Tiny Pretty Things (35 page)

I wonder if there’s a threat in there. Alec’s dad is the head of the board, one of the most important people at the conservatory. A conversation with Alec could be just that, or it could be a message from above. I get the feeling this might be the latter.

“Fine,” I say, hoping all four of these elevators will open at the same time and they’ll get in a
different one from mine.

“What’s up with the elevators?” Alec yells.

“They’re not working right now,” the front desk guy says. “Gotta take the stairs.”

“Are you serious?” Alec says.

“I don’t have time for jokes.” He turns back around. “You can wait an hour or maybe more, or take the stairs.”

Alec scoops Gigi up into his arms—despite her squealing, ear-shattering protests—and heads for the stairwells. I feel a little pinch inside, part of me coveting a little of what they have, and the other part wishing I didn’t care. Hanging out with Jayhe has changed things a little. Maybe it’s just a physical thing, maybe it started as a way to get back at Sei-Jin, but I feel like I can almost trust him. A few times, I’ve had to stop myself from showing him the box I found, from telling him how close I am to finding my father. There’s no one I can trust with that.

I climb the stairs slowly. I want to give Alec enough time to get up to the eleventh floor, drop her on the bed, and get out. Out of breath, I wait on the top step, hoping Gigi’s giggles will soon disappear, and I’ll see Alec’s blond head zip out of our room.

“Looking over your handiwork?” someone says behind me. “You don’t deserve to dance with us. You don’t deserve to be at this school.” I turn around and Sei-Jin glares at me. Her eyes are narrow slits and her teeth are clenched. “I know what you did,” she says.

I turn my back on her. Her feet pound the wood and she dashes up the stairs to me. Her cold hand jostles my shoulder, yanking me around. The banister presses into my spine.

“Get off me,” I say. “What’s your problem?” My hand feels wobbly on the banister.

I try to brush past her.

“I know it was you who did all that stuff to Gigi,” she spits.

My face drops and I try to compose myself. “Is this your attempt at a late April fool’s joke?” I quip back. I won’t let her get to me. Not anymore. I’m about to be one of the top dancers, and then she’ll beg for my friendship again, and I’ll have the satisfaction of saying no. She messed up my life, and she’s the reason I have no friends. I think I lost the ability to make friends after her.

“You wrote that message on the mirror and put all that stuff about her in the Light. And that disgusting cookie. And I know you put the glass in her shoe. Of course you would. You’re her understudy. If she doesn’t dance, you do!” she says, her grip tightening on my shoulder, her voice echoing up and down, even reaching the eighteenth floor. “Who else, besides you, is that desperate?”

I want to scream at her and I want one of the RAs to catch her keeping me here against my will. But most of all, I want to shut her up.

“You did all of it!” she yells. “You make us all look bad, you know that?”

Her accusations hit me one after the other. I start to feel a little afraid. Someone might hear her. They might believe what she’s saying. Blood drains from my face. My heart thuds in my chest. I want to vomit, empty myself of all it—her words, my tea, the noodles I picked at for lunch, the accusations.

“I didn’t do any of that.” I defend myself, but my voice is shaky. “You don’t know anything.”

“What I do know is that you’re jealous of her. You always have been that type of girl.” She’s got me boxed in and I can’t get away. “Remember when we were eight and you stole my jeweled leotard?” she says, her eyes bursting with anger. “You lied and lied and lied about taking it, then I caught you wearing it in your room. Twirling in front of your mirror, playing that stupid little music box.”

I shake my head, trying not to remember that. She didn’t know what was going on, that it was the year my mom told me my dad didn’t want to be my dad, that he didn’t want a relationship with me. I think of the music box on my shelf and the tinkle of its melody crowds into my head. I was just borrowing her leotard for a little while, pretending to be a princess. I planned to give it back. I did some bad things, I guess, when things were so confusing at home. But isn’t that to be expected? I was just a little girl and I had a secret the size and shape of a fully grown man.

“Or when you told Hye-Ji she was fat?” she says.

