DANCE OR DIE: Two Guys, One Girl. No Voice. No Choice.

by A. E. Murphy

  “Will you?” I look at Carter and ask, “Will you be happy if I choose Presley?”

  “I’d be devastated,” he admits on a low, quiet mumble.

  I look at Presley. “Will you be happy if I choose Carter?”

  He pushes his hair back and laughs sardonically. “Great, just great.”

  “He was really sure you were going to pick him,” Carter explains.

  “Fuck off.” Presley glowers at him and turns towards the door, but then he spins on me, eyes angry and guarded. “You know you’re not the only one who’s had a shit life. I don’t find it easy to love either. Why didn’t you walk away sooner?”

  “I—”

  “I warned you,” he snaps at Carter. “I told you she’d chew you up and spit you out. I just didn’t imagine I’d fall for it too.”

  “You’re being unfair,” Carter says, trying to calm his friend. “We all did this together. We all knew where we stood.”

  “And now you’re defending her so she chooses you. Smart.” His lips twist with a sneer and he spits at me over his shoulder as he walks away, “You can have her, Carter. You win. I’m out. Plenty more to stick my dick into.”

  “Fuck you, Myers,” I yell and charge after him. “What do you want me to do here? I’m making the only decision I can!”

  “Love me more than him.”

  “If it were only that simple.”

  He looks at me and then at Carter. “You have everything. Let me have something.”

  “You promised no fallout,” I hiss at him, cupping his face with my hands. “You promised we’d be okay.”

  “Well, maybe I just need a fucking second here,” he snaps, pushing me away, and then he punches the door so hard he leaves behind a shiny residue that I know is blood.

  “Calm down,” Carter pleads, “come on, man. You’re scaring her.”

  “I’m not scared, he’d never hurt me,” I say with a frown and Presley’s shoulders slump. “Look, we can’t keep going as a three, and I can’t choose. This is unfortunately how it is. I’m sorry, but I’m not changing my mind.”

  Presley walks out leaving Carter and me alone. Carter doesn’t meet my eyes, nor does he turn my way.

  “You promised,” I whisper.

  “Yeah, well, maybe I need time too.” He also walks to the door, breathing heavy.

  “Carter, please.”

  “You couldn’t just pick one, could you?”

  I blow out a breath. “I love you both. I enjoy you both. I need you both.”

  “And now we’re both gone.”

  “You’re really not going to talk to me?” I ask them as we practice our routine, though they haven’t said anything at all, except move names and each other’s names.

  I dance with them but it’s stiff and Hammond gets testy. It’s not my fault they aren’t performing properly.

  When it’s the end of class and they are still completely ignoring me, I decide I should probably get angry. But instead I opt for honesty.

  “You guys are really hurting me right now.” Then, without looking for their reactions, I pick up my bag and leave.

  Night comes and Presley visits but again he completely blanks me. He was the same at lunch when I approached, he was the same after school when we danced with Michael. Carter blanked me too, though he avoided me mostly, likely so he wouldn’t have to deal with blanking me. I am being stonewalled and it feels so unfair.

  It’s more of the same for the rest of the week. Though we nail our routines, there’s no passion there anymore and by Friday I feel physically drained.

  Everybody is noticing it too. Stanley mentioned it this morning, Lane mentioned it last night. They were my friends and we had fun together, Carter taught me how to ride a bike for fuck’s sake. It’s not fair. I can’t help how I feel, and now that I don’t have them, I feel empty. Like a huge part of me is missing, the part that makes me happy.

  It’s stupid, they’re just boys… they shouldn’t be anything.

  “Hey.” Michael approaches as our afternoon session ends. “Are you okay? You look a little down.”

  “I’m fine,” I lie because I am so far from fine my fine is sitting on the sun out of reach and is mocking me.

  “You and the guys fall out?”

  I shrug. “It’s nothing.”

  “Well, if you need an ear.”

  Smiling softly, I thank him and duck my head as I pass Carter and Presley whose eyes are on Michael. They look livid. They have no right to look livid.

