Spin the Sky

by MacKenzie, Jill;

  “I—I don’t know.” I hold my stomach, my body trembling with a shake I can’t stop.

  Thomas wipes under both my eyes. His palms are wet. Whether the moisture is from his skin or mine, I’m not sure.

  “You can’t do this.” He squeezes my arms. A camera turns on us and zooms in on his hands, my arms, my face, my eyes. I’m shaking. “You can’t do this to yourself. I won’t let you. You’ve got to go. You’re on right now.”

  I scurry toward the stage but I hear him say it, as if he’s read my heart and my mind. “Magnolia. Don’t let me down.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  The music starts and I spin around to face the judges, audience, cameras.

  Only the blackness stares back at me.

  I slide my right foot out, and then tap.

  Thomas taught me how do this, this smooth gliding motion with my toe, then heel, then toe, my taps grazing the vinyl floor. My mind repeats the name of each step. My body obeys.

  Black essence. Triple buffalo. Tap, goddammit. Tap.

  The music helps my feet, giving them direction with each beat, each syllable of Coltrane’s song, his sax crooning through my limbs like fuel.

  “You want me to dance to a classic?” I had said to Thomas, his fingertips pressing play on the stereo fifteen minutes after he met me for the first time outside the studio. Fifteen minutes after George locked lips with Rio, and meant it.

  “Yes,” Thomas said. “Because you’re a classic.”

  I leaned against the wall and listened, knowing I had heard that song before.

  Mrs. Moutsous kept a huge crate of records in the garage next to her good set of silverware that she only took out at Christmas and Thanksgiving. Occasionally, she let us borrow one or two, making us promise to return them to their sleeves the second we were finished.

  On rainy nights, George and I would stretch out across his floor, my head to his heels, our skin absorbing the sultry notes. The music always seemed more sacred coming from that old player than it ever did belting from people’s iPods and phones. But I never knew if it was the hearty quality of the records themselves, or if it was just me and George, locked in the single magic minute we shared, that made it seem that way.

  “I want to dance to stuff like this,” George said, seconds after the first time we heard this song. He lifted the needle and set it back down, replaying it. He stared into my eyes. “I want it to mean something.”

  His words filled me up, made me whole. “I want that, too.”

  He scooted his butt closer to mine. Rested his hand on my leg. I closed my eyes, feeling his heart beat in time with mine. Feeling his breath on my lips.

  When I opened my eyes, George wasn’t next to me. Wasn’t touching me, wasn’t caressing my thigh. Wasn’t kissing me. He was still where he always was, lying on his back, his head resting against the wood frame of his bed, eyes closed, head moving in slow, tapping time to that sax. None of it had happened at all.

  Now, my legs are bent, my knees shaking from the burn. Buck single time step. Bombershay, toe-clip. Tap, goddammit. Tap.

  My mind shifts from George’s room to Deelish, the shop I know is filled with wide-eyed people watching the TV that hangs in the back. Watching me do this. Tapping, of all things, tapping.

  I know my feet will not betray my soul as they hammer out every ball change that scuffs the floor, every stomp, stamp, brush, spank, hop, click, and roll that I’ve rehearsed, over and over and over, but never got exactly right. Until now.

  Their faces are happy, hopeful, proud. I’m doing it. Showing them that I can do something for Summerland. It makes me happy, hopeful, proud. Until they see the word rolling across their screen. Murderer. Their faces fall. They turn away, their eyes lowered. She’s still the daughter of a murderer, no matter how well she dances.

  Irish flap. Pendulum shuffle. Tap, goddammit. Tap.

  I picture the first time I saw Gene Kelly tap on some old TV show in black-and-white. It seemed so hard yet so cool and smooth, like gloss. I imagine that I am him. Imagine that I’m part of his body, his fluency in this soft, dripping language. Dolores’s words skim over me. I’d never let my flower girl be out here all alone. And then Chloe’s words, too. How do you feel about you? Their faces glide through me every time my feet graze the floor. How do you feel about you?