My face flames. “She’d locked me in the storage closet.” I’m seething as the memories flood back to me. All their torture. All their meanness. All the pressure from my mom and the absence of my dad.

“Or how you think it’s cool to text my boyfriend. Yeah, I saw your name pop up on his phone last night. He doesn’t like you, June. He takes pity on you, but that’s because he doesn’t really know what a bitch you are.”

“I’m not listening to you anymore. I didn’t do anything wrong. And you’re not going to make me feel like I did.” It takes all my self-control to keep my voice in check. I’m shaking, so I hold the railing and swallow fears that she knows what’s really going on with Jayhe and me. I’m not ready for her to know yet. But the rage inside me bubbles up, killing that tiniest hope that existed inside me that we could one day go back to how it was, the smallest corner of my mind that missed her. No, I will destroy her. “Get away from me, Sei-Jin,” I say, then lean forward. “Or maybe that’s your problem. You don’t want to.” I purse my lips at her.

Her eyes bulge, and she clenches her teeth. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And as a matter of fact, I should’ve figured it out earlier. You know, Mr. K pulled me to the side. He asked a few of us, separately, if we knew anything about what was happening to Gigi. I should’ve told him I thought it was you. I’m going to tell him first thing in the morning. E-Jun Kim is responsible for all the things that happened to Gigi. She’s a bitch. She’s terrorizing her poor roommate. Your mother will be so proud. Oh wait, she’ll probably hate you, too, after she finds out just like the rest of us! Poor June! No father. And then, no mother.”

“SHUT UP!” I scream, not realizing it’s at the top of my lungs. My vision goes blurry and I can’t quite see her face. I imagine her marching into Mr. K’s office, saying that she knows something, and telling him that I’m violent. He’ll offer her a seat, listen intently to her lies. He’ll call Mr. Lucas into the office and make Sei-Jin recount her tale to him. Mr. Lucas’s face will twist with disappointment and shame and embarrassment. They’ll dismiss me from the school. There will be stories on the
dance sites about how the ballerina from the American Ballet Conservatory got kicked out for hitting another dancer. I wonder what Jayhe would think, and hate myself for caring.

“It’s all so obvious,” she taunts.

I hear the blood pounding through my veins, and my heart is a drum beating a war chant. I’m ready to hurt someone. Not anything terrible. Not real violence. But just enough to show them not to count me out. To remind them how powerful I really am.

I don’t know what I’m doing, just that my hands are on her shoulders and I’m shoving her. Hard. Her mouth opens and shuts, but I can’t make out her words. She falls backward and tumbles down five steps. Her bottom makes a thud when she hits the wood. And her head clobbers the wall.

Bette appears at the bottom of the staircase. She races up, catching Sei-Jin before she tumbles any farther. “June!” Bette hollers, and I snap out of it, suddenly aware of where I am and what has happened.

I clomp down to where Bette is cradling Sei-Jin. I put my hands on my head, not sure what to do. My voice tucks itself into my throat, shutting it down so I can’t speak. Did Bette see me push her? Did I really push her? No, no, she must’ve fallen.

Sei-Jin is hysterical. She screams and hollers, her mascara running in black streaks down her alabaster skin. I try to reach for her. “Don’t touch me!” she shouts. “She pushed me. E-Jun pushed me!”

Bette walks her down the rest of the stairs, letting Sei-Jin’s spindly arms drape across her shoulders, her frail body leaning against Bette’s stronger frame for support, and they disappear, headed for the fourth-floor RA office. I collapse on the staircase.

“You better come with us,” Bette calls up to me when she notices I’m not following. “You don’t want to look any guiltier, right?”

A few minutes later, we’re all in the RA office. Sei-Jin cries into the phone. I hear her mom’s Korean curse words fly through the receiver and I know they’re directed at me. I hear my mom’s name,
Kang-Ji
, and I know Sei-Jin’s mom is going to call her even though it’s midnight. My heart hasn’t slowed down yet. Bette sits beside me on the puffy couch, her fingers fidgeting constantly with her little locket. The RA switches between two calls, one with Mr. K and the other with Mr. Lucas. My tiny stomach folds in on itself.

