Spin the Sky

by MacKenzie, Jill;

Next to me, Olivia squeezes my hand, hard. I look at her and then over her to Hayden. And then to Jacks. Liquid. Rio. George. And the others. Their eyes are shut tight, making little creases in the corners.

  My heart booms so loud. So I break my hand free from Olivia’s and place it over my chest. She gawks at me with eyes as wide and round as UFOs. She grabs my hand in hers again.

  The lights darken. Camilla waves her envelope across the air. “The futures of these dancers are in the palm of my hand.” She tears one corner of the envelope open with her nails.

  Smiles. Nods. Smiles again. Pauses.

  My heart pounds. Boom. Boom. Boom.

  “The first dancer to go on to the next round of Live to Dance is—”

  Pause. Pause. Pause.

  Boom. Boom. Boom.

  “Rio Bonnet.”

  Rio breaks free from our chain and jumps up and down, her curls bouncing all over the place like tiny little springs. The cameras follow her up and down the stage and I watch as one cameraman smiles behind his lens. She’s gorgeous. And she’s a Bonnet. The cameras must love her. I knew Rio would make it. I knew she would no matter what Thomas thought. Of course the audience loved her. Even when I met her my only thought about Rio is how loveable she truly was. Is.

  Camilla shimmies back to the microphone. “The second dancer to go on to round two is—” Pause. Pause. Pause.

  Please. Please say it.

  “Olivia Palmetto!”

  I give Olivia’s hand a two-beat squeeze while the audience goes berserk at the sound of her name and the cameras zoom in close to her face and flash her profile on the screen behind us. She bounces on the balls of her feet and waves to the cameras, because she’s never been afraid of them the way I was. Am. Then again, she has no reason to be. She peers straight into the blackened audience and gives a solid thumbs-up.

  I’m happy for her—I really am. If anyone deserves this, Olivia does, so of course I’m happy for her. But the thing is, it means that report was wrong. It also means there’s one less spot for me.

  I take a deep breath. Hold it in. There are only nine spots left. One has to be for me. It just has to.

  Camilla clears her throat. Waits for the audience to quiet. “The third dancer going on to Week Two,” she says, “is Jackson Wiles!”

  Jacks spins around with his eyes so wide and runs down our line, high-fiving us all. He jumps up and down all around the stage and the cameras are loving it, moving all around his feet and following him as he uses the whole stage to do back handsprings from one side to the other. A few of the audience members are booing, because he’s Bad Jacks and everyone knows it, but mostly people are cheering for Jacks and his happy dance which, I have to admit, is pretty darn happy. The screen blasts behind us, replaying his back handsprings over and over because it’s exactly the kind of thing that people at home will want to see. The reports weren’t just wrong, they were really wrong. Next to me, Olivia’s giggling, so I guess everyone really does love an underdog. But then Jacks turns to the rest us still standing here, begging for the universe to call our names next, and mouths the word suckers. He slides up center stage on his knees.

  He’s such an ass.

  I squeeze my hands into fists inside Olivia’s. Please. I’ll do anything. Anything.

  Camilla raises her hand. “The fourth person who will go on to compete is—”

  I shut my eyes and hear my own name run through my mind, hear Camilla’s voice saying it. Magnolia Woodson. It has to be me. Magnolia Woodson. It sounds so right.

  “Juliette Mancini!” The crowd goes wild for her, too, but Camilla reins them in faster than the other two. And the fifth person to go on to Week Two of Live to Dance is the incredible, unstoppable—”

  I hold my breath.

  “Hayden Pettiwater!”

  I bow my head and close my eyes, while a few inches away from me Hayden shakes but is still sort of not moving, like her feet are bound to the stage by superglue. Her shoulders are trembling.

  Camilla touches Hayden’s arms. She waves a couple of the cameras over. “You made it, Miss Pettiwater! You made it to round two! Aren’t you excited?”

  Hayden nods her head. The screen behind us shows her grinning face, but then cuts quickly to Camilla’s face, which looks much more comfortable on that huge screen.

  Camilla clears her throat. I stand up a little straighter. There’s still a chance. There’s still a possibility for me. “Ladies and gentlemen, the sixth person to proceed to Week Two of the show is Zyera Jones!”

