A Poised Nuisance (Lithe Book 1)

by Iris RIvers

  As Dunne wrapped up class and Lara—being Lara—pushed her way to the door, she heard him behind her. His footsteps. She wasn’t sure how or why she could tell his steps from all else, but she could—and she wasn’t proud of it.

  “I know you won’t be dropping your part,” Kai said.

  “You might be intelligent after all,” Lara retorted, spinning to face him. She met his gaze proudly.

  “Just know that I will not be helping you in this—if something happens to you, if you forget to attend one day of practice, I won’t defend you. I will do everything I can to get you away from the lead. Know that.”

  Lara smiled. Not a soft smile, no—a cruel smile, filled with malice and enmity. A smile worn by tyrants and murderers and deviants.

  She strode up to him, their shoes meeting each other on the floor beneath them, gently touching. Kai could feel her breath whisper across his face. “All’s fair in love and war,” she said, then walked to the door and dramatically slammed it behind her.

  Kai stood there, not moving until he was the last person in the dance room, until the only thing to be heard was the bustle coming from the city.

  THAT NIGHT, SAGE HAD entered her empty dorm room at around two in the morning. She wore a gray zip-up hoodie—its sleeves covering her hands and the hood up over her dark hair. Her mind was numb; she couldn’t recall the things she had done—the sole thing in her mind was the sound of the bell. She remembered stumbling back when she’d rung it, using all of her might to pull its rope.

  She couldn’t remember if the boy had screamed.

  Sage walked slowly to the shower caddy that sat on her messy wooden desk. She grabbed it and made her way to the bathroom she shared with her roommate. Her name was Angelica—Sage decidedly called her Mother Angelica, a reference to the television nun, for no other reason than she found it funny—and she’d been gone all night, staying at her junior boyfriend’s apartment, which his wealthy parents had bought for him a few months ago.

  She turned on the shower, pushing the handle to the very top to make the water scalding. Steam filled the room quickly as Sage undressed. She avoided her torn fingernails and scuffed arms, simply pulling down her black jeans and unzipping the frayed jacket. Then, with much effort, she stepped into the shower.

  The water burned as it fell on her skin; the steam rising from the water enveloped her body, hugging her close. She wet her hair, running her fingers through the purple strands with a fine coat of conditioner. She left scrubbing her body for last—she was still too fragile; she hadn’t looked down at her arms yet. As she grabbed the body wash though, she saw it.

  It looked like red paint against her brown skin. For a short moment, she convinced herself it was. She was now an artist, and she had just returned from her late-night class in which she had finally finished her painting. It was a landscape, she decided, one of a beautiful, bloody sunset. She’d painted the final farewell of the orange sun.

  Sage grabbed a rough rag from the bottom of the shower and rubbed it against her skin. The red was sticky, coating her arms like a sick syrup. She scrubbed and scrubbed, her arms now red from not only the blood, but the effort of her washing. Sage suddenly realized that she was crying—she didn’t know when she’d started, but she was crying, tears trailing down her cheeks slowly, burning lines in her cheeks.

  She held the bloodied rag—now too tired to wipe the remaining red from her body—and stared down at it. Her soft tears turned to harsh sobs, and she collapsed to the shower floor, scratching her bloody skin with split fingernails.

  She wept—not only for the man she had just extirpated, but also for herself, for the part of her being she had lost when she’d decided to push the man from the bell tower, for the part of herself she would never get back.

  The bell echoed in her mind.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Do you really believe ... that everything historians tell us about men––or about women––is actually true? You ought to consider the fact that these histories have been written by men, who never tell the truth except by accident.” ––Moderata Fonte

  Lara hated the afternoon—the in-between amidst the undecided morning and the contemplative evening. Each day, despite her plans, despite how she felt, when it was around three in the afternoon, she could only think of sundown—it was too late to start something, she’d think, but it was also too early to call it a day. The afternoon was the quietude before a storm—before the sun hid from its people and allowed the moon to whisper in its place.

  Consequently, as Lara lay in bed, reading the time on her phone (2:57 p.m., sadly), she wished it were earlier or, possibly, a few hours later. She was stuck in the in-between. Lara rolled from her back to her front on her bed, pressing her face into the thin pillow she’d bought at Target, and audibly groaned. She felt her cat jump at her feet and timidly slide off the bed.

  It was Wednesday, and she had no class today. She also had no plans—she never did, which she hated to admit—her singular friend was, pitifully, her cat, Ebony. When she could no longer breathe and resolved to not die today, she turned back over, gulping the grimy air as if she hadn’t breathed in minutes, not thirty seconds.

  Lara’s phone vibrated beside her hand, interrupting her from her thoughts. She looked down at her screen and read: MOM.

  Lara blinked once. Twice.

  Mom. The word had startled her. She sat up with a bolt, tucking a stray piece of hair behind her ear. They hadn’t talked since school began, and that was weeks ago.

  Is the world ending? she thought, pushing aside the curtains to the window behind her, checking for fire or smoke or flesh-eating zombies walking the melancholic streets of New York City. There was nothing.

  With dull hands, she picked up the call.