  My feet tap, fast. My arms fan out at my side in circles, propelling my feet faster, faster, until my legs, knees, torso separate. Until everything feels clear.

  After what seems like forever, my music stops. I face the audience, smiling. Because I didn’t fall or slip or make some complete tapping mess of myself like George and all of Summerland thought I would.

  I bow my head, slightly, in reverence. Then I step forward to accept the judges’ critique.

  “You were stunning, Magnolia. They loved you.”

  Those are Thomas’s words when I scurry backstage, my first-ever tap routine over and done. A camera follows me back and Thomas wraps his arms around me and I hug him too, my face resting on his shoulder. We stay like that, frozen in my moment. I don’t care that they’ll air this later. I don’t care because it’s nice to be held like this even if Thomas is only doing it because they’re filming. And his hug doesn’t feel like that. It feels like how I imagine a dad doing it. Warm and real and protective and something else. Proud. That’s what this feels like. It feels like he’s proud of me.

  I hear someone shout my name. It’s Rio, running across the room. Jacks laughs at her and he nudges Liquid in the ribs even though I thought they hated each other. Liquid scoots away and replaces his headphones over his ears.

  Rio reaches me and gives me this giant hug. Unlike Thomas’s embrace, her touch feels so awkward and wrong because we’re not friends. Never had the chance to be friends.

  “You were amazing,” she says. “I didn’t even know you could tap. Especially when George said all that about you not being able to.” She glances left and right, presumably for him, and then takes a big breath. “Listen,” she says, her voice hushed. “I need to talk to you. About something important.”

  “Rio. There you are.” A stage manager comes up behind her and smacks her over the head with a piece of paper. “You gotta go, girl. You’re on now.” Then he mumbles into his little walkie-talkie thing, “I’ve got her. She’ll be there in two.”

  “Find me later, okay?” Rio says, the guy pulling her toward the stage. She grabs my hand. “Promise me you’ll come and find me after this is done.” She releases me, but holds my gaze. I watch her go, her eyes pleading.

  I don’t hate the girl or anything. But I don’t want to talk to her about the rise of her and George’s coupledom either, especially not now. I mean, what would be the point? I have to let it go. I know that now.

  I turn away from her, toward Thomas’s bright face, smiling at me like I’m his lucky penny. He takes hold of my elbow and leads me to the flat-screen at the back of the room. Camilla’s on, introducing Rio. I knew this screen was back here, but when I was dancing, I didn’t think about how everyone back here would be watching me on it, too.

  “No one could take their eyes off you,” Thomas says, studying my face. “Even Hayden was blown away, and she’s been tapping since she was six. She even said she didn’t believe it was your first time, that the producers were lying about it so it’d make your performance look better.” He smirks. “She was just about to query them on it when I set her straight.”

  “You told her that I couldn’t tap?”

  “Nope. I wasn’t going to lie to her. I told her that you were capable of anything.” He sighs like he’s the happiest man in the world. “You’re a wonderful tapper. So wonderful, in fact, you absolutely terrified that poor girl.” He motions to George, whose miserable face is now looking everywhere but at me. “Even he was glued to the monitor.” For a second, I say nothing. Just kind of stand there watching George visually dissecting a piece of fluff in the far corner of the room.

  I hold my head high, let the words
out in one swift breath. “He was probably just putting on a show. Making nice for the cameras. He couldn’t care less if I did well or not.”

  While I give the pads of my feet a little squeeze, Thomas wipes the back of my neck with a cool cloth. “I somehow doubt that. You’re pretty impossible to ‘care less’ about.” He bends down to whisper in my ear. “And if he really didn’t care about you, then why did she go stomping off five seconds after your routine started?”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Because. He couldn’t keep his eyes off you.”

  So that’s what Rio wanted to talk to me about? To tell me to stay well away from her (ugh) boyfriend? At first I feel my teeth kind of gritting together. He was my guy before he was ever hers. I knew him and loved him way before she even existed in our world.

