Finding Center (10 page)

Aly

Yana’s curly hair is like a beacon halfway across the café where she and Sofia already secured us a table. This is prime DC real estate, even in the summer when the students are gone and Congress is in recess. Still, this brunch spot has the best frittatas in the whole city. The poppy seed inside of me really wants eggs. All the time. I’ve never craved protein like I do now. That and a bizarre new aversion to fruit that used to sustain me.

I sink into the chair and Yana pitches forward, her eyes glittering. “Oh my God, you have to see our waiter.”

“Good morning, Alyona,” Sofia says pointedly at our friend.

I look over my shoulder, scanning the restaurant. “Good morning to you too. Is he hot?”

“Channing Tatum hot,” Yana says breathlessly. Yana’s the opposite of her brother. At twenty, she’s the youngest of us, and she tends to serial date. She just broke up with a dancer with the Washington Ballet but is apparently already on the rebound hunt. She’s young, absurdly talented and completely incapable of being single.

Though, I’ve never really dated anyone but Zed. It’s not like I have a lot of room to talk.

Sofia wrinkles her nose as she spreads butter on her bagel. “Are we calling Channing Tatum hot? In real life?”

“Not your type?” I tease her. “What
is
your type, Sofia? You haven’t dated anyone that we’ve known about since DBC started.”

Sofia smiles mysteriously. “That you know of.”

“Liar,” I whisper to her as the waiter comes over, making Yana turn as red as her hair and stunning her speechless. He’s pretty attractive, and definitely in a Channing Tatum type of way. Sofia just keeps smiling.

I order a frittata, a side of hash browns and orange juice. I hope I can keep it down. When the waiter departs, I look up and the girls are staring at me. Sofia sets down her knife.

“That’s more food that I’ve seen you consume in a single meal ever,” Sofia says. “With the exception of when Zed nags you. Not that it’s bad. It’s just new.”

We don’t talk about my eating disorder, but my friends know. How could they not, when the rest of the world does? But this food isn’t for recovery. This food is because there’s an itsy-bitsy human inside of me that makes me hungry and nauseous at the same time, which is a circle of hell.

I shrug. “I’m hungry.”

“Can we get back to the part where Sofia thinks Channing Tatum isn’t hot? Girl, are you sure you’re straight?” Yana stabs a piece of mango in her bowl with a particularly violent motion. She bites into it, glaring at Sofia.

I laugh. “The waiter’s cute, Yana. You should totally slip him your number on your receipt.”

“He’s cute, and definitely gay,” decides Sofia.

“Oh my God, he is not,” Yana says, but she whips around to stare at him. She tilts her head. “Do you think so?”

“My gaydar is way better than yours,” Sofia says. “Remember when you hit on Killian right after your audition?”

“You didn’t!” I grin at Yana. “Did you really?”

Yana’s red even as she denies it, so I know it’s true. I’ll have to ask Killian about that on Monday. This is one of our rare full weekends off so I finally have some time to catch up with the girls when we’re wearing street clothes and not leotards. I’ve missed them. The desire to share my secret and the fear of losing that secret go to war inside of me as Sofia and Yana chat about Killian, Yana’s new roommates and whether Yana and Yevgeny would get home to Ukraine this holiday season.

My food comes and I dig in, listening to Yana talk about why she won’t date someone who isn’t a dancer. I try to contribute and Sofia points out that Zed used to be a dancer, so he understood why this consumed me six days a week. It’s mostly true. They don’t know that Zed and I nearly broke up—or rather, we did break up—over my return to ballet.

“So what’s new with you, Alyona?” Yana says. “Other than Madison being impossible.”

I sit up straighter to roll my eyes. “I’m kind of scared to leave my water bottle unattended. The look she gave me when casting was posted...I wouldn’t put it past her to try to poison me.”

“A little dramatic,” Sofia remarks.

“Is it really, though?” Yana pushes her fruit at me and I wrinkle my nose. She shrugs it off and turns to Sofia. “Actually, no, that’d be too subtle for Madison. She’s more of a beat you to death with a pointe shoe in the studio type of assassin. If anyone’s going to kill someone else with poison, it’s totally you, Sofia.”

“You’re the Russian,” Sofia says.

“Ukrainian.” Yana’s voice takes on an edge.

Sofia looks at me and shrugs. “Same thing.”

I shake my head at her. “You’re starting shit, Sofia.”

She feigns surprise. “Me? No, we’re talking about Madison. I’m glad that you got the roles, Alyona.”

I pause, fork halfway to my mouth and set it down. “That obvious, huh?”

Yana blinks at me. “What?”

