And nothing you can say can change that.”

The words wrap around me.

“Gigi?” I hear from the studio door. Both Alec and I turn around. One of the
petit rats
shuffles up to us. Her little brown bun looks like a chocolate cupcake atop her head. She curtsies. She’s holding a small pastry box.

“This is for you,” she says.

“Thanks,” I say. “But you didn’t have to give me anything. What’s your name?”

“Margaret,” she whispers. “It’s not from me. One of the RAs told me to give it to you.”

“Okay,” I say, taking the box from her tiny hands. I wonder who it’s from.

She scampers out of the studio while I untie the ribbon. Alec starts to nibble on my shoulder. “What’s this?” I say, then smile at Alec. “Is this a surprise from you?” Just what I needed after telling him my secret.

“No,” he says, craning to look in the box. “I didn’t send it to you.”

My insides get all squishy and weird as I pull off the note attached to the bottom. I flip it over. It reads:

I throw the card and rip open the box. Inside there’s a moldy, heart-shaped cookie stuck on a sticky pad, surrounded by dead cockroaches. Startled, I drop it.

I shriek in fear that quickly swells to anger, and jump up.

I run to the hallway. Alec follows, frazzled, furious. I can’t hear what he’s saying to me. Girls whizz by in and out of other practice studios.

“Who left this?” I shout, shaking the empty box. “Who’s messing with me?”

They stop and stare at me like I’ve lost it. And maybe I have. I hear the blood whooshing through me and feel my heart pounding. Alec tries to pull me back into the studio with him. I can’t stop yelling. “Who? Who?”

They whisper among one another. Say I’m crazy. Paranoid. They leave me there to scream and scream and scream until my shirt is all wet and my knees are so wobbly I sink to the floor.

“Gigi,” Alec says, his arms cradling me, pulling me up. “It’s just mind games. This is exactly what happened to Cassie.”

I am shaking, and he tries to hold me up. But I feel like I’m going to fall. “Alec, I just—”

“They’re trying to rattle you.” He pulls me back into the studio away from all the whispering and stares. “It’s okay.” He repeats over and over again. “You’ve got to be strong here, Gigi. We all want to be the best here, and you are. I know you have it in you. But you can’t let them shake you. You can’t let them win.”

“I don’t understand why they’re doing this!” I wipe messy tears from my face, and instantly want to bring up the pictures of Bette and him. But I can’t. He pulls me close and strokes my back.

“It’s Bette,” I whisper. “I know it is.”

“What?” He pulls back.

“It’s Bette. It has to be.”

“She gets desperate sometimes, but she wouldn’t do that,” he says. “Plus, she’s deathly afraid of cockroaches.”

“You don’t believe me,” I say, more tears pouring out.

“It’s not that. I just know her, and that’s really not her style. Is all. Not saying you’re wrong.”

“She wrote that message on the mirror. She did other things, too.” I pull back. “You’re defending her.” My eyes are so full of tears, I can hardly see him. Everything’s a blur. Maybe he still loves her. Maybe they aren’t quite done yet. Why else would he take her side?

“She doesn’t do that stuff,” he says. She’s got him fooled. He mumbles a bunch of things, but I can’t hear him anymore. My ears fill with sounds of my own fear and tears.

He pulls me close even though I fight his embrace. “Everything’s going to be fine.” His words land in my hair, and his arms close in around me.

He says it over and over again, but I don’t know if I can believe it.

At dinner in the café, people whisper all around me. My cheeks still feel hot, but I’m pouring myself into the book for English class and trying to find flavor in the bland piece of chicken on my plate as a distraction. This is the time when I miss the ballerina versions of Mama’s food the most: steamed cabbage sprinkled with red chili flakes, black-eyed peas with a tiny portion of bacon (turkey, of course), chicken dusted with a mix of flour and breadcrumbs before it’s fried in olive oil, all kinds of stewed greens.

Not even a comforting text from Alec can erase the homesickness today. I want to tell my parents. Talk to them about what’s happening. But I don’t dare. Mama already wants me back home. If she knew about this she’d demand I leave the school.