  My thoughts dissipate, suddenly replaced by my tap routine and how, somehow, through my clicking feet, came my revelation. The people of Summerland will never accept me, will never welcome me back with open arms and want me there, because Colleen will still be dead. No matter what I do to dance my best for them, it won’t bring her back. I can’t undo what’s already done.

  And George.

  George doesn’t love me, doesn’t want to kiss me. Doesn’t yearn for his hands around my waist or his mouth on mine. No matter how much I try to be the person he wants, I can’t be.

  Those were my dreams. Not theirs. Not his.

  A jolt of pain runs up through my ankle and then down through my toes on my left foot. I bend down and take off my shoe. Glance up to see if any of the cameras are pointed at me and filming. None are. I rub my foot a few times and the pain lifts. “You’ve got it wrong about George and Rio.”

  “See for yourself.” Thomas tilts his head at the TV. “She’s a bit rattled up there, don’t you think? If you ask me, she’s nothing like the Aimee Bonnet I knew.”

  My head snaps up toward the monitor. I inspect the last twenty seconds of her routine. She hits every motion. Every hip-thrust and arm-pump, punching each motion out hard and clean.

  But Thomas is right.

  Something is missing. She hasn’t tripped or forgotten the routine, but still, I see what he’s talking about. I scan Rio’s lean body, ending at her heart-shaped face. It’s all there. All in the eyes.

  “They don’t have the passion you do,” Thomas says. A camera turns in his direction, getting closer to hear his every word because everything Thomas says means something. “Like she doesn’t even care about what she’s doing up there. Her motions are hollow. Good to the untrained eye but immature to those that know. She dances like a child. I danced with her grandmother when I was still up and coming. She never danced so mechanically. Aimee Bonnet was all heart.”

  Watching her, I can only imagine what the rest of the dancers saw as they watched me from this screen: a junkie’s daughter. A murderer. And the audience, too. Now that they know where I came from, there’s no taking it back.

  Rio finishes her routine and the cameras swoop down and the audience cheers and the judges give her a standing ovation just like they did for me after my tap routine.

  Astrid Scott grabs the microphone. She makes some comment about Rio living up to her family name. Gia Gianni’s eyes are all sparkles because she’s just seen what she calls “a great technician in action.” They seem to have missed everything that Thomas was talking about. Seem to have forgotten what it means to dance like you need it to live.

  Elliot’s face flashes on the screen. Thomas nudges me. “Look there. He sees it. He knows that a dancer’s only as good as the fire in her heart.”

  I squint, trying my best to see what it is that Thomas sees. And then I do see it. Thomas is right. Elliot’s smile never reaches his eyes. Because Rio isn’t who he thought she was, either.

  I peek at George, hoping he’s noticed it, too. I wonder what the hell happened between the two of them and just how long it’s going to take before he comes to her rescue and makes it all better, all over again. Saves her, like he used to save me.

  But George isn’t even watching Rio as she takes her final bow and glisses off stage. Instead, he’s still focused on that dirty piece of fluff on the floor in the corner of the room, collecting dust.

  I wonder what he’s thinking. If he’s missing home the way I am or if it’s me he’s longing for. Not Magnolia, the girl who wishes that kiss wasn’t once, and only once. But Magnolia, the girl he swore he’d never let out of his sight.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Game day.

  The one we’ve all been waiting for and not waiting for, because today’s the day where they tell us our fates, proclaim us either winners of this round and on to the next, or losers. Losers.

  Olivia picks a piece of purple nail polish from her thumb with her teeth.

  Her eyes are puffy, like she hasn’t slept in about a month. I doubt I look much better. My stomach gurgles with this unsettling feeling that I can’t quite place. Like I’m going in for a root canal. But more like ten root canals. Plus a lobotomy.

  “It doesn’t look good,” Olivia says in low voice. “For me at least.”

  I glance up from one of her magazines I’ve been pretending to flip through, sprawled out on my bed. Anything to keep my mind off the fact that tonight is our first results show. “What doesn’t?”

  “The reports. You know, what they say about us.”

