by Anna Birch
Last online: 6h ago
Great-Grandma Ingram loved to tell the story of how Griffin’s first step wasn’t a step at all—at just over a year old, he let go of my mother’s hand and twirled. I don’t know which cousin’s wedding it was, or where I was at the time (probably hiding under a table, scribbling into a composition notebook), but little Griff shocked everyone by standing on his own and swaying to the music before he could even walk.
It was Great-Grandma who insisted Griff and I attend the Conservatory. She was the one to leave behind the money that would pay for it. She knew my parents well enough to know that holding them hostage with access to a trust fund would be enough to bend them however she wanted—and she wanted Griffin to dance.
And my God did he dance—he was six the first year he performed in the Nutcracker. Harlequinade at nine, Coppelia at ten, A Midsummer Night’s Dream at eleven.
Sleeping Beauty.
Le Corsaire.
Raymonda.
My parents hated it.
They hated the practices, and the rehearsals, and the costumes, and the all-consuming vortex of hair spray and rhinestones. When Griffin (and I) were discovered by Conservatory campus police high as kites at the Kwickee Mart installation in May, our parents were delighted to force him out of it and into the kind of tech concentration—coding—that would eventually lead him to a career that would feed him physically but starve him spiritually.
My parents didn’t anticipate what I know, though: Griffin always finds a way. Just like that first sashay-step he took at my cousin’s wedding, he will always find a way to put dance first. Even if it means actively defying the very thing my parents told him that he could no longer do.
In front of me, an entire gaggle of tiny, squealing girls in matching black leotards press around Griffin on the sidewalk, all eye level with his navel and practically climbing over one another to vie for his attention. An older woman with shaggy hair lords over the chaos with a red-and-white megaphone in her hand.
It’s my turn to idle at the curb, waiting to pick Griffin up from his first day as an instructor. Dance!Alabama has an absurdly official process, and I hold up a pink card in the shape of a flower that signifies my place in line for the woman with the megaphone. Her voice booms loud enough to rattle through my windows:
“RIDER 153! 153? 153!!!”
Griffin frowns out into the parking lot, unaware until she finally swats him with the back of her clipboard. “153, Griffin!”
He blinks at her for a moment, processing, until recognition falls over him and he pushes past a group of girls watching videos on their iPhones, to open the passenger-side door of my car. He stretches out in the seat next to me, closes the door, and I take off before he can even finish clicking his seat belt.
It’s been mere hours since my showdown with Iliana last night.
Not even twenty-four hours since I felt in control of a situation with her for the very first time, since I watched her blink and stammer and paw at her hair through her hairnet with twitchy fingers.
I feel jittery still, and I’m going to need another hour at least to recover.
“Is the entire class like that?” I ask, thinking of the girls swarming him on the sidewalk.
Oblivious, Griffin downs at least half of the to-go cup filled with coffee between us in one swig.
“Imagine the whole thing set to Disney tunes being piped through the speakers,” Griffin says. “Allllll of those little-bitty kids—pretty much all girls, I heard there’s a boy that takes class during the week, but I think he’s half yeti because no one I’ve talked to has actually set eyes on him—and not a single soul paying attention.”
“Disney tunes are my description of hell,” I say.
When I swing around to the back of the strip mall and put the car in park, it’s as much for me to calm my nerves (and my shaking hands) as it is for Griffin to change out of his leotard.
“Here? Really?” Griffin’s eyes shift from the passenger-side window, back to me. “You couldn’t pick somewhere more secluded?”
“Are you kidding? Look: trees.” I point to the right. My hands are still shaking. “Building.” I point to the left. Still shaking. “No other cars anywhere.” I gesture all around. Still effing shaking. “Just make it quick, okay?”
“What if there are security cameras?”
“There aren’t security cameras.”
“You didn’t even look!” Griffin is frowning again.
This is the Griffin I know and love, mouthy and anxious in a leotard and compression shorts. I always miss him—until I have to deal with him again.