Sofia hesitates and says, “Bad weeks are allowed, you know. No one’s one hundred percent all the time.”

Except me. I should be. I want to be. And I haven’t been. What’s worse is that I don’t know when I’ll be 100 percent all the time again. Even if I dance at the best of my ability, sooner or later, my body’s going to change. And then what happens? To me at the company? To me as a dancer?

Yana kicks at me under the table. “Your ninety-five percent is still better than most of us.”

Most, but not all. And Madison’s getting stronger every day. She’s having good weeks, and I’m having bad ones. Some part of me wonders if I should tell Jonathan now, but then, what if this is the last time I get to dance in a ballet? What if I don’t come back after this pregnancy? What if I’m replaced at the company and can’t find somewhere as flexible as DBC? What if I have to start back in the corps?

“I’ll be better this week,” I tell them. “I don’t really have a choice. As much as I wish I wasn’t saying this, Madison’s getting better. I’m not getting replaced at twenty-six by a bitchy little bunhead.”

“That’s the spirit,” Yana says cheerfully. “You’ll be back. It’ll be good. Everything will be fine.”

Zed

I’m sorry this is a rough few weeks. I love you.

I stare at her text for a second. It’s hard to tell if Aly needs or wants a call right now, or just a reply text will suffice. She’s supposed to be going to her mother’s after brunch with her friends. And while I’m not opposed to turning around if she needs me, it’d screw up my plans for the day. Finally I text back,
I love you. I always love you. Try to enjoy your day off, Kitten.

Not that Aly doesn’t say
I
love you
frequently, it’s just she doesn’t usually say it out of the blue, unprompted like that. My Aly Spidey sense kicks in as I wait for a reply. If I break trajectory now, I have a lot of explaining to do. Namely, why my computer bag holds dance clothes and dance slippers instead of my work. And why I’m heading up to her dance studio, where she isn’t.

She sends me a smiley face and I breathe a sigh of relief.

The Metro ride’s long and full of tourists, but when I get aboveground again, my phone’s quiet. And I’m glad. I’m a terrible liar. Pushing open the doors to the company feels deceitful but I swallow back my doubt. My ankle feels great as I’m walking and I keep dreaming about dancing. To back out now feels cowardly.

I ride the elevator to the main floor and stop outside Jonathan’s office, waiting until he notices me before I offer a tentative wave. He rises slowly at his desk and gestures me inside the office. Jonathan and I don’t dislike each other, but we only have one thing in common these days: Aly. And without her here, Jonathan looks pretty confused.

“Hey, Zed,” he says, and then frowns over my shoulder. His eyes flicker back to me. “Alyona’s not here. Is everything okay?”

It’s now or never. Underneath my jeans, my tights feel too small for my body. I can’t breathe, but I can’t walk away. I’ve only walked away from something I wanted once and I regretted it every day until I ran into her again, four years later.
You’re just trying it out
, I tell myself for the tenth time this morning.

“Any chance I can borrow a studio for a little bit?” I ask, relieved when my voice is light and casual. “Just thirty minutes or something.”

Jonathan hesitates, his eyes moving to the bag over my shoulder. “Sure. Anything I can help with?”

“Nope, I got it. I appreciate it. Thanks.” I shake his hand and he still looks at me suspicious and confused. Finally, he just shrugs and nods across to the studio on the main floor, with all the mirrors, right in front of his office. I freeze and swallow. “I thought maybe the third-floor studio.”

“Madison and Yevgeny have a private class with Lila right now,” he says, his eyes clear as he slides his hands into his front pockets. “What are you up to, Zed?”

“Testing my limits,” I say. “I promise not to take long.”

He watches me suspiciously as I step out of his office and cross the hall to the studio where everyone can see me. Where he can see me too. If he tells Aly, she’ll be furious. I should tell him not to text her any questions, but if I leave the room now, I might never get myself to return.

God, I miss this. Fuck.
I
do.
I don’t say it often, and I don’t know what holds me back, but I miss ballet. And maybe, today, I move that into past tense. Maybe today, I stop missing ballet and I get to dance again. I used to say that I left all my problems at the door to the company. That work was a sanctuary without any of the real-world problems. But today, all of the real world sticks to me. Jealousy, that Aly’s had this when I haven’t. Anger, that I haven’t tried to return before. Guilt, that I ever left.

I’ve been searching for years. Without Aly, I tried alcohol. Without alcohol, I tried work and AA meetings. Without those, I tried Aly. Even with the past few months of trying to balance those two, it still didn’t feel enough. It still felt like something was missing. Standing here, in front of the mirrors and the barres and the piano, I think it was this. That maybe the trinity of Aly, recovery and ballet can fill that emptiness inside of me I’m always pushing away.

