Pointe

by Brandy Colbert

  We were greeted with patience and soft smiles in the hallways, in the garden, or when we were throwing clay in the art shed. But when it came to eating and talking, they never let us forget who was in charge.

  “Who’s your counselor?” Vivian had asked as she sat on her bed watching me unpack on my first day. Her side of the room was a mirror image of mine: a twin bed, a small desk, and a dresser.

  We weren’t allowed to bring much—not even cell phones—but I had my pointe shoes. There was a huge discussion about whether or not I should be able to keep them. The woman who admitted me thought they could be considered a trigger. In the end, Dr. Bender decided against confiscation but said I was not to put them on, under any circumstances. She claimed I was too malnourished and weak to even think about dancing.

  I’d shrugged at Vivian as I placed the shoes neatly on top of my bureau, ribbons dangling over the sides. “I think her name starts with a D or something.”

  The name of my primary counselor was written in my welcome packet, which included my daily schedule, the rules of the facility, a map of downtown Milwaukee for the days we went into town, and a sheet of paper with a layout of the house. Which seemed unnecessary. The place was big but it wasn’t that big. It’s not like I was going to mistake the dining room for Dr. Bender’s office.

  “Oh, Diana.” Vivian nodded and kind of smiled and I didn’t know if that was good or bad, so I stared at her until she said, “She’s okay. Better than Pete or Ivy or Dr. Bender.” She shuddered.

  “But?” I turned away from her to place a stack of underwear in the top drawer.

  Vivian appraised me with her kohl-rimmed eyes. They were big and blue and so serious.

  “But Diana’s tough.” Vivian ran a hand through her stringy blond hair. Later, I’d notice the bald patches when she was carefully brushing it out before bed. “She won’t let you off easy. Not even if you cry, so don’t waste your time. It works on Pete . . . and Ivy, when she’s in a good mood.”

  “What about Dr. Bender?” I stopped to wrap my sky-blue cardigan tighter around my shoulders, but it was useless. All my clothes were falling off by then. It had been that way for a while, months before anyone noticed. And it was hot. Stifling, but I didn’t want anyone to see how skinny I was that first day—really see—or I thought they might do something even more drastic. Like, send me to a real hospital with doctors and nurses who looked like what they were. Who put tubes down your nose and held therapy sessions in cold rooms that smelled like bleach.

  “I’ve never been brave enough to try.”

  I almost laughed when I first met Diana Porcella. She looked like a college student, and from what I could tell, she was the only person on staff who believed in closed-toe shoes. She smiled big when I walked into the parlor-turned-office and said it was nice to meet me as she gripped my hand in a firm shake.

  Her questions started out simple enough but it was clear she already had some type of file on me. Despite the toothy grin plastered on her face that first day, I knew she was feeling me out, trying to see how far she’d be able to push me. She nodded as I told her about Ashland Hills, like she was already familiar with my life, down to the name of my best friend. I could have lied when she asked if I had a boyfriend. I didn’t have to tell her about Trent.

  About how he made me feel wanted. How I always felt I had to prove myself to him because he was older, because he was putting himself on the line with our relationship. (“Five years isn’t a big deal to us, but other people care,” he’d said to me the first time we kissed. I was still in a daze, a haze of bliss and disbelief that his lips had been on mine. “We can’t tell anyone, Theo. I want to keep doing this”—he’d grinned at me, kissed my nose, caressed my cheek—“but we have to keep it a secret, or I could get into a lot of trouble.”) And then, how when we started having sex, I wanted to show him he wasn’t making a mistake, so I pretended I was always into it—always wanted him—so he wouldn’t get bored and choose someone more experienced. Someone older, who didn’t have to be a secret.

  During our first couple of sessions I was too nervous to talk about Trent. The counselors were adamant about the fact that, except for cases where they were concerned our lives were in danger, everything we told them was confidential. But something changed the first time I mentioned him by name.