“Get out OF THE CARRRR—!”
“UGH, fine.” He snatches a duffel bag from my backseat and leaves the door open as a kind of privacy screen, ducks down under the tinted window, and gets to work.
“You need to hurry,” I say. “Mom and Dad are supposed to be at the school to pick us up for lunch in, like, ten minutes.”
“Chill! I’m hurrying!”
“Don’t tell me to chill, Griffin Ingram.”
“Don’t tell me to hurry—”
“Oh my God, put your jeans on.”
After a few moments of struggle and a brief glimpse of bare back that I couldn’t avoid, Griffin reappears in the passenger side in a mint-green polo shirt and jeans scuffed at the knees. He musses his boyish mop of hair with his fingers, his eyes trained on his reflection in his visor mirror, then drops back into the seat and clicks the seat belt.
We navigate our way out of the parking lot in silence.
It isn’t until the front of Dance!Alabama appears behind us again, in all its controlled chaos during pickup line, that I find the words for what I’ve wondered since Griffin let me in on his little secret.
I wish I understood what this thing is that keeps driving him forward, even when the circumstances surrounding doing what he loves are so completely horrible.
“Is all of this worth it?” I ask. “The sneaking around and dancing at that hellhole of a place? You’ve always had opinions about places like Dance!Alabama, but now—”
“I can’t not dance, Rho.” He glares out the window. “I still can’t believe they sunk to that level. You didn’t have to leave the visual arts program.”
“Oh, come on,” I say. “They’ve always been supportive of us.”
We both know this is a lie. But it feels disloyal if I don’t say it.
“No, they’ve pushed what they want on us. They decided before we could even walk what they wanted us to be: You were some kind of creative prodigy before you could even hold a pencil. I’m supposed to do something ‘productive,’ as if the performing arts isn’t.”
I frown into traffic.
I’ve never articulated it to myself this way, but he’s right. If they didn’t want me to pursue art, they would have used it as an opportunity to force their wishes on me. All I have is the privilege of being too much of a people pleaser to pursue the things I actually love.
I don’t even know what those things are anymore.
There’s a truth underneath all of this that’s pushing its way up toward the surface, something I’m not quite ready to admit to myself. It’s evident now more than ever: The way Griffin throws himself into his art, despite every single challenge that’s been thrown in his way. The way Iliana throws herself into her art, staring down any threat to her success with a kind of tenacity that is honestly terrifying.
And then there’s me.
“I don’t understand why you don’t hate me for this,” I say. “I got to stay in my program, and I don’t deserve to be there anymore. You were living your dream, and it all got taken away from you.”
“I do, some days. Then I remember that you’re dying inside because they’ve forced you somewhere you don’t want to be, too, and I know that we’re both in hell right now.”
“Well, you aren’t wrong,” I say. “Every bit of this.”
I pick up my phone from the dash and hand it over. Cheshire’s dir
ect message is still open on my screen:
Curious-in-Cheshire 11:03a: so, how do you want to do this meeting thing?
The read receipt hangs at the bottom of the DM like some kind of albatross around my neck, and I know it’s probably torturing Cheshire, too.
I have no idea what to do anymore.
Griffin sucks his teeth for a moment before he tosses it back onto the dash. “I didn’t know y’all were still talking.”
“Of course we’re still talking,” I say. I couldn’t imagine not talking to Cheshire. “She’s going to be in Nashville that weekend, too.”
“Rho. We have talked about this a thousand times—don’t tell people on the internet where you’re going. That is literally the worst idea I’ve ever—”
“She’s going for the Capstone Award, too,” I say. “That’s why she’s going to be in Nashville. We’re going to be in the same room. A lot over the next few weeks.”
Griffin rolls his eyes so hard, it looks like they’ll fall out of his head and fly off into the stratosphere. “Anybody can say ‘me too’ about anything. Give me a break.”
“No, she asked me if I was doing it,” I say.