  I feel my knees get weak. It can’t be me now. There are too many good dancers left. It just can’t be.

  “Okay, ladies and gentlemen,” Camilla says. “Our seventh and eighth competitors who will go on to round two are the ballroom couple from New Mexico, Thaiss Morgen and Gabriel de los Suenos!”

  My heart falls into my chest. Now I know it’s true. I didn’t win. Because the last two spots have to be for Liquid and—”

  “George Moutsous!”

  He made it! He really really made it! Without thinking, I bend forward and my eyes search for his. He leaps around the stage, accepting his rounds of cheers and whoops. The cameras swoop over him and around him and he’s facing them and jumping up and down and the crowd is going wild because he’s George. But then, and only for a second, he peeks over his shoulder and our eyes meet. Hold each other. I inhale. I feel him inhale, too. And then he turns away.

  When the audience’s noise dies down, Camilla walks down our line, surveying the rest of us.. But as she walks past me, I notice her stare travels over me, my face, my body, quicker than everyone else. I look toward the cameras and they’re not even on me at all, just panning across the other contestants. Something’s wrong. She must know that they’ve already eliminated me. I don’t understand. I thought I did my best. I thought I did okay. She turns to face the cameras.

  “And the last person to make it on to next round of Live to Dance is—”

  My heart crackles. The silence fills my chest like helium. And lead. How can this be the moment where they tell me I’m going home? I’ve gone through it a million times in my head. It never looked like this.

  I shut my eyes. All the noise drains from my ears. I am deaf. I am blind. I am floating somewhere above myself, looking down on the crowd. The stage. And then I see me. Standing there, knowing that I haven’t made it.

  Knowing that I’ve lost everything.

  “Magnolia Woodson.”

  What?

  I open my eyes.

  “Magnolia Woodson!” she repeats, this time screaming my name.

  It’s me!

  I jump up in the air with my arms and fists raised to the ceiling. The cameras zoom in and for the first time since I got here and they’ve been all over me, I don’t even care. The audience is out of their seats. They’re whooping and dancing and cheering because I did it I did it I did it. Me. Magnolia. Me. No-good Woodson girl.

  Olivia grabs me and throws me into this kind of bear hug and then, still tangled in embrace, we’re dancing around and laughing and everyone else is dancing all around us too while the cameras catch every single second of it on film.

  For that glorious forty-five seconds, we are the chosen ones.

  Me. Olivia. Hayden. Jacks. Rio. George. The ballroom couple. Zyera. Juliette.

  And then, all it once, it hits me who it is that’s going home. Lawrence, the West Coast Swing guy from New Jersey who was supposed to place third overall and made the judges cry both times they saw him dance. And Liquid from God knows which street corner in New York. Liquid, who held me back from creaming George because, somehow, he knew I shouldn’t. Liquid, who barely speaks with his mouth or his eyes.

  Lawrence is braving the cameras, his grin wide. The screen behind us flashes with his face. He talks about how lucky he was to be here for this opportunity and he says he wouldn’t trade it for anything. Liquid’s staring at the cameras, too. The screen changes to show his face but he doesn’t tell his story the way La
wrence did. He nods and accepts his defeat, but it’s not the same. There’s something different about him, but there’s always been something different about him. And then it hits me. I know.

  Liquid isn’t vapid, devoid of any emotion the way Jacks is because he’s tough and mean and hurtful for the sake of hurting. Liquid is defeated. I don’t know if it’s the streets that made him this way or if it’s something else. The only things I’ve seen from him—touching me and touching George and maybe wanting someone to touch him back—I thought were the same things he came here for. Dancing and getting laid. But I bet he has no problem achieving either of those things in New York. He wanted something different. That’s why he came here.

  My heart sinks for both them, but I think Lawrence will be okay. He’s standing with Liquid and talking to Liquid and maybe even trying to exchange private moments of pain with Liquid. But Liquid’s not even moving. Not saying a thing. Like he was already gone, long before he came to this show.

