Tiny Pretty Things (9 page)

“Bette,” Alec says. He never used to scold me like that. He liked that I said what was on my mind. Plus, Will used to be my snarky sidekick, and the two of us would make Alec laugh with our snide little comments.

Eleanor’s face falls. I guess it was my intention, but I’m not some robot, and she’s supposed to be my best friend. I take a deep breath. We’ve been getting into fights like this a lot lately, and I promised myself I would try harder to get back to the way we used to be. But some days I can’t even remember how it used to be, who I was, who she was, and what made us friends. Since I didn’t get the Sugar Plum Fairy role, nothing feels right. And she’s been watching these videos and disappearing for blocks of time and not telling me where she’s going. She’s keeping secrets from me. She’s making things weird lately.

“Alec’s just gonna hang out for like an hour. Could you work in the lounge maybe? You’re looking hot lately. We all know you’ll be bringing a guy over sometime soon, right?”

I even wink. And pout.

Her cell phone rings. She jumps to silence it, then caves. “Holding you to that,” she says on her
way out the door.

“Cross my heart, hope to die,” I say and grin. It does feel good, remembering that we actually kind of love each other. I miss her a little, the second she’s out the door.

“Just an hour?” Alec says into my neck.

“We can make it a good hour,” I say.

And we do. But the whole time feels like another big audition, and this time the challenge is to be the sexiest, the most desirable, the wildest. I wrap my legs around him so tight I’m surprised he can still breathe. I can be the girl he fell in love with years ago. The girl he still loves now. The only girl he wants to partner with.

We don’t have sex, though. Alec says he’s tired and needs to conserve his energy for tomorrow’s rehearsal. I’m naked by the time he throws that one out, and I can feel my face shift from sexy to pissed.

“We always have rehearsal—” I say.

“I have a huge role. And a
pas
to practice.”

“With Gigi,” I grumble, then explode. “You shouldn’t have come up here then. Where the hell is my shirt?” I scramble out of bed to find something, anything, to cover up what he’s rejected.

“I thought we still had fun,” Alec purrs in my ear. He kisses the lobe, and then down my neck.

“Just seems weird that you don’t want—”

“I want you. I always want you. Just freaked out about impressing Mr. K tomorrow. I swear. This weekend I’ll be back to my normal self, okay?” He’s blushing, like we’ve both failed at our sexy, romantic relationship tonight.

When he leaves, he kisses me on the head and for just that one moment when his lips hit the space where my hair meets my forehead, I’ve won. It isn’t about Gigi.

“Tell Eleanor to come back in, okay?” I can still make him do things for me. He nods.

“Can’t wait to tell her all about me?” He likes to tease me, and even reaches down to tickle me. I squirm and hold back painful laughs. I could do this forever with him.

“Eleanor and I don’t sit around talking about our boyfriends all night,” I tease back. “Don’t get the wrong idea.” I let out a flirtatious laugh and touch his shoulder. He’s surprisingly tense. He even blushes a little. “Even if I love you,” I tack on, like maybe that’s what’s bothering him.

He doesn’t say it back, just kisses my forehead again. I almost repeat
I love you
, like maybe he just didn’t hear, but I can’t take the risk.

It’s a long, lonely five minutes before Eleanor reappears. I don’t want us to have another awkward spat right now. I just want my old friend back.

Eleanor throws the door open. “Done?” Her face is still rosy, like the first day I ever met her. Six-year-old would-be ballerinas auditioning for the conservatory, standing in tiny leotards, hands and feet ready to be examined.

“Can we watch
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
?” I say. My voice is quiet and I just want her next to me, sharing a blanket, watching the TV like it’s a portal to a world outside this stupid dorm. Eleanor
sighs. I’m sure she thinks she’s supposed to stay mad, but I know she just can’t do it. Not strong enough.