One of the Level 6 girls laughs in my direction, and I hear them whispering about my meltdown in the hall. I want to shout and scream again. Instead, I just shove away from the table and walk away, trying to stay calm and poised. They’re not who I’m really mad at. I know who I should be mad at. And it’s about time I faced her.

I take the elevator down to the second floor, and then the first, and I don’t stop until I’ve looked through every studio, and find her in studio D, at the center, practicing pirouettes.

“Bette?” I say with an edge, pushing the door open. There’s no pretense here, no reason to pretend that this is going to be a civil conversation. We both know she’s been doing things to me. And it needs to stop. “We need to talk,” I say, feeling a little like someone else. Someone not at all afraid of her.

“About what?” She doesn’t move a muscle, staying in fifth position, and her nose crinkles like she’s smelled something foul. Like that something is me. I straighten my back even more. I let my shoulders sink down and back, like they’ve grown the heaviest and most incredible set of wings.

“You did something terrible,” I say, gaining confidence. “Actually, several terrible things.”

“I did something terrible?” she says, finally turning to look at me. Her eyes narrow, but her face is
steady, not backing down.

“The message on the mirror. The picture of me and Henri in the Light closet, the naked pictures on Valentine’s day, and that disgusting cookie,” I say. “And I shouldn’t forget the medical report. You went through Nurse Connie’s medical files and stole private information.”

“Pictures? A medical file? Cookie?” The tone in her voice makes me feel like we’re talking about unicorns and leprechauns. Like I’ve made a whole bunch of things up. “What are you talking about?” she sputters out again, and seems so stunned by how angry I am.

“Come on,” I say. “It’s not like I don’t know you hate me.”

I inch toward her.

“Well, that’s news to me,” she says, “because I don’t hate you.”

“Then why did you do all those things? It’s been you from the beginning. You’re messing with me,” I say. Her nonchalance stokes my anger.

“I’m messing with you,” she repeats, mocking me, like we’re in kindergarten and she’s broken all the crayons in my box. “I don’t know anything about a medical report or pictures. I heard about that cookie thing. That wasn’t me. I don’t do roaches. But fine. Yeah. The other stuff—the message on the mirror, the shot of you and Henri. Yeah. Sure. I wanted to remind you. that Alec was mine. That this school was mine. And whatever. But you got Sugar Plum Fairy. And you got Giselle. So there’s nothing to be jealous of here. You won.” There’s a finality in her voice, an exhaustion. “So you don’t have to be worried about me anymore.”

“What, and that makes it okay?” I say, trying to keep my voice from wavering and my hands from shaking. “You can do whatever you want because you’re having a bad year? You can mess with me because you don’t like me? Because Alec likes me? You can’t do all this shit to me!” I didn’t even know I was capable of swearing, let alone swearing right at someone. “And even now, you’re not owning up to it all.”

She sighs, like I’m some pestering child, checks herself in the mirror again, and says, “What are you going to do? Go all ghetto on me or something? Beat me up to get the answers?”

My eyes are tornadoes now, and though I’ve never hit anyone in my life, or been hit, I want to slap her. Throw my entire palm into her face so it leaves a mark. The word
ghetto
drums inside me. I want to shout that I’ve never been to the ghetto. My heart feels like it might just stop—the beats pulsing like a hummingbird’s wings, the muscle threatening to give up.

“Stop being crazy,” she says.

I take a few deep breaths, allowing my center to lengthen, so I feel twenty feet tall. I am a ballerina. I am in control.

She smirks, like she knows she’s won. I take the pictures I’ve been carrying around out of my dance bag. I throw several of them on the floor. Images of her litter the polished hardwood: her breasts, the tops of her thighs, Alec’s hands around her, touching her, her smug face looking right up at me. She moves forward with instant recognition—and maybe revulsion.

“Where did you get those? Have you been in my room?” she says. “Those are private.”

“Stop being
crazy
, Bette,” I mock her. She leans down to gather them as I kick them away. “Try denying those. And there are more.” I leave her scrambling to pick them up.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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