Shiny Broken Pieces Read online

  “But—”

  “Look, I’m not happy about it either. But it’s not like you’re entitled to a single.” Her words are clipped, sharp, with a hint of a British accent popping up now and again. “Anyway, it’s too late to do anything about now, right, E-Jun?” She stretches out my name like it’s a heavy, foreign thing she has to carry. A burden.

  “Everyone calls me June,” I say, which she should know because we’re not strangers.

  “Cute,” she replies flatly. It makes me feel like I’ve said my American name is Star or Poppy or Rainbow.

  Then she lumbers off my bed, as if it just occurred to her. When she catches me frowning, she shrugs. “He knows I hate messing up my covers.”

  Henri smirks. “Among other things,” he adds, then winks in my direction. Gross. He gives her a deep, grabby good-bye kiss before he slinks off. I shudder at the thought of him. Something about that boy has always been off to me, and I hate the idea of him being here, in my space. Well, our space, I guess.

  I seethe in silence as I start unpacking slowly, mentally willing away Cassie and all her stuff. There’s just so much of it. The closet is two-thirds full already, and she’s got stacks of books—Machiavelli, Marx, and other political things, along with all the major ballet books—lining her shelf. In the corner, a small cube is filled with dance gear—dead toe shoes, leotards, ribbons, warm-ups. My side of the room—what’s left of it—is stark in comparison.

  When Cassie started at the conservatory in tenth grade, she’d take half her ballet classes with us in Level 6 and the other half in Level 7 with the junior girls. No one really knew her. No one really wanted to know a girl who was too good of a dancer. She was Alec’s cousin—my cousin, I realize with a start—and everyone knew that she’d been specifically recruited from the Royal Ballet School. She was that good. But then, after what Bette and the girls did to her—the hair, the shoes, and especially the lift accident with Will—she disappeared. Now here she is, completely invading my space.

  I unpack the box marked “tea” and plug in the electric kettle, filling it with bottled water, hoping it will relax me. I open up my new glass-lidded tea box—a gift from Jayhe—and pull out a small satchel of chamomile and lavender that he prepped for me. “It’ll help you chill,” he always tells me. As if anything could really help with that tonight.

  “Careful with the kettle,” Cassie announces. “Fire hazard and all.”

  “I’ve had it for years and nothing so far.”

  I don’t realize I’ve said it aloud until she whips around and comes right up in my face. “I don’t want any attitude from you.” She stares down at me, her skin pulled taut over her skull, like Charlie, our bio class skeleton. I wasn’t exactly nice to her when she first came to ABC. When I flinch, she laughs. “Mr. K pretty much promised me the Sugar Plum Fairy, and that basically guarantees one of the apprentice spots. So you better not mess with me.”

  My heart sinks into the depths of my stomach, where it’s sloshing along with the bits of grilled chicken I ate off my sandwich. It all threatens to come up again, right then and there. I rush to our private bathroom, locking the door behind me.

  Cassie’s put down a bubblegum-pink mat that’s enough to get me nauseated. I run the tap, waiting until I hear the room door close with a thud. She’s gone. Thank God.

  There’s a scale in the corner. The last time I checked my weight was during summer session. Mom doesn’t keep scales around the house. I try to focus on breathing and my face in the mirror. But I can see it out of the corner of my eye.

  I can’t resist. I need to know. The numbers quickly shift from 0 to 80 to 90 to 100 and then 110, 112, 115. I shift my weight a little and they scramble again, settling, finally, at 108. That’s heavier than I’ve ever been. By far.

  I swallow down the sob that’s rising in my throat. I hear Cassie’s nasty words in my head again. Seconds later, I’m cradling the toilet, the tile floor cold and hard under my hands and knees, the familiar scent of lemon disinfectant triggering that same response instantly. With it comes relief, a sense of control. I tell myself it’s just the bile and burning that’s causing the tears. No matter what Cassie says, I’ll be the Sugar Plum Fairy when that cast list goes up, just like I’m supposed to be. My performance in Giselle last year made that happen.

  This is my year. This is my turn. I’ll be the lead soloist. I’ll be chosen for the company. I’ll do whatever it takes.

  4.

  Bette

  I’M SITTING ACROSS FROM MY father in his favorite steak house downtown. The restaurant, with its high ceilings and marble floor, echoes with snippets of stuffy conversations and the clink of wineglasses being set on white-clothed tables. Ours overlooks the Hudson, and while he chews, I watch a boat sail up the edge of Manhattan, headed north. You can forget this place is an island when you live close to the large expanse of Central Park cutting right through the middle.

  He’s grown his beard in. White hairs poke through the blond. He lives about eight blocks from our house on the Upper East Side, but I haven’t seen him in months. My mother insisted on having it that way, ever since I was twelve and he bailed on Adele and me for a Christmas brunch, jetting off to the Turks and Caicos with his latest assistant girlfriend instead. But before that, he was around, sometimes, randomly, cooking breakfast in the kitchen on a Sunday morning or spending the afternoon reading the Times.

  The Times Magazine pokes out of his bag under the table. I peep at it, wondering if it’s a sign that things will go back to normal. I used to love reading it with him while Adele was busy in the basement, getting in extra rehearsals with the latest Russian expat ballet mistress my mother had hired. He’d tell me about the state of the world, explain it to me like I was a grown-up, like it should all make sense. And it did, the way he said things. I would fish those old magazines out of the trash to save in stacks under my bed.

  Blood seeps out of his rare steak, and I watch it ooze out into the fluffy mounds of mashed potatoes. I push my salad around my plate, my appetite disappearing.