  “Hello?” Lara said. She could hear her mother’s breathing on the other end. It was shallow, steady.

  “Hello, Lara.” Her mother’s voice was the same. Glacial. Domineering. Vigilant. Lara wasn’t sure why she’d expected it to sound different, like a change in her voice would take away the echoes of Lara alone, locked up in the closet, or lessen the faint scars on her back, crafted by the persistent snapping of rubber bands—borne by her mother’s skilled fingers. Lara’s hands tightened around her cell phone; she was both angry and embarrassed and even a bit uncomfortable at the remembrance of these pain-stricken moments.

  “What’s up?” She feigned casualness though felt anything but.

  Seo-Yun was not one to waste time with formalities. “When’s the winter recital?” she asked. “I’d like to come see you.”

  Of course. Lara knew she’d called to speak of ballet—of the things she’d accomplished thus far—but she’d hoped the call would reflect something else. Care. Maybe even love.

  It was incredibly idiotic to wish for the affection of the one person Lara knew she’d never receive it from, but she wished for it every day. She’d watch her classmates’ parents hugging them after a performance, kissing their cheeks and tugging them to a local diner and feel an absurd sense of longing. Pathetic.

  “I’m not sure,” Lara replied, putting her mom on speaker and going to the email Dunne had sent after she’d introduced the recital. She scrolled down to the very bottom—which took a while; she was one for words—and read aloud: “Oh, here. It’s on December thirteenth.”

  “Friday,” her mother voiced, more to herself than to Lara.

  “Yes.”

  “Have you received your parts yet?” She was now typing, Lara heard, most likely putting the date into her overbooked calendar.

  Lara thought of Kai—of their roles. She gritted her teeth. “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “I’m the lead—”

  “Good,” her mother interrupted.

  “But it’s shared,” Lara said with quickening speed. The silence on the other end was deafening. She waited. Waited some more. It seemed waiting was all she did when it came to her mother.

  “Shared?” The disgust was evi
dent in her voice.

  “Shared,” she confirmed. More silence. “With Kai Reeves.”

  “The boy who got the lead last year?” Her tone sharpened. Lara was afraid to speak. Afraid to move.

  “Yes,” Lara said slowly, quietly. “Him.”

  “Tell me you’re joking,” Seo-Yun demanded, her anger vibrating through the phone. Lara said nothing. She could almost envision her mother’s head bowed down, fingers pinched on the bridge of her nose as she wondered why her daughter had become such a failure.

  “I’m disappointed,” her mother said when the silence stretched for too long. Lara’s chest caved.

  “I know,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’ve been trying though. I really have.”

  Ebony jumped back onto the bed as Lara spoke, curling up beside her, stretching out her legs. Lara brushed her head, hating the way her fingers trembled.

  “Clearly not hard enough,” her mother resolved. What else was she supposed to say? I understand? It’s okay? It wasn’t—they both knew that. “What can we do about this?”

  “You’re not meddling with this recital,” Lara objected. Her mother was humiliating—her classmates and professors already knew the type of person she was. She’d spent all of the freshman year imposing her opinions onto Lara’s professors—calling the instructors and recommending her daughter receive the lead role or the extra credit or any treatment that put her above the others.

  “I will,” she spat, “if I must.”

  “Mom—”

  “I’ll figure something out.”

  The line went dead. Lara fell back onto her bed, shutting her eyes against the light of her room, leaving her in darkness.

  BAKER WAS BEGINNING to realize that Kai was not fond of shopping. In fact, he hated it. Kai was not one for extravaganza, especially in clothing. He hated the glamour and glitz, hated the excessive lifestyle that all wealthy New Yorkers seemed to uphold. If Baker were to describe Kai in one word, it would be poised. High-toned. He didn’t care for others—not typically—yet the crowds of people around him tended to be drawn in; pulled by some force that Kai had never been aware of. He was interesting, for lack of a better word. People wanted to know him.

  As they walked through the streets of Chinatown, colorful signs hanging above their heads and tan structures surrounding them, Baker could not help but thoughtfully admire the pale blue of Kai’s shirt as it shifted around his slender body. Admired—not in an amorous way, but more so with perplexity. Since they’d been friends, Kai’s wardrobe had comfortably consisted of black pants—in all forms—sneakers, or, occasionally, platformed Doc Martens, and, finally, silky button-up shirts—with little color, typically being various shades of whites and blacks. Sometimes, when he felt reckless, he would complement his outfit with a sleek, plaid coat. His septum ring, tinted in colors of silver or copper, tied it all together.

  Kai was formidable—in the way he dressed, in the way he appeared, and in the way he spoke. His voice consistently sounded monotone; his features schooled to remain impassive, bored. The shadows from his past had infested every living part of him. Consumed him whole and left him with nothing to breathe, with nothing to think. Kai spent his life on a slender tightrope—resting thousands of feet above the ground—too afraid to look down yet never afraid to fall. Baker wondered, for a small, brief moment, what Kai was afraid of. Truly afraid of.