  I throw down the mag and then hop up on the hotel room desk facing the mirror, cross my legs, and then smooth a glob of Olivia’s “calming cream” all over my face and neck. It’s pudding-smooth and rich, like the kind they sell in those department stores where the women are pretty and polished and stare at you because you’re not. I inhale it. It smells like George’s house, too. I screw the lid back on.

  Olivia hands me a purple sheet of paper. “Here. See for yourself. I printed this out downstairs. It predicts who’s staying and who’s going home tonight. Poor Jacks,” she says. “It’s almost never wrong.”

  I take the paper from her and read it over and over. Up and down. The words are all there, in black and white. It says that Jacks is going home tonight. I don’t know why Olivia feels bad for him when he doesn’t feel bad for anyone, ever. “This is awful.”

  “What are you worried about? You’re ranked as the second favorite to win.”

  “Yeah. Second favorite. Not the same as favorite.”

  “So what? Team George has way less votes than Team Magnolia. See for yourself.” She taps the part of the page where it says, literally, “Team Magnolia has obtained more popularity than Team George.” I swallow. I have no idea how this has all happened in one week. How these people—the audience or reviewers or Internet gods—know anything about us at all.

  Olivia peers over my shoulder. “You should be grateful that they think you’ll beat him.”

  I shrug. Hop off the desk and pick up the mag from my bed.

  “No way,” Olivia says, one hand in front of her. “Don’t tell me that after everything that’s happened, you’re still all soft and mushy over that guy.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Then what?”

  “Second place isn’t what I came here for.”

  Olivia studies the printout, a frown creasing her forehead. “She might not win, you know. This thing doesn’t know everything.”

  “You just said it did.” I point to the top of the page that says Rio’s the favorite to win. Not just this round, but the whole thing. “Maybe she’ll get disqualified for using supplements or maybe she’ll fall asleep and miss her performance. Or better yet, maybe she’ll sprain her ankle and won’t perform at all.” I pick up the page and read it over again. Then another thought dawns on me. “How can it predict the results when we’ve only just started this?”

  “Not it, you idiot. Them. The judges. Astrid and Gia and Elliot. And Camilla Sky, too. Especially Camilla Sky. The bloggers from that site poll them to see who they think will be the first ones to kick it. The audience is influenced by the pr
os and vote accordingly.” She flips her head over and douses her hair with hair spray. “It’s a fine science,” she mumbles. “I’m going to die.”

  “Give me a break, Liv.” My eyebrows furrow, thinking about the latest YouTube video she played for me. This one was called Magnolia Questions George Like She’s in the CIA. Naturally, it was filled with tons of are you gay or not talk that made me seem small-town and ignorant, when it’s never been about that. Not for us. “There have been no YouTube videos about you at all.”

  “You think that’s a good thing? It’s publicity. I need that publicity.”

  “You’re a great dancer. It speaks for itself.”

  “Did you read this thing? I obviously didn’t wow anyone on Tuesday, even in my own style, which is pretty pathetic considering I’ve been dancing since I was, like, six.” She waves it in my face. “Look. Even those ballroom guys beat me. And Juliette too. They were mediocre.” She taps the page. “It says I’m in danger. I might even be going home tonight.”

  I go over all the motions from this week’s performance, two days ago. We watched Rio come offstage, her face calm and pretty much pleased with her performance, despite what Thomas thought about her soul, or lack thereof. We watched George perform his jazz routine, and it seemed flawless this time—no play for the cameras—just perfect, shining-light George. We watched Liquid perform Broadway and we listened as Astrid and Gia and even Elliot congratulated him on attempting a dance style so far from his own, which everyone knows is code for you blew it, and we watched him slither off stage after, like he didn’t even care. We watched Hayden execute her classical ballet routine—same smile plastered on her face like it always is—totally flowing and graceful, like it was nothing at all for her. We watched the ballroom couple glide through their pas de deux, Zyera burn through Bollywood, Juliette’s feet click through the toughest (and possibly only) Irish step routine I’ve ever seen. We watched Jacks krump, every motion brewing from somewhere deep inside of him, every pop full of strength and anger and power.