“Oh.” He squirms in his seat next to me, then shoves a fingernail between his teeth.
I don’t want to ask what he’s thinking.
I don’t have it in me now—not enough bandwidth to deal with the Capstone alone, much less Cheshire’s needy clinginess and Griffin’s agonizing over my life choices. I’ve never had a girlfriend or anything remotely close, and the idea of somebody checking up on me when I already need Very Badly to be alone is more than I can handle.
Not to mention, Griffin’s got opinions about this—about everything—and I’m extremely not in the mood to have any of them foisted on me …
Until that little voice in the back of my head starts to whisper.
What if he’s right?
What if Griffin is providing a universe-ordained opportunity to save me from this, and by not listening I’m sealing my fate as a future missing persons headline?
What if we find out later that Cheshire is a forty-two-year-old man with a lesbian fetish?
No, I want to scream back to myself. Cheshire is the realest thing I have right now.
Cheshire is real. What we have is real.
And yet.
The whispering continues. Anxiety doesn’t care about the laws of the universe.
All it takes is one singular seed of fear and all bets are off.
“Just say it.” I pull into the Conservatory parking lot, and into the spot next to where our parents idle in their massive SUV. “You’re practically choking on it.”
“Even if Cheshire is real, do you actually think this is the right time for you to be doing this? Everything about the Capstone has been a capital-S Struggle.” He waves to Dad through the passenger window. “Do you really want to be distracted by a girl, for the first time in your entire life, when you’ve never needed to focus on something more in your life?”
“You don’t think I can have both?”
He turns to face me in the seat. “All I’m saying is that you have to make sacrifices for the things you want. You need to decide what you want and be ready to lose something.”
“Ugh, you can be such a jerk sometimes.” I throw my car in park and pop open the trunk. “I can have both, Griffin. I don’t have to choose.”
It sounds real when I say it out loud. There’s no reason for him to doubt me.
I just hope I believe it before I meet Cheshire, too.
TWO WEEKS UNTIL THE CAPSTONE AWARD
CHAPTER 11
ILIANA
Username: Curious-in-Cheshire
Last online: 20m ago
Curious-in-Cheshire 11:03a: so, how do you want to do this meeting thing?
The message shows as “read” the moment I sent it, but there is no response.
I’m supposed to be helping load the van, but I can’t tear my eyes from my phone.
My heart is in my throat.
I flick back over to the email from the Capstone committee and scroll through the names a second time. Twenty-five names in total. My name, Sarah’s name, Rhodes’s name, and then twenty-two potential Alices—seventeen if I weed out the boys from the list.
Kiersten Keller, a girl from our actual school. A real human person that I’ve probably set eyes on before.
Kiersten Keller, who was supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago to ride with us to Nashville for the Capstone project proposal because her parents can’t make it, either.
It’s crept up on me, slowly but surely, but Kiersten’s absence and my conversation with Alice on Slash/Spot feels related somehow.
“Iliana! Get your shit!” Sarah is a flushed, wide-eyed pixie on the other side of the van, hoisting her own beat-up luggage into the back-seat. The van rental place is up the interstate, on the way to Nashville and away from the city, so we all agreed to meet here rather than loop back and load up at the school. My suitcase actually belongs to my brother—a squared-off, hard-shelled thing he bought for a spring break spent in Cancun during college—and I stow my phone in my back pocket to lift it out of Sarah’s trunk with both hands.
I imagine these are not the sort of problems Rhodes is having right now.
They’re probably staying in their condo and calling it a little family vacation.
Neither my mom nor my dad could even get off work to see my presentation. Sarah’s mom is meeting us there for the day and promised to record everything so my mom can watch when her shift at the factory ends. I switch back over to the Slash/Spot direct message platform. I have a message.
I-Kissed-Alice 11:10a: do you want to try to meet at all in Nashville?
Something in me crumbles a little.