  Or maybe they do. I was theirs first. I decided I didn’t want either of them.

  Well, actually that’s not true either. I didn’t decide that I didn’t want either of them, I decided I wanted them both too much to pick one.

  As I’m leaving school to get my bike from lockup, that reporter journalist cunt bitch approaches me again with her hands raised.

  “Go away,” I say to her, leaning down to unlatch the lock from my wheel and frame. It swings loose and knocks against my shin. Ouch.

  “Please, just hear me out.”

  “Do you have any idea what my uncle will do to me if he even hears you’ve been near me? Any idea what he’ll do to you?”

  She nods. “I do. That’s why I’m here. He needs to be stopped.”

  “There is no stopping him.”

  “We both know that’s not true.”

  I look her dead in the eye. “Fuck-off Magazine or whatever the fuck your name is. I’m not interested.”

  “It’s Mackenzie.”

  I wheel my bike past her.

  “Tell me about the panty box.”

  I drop my bike, turn, grab her throat and slam her up against the iron bars of the lockup.

  She hardly flinches, not even when I squeeze. “I know you’re scared. I know how sick he is. I know what he’s done to you because his son did the same to my friend and your uncle covered it up.”

  “Then, get her to testify.”

  “She can’t. She’s dead.”

  “Lucky her,” I mutter and squeeze harder, feeling her pulse flutter under my palm. “Stay away from me, stay away from my family.”

  I let her go and retrieve my bike.

  “I made her a promise before she died that I’d bring him down before he can hurt anyone else.”

  I kick my leg over the seat.

  “Did you know he runs a child trafficking ring? He controls an entire network of really bad people. Imagine how much power he will have if he becomes president, which could happen. He’s a popular choice, not just with the people but his party too.”

  I blink at her. “Then, why the fuck would you get involved? He’ll have you killed before you can out him. Aren’t you scared?”

  “No, because I’m not so narcissistic that I think my life is more valuable than those kids locked in cages getting raped by men three times their size every morning, noon, and fucking night.” She comes around the front of my bike and grabs the handlebars. “If we can bring him down, we can start on the rest.”

  “What is this we? There is no we.” I try to shake her free but she holds on tighter.

  “Think of that little girl you saved from the fire. Ask yourself would you do that again. That’s all you’re doing, Mallory. You’re just running into another fire, to save another kid just like her.”

  “Yeah, except I’d be bringing that little girl in there with me. When I saved her, it was just my body to think about. If I fuck with my uncle, it’ll be everyone I care about who suffer. That’s how he works.”

  She finally releases me and steps to the side, but not before dropping a business card in my basket. “Call me, let’s make waves together, Mallory.”

  “That’s not my fucking name.”

  “He raped your mom too,” she shouts so loudly, she’s lucky the school is empty.

  I skid to a halt and look at her over my shoulder as she starts to approach again.

  “She begged your dad to take you because she wasn’t fit to look after you, she knew your
uncle would get you.”

  “My dad?”

  “Yes, your dad, Stanley.”

  I frown, confused. “Stanley’s not my dad. He’s my foster block.”

  Her lips part and a flash of guilt flickers in her eyes. “Right, my mistake.”

  “Wait.” I grab her wrist and my breathing quickens as my mind puts the pieces together. “Is Stanley my dad?”

  “That’s not for me to say.”

  “Oh my God.” I dismount my bike because I can’t stand up straight. “You’re lying.”

  “Maybe I’m wrong. But… it wasn’t hard to put together. Stanley won the international Dance Xtra competition back in nineteen ninety-seven. He was meant to be this amazing dancer. Just like you. You have the same natural hair color though he shaves his so you can’t tell. You look alike. I’m surprised you haven’t put it together already.” As I stand, gaping, hurt, angry… she continues, “I spoke to your mom about your uncle, she told me everything. He was awful to her. He’s the reason she’s addicted to drugs. He used to force them into her body because she tried to talk. Nobody would believe a junkie that her hard-working, loving brother was raping her.”

