by Una LaMarche
We were cutting through a courtyard when I felt our chain break. One second you were right behind me and the next I was flying forward, stumbling, looking back to see Liv sitting on the ground, you kneeling next to her, holding her by the shoulders.
“Something’s wrong!” you cried. “She can’t walk!”
“I c-c-can’t m-m-ove them,” Liv said, pausing between each word for a big, hitching gasp.
“Come on, I got you.” I crouched down to pick Liv up when her feet started kicking, shaking violently. She let out a guttural moan. Her skin was cold and clammy, slick with sweat.
“What are you doing?” you asked as I lifted her. “Where are we going?”
“Yo, Five-O, Five-O!” Someone yelled. The basketball court. They were right behind us.
I looked down at Liv—her eyes were rolling back in their sockets. She didn’t need to go home, she needed help.
“There’s a medical center on 99th Street,” I said quickly, my brain reeling. We’d been there with Abuela a couple times, when she had chest pains. But it would mean an abrupt change of course. It would mean doubling back across three blocks. I didn’t know if we had time, but there was no room for hesitation. “Come on,” I said, shifting Liv up onto my shoulder and reaching out for your hand. That time, you took it. We took a step. And then—
“GET YOUR HANDS OFF THAT GIRL!”
The voice pierced through the night, silencing the rest of the city like a hand clamped over a screaming mouth. No shouts, no horns, no sirens. No dogs barking, no kids laughing. Even the subway, which sometimes shook the ground when it passed, seemed to stall on the tracks underneath us. All I could feel was my heart, and your hand. A flashlight shined in my eyes, forcing me to squint. I couldn’t see the cop’s face, just that he was standing twenty feet away, and that he was pointing something else at us, too. He clicked the safety off and yelled at me again.
“PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR!”
“Diego,” you said. It sounded like a question, a warning, a prayer. I felt your fingers tighten around mine and I squeezed back.
“Unnnnnghhhhhhh,” Liv groaned. What did the officer expect me to do, throw her on the pavement? I carefully shifted my weight, balancing Liv between my neck and the crook of my elbow so I could show him my palms without dropping her. It meant letting go of you. I didn’t want to, but I had to.
“This is my friend!” I shouted. “She’s sick! She can’t walk!”
“SHUT UP AND PUT HER ON THE GROUND!”
“She’s having an overdose!” you screamed.
“GET ON THE GROUND!” The flashlight darted over to you, then back to me. The beam shook, and I caught a glimpse of his face in the dark. All I could tell was he was scared, young, and white. I tried to swallow, but there was nothing in my throat.
“We didn’t do anything! She needs to go to the hospital!” Your voice was even louder, full of rage, so hoarse it cracked.
“Joy,” I said as calmly as I could manage. We’d never talked about it, but I figured you knew the rules. If a cop stopped, you didn’t run, you didn’t talk back, and you didn’t ever, ever get angry. White people could do that—hell, they could shoot up a church and then ask for Burger King—but not us. We got killed at traffic stops for speeding, for having broken taillights, for knowing our rights. We were running from a drug bust. True, we hadn’t done anything, but the cops didn’t know that. To them, we were runners. We were criminals. We had no chance. It was already over.
“Everybody on the ground, NOW!” the cop shouted. I knelt down slowly and put Liv, still shaking, on the cool cement. Then I lay on my stomach and folded my hands behind my head.
“She could die!”
I turned my head, scraping my nose against the jagged sidewalk, to see your sneakers still upright. You were standing your ground like always, only this time you were looking down the barrel of a gun.
“Joy!” I hissed.
“Don’t worry about her,” the office yelled. “I told you to get DOWN!” He fumbled for his walkie-talkie and dropped his flashlight; it crashed to the ground and rolled toward my head. “Requesting backup!” he barked. Then, to you: “I’m not asking again. DOWN ON THE GROUND WITH YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEAD.”
“She’s not armed, man!” I cried. “Joy, show him your hands!”
“Shut up!” he screamed. “I wasn’t talking to you.”
I heard retching sounds. Liv had rolled over onto her side and was throwing up.
Don’t move, I thought.
“DON’T MOVE!” the cop shouted. But I knew you well enough to know they were wasted words. You took a step and crouched next to Liv, reaching for her face, and the next thing I knew the cop was on top of you, grabbing your hair as you cried out in fear, barrel rolling you into a ditch.
I bared my teeth and squeezed my eyes shut, a silent scream down into the earth. How had I ended up in this place? How had I let it happen? I hadn’t dropped you onstage, but I didn’t know then there was a worse way to fall.