I strip in the corner, tugging my jeans off. I cut my tights above my prosthetic leg, and in the mirror I look like a strange version of a robot out of a post-apocalyptic movie in which there are still ballet dancers. I flex the ankle in the mirrors, imagining the day when there are prosthetic feet with arches the same way they do major joints now. Maybe I’ll be able to point my left toes in the future.

I set up my phone on the dock in the corner, cueing up music to play, and then sink to the floor, stretching slowly. I’ve never lost my flexibility, but there’s a difference between that and the strength in the flexibility that dancers have. I’ve lost the strength. Doing a split doesn’t matter if you can’t hold your arms over your head. Not in ballet at least.

And you’d be surprised how much strength it takes for a proper port de bras.

By the end of the first song on the playlist, my muscles feel warm enough to get to my feet and reach for the barre. I have to check myself and start basic, running through the positions. First, second, third, fourth—fifth sends a jolt through my back. It should be doable. Fifth turns out from the thigh and hip, not from the knee where I’m missing my leg.

I grit my teeth and try to turn my feet out in opposite directions, my real anklebone against the squishy black rubber of my fake one. The leg doesn’t want to rotate like that and I don’t have the finesse to do it. My right foot points to the right, parallel to my hips, but my left points out to eleven o’clock. I can’t get it to the nine o’clock point. I take a deep breath.
Don’t push yourself
,
Harrow.

I sweep my right foot out to the side, pointing my toe. My foot arches like it never forgot. I pull it back beneath myself, shift my weight and push out my mechanical foot. It’s still a strange sensation, even six years after my amputation, to see a leg moving because I make it but have it
not be my leg
. I can feel when it touches the ground, and I can feel when it leaves the ground, but that’s the extent of my sensation. Gravity. When they first amputated, I dreamed about my leg. It wasn’t something I mentioned to my doctors but when you’re a dancer, your legs are everything. Your body is everything but your legs in particular...you get attached. So to speak. Your feet and your legs are what earned you your career.

My missing leg ended my career.

So of course I dreamed about it. I dreamed about it the way I dreamed about her. I dreamed that I chased after doctors and searched through wastebaskets of discarded limbs and tried on different legs. And none of them were mine.

My prosthesis is my leg and foot, and it’s not mine, all at the same time.

Getting Aly back didn’t mean getting ballet back. And it didn’t give me my leg back. I think I believed once she came back, everything else I lost would too. But maybe I didn’t lose this. Maybe I only thought I lost this.

Behind me, the door clicks softly. I startle, and turn. Jonathan walks along the wall, his hand on the barre. Behind him, a crowd of people stand at the windows, watching silently. I swallow, shame rising in my throat. I didn’t want attention. I just wanted a real room to test myself.

“Weight on your right foot,” Jonathan says, his voice neither casual nor stern. He comes up next to me and presses his hand against the top of my diaphragm. I automatically lift my chest. “Straight at your core. You’re letting yourself soften in your abdomen to get the leg extension. Don’t push yourself so hard right now. Just lift as far as you can with proper technique. You’ll get it back.”

He steps away, his brow furrowed and his lips pursed like we’re in class. I lift my chin and he stands at the barre in front of me, demonstrating a few steps. When I don’t move, he repeats the sequence, quietly naming each step, and then very slowly, I start to move.

You’ll get it back.

We stay at the barre for thirty minutes and then Jonathan gestures to the middle of the room. Even though I’m in good shape, I’m breathing heavily. My muscles shake a little. I glance at the open space. Here, if I lose my balance, I have the barre. Out there, I fall.

“You’re sure I’m ready?”

Jonathan shrugs. “Maybe, maybe not. It’s not like I teach a lot of amputee dancers. But I think it’ll do you well to see what your timing is, what your leg feels like when you have to do timing.” He gestures to the barre and adds, “And without that. It’s good for your confidence.”

“You don’t go slow at all, do you,” I mutter and move into the center of the room.

“Don’t act like you’re surprised, Harrow,” he says with a wolfish grin. “Steady your supporting leg. If you can’t point your left foot then that’s your balancing foot. Press it into the ground. Stretch up through your spine. There you go. Good job.”

I rise out of a demi-plié and stretch into an arabesque. And I don’t fall. My body stretches, awakens, trembles.
I
am dancing again.
And I’m almost afraid to think this at all, but it’s true. I can feel the truth of it in my bones. It feels good. Good enough to cry. Good enough to scream. As good as finding Aly again. This is what I’ve been looking for all these years.