  I felt a release so beautiful, I could have cried.

  I’d never spoken to anyone about him before. Donovan knew, but we had a sort of silent agreement that he wouldn’t ask what Trent and I did when he wasn’t with us, and I wouldn’t say anything about it at all.

  I never stopped looking over my shoulder that first day, afraid someone would burst into the room and take me away now that I’d finally said Trent’s name. Each day after that, it became easier to tell Diana Porcella about how he called me Pretty Theo and the tender note in his voice when he talked about growing up a half hour outside of Detroit. Or how after we had sex, he would burrow his head into my shoulder and doze off instantly, how it made me feel special that he could fall asleep so easily with me.

  I couldn’t tell her how old Trent was, though. If she had known he was eighteen, that would have trumped any confidentiality agreement. What if they tried to find him, tried to press charges against him because of something as stupid as a five-year age difference? Or worse, what if he came back but they’d found out and said I couldn’t see him?

  So to Diana Porcella, Trent was fifteen and he moved away suddenly when his father got a new job and that is the guy she thought I missed. I didn’t trust Vivian, either, so I told her the same story and that is the guy she thought I was crying about when she woke in the middle of the night to my tears, when I hiccupped out how much I missed him.

  The really hot nights were worse than the ones when I couldn’t stop wondering why he’d left. The restlessness worked its way through the bones of the house; you could practically hear the rustling of the other patients trying to get comfortable in their rooms down the hall. I knew Vivian was awake on those nights just as she knew I was lying there staring at the ceiling. But we never said a word to each other. We simply lay on top of our covers, breathing around the tick-tick-tick of the rickety ceiling fan in our celery-colored room.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  WHEN I WAKE UP MONDAY MORNING I IMMEDIATELY TURN ON my laptop and type in Chris Fenner’s name. Then I stare at his face and wait for his features to rearrange themselves so his eyes are not that gorgeous amber color, so his lips aren’t the same ones that kissed me all over my body.

  I did the same thing yesterday. All day. I told my parents I was studying for a big chemistry test, but instead I spent hours up in my room, covertly nursing a weak stomach and mind-numbing headache as I scoured the same articles about Donovan and Chris, trying to see if I had missed something.

  Chris. Yes, Chris. I’m not going to call him Trent anymore. I’m not going to call him someone he never was.

  Nothing has come out about the suspect besides his name. Maybe Chris didn’t take Donovan. There could have been a misunderstanding. Maybe the lawyers and reporters and police officers were confused when they found them, jumped to conclusions because the waitress who called them was so frantic after she recognized Donovan. Maybe Donovan agreed to go with him. They used to be friends. Friends.

  Unless there was something going on with them the whole time and I was too stupid to see it. Did Chris make me his secret so he and Donovan could keep an even bigger one?

  Mom always says the most effective way to take your mind off something is to stay busy, so I convince myself that this sick, sick feeling will go away once I start getting ready and drive to school and get on with my day.

  Except I puke in the shower. My stomach is knotted with shame. I’m not safe from thoughts of him, even standing in the steam with needles of water pricking my skin. It’s as if he’s here in this room, as if Chris Fenner can somehow see me standing here naked.
No matter how hard I scrub, I still feel his fingers on me. In me.

  I take too long in the shower and then too long deciding what I can choke down for breakfast without getting sick again, so by the time I pull into the student parking lot I’m already late for homeroom. It’s not that big of a deal; homeroom isn’t a real class. But now I’ll have to stop by the office to get a late pass and that always takes forever and if I had somewhere to go I would pull right out of this lot and not look back.

  I close my eyes as I think about getting out of my car and walking into school. I remind myself that only two other people in the entire world know about this; one of them is certainly not telling and the other one isn’t talking at all.

  Unless he does.

  So I whip out my cell phone and before I can really think about it, I’m calling Donovan’s house.