“You’re hurting me!” you sobbed.
“I’m not hurting you,” the officer snapped. My limbs started to twitch.
Don’t run.
“My ankle!” you screamed.
I tensed the muscles in my upper back and lifted my head with my hands still cupping my skull, twisting enough to see the cop—who must have been six feet, two hundred pounds—sitting on your legs, pulling your wrists back as he grabbed at his belt for handcuffs. Your face was a mask of pain.
“Looks like you were running just fine to me,” he said, and then, with one wide palm, took the back of your head and shoved your face roughly into the dirt.
“GET OFF HER!”
My body moved before my brain could tell it to stop. My fingers found pavement and pushed, the muscles in my legs, conditioned by years of training to leap, sprung into action. I was on my feet, reaching for you. I didn’t touch him, I swear.
I didn’t touch him.
I heard it before I saw it.
Pop.
It felt like getting knocked down by someone sprinting, like a punch to the gut with a stick on fire.
“DIEGO!” That scream ripped through my bones. How had I gotten here? What had I done?
I saw you in flashes, a fouetté turn that wouldn’t end, my eyes focusing for a split second, grounding me in between spins: your smile, your laugh, the way you looked so mad when you got nervous. The curve of your waist in your leotard. Your silhouette on the train that night, looking out the window with the whole city stretched out behind you like some crazy constellation. The weight of you in my arms. The weight of you.
You.
You.
It’s always been you.
You know that, right?
Finale
Joy
THEY CLOSED SCHOOL for a week in your memory. The whole city felt like it shut down. There was a protest march in Union Square, people handing out fliers with your picture on them, carrying signs—or so I heard, anyway; I couldn’t go. I was still in the hospital then. Officer Lorenz—that was his name, by the way, in case you feel like haunting him or something, 23rd Precinct—tore my anterior talofibular ligament, and even though my parents thought I should wait to have the surgery, I wanted it right away. I needed for someone to cut into my skin so the pain would be outside as well as in. Lying in recovery felt better than walking down the street because that way, everyone could see that I was suffering. I didn’t have to pretend.
Liv is OK. I know you’d want to know that before anything else. She ended up at Lenox Hill with me, but the doctors stabilized her quickly. It turned out she’d been taking three times the recommended dosage of some prescription pills she got from Dante, plus a bunch of other stuff. He’s alive, too. He got caught and charged and sentenced to a year in jail, but at least he cleared your name. The first New York Post he
adline after the news broke—thankfully I was still on heavy painkillers, and no one showed me, because I would have lost it—was TWINKLE TOE UP, and it was all about how you were some drug-dealing dancer who lunged savagely at a cop; within a week, after Dante went on record with why you’d been there, and I publicly challenged Officer Lorenz’s account of you tackling him, it became HERO HOOFER: WRONG PLACE WRONG TIME. I mean, seriously, fuck the New York Post, but at least they printed a retraction.
Someone made a donation page to cover your funeral costs, and it raised over $200,000. Your mom set up college funds for Miggy and Emilio. Janus held a benefit concert, too, at the end of the year right before graduation. It was basically just a repeat of Showcase, but I wasn’t a part of it. For one thing, I was still in physical therapy, and besides, they didn’t include our pas de deux. It wouldn’t have felt right. Not that anything feels right anymore, without you. Not that anything ever will.
I learned to walk again over that summer, and Liv went to rehab, some fancy place out in California. Dave went out to visit her a few times. They’re still together and seem pretty happy. I try not to hate them for it, and usually I do a pretty good job. Both of them are still hustling, taking graduate acting classes, living at home, waiting tables to make money. We meet up whenever I’m back in New York. Ethan, too—after what happened, all of the other stuff seemed so incredibly petty that we all just forgave one another, without having to say it. I know this will shock you, but E takes his NYU workshops extremely seriously. He’s always sending invitations to his staged readings, but luckily I’m 880 miles away, so I have an excuse.
Yup, I’m an Atlantan now. It took me a year to get back in the kind of shape where I could really dance again, but I worked harder at it than I’ve ever worked at anything. And when it was time, I walked into that first company class ready to drop a mic. I did it for you. Everything I do is for you. And not in some creepy shrine way, although I do have our photobooth strip in my wallet. It’s just that, after you died, and after a few really rocky months I spent wishing it had been me, I finally decided I’d rather live for you than die with you. I wanted to live a life you would be proud of. And that meant getting back onstage. Now I’m in the corps de ballet, and I’m thankful for it every day.
