Pointe

by Brandy Colbert

  By the time I met Donovan at the bus lines after school, I was fuming inside my parka. I wanted to get home because I had the night off from dance and it meant I could spend the evening curled up on the couch in front of the TV. My parents would make a fire and we’d watch mindless sitcoms and the intense hospital dramas they loved and I’d forget about every shitty part of my shitty day.

  But Donovan wanted to stop by Big Red’s on the way home to check out the new X-Men. I wasn’t in the mood. I was still new to pointe work and the lesson the night before had been brutal. I was half limping because of my sore feet and I didn’t feel like standing around watching him look at comics while one of the grumpy cashiers watched both of us.

  Donovan was insistent. He promised to buy me anything I wanted if I’d come with him. I knew that wasn’t saying much—after all, the most expensive items at Big Red’s Gas n’More were things we’d never buy anyway, like jumper cables and bottles of liquor. And it’s not like his allowance was so extravagant. But it was still a nice offer. And I was hungry from skipping lunch, wouldn’t mind spoiling my appetite for dinner with a candy bar or chips and a soda. So I went.

  The glass door of Big Red’s had barely suctioned shut behind us before Donovan nudged me. His eyes were trained on the front counter, but I’d already noticed. In place of the middle-aged woman with the bad skin, or her husband—Larry, the owner, who was just as inexplicably cranky—was a new guy. He was older, but not by a lot. Maybe college-age at the most.

  His head was bent over a cell phone, his thumbs moving rapidly over the keys, but he looked up as the bell on the door jangled above us, as we stomped the lingering bits of snow and ice from our boots. He looked up and he smiled. Said, “Hey, guys” so warmly, like he’d known us forever. Like we were friends.

  Donovan and I were speechless, almost frozen in place. No one had ever greeted us like that here, if they greeted us at all. Larry and his employees had no problem reminding us that we were just dumb kids who were lucky enough to have money to burn or else they’d kick us out in an instant. They were always more concerned with their magazines or the person on the other end of the phone. We were an inconvenience, another reason they had to pay attention.

  But something about this guy seemed different. He was cute, for one thing, with a grin that made me look away and then back at him, a grin that made me feel grown-up and nervous at the same time. He ran a hand through his thick, dark hair as he looked at us, as he asked, “Anything I can help you with?”

  My God. He was treating us like adults. Or at least actual teenagers, which I appreciated, since I knew I still looked like more of a child than a girl on the verge of womanhood. Or whatever that video said in health class last year.

  “Uh, no, thanks,” I said, stepping out of his line of vision. Sort of hiding between the racks of candy and gum because he was the cutest guy I’d ever seen in person.

  It was stupid to be so nervous. He was probably just a high schooler who was being nice to us as some kind of joke.

  Donovan didn’t say anything. He walked around the corner to the comic books almost cautiously, as if we were being set up. I made my way down the candy aisle, then slowly down the next one, inspecting noodles and ice cream and tuna in a can. I was pretending to look for the item Donovan had promised to buy but I couldn’t concentrate; every part of me was consumed with the new guy behind the counter.

  Guys had never really paid attention to me. I got looks sometimes and no one seemed like they wanted to puke when I was partnered up with them in class, but no one ever asked me out, either. I was always the friend. Known for ballet and being sidekick to Donovan and Phil. I’d never been kissed, not even in a game of spin the bottle or a sneak attack during elementary school recess.

  I moved to the back and stood in front of the refrigerated wall of drinks for a while, perusing my options as the coolers hummed steadily on the other side of the doors. Nothing. I moved on to the freezer with the pints of ice cream and frozen treats lined up in neat stacks. I don’t know why ice cream sounded good when it was forty degrees outside, but it did. So I was standing there, so intent on choosing between an ice cream sandwich and a wrapped ice cream cone that I didn’t hear him come up behind me.

  “Finding everything okay?”

