Kasey Screws Up the World

by Rachel Shane

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you stay in this class.” She stood up and removed her hand.

  Lara nodded as if she’d been expecting it. And judging by the amount of money she’d blown on other failed classes, this outcome was inevitable.

  “You go get yourself healed and we’ll talk again in the spring.” Erika gave me a pleading look and I understood the hidden meaning. Get her out of here.

  Lara allowed me to help her up, and she leaned on me as we trudged to the street.

  “I’m taking you to the hospital,” I said. “Wait here while I call a cab.” I had to prove to her that I could be there for her. That I wouldn’t abandon her again.

  “No!” She gripped me harder, digging her nails into my shoulder. “I can’t. Mom and Dad will find out.”

  “Is that so bad?”

  “For me it is. Please, Kasey.” Her face was a mixture of pain and desperation. “Bring me home. I’ll ice it. I’ll be fine. If I’m not, you can make me go later.”

  I bit my lip and took a deep breath. Now was as good a time as any to tell her about my idea to help her. Really help her. “Lara, I know how to help you, but—”

  “Well, one good thing came out of the cruise, I guess,” she said while a cab pulled up beside us. At least she initiated the conversation for once. Though I suspected this was her way of distracting me from bringing her to the hospital.

  “What?” I played along. I couldn’t help myself.

  “It seems your spy skills have really improved. Finn deserves props for that.”

  I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I detected the slight hint of humor in her voice. This was the most progress we’d had in months. All this time I’d been avoiding her, throwing gifts and money at her to bribe her forgiveness. Interrogating her with questions. But what she really needed was for me to be there for her.

  It was too soon to end her dream for her once again. I needed to take after Lara, small steps, not big ones.

  I WAITED IN SPANISH class with a giant package for Lonnie. I patted the cell phone in my pocket, just to make sure it was still there. Still no reply from Finn. I didn’t care if Señora Ferrara caught me with it. It was my lifeline.

  When Lonnie walked into the room, I held the giant package up in the air, huffing at the weight of it. Our classmates whistled at me as they swiveled in their chairs to hear his reaction.

  Lonnie frowned while he weaved through the maze of desks to the back of the room. “I was afraid of that.”

  I leaned the guitar against his desk so the giant red bow faced outward. Just another ATM transaction in a long list I still had to pay back. “Usually when someone gives you an expensive gift, you thank them.”

  “I knew this was going to happen as soon as I read your last post. FYI, I knew you were the one who broke my guitar. It was pretty obvious by the bloodstains on the wood. Plus, you had an audience.” He gravitated toward the guitar, then stopped himself and pulled back his shoulders. “And here I thought you were going to mend my heart.”

  “I am. Except…not with me.” I swallowed hard. I had to let Lonnie go, even if the possibility of Finn remained only in the past. “I just want to be friends.”

  “And friends we are.” He nodded, seemingly agreeing with me, but the look in his eyes said he wanted to add “and benefits” to that declaration.

  “Just take it, man,” someone called out from the front of the room.

  Lonnie picked up the guitar. Everyone cheered. He set it back down beside his desk.

  “Aren’t you even going to look at it?”

  “I can see it’s an electric by the shape.” He unearthed a pen from his messenger bag. “I want the moment we first meet to be private. I could very easily fall in love and I don’t want to go all ooey gooey in front of them.” He nodded toward the other students in the room, then leaned in to me. “It would ruin my street cred.”

  “Speaking of ruining your street cred…” I unzipped the guitar case. “It’s pink!”

  The students near us snickered. Lonnie blinked. “You bought me a pink guitar. Seriously?”

  I patted Lonnie on the shoulder. “Had to figure out a way to get you to stand out.”

  “My music’s supposed to do that.”

  “Plus this one was on sale.” I strummed the strings. “Come on, she’s beautiful, isn’t she?” I leaned in to whisper in his ear. “Denise’s favorite color is pink.”