Why isn’t she more excited about meeting? We’ve been friends—more than friends, really—since the beginning of the summer. I couldn’t imagine getting through losing the Savannah College of Art and Design scholarship, community service, and the fallout with my parents without her. I was there for her, too.
This shouldn’t hurt as much as it does.
I reply right away.
Curious-in-Cheshire 11:10a: why wouldn’t we? Haven’t we always wanted this?
I-Kissed-Alice 11:10a: I just don’t want to mess this up by confusing competition with our feelings for each other … or vice versa.
My phone disappears from my hands. It takes exactly three seconds for my brain to register that it’s gone, and another second to realize it’s because Sarah took it from me. She flicks up and down on the chat screen, reading. I snatch it back from her, but it’s completely pointless—she’s read everything she needs to read.
“‘Do you want to meet at all in Nashville’?!” Her eyes are wide and bright. “Who is this?!”
“I don’t want to talk about it!” My face burns all the way into my hairline.
But Sarah is my best friend, and she knows me better than almost anyone.
Almost anyone. Except Alice.
“Well, she’s my friend … I guess … on the internet,” I say. Immediately I regret it. I don’t want her to know, but the catharsis of sharing this part of my life with someone—anyone—is irresistible.
I can’t stop once I start.
I tell Sarah everything—how we bonded over fan fiction at the beginning of the summer when I was grounded to my house after my arrest. How we write comics together now, and the role-playing that happens between comic updates, and the way it feels so completely real except that I’ve never even set my eyes on her before. That Alice is the reason I haven’t been with anyone in months, because my heart can’t bear the idea of investing itself in someone else. The fact that she’s going for the Capstone, too, and she needs it as much as I—as we—do.
By the time I’m finished, I can’t look at Sarah anymore.
This is the first time I’ve ever said any of this out loud.
“OH MY GOD! YOU HAVE TO MEET HER!!!” Sarah grabs me arou
nd the middle, jumping up and down. Her eyes are wide and glittery, like an anime character’s, and she lets go of me to clutch her hands to her chest. “This is ADORABLE, Iliana!”
“You’re so embarrassing,” I say, but I can’t help the excited trill in my chest.
I never wanted to admit how much I want Alice.
I want her in a tangible way: I want to put my hands on her. I want to feel her on my body the way I feel her in my soul. I want to hold her hand and look into her eyes and hear her voice whispering my name as if she’s uttering a prayer—
Now that I’ve imagined it, I don’t want to settle for anything else.
I don’t want to be her friend anymore.
I don’t want this weird, murky, sort-of-romantic-but-not-really thing—I want to love her openly. I want to be an acknowledged part of her life, and I want her to be an acknowledged part of mine.
“Oh my God, the list! The email! Iliana!!” Sarah drags me from my thoughts when she pulls her own phone from her pocket. She claps her hand over her mouth. “What if it’s Kiersten? What if Alice has been under your nose the entire time?!”
“I know. It could be Kiersten. The Marianna Walters girl feels like a possibility, too.”
“Marianna sounds pretty. Kiersten is pretty.” Sarah lets out a girly squeak. “And she’s riding with us, if she ever fucking shows up.”
“Is she?” I pop Kiersten’s first and last name into the first social media app I can pull up. Her face appears, and I recognize her immediately.
I’ve definitely noticed her around campus before. Her hair changes color every week or two, almost as if it’s made of magic. She’s pretty in an almost cartoonish sort of way, with big eyes and cutesy-femme clothes in wild floral prints.
She’s not how I picture my serious, tenderhearted Alice, but looks can be deceiving.
In an instant, my idea of who Alice could be shifts. I want it to be true so deeply, almost more than I’ve ever wanted anything, and I know if I think too hard about it I’ll start poking holes in my own hypothesis.
Sarah and I make shell-shocked eye contact.
“We have to figure out if it’s her,” Sarah says finally. I’m glad I told her. “You need to know what you’re dealing with before you go into this.”