  I jumped. Then I looked up at the open glass door in front of me, my fingers clutching the handle. “I’m sorry.” I slammed it shut so quickly, the whole case shook.

  It was Larry and his wife’s pet peeve. If you had the door open longer than two seconds, they would scream out from the front counter that you’d better close it unless you wanted to pay the store’s electric bill that month.

  But this guy just flashed his grin and said to let him know if I needed any help. Then he moved down the aisle, whistling a clear, cheerful tune that stuck in my head for the rest of the week.

  At the register, he made a big show of ringing me up before Donovan, made a sweeping gesture with his arm as he said, “Ladies first.” Which was kind of silly since Donovan was paying for my ice cream, but I let him do it anyway. And that’s when, up close and able to stare at him while he was preoccupied, I noticed just how gorgeous his eyes were. A magnificent shade of amber, so clear and beautiful that it looked like his pupils had been trapped there by mistake. I could get lost in them. I already was.

  “You guys go to the high school?” he asked as he swiped the bar code of my ice cream sandwich package across the scanner to his left.

  “Us?” Donovan practically snorted in his face, because he looked just as young as I did. His voice was only starting to change and he was still skinny and small back then. “No way. We’re only in seventh grade.”

  I shot him a look. I didn’t want this guy thinking we were babies, because then he’d start treating us like babies.

  “Really?” He handed the sandwich to me then, and I moved aside as Donovan threw his comic book, a bag of chips, and a soda up on the counter. He kept his eyes on the register. “Haven’t seen you guys around, but you don’t seem like seventh-graders,” he said. “You could definitely pass for freshmen.”

  “You go to the high school?” I asked, surprised and pleased that he wasn’t as old as I’d thought.

  “I graduated early,” he said with a quick smile. “At my old school. I had a lot of credits, so now I’m just taking some time off and working until I figure out what I want to do.”

  “I can’t wait to graduate,” Donovan said, digging money out of the front pocket of his backpack. “Then I can do what I want all the time without answering to anyone. Ever.”

  “Yeah, but then you’ll have a job, and you have to answer to your boss at a job.” He told Donovan the total and looked at him as he handed over the money, as their fingers brushed against each other in the exchange. “What would you do all day if you could do whatever you wanted?”

  “I don’t know.” Donovan was flustered at being put on the spot and that’s when I realized he thought the new guy was as cool as I did. He normally didn’t care what anyone thought of him, didn’t pay much attention to what other people said. “Look for rare comics. I’d go on trips all over the country to find the really good ones because you can’t always trust people selling them online. And I’d go to a baseball game in every city that has a team. Even the bad teams.”

  “Huh.” The new guy looked thoughtful and paused before he reached into the register to make change. “You like fishing?”

  Donovan wrinkled his nose and scratched under the collar of his puffy winter coat. “Not really. I mean, I don’t think so.”

  “You ever been?”

  Donovan’s head shook after a moment. “It doesn’t seem right, killing all those fish like that. They never did anything to us.”

  The guy leaned forward on his elbows, bringing his face even closer to ours. Even though I didn’t know him, I was jealous. Why hadn’t he asked me what I liked to do in
my spare time? Then I thought of Trisha and Livvy in the bathroom earlier, thought maybe it was better if he didn’t know about how much I loved ballet.

  “You don’t have to kill them,” he said. “You can throw them back and they’re as good as before you took them out of the water.”

  Donovan looked skeptical.

  “Maybe we can go sometime,” the guy said, his voice easy as he stood up straight and handed Donovan a couple of dollars and some coins. “It’s too cold now but once it warms up a little, my buddies and I make a day of it. Take a cooler full of food. One full of beer”—he gave a sideways grin when he said this, as if he knew he shouldn’t be mentioning beer, but thought we were mature enough to handle it—“and we just goof off. Sometimes we catch something to bring home and cook, sometimes we don’t. You wouldn’t have to catch anything. You could just chill with us.”