  The phone rings. And rings. And with each one, my palms sweat more, slipping around the phone as I pray for someone to pick up. At first, I wish for Donovan, think maybe he’ll see that it’s me calling, recognize my number after all these years. But soon I’m desperate for anyone to pick up, even if it’s Mrs. Pratt, even if she uses her defeated voice, the one we all heard in press conferences and interviews after Donovan had been gone too long to hope.

  No one answers. Not Donovan, not Mrs. Pratt, not a voicemail telling me my call will be returned. I know they must be ignoring everyone—he’s only been back three full days—but for some reason I thought Donovan might come to the phone if he saw it was me. Talk to me, because he must know I’m freaking out.

  I remember the first time Chris pulled me into the bathroom of the convenience store for a quickie. He was working and it was risky, but the store was still empty when we came out. Except for Donovan, who was staring very hard at the comics on the shelf before him, like he wanted to be anywhere but there. When he looked at me, his eyes rested on the waistband of my skirt and I looked down, too, horrified to see it all bunched and misshapen around my middle. He looked away quickly but I felt the burn of his stare until I buried the skirt deep in the bottom of the hamper that night.

  But he’s not talking. He won’t tell.

  It takes five minutes to roll up the window and step out of my car. I spend the next ten hanging out in the science-wing bathroom before I stop in for my late pass.

  And after that, I watch the clock in my classrooms for the rest of the morning, and 210 minutes later, my stomach has still not stopped turning over.

  • • •

  You can tell everything you need to know about a school if you poke your head into the cafeteria at noon on a Monday. Like which friends are fighting and who got too wasted over the weekend and who smoked a joint before lunch. It’s no place to be invisible.

  The chicken in the hot-lunch line is dry and I can’t bring myself to walk over to the salad bar, so I grab a Diet Coke and a package of trail mix at the register. My hand holding the trail mix feels light and I squeeze it around the package, determined to not look down at the calories printed on the back.

  Phil stares as I sit down across from him. “She lives,” he says around a mouthful of mashed potatoes.

  “I know I look like shit.” My hair is back in a wispy ponytail, my eyes tired and red and puffy from my weekend of crying and insomnia and trying to keep my food down. I’m wearing jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt I found on the floor, and a pair of bright red flats that don’t match my outfit in the slightest.

  “You don’t look like shit,” Sara-Kate says quickly, glancing at Phil. “We were just wondering if you were okay. We both called and texted but—”

  “I know.” I scoot my round plastic chair closer to the table, look down at the sophomores at the other end to see if they’re watching us. They’re not. “I mean, I saw.”

  I’m lying because once again I don’t remember even looking at my phone this weekend. The first time I’ve really paid attention to it in the last two days was this morning, when I called Donovan.

  “Trisha was talking this morning,” Phil says. And his eyes move down to the table, like he’s not sure whether to share this with me. I look at Sara-Kate to see if she already knows, but her face is neutral. “Her dad said if that piece of shit pleads not guilty, this trial could get huge coverage. Especially if Donovan still isn’t talking when it starts.”

  “Yeah, because Mr. Dove is the expert on these kinds of cases?” My fingers skate across the top of my Diet Coke can until I force them to sit still while I open it with my other hand. “He’s a divorce attorney.”

  “He’s still a lawyer. He might know what he’s talking about.” Phil shrugs, his neck sinking into the collar of his plaid button-down. Red and black and white, rolled up to his elbows, like a skinny brown lumberjack. “And dude, if he pleads not guilty, you could help put a total scumbag in prison.”

  Sara-Kate looks at Phil, then tilts her head to the side, her big eyes blinking rapidly, as if she’d never thought about the possibility of a trial.

  “I don’t know what happened that day better than anyone else.” My eyes flick to the salad bar, where people are lined up, dropping chunks of browning iceberg lettuce into their bowls. I clear my throat, try to sound normal as I say, “It’s not that big of a deal.”