  Lonnie looked horrified. I laughed.

  “You’re going to look so good playing this guitar at the fundraiser in two weeks.”

  He raked his hand through his messy hair. “What fundraiser?”

  “The one that’s going to fix everything.” I patted Lonnie’s arm. “How would Aixelsyd feel about a comeback performance?”

  Just as I headed to the subway to go home, I felt the familiar staccato vibration of a new email. I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, causing pedestrians to maneuver around me, and yanked my phone from my pocket.

  My eyes bugged out at the site of Finn’s email address.

  My fingers chose this moment to become sweaty from the late summer heat. I had to push several times before the email popped up on my screen. It was even more cryptic than mine.

  You’re asking the wrong question.

  I WENT BACK TO Lara’s dance class after school to make sure she didn’t come back. “Nope, she was a no show today,” Erika, the dance instructor, told me. “Thank you for getting her to see reason.”

  Except the next morning she left again before the crack of dawn. No money had been withdrawn from the ATM, but she could have had a stockpile. So where was Lara going now? I wanted to make sure she was being safe, not hurting herself further. I couldn’t skip school for the third day in three weeks without administration alerting my parents, so I did the next best thing. When no one was home, I snuck into her room and turned on her laptop. Finn would be so proud of my on-the-job spy training.

  Finn.

  After his email reply, I ransacked my closet for the crumpled ball of paper I’d thrown there after the cruise. A whole bunch of numbers stared back at me. If I decoded the note, maybe I’d get the answer Finn was looking for. I stared at the paper for an hour, but I had no idea where to start. All I knew was I couldn’t start here. Just knowing it was beside me gave me the courage to reply to his email.

  Are you OK?

  Two hours later my reply had only yielded silence in response, so I tried again.

  Do you hate me?

  I only waited an hour this time before sending another.

  Will you forgive me?

  And then I got desperate.

  Do you miss me?

  Followed by the last one I sent: Why haven’t you written back?

  It was just one step away from begging, please please oh my God please write me back!

  I couldn’t think about that now. I focused on Lara’s laptop. It was password protected, but I knew her well enough to guess the password in only a few tries. I scrolled through Firefox’s web history. The first couple links took me to Wikipedia entries about the subjects she was supposedly studying in her college academic classes. Research for her lies. At least she wasn’t making the same mistake with the Tysh College gas leak incident. After that, I found a page detailing upcoming dance auditions throughout the city.

  There was one tomorrow after school. And checking the calendar, I spotted one a few weeks ago run by a casting director named Beth.

  I thought back to the day I discovered she’d lost her scholarship. Someone named Beth had called to confirm Lara’s appointment. She’d lied and said it was an appointment with Dr. Shannon.

  It was an audition. Her dance classes were only half the story.

  I bit my lip. I was wrong to avoid talking to her about my idea. Without another career option, she’d never stop trying to dance, no matter how many times she got kicked out or failed. I had to stop her, for good. Which meant I’d have to go to the audition.

  Rows of red velvet
seats cascaded toward the stage. A few heads popped out of the seats, breaking up the monotony. I spotted my sister sitting at the end of the aisle toward the front. The blond head donning an oversized bow next to her must be her friend Jules Barlow. She always used to wear those ridiculous headbands during half time performances because she thought it made her stand out. Lara only needed dancing to do that.

  On stage a stick figure drawing—or maybe a girl, it was hard to tell—twirled and shimmied to an upbeat pop song. In mid twirl, someone in the front row held up a hand. The girl on stage stopped on cue and stood there her chest puffing in and out. After an uncomfortable few seconds of silence an irritated voice said, “Thank you. That’s all we need.”

  She nodded, then scurried toward the edge of the stage with her head down, amping her pace with every step as if she couldn’t get away fast enough. She grabbed her bag from a chair and rushed down the aisle, fanning her face with her hand as she went.

  She was off beat, I thought. Her form was all over the place, arms bent at the wrong angle instead of straight and elongated. I could have done better.