  Donovan turned over the idea in his head as he deposited the money in his backpack, slid the comic book carefully into a thin zippered pouch on the other side. “You’d let me hang out with you guys?”

  “Of course,” the guy said. “You seem like a cool dude to me. Cool people are always welcome.”

  I stood off to the side, feeling very unwelcome and very uncool until he looked at me and said, “No girls allowed on our fishing trips. Sorry.” And then he winked one of his brilliant topaz eyes. “I’ll have to find a way to make it up to you.”

  Those words ran through my head the rest of the week and I kept telling myself it didn’t mean anything but when he kissed me two weeks later, I felt validated. As if I’d known all along that he was meant to be mine.

  We had both fallen for him. He made both of us feel special in our own way and that just didn’t happen with someone like him. Older, cooler, and more experienced. And it never happened to me, not with guys that good-looking.

  We were both so enamored that we didn’t realize he hadn’t told us his name. We didn’t realize until the transaction was complete and the conversation had wrapped and we were making our way toward the glass door.

  “Hey, I’m Trent, by the way,” he called out from the counter. “Trent Miller.”

  “I’m Theo,” I said quickly, wanting to get it out before Donovan could speak.

  “Theo? That’s an interesting name for such a pretty girl.” He winked at me again and I normally hated winking but on him, it was cute. Sexy.

  My face flushed as I explained, “It’s short for Theodora.” I’d said it a thousand times but it felt different when I said it to him. It made me feel older, somehow, like maybe I wasn’t such a little girl with an old-lady name after all.

  “Nice to meet you, Theo.” He turned to my friend. “And . . . ?”

  “Donovan. Donovan Pratt,” he said, copying Trent by adding his last name.

  “Theo and Donovan,” he said, nodding very slowly, as if he were packing it away in an important place. “I’ll try to remember. That is, if you guys come back and see me?”

  “We’ll try,” I said, attempting to play coy at the same time Donovan said, “Definitely. We’ll be back, Trent.”

  He said it with so much enthusiasm that it embarrassed me. I knew from hearing girls talk in the locker room before gym that I was supposed to play hard to get. So I didn’t even say goodbye that first day we walked out. I tried to pretend it didn’t matter if Trent Miller liked me, but I looked back at him through the glass once we were on the other side, and I knew that was the furthest thing from the truth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  I DON’T KNOW EXACTLY HOW LONG MY TESTIMONY LASTS, BUT IT feels like a long time. Hours.

  I have no idea what my voice sounds like as I croak out my story. Or what my fingers look like as they press a fresh tissue to my face every few minutes, reach down to cradle the cup of water more often than that. I couldn’t tell you which of the jurors gasps when I tell them, in detail, what Chris did to me in the backseat of his car and what he had me do to him. I’m not sure if it’s the Asian woman with the silver bob or the white man with the purple birthmark that covers half of his face.

  I don’t see my parents’ faces, don’t wonder if they are horrified or mortified or both, because I can’t look at them and watch all the respect they had for me drain away before my eyes.

  I try to be a grown-up. I attempt to say it all with no emotion, without showing how terrified I am of these questions. The detail is astounding—in McMillan’s wording and how much I’m supposed to reveal in my response. I have to close my eyes sometimes, shut out everyone in the room and talk like I’m relaying the plot of a movie. I don’t shake so much if I think about someone else in the role of Theo Cartwright. My voice wavers a few times, but McMillan just tells me to take my time, waits patiently as I stop to take in a few deep breaths or sip from my water.

  Chris’s lawyer isn’t so nice. He spits questions at me rapidly, so quickly that my body grows too warm and my thoughts become muddled. But I keep up with him. I have to, because the sooner I answer his questions, the sooner I can get out of this hard seat and away from all these probing eyes. His own are an icy, crystal blue and they peer at me the whole time he’s cross-examining, daring me to doubt him. I knew from the second I saw him that he’d be anything but easy on me. He keeps asking if Chris ever flat-out told me he was going away with Donovan, or if I ever saw anything inappropriate between them with my own eyes. He asks if Chris threatened me, if I ever felt like my life was in danger when I was around him.