We lie on the futon-couch thing we have set up and get to the part when Audrey tears up her apartment in grief. Eleanor’s breathing has slowed. She always falls asleep first. Her head flops on my shoulder. I wish I could sleep as soundly as she does. But I know I won’t be able to for a long time, until spring semester’s ballet and my second chance to snag the lead.

“What do you think of Gigi?” I whisper into the dark, knowing she won’t hear, except in her dreams.

“Mmmm,” she says, which I decide means Gigi’s no big deal. Nothing special.

“She can’t take everything from me, right?” I say, and listen again for Eleanor’s nondescript sigh. It comes, and I try to let it comfort me as much as it would if we could actually talk about this.

A few tears come before I finally fall asleep. Quiet ones. Just between me and the dark.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

I WALK TO MORNING BALLET
class alone, super early, so I can have studio C all to myself and get my head together before it starts. I’ve piled on the layers—it’s late October and the chill has already started seeping into every pore. Plus, layers give me just enough invisible padding so that it’s not obvious. I blend right in with the rest of them. But I know, really, that I need to make Morkie
see
me. That’s how you become a star. Catch your teacher’s eye.

Right outside the studio, I almost drop my thermos. Sei-Jin’s boyfriend, Jayhe, sits on a booth seat in front of the glass, where everyone gawks in at us. He’s slouched, in unlaced Converses and slim black pants. His red hoodie is up and he’s looking at his phone.

I haven’t seen him since Sei-Jin and I stopped being roommates and friends. Almost two years ago. When did he start wanting to watch her dance? He looks sort of the same. But cuter. Less awkward. I’ve known him longer than Sei-Jin. We went to the same Sunday school as kids, he lived three blocks from me, and before I moved to the conservatory his
halmeoni
used to watch us both
after school. She’d call me her little granddaughter, and I would swim in his blow-up pool. I even know he has a blue-bottom birthmark on his butt. But now, Sei-Jin and Jayhe are like a version of Bette and Alec: made for each other, perfect, royalty in the Korean community.

He leans forward and looks up at me.

I feel my face get hot. I’m afraid my makeup will run. He doesn’t say anything, just stares.

“Hi,” I say, not sure why I’m even talking to him. In the ninth grade, I lost all my friends when Sei-Jin turned on me. Everyone disappeared. Even him. Especially him.

“Hi,” he mumbles back, rubbing his sleepy eyes.

“What are you doing here?” I say, taking another sip of tea to fill in the space between his delayed responses. I wonder if he’s skipping school. I wonder if he’s changed.

“Sei-Jin,” he says. “Supposed to watch now, I guess.”

I try to make more small talk and realize that this is the first time I’ve actually spoken to a boy from outside the conservatory in a long time.

“Are you going to finally join ballet class with us? Remember when you used to try to do pirouettes in your basement?” I laugh, surprised at myself. For a second, I feel like I’m back in my old life. The one with friends and people who wanted to be around me. The one where I had inside jokes and memories and traditions. The one where I made room alongside ballet for hanging out, marathon chats, and adventures outside of school.

He kind of smiles. His cheeks are fuller, and there’s a touch of stubble that wasn’t there before. It makes my breath catch, with regret or maybe something else.

A throat clears behind me. Jayhe squirms and looks away from me, like I’m not there anymore, like he wasn’t talking to me at all. The tiny connection is lost. The feeling of my old life disappears in an instant like a popped bubble.

“Not so pretty this morning, are we, June?” Sei-Jin says, pursing her perfect pink lips.

She startles me. She sounds the way a snake might, if it could speak. The other girls twitter behind her, too scared to say anything themselves, but happy to look me over, laugh in my face, whisper in fast Korean, and point at my body like it’s a dartboard for their own insecurities. The new Chinese girl is on the edge of the pack, arms crossed, lost in translation, but still finding a way to nonverbally participate.

“Oh, you don’t look that bad,” I say in response, proud for a half second that I came up with a comeback. Sei-Jin steps closer. I can smell her breakfast and make out the scent of that same soft pink lipstick she’s worn since middle school. Trying to be like Bette.