  I try to find sympathy for her but I can’t. “So why did she leave me on his doorstep?”

  She places her hand on my wrist. “She didn’t. She left you on your father’s.”

  I inhale slowly and painfully as I try to recall the memory. I remember her begging somebody to take me, I remember sobbing that I didn’t want her to leave. I remember him saying no. I remember being left on a doorstep somewhere but then… my next memory is of my cousin and that day and night. The first time he raped me.

  “Why’d you have to tell me that?” I breathe, clutching my chest. I can’t breathe. “WHY’D YOU HAVE TO TELL ME THAT?”

  “Scan?” Presley yells from the school entrance. He’s standing in the sunlight; it bounces off his skin making him look ethereal.

  I race towards him, leaving my bike, but I pass him and pull on the bar that cuts across the main door to the building. I head inside, feet pounding on the floor until I stop at the trophy I need to see.

  “Stanley Oaks.” It’s there engraved on metal for eternity, his name, the year, the competition, the ridiculously sized trophy.

  I hit the glass with the side of my fist. “YOU LIAR!”

  Presley approaches and grips my bicep. “Hey, come here.”

  I shove him away from me hard and he goes back two steps. “No. You don’t just get to decide when to be there for me. NOBODY gets to just decide when to be there for me.”

  “What’s wrong? What’s going on? Talk to me.” His concern is laughable. Where was he a week ago when I needed him to be my friend?

  “Don’t fucking touch me.” I slap his hand away. “Get your sister out of that house. I’m going to burn it to the fucking ground.”

  I run again, back to my bike and Presley follows, shouting my name. But I’m so fucking angry and pumped up on adrenaline that even he can’t keep up.

  I mount my bike, tears streaming down my face. Betrayal a heavy weight in my heart. It spins and turns with jagged edges, tearing through the muscle, damaging it beyond repair.

  The ride doesn’t calm me down. Nothing can calm me down.

  My mom’s voice floats through my mind.

  “You have to take her.”

  “You decided to have her, Francis. The hell is wrong with you? A child needs her mom.”

  His voice was so familiar. How could I have missed that?

  He even looks like me, she’s right. I’ve sometimes thought that when looking at the way his nose scrunches when he’s annoyed or playful. Mine does that. I just put it down to wishful thinking. I never knew who my dad was and my mom never wanted me and suddenly this amazing man takes me in and treats me like his daughter.

  “I can’t look after her. I don’t understand her. I get too angry with her. She deserves better than me.”

  She begged him. Begged.

  He turned us away. His daughter. But she left me there anyway knowing he’d have no choice.

  He had this house. He had this life. He had Lane. He turned me away. No… he didn’t just turn me away, he delivered me to the doorstep of that evil man and his son.

  The second I hit the driveway, I drop my bike, race to the toolshed and pick up the heaviest thing I can find.

  A mallet.

  I take it back to his beloved four-by-four and bring the solid end down right in the middle of the windshield. I’m probably going back to the mental hospital after speaking to the journalist anyway, so I may as well get a few kicks in before the inevitable.

  I lift it back up and hit it again, creating two circles surrounded by cobweb patterns reaching to every end of the glass, and a big circle in the mirror.

  His alarm starts blaring but I don’t stop. I hit the passenger window right as the front door of the house flies open and Stanley steps out. He doesn’t speak, he doesn’t get angry, he doesn’t tell me to stop. He just lets me destroy his car, one window at a time, then the hood, and the doors. Glass scatters over my feet and the ground but if it cuts me at all I don’t feel it.

  I keep swinging and hitting and swinging and hitting.

  At some point Carter and Presley showed up, but Stanley told them to stop.

  Everybody is just watching me.

  My arms burn, my body is getting weary. I can hardly raise them anymore to swing.

  “You know… I was seven when my cousin first pinned me down in my bed and raped me.”

  Stanley’s jaw trembles but he doesn’t look away. He holds my swollen, tear-filled eyes.

  I see Presley tell a neighbor to fuck off and Carter gets a little bit closer.