  McMillan objects a few times—maybe one time too often, because the judge admonishes him and almost seems ready for Chris’s lawyer to get back to it. But I appreciate that he’s looking out for me, that he knows how hard it is to sit in front of a courtroom and have my past laid bare.

  I glance at Chris a few times and it’s hard to believe how the tables have turned. It feels amazing to have the power over him, and I become stronger as he sinks a little lower into his seat with each admission. He’s done. Ruined. And maybe my life is, too, but at least I’m not going down alone.

  I wonder when he decided—that it was going to be me, and then Donovan, for as long as he could have him. Did he know how it would play out as soon as we stepped through the front door of Big Red’s? Or did he wait a few days to feel us out?

  I think the part that bothers me the most is not knowing if he’d targeted us specifically or if he would have done the same thing to any two kids who walked through the door.

  I don’t want him to have that choice ever again and that’s how I pull through the questions from Chris’s attorney. Even the hateful ones that imply I was stupid and probably deserved what I got.

  Maybe he thinks that. A lot of people might think that when they find out. But I told the truth. I did what I could for Donovan and people can call me all the names they want, but selfish won’t be one of them.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  I SLEEP FOR WHAT FEELS LIKE A WEEK, BUT WHEN I

  finally get out of bed it’s only four in the morning.

  I’m groggy. Disoriented. I crawled into bed as soon as we got home from the courthouse, and the trial comes flooding back in a rush.

  The defense attorney’s accusing tone as he fired the most embarrassing, personal questions at me. Questions no one should ever have to hear, let alone answer in front of a crowd. The hushed sounds of shock from the gallery. Chris’s eyes. Always Chris’s eyes.

  McMillan and the suits escorted us to our car, protected us from the throng of reporters shouting questions and shoving microphones in our faces. We made it home in record time only to find the same type of scene outside of our house. Once we were inside safely, I walked directly to the stairs. I hadn’t said a word to either of my parents since I stepped off the stand.

  They talked to me, though. Even when I didn’t talk back, they kept going. They must have said they loved me no fewer than twenty times on the drive back, then assured me it wasn’t my fau
lt, that I should never think it’s my fault. They told me that what I did was brave, that they were proud of how grown up I was on the stand.

  Dad chimed in, but Mom did most of the talking. I wondered why, until I saw his eyes when he opened the car door for me. They were red and watery and he’d been hiding his tears from me the whole ride home.

  I turn on my light and look down at myself. I’m still in all the clothes I wore to the trial: black pants and a gray blouse that reminds me of Hosea’s eyes. My black cardigan lies on the floor next to my flats. My phone sits on top of my dresser across the room, turned off as soon as I got home. I couldn’t take any chances. I still can’t. Everyone must know the news by now.

  I think of the reporters who greeted us on our trip back from the courthouse and I jump back over to the wall, slam my hand down against the light switch. I wait for my eyes to readjust to the dark, then creep slowly to the window. I crouch down so my eyes are level with the ledge and I slowly part the curtains, look out at the dark street below.

  Still there. Not as many as before, and they’re not standing outside, but a couple of vans are parked across the street. One is planted boldly in front of our house. I can’t make out any shapes inside the tinted windows, but I can only imagine the men inside. Leaned back in the seats with their mouths open as their snores fill the cabin, or heads slumped over chests as they try to catch a few winks. They can’t miss anything. For many, this is probably their biggest story yet and it was delivered straight to them, practically on a silver platter.

  I pad downstairs to the kitchen in the dark and open the refrigerator, casting a halo of light around my face. Boiled eggs. Leftover macaroni and cheese—homemade, not from the box. A couple of aluminum-foil-wrapped slabs catch my attention. I peel off the top layer of foil, look down to discover leftover slices of frozen pizza.