  My eyelashes fluttered closed. No, I couldn’t have. Lara could have, but not me.

  I was here for Lara.

  As the next girl took the stage, I swallowed a breath and forced myself to approach my sister. Each step I took down the red aisle became a rhythm of its own. My body itched to dance. I wanted each face to be watching me. Instead they ignored me and practiced their routines in their seats, waving their arms in the air to mimic the steps. My sister sat in her row straight backed. She didn’t need to practice the steps. She knew them by heart. Jules on the other hand attempted to gyrate her hips in the confines of her chair.

  Jules noticed me first, then tapped Lara’s shoulder. Lara swiveled her head in my direction and her eyes widened.

  “I thought you were going to leave me alone,” she whispered. In her lap, her fingers trembled.

  Jules eyed me up and down, focusing on the leggings I had worn to school. “You’re auditioning?” The tone of her voice suggested I’d just presented her with something as puzzling as a polynomial.

  I ignored Jules and fixated on the way Lara clutched her hip to prevent it from fully sinking into the uncomfortable chair. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

  “You.” A woman with disheveled hair and glasses too big for her face rushed over to me. “Name?” She uncapped a pen with her teeth and balanced a clipboard on her knee.

  “Oh, uh.” I should tell her I’m not here to audition. “Kasey Fishbein.” I was being polite and answering her question, that was all, I told myself. The stage called to me and I imagined my legs carrying me forward, sweeping me into an impromptu routine, impressing this casting director like I knew I could. My heart thumped audibly in my ears.

  Lara sucked in a breath behind me. I didn’t dare look at her. The casting director perused her list, clucking her tongue. “I don’t have you here. Agent? I’ll give them a call.”

  “She’s not auditioning. She had to bring me something.” Lara nodded at the casting director, who then looked at me.

  “Lara’s my sister.” I didn’t know why I felt the need to say this. Maybe to remind her.

  The casting director’s eyes went back and forth from Lara to me. We both smiled. This was a game. We were pretending to be people we weren’t. Like Victoria Cruise.

  Maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea. For the first time, I felt like Lara and I were on the same side. Apparently we only got along when deceiving people.

  The casting director squinted at my sister beneath her bifocals. “Wait, I just figured out why your name sounds so familiar. I’ve heard about you. Bum hip, right?”

  Lara’s face paled. Jules scrolled through her phone as if she had no connection to my sister.

  “I’m almost healed,” Lara said.

  The casting director picked at something in her teeth. “Well, let’s see about that. You’re up.”

  Lara struggled to balance in her heels. She stumbled, backing against the seat and grabbing her hip.

  The casting director took one look at her and sighed heavily. “Next?” She glanced down at her clipboard. “Julia Barlow.”

  Jules brushed her long blond hair out of her eyes and hopped out of her chair. She shot Lara the briefest of frowns before she followed the casting director to the stage.

  The room swelled like a water balloon filled to capacity. Lara held onto a smile despite the way it wavered. She gripped the top of the auditorium seat to help pull herself into the aisle. “I hate you,” she whispered to me, as if this, too, was my fault.

  The other girls in the audience watched Lara’s progress while Jules took the stage, performing only for the casting director. Lara shielded her face with her hand despite the attention from the audience. She normally took her steps with care and precision, but now she sped up like she was in a race against her own composure. One would fall first.

  I wouldn’t let it be her.

  I wrapped an arm around her waist to steady her.

  She flicked my arm. “Get off. I can do it myself.”

  I squeezed tighter. “No. You can’t.”

  A few snickers came from the audience. Lara shot her head in their direction before leaning most of her weight on me. I nearly gasped in shock, but she must have decided it would be more embarrassing to fall than to rely on me.

  “What were you thinking, coming here? Have you not had enough sabotage for one lifetime?” she said.

  “I thought you didn’t want Jules to know how bad your injury really is.”