“What happened?” Bette whispers to me. Her words are heavy with knowledge; she already knows the answer to her own question, but she wants me to confirm it.

I shrug. I’ve gone over it in my head like a ballet. Each move I made and each one she made. The memory of Sei-Jin’s words float around me like music, repeating in refrains. I don’t know how to answer Bette. I don’t know if she’s on my side. “I . . . I don’t know,” I say.

The RA hangs up and stands in front of Bette and me. Sei-Jin walks into a private area, still crying on the phone.

“What happened?” the RA asks. I wish they would all stop asking the same question over and over. It’s making me dizzy.

My mouth is glued shut. I can’t seem to open it. I sit on my hands, wanting and needing my compact, just so I could have something to hold on to. Something safe. The RA looks at Bette, waiting for an answer and Bette’s big blue eyes land on me.

“I stayed late to practice in studio B,” Bette begins. “Then I had to take the stairs because the elevators are out. I heard yelling and shouting when I made my way up. And I saw Sei-Jin fall. I complained to the janitor the other day about how slippery they are.”

I gawk at Bette, knowing she saw me push Sei-Jin. The lie leaves her mouth so easily, I almost believe her myself. The RA turns to me. “Is that true, June? Sei-Jin’s saying you pushed her.”

“I didn’t,” I whisper. “She . . . fell.”

“Then why would she say that?” the RA asks.

“I don’t know,” Bette answers for me.

“We’ve always had . . . issues,” I tell the RA. The phone on the desk blares.

“Well, go to bed. We’ll deal with this in the morning.” She picks up the receiver but cups her hand over it. “In the meantime, stay away from Sei-Jin, June,” she warns, and I know she suspects me, but also trusts Bette because she’s a legacy here. No one wants to accuse her of lying and have to deal with her crazy mom.

Sei-Jin returns to the room just as we’re leaving. She calls me something nasty in Korean that I’ve heard on one of my mom’s soap operas. She lies across the couch with an ice pack, still sniffly and red in the face from crying.

Bette and I take the stairs up to the eleventh floor. I feel her looking at me, but she doesn’t speak. She’s waiting for me to say something. Finally, when we get to our floor and she turns to go to her room, I grab her arm. “Thanks,” I say.

She doesn’t reply at first and I assume her silence is
you’re welcome
. “Is it true, though?” she says instead.

“What?” I answer.

“I heard what Sei-Jin said.” She looks me right in the eye. “Did you do all that stuff to Gigi?”

“No,” I say with a frown. “Did you?”

Bette’s face pinches. “No!”

“Well, you haven’t exactly always been a model citizen,” I remind her. “We all know that.”

“Neither have you,” she snaps back.

With accusations flying, and me suddenly implicated, I want her involved. I want her secrets out, too. Not just mine. Because the more everyone knows her dirty secrets, the more likely it is that she is to blame. Over me.

At least, that’s what I keep telling myself.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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MY THROBBING FOOT PULLS ME
awake. An April rain streaks the window, and gray light barely makes it through. I watch my butterflies flap their orange and black wings inside the cage. I bet they’re desperate for sunshine. Or maybe I am. I named them after the great ballet dancers: Martha, Gelsey, Mikhail, Svetlana, and Rudolf. My butterflies are the ballerinas of the animal world. Their movements light and peaceful and created by nature. I blink back the tears that keep coming in quiet moments when I’m alone. My pain meds knock me out and dull all the thoughts running through my head these days, but sometimes when I wake up in the morning, it all comes flooding back like a big ocean wave threatening to swallow me whole.

Did someone put the glass in my shoe on purpose?

The angry truth:
Yes.

And:
Why me?

The most likely answer:
Because I got Giselle.

Other swirling thoughts:
Because I’m new. Because I’m black. Because Alec and I are together.