  I feel a stab of regret, a stab of pain. Not for me, but for them. Even if Liquid can’t show it. Even if he can’t feel it. He’s got to know he did everything he could to be here and it wasn’t enough.

  But I can’t worry about him now. As the cameras swivel from them to me and the other winners, I know I can’t worry about George or how he doesn’t seem to notice Liquid’s hunched shoulders, shielding hair, dead eyes.

  I straighten my back and hold my own head high. Behind me, I know it’s my face they’re showing because now the whole audience is shouting, “Mad Mags! Mad Mags!” It’s me I came here for—not them—not any of them. It’s me who’s going on to the next round, and the five after that. It’s me who’s going to win this whole darn thing.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Two weeks later, we’re walking through the white-washed pathway to the hotel’s pool and bar area, happy to finally have an afternoon off. We’ve only got three hours before our next dance styles are posted, but it’s three hours where the cameras have strict orders to leave us alone, and that’s more than we’ve had since we came to LA. It’s also three hours to try to mesh in with this swanky LA scene, which isn’t easy for a group of mostly small-town kids who have been locked up in sunlight-deprived dance studios for three weeks. I mean, physically we all fit in thanks to the fact that, as a rule, most dancers are fit. But still, on a metaphysical level, most of us have little to no knowledge of Brazilian bikini bottoms and manscaping.

  I skim the deck for a couple of empty lounge chairs. Behind Olivia and me, Jacks shouts, “Would you look at the bods around here? Welcome to Hump Town USA!” which makes me cringe and wish I didn’t have to walk anywhere with him.

  I glance at Olivia, but she’s not cringing. Only when his feet catch the back of her flip-flops does she roll her eyes in my direction. “What an idiot.”

  “I was so hoping he would leave last night, not Juliette,” I say. “And definitely not Zyera.”

  “I know. They were cool.” Olivia shudders. “He’s a cretin. It almost makes me miss those ballroom guys. Hell, I’d even take Liquid back at this point.”

  I glance back over my shoulder at George. I wonder if he wishes Liquid were still here, but I doubt it, considering he barely even blinked when Liquid was eliminated.

  George’s face reveals nothing. But then he lifts his head and his eyes meet mine and hold them. He misses me. He has to miss me, because not missing me would mean that he never valued our friendship the way I did. Do. But he’s the first one to break his eyes away from mine, letting his gaze fall to his feet like he can’t bear to see me for another second.

  I mean, after the Tuesday performance show where I danced a Broadway routine and George took on a tap number, both of us earning glowing cheers from the audience, George never looked my way once. And in the Thursday results show that followed, where the ballroom couple was eliminated for their “lack of chemistry,” before they even had to dance solo, all I could think about was the way George and I used to exude natural chemistry. Like, all the time. I stared at him, hoping he was feeling the same thing as me, but he never looked in my direction. Not for a second. And last night, when Zyera and Juliette were both let go, which was so shocking and sad but exciting, too, because it left me and George both safe going into Week Four, George ignored me like I didn’t even exist.

  It’s been three weeks since we had our fight. Three weeks since the universe turned our world upside down and made the sky no longer up and the sea no longer down and our friendship no longer the most important thing either of us have ever had. It’s the longest we’ve gone without talking. It’s the longest we’ve gone without finding every single reason to be around each other. I know they say that time heals all wounds, but I’m not sure that that’s true. At least, I’m not sure that it’s true for George and me.

  “Where do you guys want to sit?” Hayden says. Her voice is so high and tinny. Sometimes it’s all I can do not to tune her out. But part of me feels bad for her, too. It’s obvious no one really likes her because she never stops smiling and always-smiling means fake, but then I wonder what they say about me behind my back, too. I’m afraid to ask Olivia. If I did, I know she’d tell me the truth.

  “There’s a bunch of chairs over there by the bar, and a few over there by the sand,” Hayden says. “What do you guys think? Beach or booze?”

  “Booze, definitely booze.” Jacks cups his left hand around the top of his mouth and waves his right one in front of him which, I guess, is supposed to seem tough. Then he raps—literally raps. “Bring me booze, bring it fast, if you don’t I’ll slap your—”

  “Okay, we get it.” Olivia puts one hand out to intercept Jacks. “Booze it is.” She sticks her tongue out at him. That girl cracks me up.