When we first moved to the high school dorm floor, Sei-Jin and I were inseparable,
jeol chin
. Best friends. She was the sister I never had. But at the start of tenth grade it all changed. That was when she started a rumor about me, forced the RAs to move me out of our shared room, and never spoke to me again. It was really early on a morning like this one, a cold fall day, and we’d been sitting at the twin vanities her mom had bought for our room—just like the ones in the American Ballet Company dressing room. Sei-Jin’s mom was nice enough to get me one even though my mom
couldn’t afford it. The bulbs cast a warm glow on our faces.

Sei-Jin opened her makeup case. “You should start wearing more makeup,” she’d said, removing a blush, lipstick, and powder. “Especially to ballet class.”

“I’ll just sweat it all off,” I said. I was so clueless then.

“Real ballerinas dance with it on, without a drop of sweat on their faces.” Leaning in close, she took my chin and pulled me into the light, like she was one of the makeup artists that made us up before our tiny girl parts in the company ballets. “You ever notice that?”

I didn’t answer.

“Close your eyes,” she said. I obeyed. I always obeyed.

She brushed the powder across my face, the strokes like butterfly wings fluttering against my skin. Then she used her soft fingertips to add blush to my cheeks, and rubbed a waxy stick of lipstick on my mouth. “These colors will hide your yellowy undertones. My mother always says you don’t want your skin to be the color of a dead chicken wing.” Her voice was full of wisdom. “This type of palette is best for us.” And I was in awe of the way she used words like
undertones
and
palette,
words I’d never heard before.

She wiped a smaller brush across my eyelids. “This will create a shadow. Like you have a crease along your lid. It’ll make your eyes appear less slanted. The Russians don’t like our eyes.” She set the brush down.

“I don’t care if they don’t like it,” I said, hating that so many Asian girls go through surgeries to change their eyelids shapes. That Sei-Jin wanted to be one of them.

“Oh, yes you do. Everyone cares what they think. Even though it’s disgusting. Too hard not to care. You won’t get the things you want if you don’t,” she said, rubbing her fingertip near the corners of my eyes. “Look,” she instructed.

I opened my eyes, unsure about what I was going to see. A different, softer girl gazed back at me. Sei-Jin leaned her face close to mine, her eyes big and doelike.

“See? You look different,” she said.

I felt different. Special. I felt like a soloist or principal in the company. Not like myself, who couldn’t seem to do anything effortlessly. I tried to say thank you, but I couldn’t find the words.

She lifted my chin again.

“You look very pretty,” she said, her voice just a whisper. She stared at me, and a weird energy stretched between us. She leaned in close. I saw the two tiny freckles on her nose and felt her breath on my face. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t pull back. Then she kissed me. Her pink lips pressed into mine. Soft, warm, and strange. I’d never been kissed before.

Her eyes closed. I kept mine open. Not sure what to do. I watched her eyebrows lift.

She tried to part my lips with her tongue.

I pulled away. “What are you doing?” I said. My heart lodged in my throat. The noise of it thumped in my ears.

Her nose crinkled, and a deep blush climbed from her chest, up her neck and to her face. “Uh,
sorry.”

She turned her head to her mirror and took a lipstick from her bag. Her shaky hand applied more to her lips. I wiped the gooey paste from my mouth on a tissue, some of it mine and some of it hers. I watched sweat appear on the back of her neck. I wanted to say something. That it was okay. That she was my best friend. That I didn’t know why she kissed me, but I would be here to help her figure it out. I looked at the clock. It was almost time for class. I got up to leave. Sei-Jin didn’t move to follow me. Still just sat, transfixed on her own image in the mirror. I didn’t know what to say.

I tried to wait for her to come. She didn’t. I rushed to the door.

“E-Jun,” she called out.

I turned around. She just looked at me.

“Tell them I’m sick, okay?” she said, her eyes brimming with tears.