  “It’s kind of a big deal. You were one of the last people to see him. My mom—”

  He stops but I look at him, curious what Mrs. Muñoz had to say this time. “Your mom what?”

  “Nothing.” He shakes his head, presses his lips together.

  I frown at him, tap the edge of his tray with my soda can. “What did she say, Phil?”

  My tone must be harder than I realize. Sara-Kate’s eyebrows go up as she swirls a french fry through a pool of ketchup on her plate.

  He pauses again before he speaks. Not Phil’s style. “She said she was glad she never let me go to that store with you guys, because it was cursed.”

  I brush a hand over my messy hair, wish I could brush one over my face and wipe away the bags under my eyes. “Cursed?”

  Phil looks sorry he said anything at all. “You know how she is. She practically lives on superstitions. Did I ever tell you about the time she swore some lady gave me mal de ojo in the grocery store?”

  Sara-Kate and I both stare at him.

  “The evil eye,” he says, shaking his head. “It’s when a stranger looks at your baby the wrong way and shit starts getting out of hand. So every time I cried a lot or had a fever or whatever, she would think it was because of a woman we passed in the dairy aisle.”

  “That is the weirdest and best thing I’ve heard all day,” Sara-Kate says in wonderment. She looks really cute in a pair of fitted gray suede pants and a vintage crocheted white sweater with a red tank underneath, and it makes me feel even frumpier than I already do.

  And for a moment, I wonder—if it were just the two of us, would I tell her about me and Chris? What would she think about me after I confessed something like that? What would everyone think?

  My life would never be the same if I put everything out there for the world to talk about. The paparazzi would show up at my house, harass my family. There would be no more parties at Klein’s because no one invites girls like me after they learn the truth. My reputation would be ruined. My life would be over: ballet, friends, all of it.

  No, I think, as Sara-Kate grills Phil about mal de ojo. I can’t say anything before I talk to Donovan. The truth is so close, and I know he’ll talk to me eventually, I just have to keep trying.

  The fact that we’re no longer talking about the trial seems like a small victory, so I decide to try the trail mix. I tear open the plastic bag and pop a raisin in my mouth. A raisin that is too juicy, too sweet on my tongue, but I chew and swallow so I will look like everyone else in this room.

  Phil scoops up the last bite of his mashed potatoes and I’m kind of amazed. Lunch started less than five minutes ago,
so that must be some kind of record. Especially for something that looks as lumpy as those potatoes. He chews and swallows and points his fork at the patch of table in front of me.

  “Is that seriously your lunch?”

  “My stomach’s off.” I stare at the stack of thin black bracelets around his wrist. “I think I caught a bug.”

  Phil makes a face at me. “I don’t see how eating like a woodland creature can help. Isn’t it starve a cold, feed a fever?”

  “Not even, Philip,” Sara-Kate says, flashing him a smile that is equal parts sweet and defiant. “It’s starve a fever, feed a cold.”

  “I don’t think either of them are true,” I say. A little too loudly. One of the sophomores at the end of the table actually looks over. “And I don’t have a fever or a cold. Maybe I just don’t feel well.”

  “Then you should be eating soup or bread or—”

  “Back off, Phil.” The frost around the edges surprises even me and I get a flash of déjà vu.

  So does Phil. His face tells me so.

  He looks at me for a very long time, so long that I know what he’s thinking. I know exactly what he wants to say to me, exactly what he thinks I need to hear. But I’m not interested. If Phil won’t stop obsessing over my old food issues, how would he react to my news about Chris? I trust Phil, I do, but not with this. Not until I know more, until I know the facts and it’s not simply speculation.

  Phil stabs his fork into a brick of chicken, begins sawing away at it with a butter knife. “Okay, Theo. Whatever you say.”

  He and Sara-Kate discuss our options for Halloween and Phil sounds normal enough, but he doesn’t look at me for the rest of lunch and I wonder if we are the friends everyone can tell are fighting.