When I’m not dancing, I’m actually working on starting an organization to help spotlight and promote community stories of police brutality from all around the country, a hub where people can connect and band together for support and social justice networking. I guess underneath all this tulle I am my father’s daughter, after all. I’m calling it the Followspot Project, but only because every variation on “Spotlight” was already taken. I hope you can forgive me, even though you’re the only one who would ever even know it was an inside joke. I like to think we can still have inside jokes, right? I mean, obviously I seem to believe you can still get letters wherever you are, too. Not that I’m sending this. I just like to keep it, to come back to every once and awhile so I can tell you things. Writing them down makes me miss you a little less. It only takes away one tiny drop from the ocean of missing you, but some days it’s enough to keep from drowning.
There’s a lot of comfort in the routine that comes with dancing in a company, but it’s grueling, too. I take company class every morning, rehearse for up to seven hours a day, and then it’s time to prepare for the performance. After the show I hobble home, exhausted and sore, but I never feel more alive. (The thing about the corps de ballet I never realized is that we’re in almost every single performance—we may not be alone on stage, but we’re always there.) I sometimes have dinner with friends, but mostly I head home to watch TV while I sew shoes and ice before bed. My parents were right—it’s not an easy path. Something new seems to hurts every day. But it’s an incredible life. We tour every summer and I get to work with some amazing choreographers. It’s a lot harder than I expected, but it’s worth it. It’s what I love, and what I’ve chosen. I know it’s what you would have chosen, if you’d had the chance.
So I’ll dance for both of us.
I’ll go on stage every night and dance like I’m trying to blow the doors off the hinges.
I’ll dance like we’re still out on the boardwalk in Coney Island, our hair blowing in the ocean breeze, grazing hands accidentally on purpose while music fills the darkening sky.
I’ll dance like you just told me you loved me for the first time.
I’ll be up there showing you I love you back.
Acknowledgments
EFFUSIVE THANKS, scribbled love notes, and poorly executed high-fives (my fault, not yours—I have terrible spatial skills) are due to the following people and things, in no particular order:
The incredible team at Razorbill/PRH: Have I used incredible in any of my previous acknowledgments? I’m too lazy to check. If so, please accept any and all of the following adjectives as potential substitutions: exceptional, fantastic, wonderful, top-notch, boffo, socko, gangbusters, crackerjack, dynamite. Special shout-outs to my editor, Jessica Almon, for her cool head, keen eye, excellent fashion sense, and for helping me to order and focus the five voices all talking to one another at once (in the book, not my head—although, that too); to my associate publisher and occasional publicist, Casey McIntyre, for her tireless support and for sending me to conferences all over the country in the fall of 2015 so that I could panic-write alone in nice hotel rooms; and to my publisher and publishing Yoda, Ben Schrank, for his unflappable leadership—and for occasionally liking my Instagram photos.
My beloved agent, Brettne Bloom, for her wit, wisdom, and Texas-sized belief in me. I will plot world domination over long lunches with you any day, lady.
Chris Silas Neal, for the breathtaking cover art. It makes my heart leap every time I see it.
Sophie Flack, my most favorite bunhead, for her friendship, gentle and nonpatronizing fact-checking (even when I got things completely ass-backwards), and early enthusiasm for this book. I owe you a Moscow Mule or seven.
My sister Zoe, for sharing her memories of LaGuardia High School and then letting me fictionalize them beyond all recognition (apart from location, Janus Academy has almost nothing in common with the Fame school, I swear).
Sarah Levithan, for generously providing background about the ballet world and its inner workings—and for the restorative walks through Fort Tryon Park!
All the performing arts students who told me their stories and who kindly suppressed their laughter even when I asked stuff like, “Do people still throw parties? Is that still a thing?”
The real, unbelievably talented dancers both professional and amateur who inspired the characters of Joy and Diego—I am in awe of you.
My parents, Ellen and Gara, who brought me up to love the arts and to dream of one day becoming a performer—which, okay, fine, I never did, but which I sort of experienced vicariously through writing this book.
My husband, Jeff, who let me work out of his office for half the summer of 2015 while he took care of our son—and who kept a jar stocked with Tootsie Pops, a.k.a. over-the-counter Xanax, in said office.
My friends, for being wonderful and tolerant and wise and lovely, and for giving me much-needed breaks from the anxiety-ridden isolation of my apartment.
My son, Sam, for being a wonder, a light, and a welcome distraction from my work—always.
My internet-blocking app, without which I would never write anything for the rest of eternity.
My phone, through which I was still able to complain about writing on Twitter when I had the internet blocked on my computer.
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