  One thing Baker knew, however, without a doubt in their mind, was that any secrets, any tiresome moments of his past that Kai had spent years trying to forget, all dissolved from his conscious the moment he stepped on stage. While others cowered from stage lights and large audiences, Kai thrived off of it. Lived off of it. It was the one thing he had control over, the very slippers around his feet telling a story—his story, whether it was filled with lies and deceit or love and reverence—that his own lips would never be able to relate.

  Baker noticed the way Kai remained stoic, impassive—but they were also able to see past the façade. When Kai cared—truly cared—he listened. Baker would casually mention something they’d been wanting and—days later—they’d find the exact object they’d mention on their desk, without so much as a note. He cared, yes, but in his own way—his own odd way that, eventually, Baker found endearing.

  “Do you have practice today?” Baker questioned as they moved past a group of tourists.

  “No,” he replied simply.

  “What are you thinking about?” It was obvious he was contemplating something—his brows scrunched as he idly toyed with the silver ring in his nose. His eyes were distant—empty.

  “The recital.”

  “The winter one?”

  “Yes,” Kai answered. “There are two leads this time. It’s shared.” He said it with such contempt, Baker assumed that had to be a bad thing. They didn’t know much about dance or, naturally, the social theatrics that came along with it.

  “Are you playing one of them?”

  “Yes.”

  Baker didn’t see a problem then. They said as much.

  “The problem is the person I’m sharing the lead with.”

  The first person their mind strayed to was the girl—the girl he spoke of occasionally; the girl who most likely had to have done something outwardly cruel to Kai because Baker had never seen someone speak of another person with such clear distaste. They weren’t sure what she’d done and they’d never asked.

  “Her name is Lara,” Kai said—Baker had never learned her name, but now that they knew it, it felt familiar. They’d never known the girl—Lara—but they felt as though they knew a slight, piffling part of her—a biased part, surely, but if the two met, Baker thought they’d feel like long-lost acquaintances.

  “Lara,” Baker tested the name.

  “Lara Blake.”

  “So, you two are sharing the lead...”

  “We’re playing lovers.” He spat the word with such hatred—such revulsion—as though he could not believe it himself. He couldn’t. He’d been tossing the reality around in his mind since Dunne’s announcement, but it had not settled. Lovers. He could not fathom the thought of holding Lara, touching her, in the way Dunne expected to see. It was so undoubtedly unreasonable—laughable, even—that neither Kai nor Baker could understand any possible explanation as to why Dunne thought they’d be able to last more than five minutes without falling into the childish turmoil of bitter disputes and burning glares.

  Baker shot out a laugh. “Don’t you hate her?” they questioned. “And doesn’t that mean you have zero chemistry?”

  “Yes,” Kai said, his tone bitter.

  He did not just hate her in this moment, but in the moments in-between as well, the moments leading up to then, to now, to the end of their lives. The moments of betrayal: when Lara had slipped a slender piece of glass into his slipper. The moments of violence: when, as Kai fell from a leap, twisting his ankle and landing uncomfortably on his side, Lara had walked over to him and pushed his ankle further—twisted his tendons more—taking him out of practice for a month in the process. The moments of jealousy: when Lara watched as Kai received a hug from Dunne after the winter recital—the hug of a mother; the hug of a friend—with such visceral hatred painted across her face that, for some reason, it made Kai smile.

  Perhaps he’d brought it upon himself. Perhaps, he thought, it was his own fault she hated him. He’d played into it as much as she had: when he’d laughed in Lara’s face as she waited for her mother who would never come; when he’d lied to Dunne, telling her Lara had said some bullshit about her to Kai, causing her to be yelled at in front of their class; when he’d simply smiled at her, provoked her further, like he enjoyed the pain she inflicted. Like he never wanted it to end.

  Maybe he was just as unhinged as Lara—and that was what disturbed him the most.

  “Why?” Baker asked, dully flagging their hand out to catch a cab. Kai stayed quiet, his eyes looking out to the graying building before them. Baker did not further their questions—they knew when to stop. />
  They stayed in silence for a few moments before a cab stopped a few feet before them. Kai opened the door for Baker, allowing them to get in before settling in himself. The cab smelled of mildew and, surprisingly, a hint of vanilla that was surely a guise. Kai scratched the side of his nose; Baker picked at their thumb. They muttered directions to the cab driver as the car jolted from its spot on the side of the road.

  “We’re still on for dinner, right?” Baker asked. They watched as Kai’s shoulders released their tension and his brows smoothed out. Baker let go of their thumb.

  “Of course,” Kai said, “but no red wine.”

  Baker shoved Kai’s shoulder. He let out a slight ow before Baker exclaimed, “It was an accident! I didn’t purposefully spill wine all over your pristine, white button-up.”

  Kai raised his brow, a hint of a smile forming on his face.

  “Okay, maybe I had some intention, but only because I’m tired of how dull your wardrobe is. Admit it, the red brought out some flavor.”

  They stared at each other, silently agreeing that the first person to break out in a grin would suffer the loss of their dignity. Kai bit his cheeks.

  “What it brought out was a shirt I’ll never be able to wear again. The stain never came out, thanks to you.”

  “That was my plan all along. Destroy all of your boring shirts then peacefully buy you new, more tasteful ones. It was all an altruistic scheme, really.”