  “Scandal… please,” he begs but I ignore him.

  “Two weeks after YOU LEFT ME ON HIS FUCKING DOORSTEP!” I get a second wind and kick the side mirror with the bottom of my foot twice until it bends the wrong way. “I was so hurt, I couldn’t walk for a week.” I kick the side mirror clean off and it shatters on the drive. “I was nine when my uncle started making me kiss him down there, sometimes his friends watched, sometimes they joined in. The more I cried, the more enthusiastic they became.” I swing the mallet against the rearview window. “They’d starve me, beat me, torment me, give me new things and withhold them. So I wouldn’t tell. So I’d behave in public. So I’d be a good little girl.”

  “I didn’t know what kind of life I was leaving you to.”

  “My uncle made me come. He was my first orgasm. I was eleven. He used to love it. He’d get this sick satisfaction from making me feel good and then he’d make me tell him how much I enjoyed it and if I told him I hated it he’d just do it again.”

  “Christ—” He looks away but I pick the side mirror up and launch it at him. He dodges it, but I have his attention again.

  “You could have saved me. You could have kept me.”

  “I’ve regretted it every day since.”

  “Fuck you. You’ve regretted it? I’ve lived it.”

  “You’re so strong—”

  “DON’T PATRONIZE ME WITH THAT SURVIVOR BULLSHIT!” I scream and hit the car three more times. “My mom begged you to take me and you dropped me off on the door of a pedophile because you were too fucking scared to admit that you cheated on your wife. Am I on the mark?”

  “No… Lane knew about you.”

  I laugh coldly. “But she wanted a child of her own?”

  Lane appears behind him, tears streaming down her face. “I never should have turned you away. I was a bitter, jealous, foolish little girl.”

  “No, you were an adult; I was just a little girl.”

  She wipes away her tears. “What would you do? If you were me back then? Desperate for one of your own?”

  “I don’t know, but I’d like to think that if I chose to forgive my husband, I’d forgive the fucking child too. The only one truly innocent in all this.”

  “I was young and stupid and it’s a decision I h
ave always regretted.”

  “Your decision took my virginity at seven years old. Your decision left me an orphan. Your decision made you a monster.”

  She doesn’t disagree, nor does she say anything else.

  “I didn’t ask to be born. I didn’t ask you to fuck my mom.”

  “I know.” He approaches slowly, hands raised.

  “Don’t come near me right now. I will fucking kill you.”

  “I love you. I know I failed you then, but I won’t fail you now.”

  “You already did, when you lied to me every day and made me stay in your house knowing that you abandoned me.”

  Shiny trails wet his cheeks. He gulps audibly and comes another step closer. “You would have left otherwise.”

  “You don’t think I’d rather be anywhere else but here?” I scream and hold the mallet in a threatening way. “STOP GETTING CLOSER.”

  “You have every right to hate me. You have every right to hate Lane. But we are still going to be here for you, whenever you need us now. Like it or not.”

  “Stanley, why is Scandy shouting?” Paisley whispers from the doorway. I hadn’t noticed her come outside. “What happened to big blue?” That’s his car.

  Presley rushes towards her and crouches in front of her. “Why don’t we go and do some painting?”

  “What happened to big blue?”

  “Well, Stanley doesn’t want big blue anymore so we’re breaking him into pieces for the junkyard.”

  “I’ll take her inside,” Lane whispers, ushering the little girl in and leaving Presley behind.

  “That could have been me.” I whimper dropping the mallet. I couldn’t physically hold on to it anymore even if I wanted to. “I could have had this.”

  When Stanley finally gets close enough to grab me, I panic and start to hit. I punch, slap, bite, and hit every part of him that I can. He takes it, he wraps his arms around me and he takes it.

  “Let go of me,” I beg, my voice hoarse.

  I lose energy fast; I lose the will to hurt him faster. He holds me until I sag, unable to stop the pained sobs from crushing my body, heart first. My throat is sore, my body is trembling. He squeezes me tight to his chest, teardrops land on my hair.