  She spots a set of double chaise lounges with rolled-up orange towels near the DJ and pulls us toward them while the others dump their stuff a few chairs over. I plunk my bag down, watching the DJ guy bob his head while holding a massive pair of earphones up to his right ear. He’s spinning house music. The kind that’s overlaid with some beautiful woman’s voice, singing about music and wine and summer love.

  This kind of music all sounds the same. All chi-chi and pretentious. Soulless.

  Or at least, that’s what George used to say. Among other things that I’ve always known, and could never forget. Like about him wanting dance to mean something, us to mean something. About music transcending him and giving him the strength to be who he really was. Is. Was.

  Although I still have no idea who that is. Was.

  I plop myself in my chaise and lean way back. Then I adjust my sunglasses—Olivia’s sunglasses, ones that she lent me the day I appeared in her room, a million years ago. I’m not kidding when I say that LA must be the sunniest place on the planet. Luckily for me, Olivia was also nice enough to lend me one of her oodles of bikinis that she brought “just in case.”

  She tosses me a magazine to read, but I leave it closed next to my leg. My gaze bounces between the DJ and Olivia, Hayden, Jacks, and George, who have already stripped off their shorts and tees.

  “Hey, you guys. Who’s swimming?” Jacks says. When nobody answers him, he catapults himself, cannonball-style, into the pool. “This place is awesome!” he shouts, splashing everyone around him.

  “See? What did I tell you? He’s polluting the atmosphere,” Olivia mumbles. She watches him do laps from one end of the pool to the other.

  On the other side of Jacks’s vacant chair, George sits up and pulls his SUMMERLAND OR BUST T-shirt over his head. I have an identical T-shirt—same color, same size, everything—hanging in my closet at home, freebies from the summer we turned thirteen, the night the Hood to Coast race after-party was held on our beach. That party lasted three glorious days, all filled with me and George eating corn dogs and riding around the flat sand on our bikes, barefoot. Our toes and heels got so calloused from those pedals. And the T-shirts. They got so smelly because we didn’t stop to change them for the three whole days. Not that eithe
r of us noticed.

  And when Monday rolled around, which was my and Rose’s usual day at the Laundromat, I sniffed that shirt long and hard before tossing it into the machine. I remember how my nose filled with the smell that made me feel more whole than anything else on the planet: salt and seawater. George and bliss.

  Now, George tosses his inside out T-shirt to the end of the chaise. He smoothes his perfect chest with some kind of boutique sunscreen. One I can’t imagine any place in Summerland selling.

  I inhale deeply. But not because of the sunscreen.

  I’ve seen George in his swimsuit a million times. But seeing the V shape that frames his hips, peeking up from both sides of his board shorts, doesn’t get old, ever, though I wish it did. I don’t know what rattles me more: seeing George with his body more toned than ever after these weeks dancing, or seeing the shirt. Just lying there. Discarded.

  I’ve never felt so far away from George as I do now. This is the farthest. And I’ve never known him to look so different to me as he does now. This is the newest.

  Olivia pokes my side. “Stare much?”

  “What?” My head snaps up.

  “I can tell that you’re totally checking him out, you know.” She leans over and taps the lens of my glasses. “I can still see your eyes through these.”

  “I wasn’t looking at anyone.”

  “Do you want me to ask him?”

  I put my index finger to my lips and make my eyes go as wide and scary as humanly possible. Because I know what question she’s referring to and there’s no way I want her to ask him that. “No. Just shut up, okay?”

  I look toward George and, no doubt about it, there’s a space next to him that’s empty. Not literally empty—Jacks is out of the pool now and is dripping his chlorinated self all over the corner of George’s towel, while the chair on the other side of George is occupied by an overweight balding man talking way too loud on a cell phone encrusted with fake diamonds.

  But that’s not who should be there next to him.

  I’ve seen him and Rio together again, off in some corner, whispering to each other like no one else on the planet exists. So I guess their little lover’s spat is over and she’s forgiven him for watching me dance. Which is good, I guess. Except she isn’t here now.