  “If I’d had a chance to audition, she wouldn’t know. I would have nailed it.”

  “Stop being delusional.” My words were harsh but I softened them in a whisper.

  “You’re really confusing me,” she continued. “Sometimes I think we’re on the same side and other times it seems like you’re against me.”

  “I’m with you. And I can prove it. I have a way to get you back into the dance world.” I cultivated my words carefully, choosing back into the dance world instead of to dance again.

  She shot me a look that said, “You’re an idiot,” then sighed and rolled her eyes.

  It was as close as she would get to admitting she’d never dance again.

  I held the door for her. A warm blast of air smacked my face and contrasted with the cool air-conditioning hitting one half of my body. It was as incongruous as Lara being nice to me while still hating me. “Have you thought about focusing on choreography instead of dance?”

  “You’re not making sense. How can I choreograph without dancing?” She raised her arm to hail a cab, then put it down and clutched her hip. She looked at me expectantly, like I should raise my arm instead of her. And I would. But not until we had this conversation.

  “What if I proved you could? Trust me on this. Come with me to the ManPrep tomorrow.” It would be Saturday, but the school remained open for students to use the facilities.

  Her voice got soft and she looked away, squinting at the sun filtering through the empty space between two buildings. “Kasey, I don’t want to go back there.”

  “That’s exactly where you want to be.”

  She sighed and focused on the traffic zooming past us. I raised my hand to catch a cab but none were empty. Lara wiped sweat from her brow, though it hadn’t come from exertion.

  The doors behind us swung open and we both turned around. Jules glanced up at us at blink-and-you-miss it speed before lowering her head and shuffling down the street. As she went, she pulled off her headband and stuffed it into her bag. The corners of Lara’s mouth twitched, and I knew I’d made the right decision about quitting dance.

  We both needed to forget about the possibility.

  “I miss you,” I said to break the silence.

  A tear streamed down her cheek. “Kasey, I’m trying to be strong. It’s hard enough acting happy so Jules doesn’t catch on, but when you say things like that…” Her voice broke.
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  “Please,” I said. “Just give it a chance tomorrow.”

  As a cab pulled up beside us, she buried her face in her hands, then pulled her fingers down her cheeks. “It’s the only chance I still have, isn’t it?”

  A PUNGENT SMELL OF stale gym shoes filled my nose as I entered the ManPrep auxiliary gym. I kept my head down until I was sure the coast was clear of former teammates or coaches. So many memories hit me at once. Denise and I squeezing all our stuff into the same gym locker just because we were in this together. The sound of the crowd cheering during one of our halftime performances. The time Crista sprained her leg and I got to replace her in the back of the line—even though the audience didn’t notice, I felt special.

  I took Lara’s purse and set it down on the bleachers. She made no effort toward them.

  “Why did you bring me here?” Her face looked pained. “I’m not choreographing a dance performance for you, right?”

  “For the dance team. This is just practice. I figured we could work out a routine here so when we teach it to them, we’ll have an idea of what we’re doing.”

  “We?” She arched an eyebrow.

  “You. I’m just here to help you teach.” I couldn’t perform. I wasn’t on the dance team anymore.

  Lara eased herself onto the bleachers and stretched her legs out in front of her.

  “Just because you can’t dance again doesn’t mean you can’t use your skills. Choreography’s not the same, but as long as there’s someone who can help you demonstrate the steps, you can have a career in this and you won’t have to destroy your hip to do it.”

  She leaned forward, her good leg shaking. She was so quiet, I wondered if she forgot to breathe.

  “The dance team made Nationals because of the creative routines you dreamed up for them. And when you made those routines, you knew you wouldn’t be able to perform with them during the competition, but you took pride that your routines would be what wowed the judges.”

  She nodded along to every word I said.

  “People are rooting for you, Lara. A lot of people, based on my hit numbers to my blog. They want you to succeed in this. You can prove to everyone how good you still are.”