  “I guess Adele isn’t coming,” he says after finishing his bite. Even though we’ve been sharing this awkward silence for forty minutes. Even though we both already knew that and ordered without her. Even though he’s halfway through his steak. Even though she hasn’t spoken to him in years. She won’t even talk to me about it.

  “She has rehearsals,” I lie, not sure what she has planned this evening.

  “What role is she dancing? What ballet are they performing again?”

  He doesn’t even realize that casting hasn’t happened for the winter season yet.

  “I don’t want to talk about ballet.” Our gazes finally meet, and it’s like looking into my own eyes. Ice-blue and cold. Adele says I crinkle my nose like he does when I’m upset or I’ve said something rude.

  “What do you want to talk about?” He motions for the waiter to bring him another Scotch and soda. I want to give him a list of off-limits topics: my mother, Adele, ballet, school, what I plan to do with my life, what actually happened last year, the reasons he’s been away so long, why he left us, his latest girlfriend. Which means that we really can’t talk about anything aside from the weather, which is relatively cold for a Sunday in the middle of September.

  “Your tutor? How’s that going?” There he goes again, with the interrogation. “The private ballet lessons? Your friends? Have you seen any of them?”

  I don’t answer. What is there to say? Nothing’s changed, least of all him.

  “The point of having dinner is to talk to each other,” he says. “How’s Alec?”

  “I don’t want to talk about that either.” I fill my mouth with slimy lettuce tossed with too much low-fat salad dressing. I wish that I didn’t still eat like a ballerina. I’m in the real world and not in the third-floor café at the American Ballet Conservatory. I could eat like a normal person—whatever that is—if I wanted to. But I have to stay in shape for when I get back to school.

&n
bsp; My dad raised an eyebrow when I ordered salad—just salad—for dinner. He hasn’t gotten used to the difference, still. We haven’t had that many meals together since he left, and he still expects the little Bette that would order a kiddie burger or chicken nuggets when he’d pick me up from the conservatory for a visit.

  Plates come and go before us, even a palate cleanser of mint leaves. I escape to the bathroom and open up my locket. I swallow a pill and I wait for some kind of focused calm to emerge after it hits my system. I wait for the warm flicker of relaxation. But it doesn’t come. I want to wretch or scream or call Adele and cry, which would be the worst thing of all. I dread the I-told-you-so on the other end of that call.

  She warned me about going to dinner with him. She told me I would end up disappointed. But she’s always been my mother’s girl, and I was always sort of his, until he left.

  When I return to the table it’s been cleared.

  “Are we ordering dessert? They have a panna cotta I was thinking about trying.” He thumbs the dessert menu.

  “I shouldn’t eat dessert, Robert.” I test out using his first name to see how it will land on him. “I’m a ballerina.”

  “Robert? I’m your father.” He waits for the accusations—“then act like it”—but I won’t give him the satisfaction. He sets down the menu. The woman at the adjacent table hears the deep pinch in his voice and looks over at us. He clears his throat and leans forward. “Are we getting dessert tonight?”

  “I’m a ballerina.”

  “Are you going to still be a ballerina?” he asks, his words clipped. I’ve clearly hit a nerve. “Your mother told me about the school’s decision, Bette.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” Head high and eyes straight ahead, I make sure not to look away. He taught me that. “You all of a sudden care now what happens to me?”

  “I’ve always cared.”

  “Then where have you been?”

  His wide shoulders seem to jump with what I can only assume is surprised humiliation. I think about saying something to smooth over the anger, but my mind fills with other mean things to say instead. Since he left, our relationship has been a series of missed dinners and empty apologies and bank deposits.

  “Your mother can make things quite difficult.” He puts a hand under his chin, like the words coming out of him are too heavy for even his firm mouth to handle.

  “Mom is difficult. No, she’s terrible. And you left us there with her.” I clutch the locket around my neck. It was his grandmother’s. He gave it to me for my thirteenth birthday. My hands are shaky. The buzz of the pill is finally settling in and I am hyperfocused on the way he looks at me, the fact that he opens and closes his mouth more times than words actually come out.

  A flicker of guilt flutters in my chest as I think about what it must’ve been like to be married to my mother. But I won’t feel sorry for him. I can’t. He chose to marry her. He left us with her. We didn’t get a choice. So, no, he won’t get any pity from me. Not now, not ever. “Have your panna cotta,” I tell him. “I’ll see you next time. Whenever that is.”

  The maître d’, used to scenes like this, I guess, already has my slim red peacoat waiting for me and slips it over my shoulders as I walk out, my stride strong, not revealing the shakiness inside.

  But once I’m out the door, my shoulders drop and my pace slows. It’s exhausting pretending to have it together. I wait a few seconds, thinking he’ll run after me and beg me to come back to the table. I had hoped—stupidly, I guess—that maybe, just maybe, today I’d find in my father an ally. Like the way we used to be. But no one comes outside. And now more than ever, I know that I’m in this on my own.

  On Monday morning, after my mother goes off to the spa for her usual weekend recovery appointment, I call the lawyers’ office. I pretend to be her—slurred, angry voice—and demand that the files from the settlement with the Stewart family be sent over for her review. They arrive within an hour.

  I have the courier set the lawyers’ boxes on the dining room table. In the dark, they are shadowy tombs. I turn the light up, pull open the drapes, and the boxes become less scary in a haunted-house way but more intimidating in a real-life way. My whole life is in these boxes, filed away forever, everything in them shouting that I was bad.

  I riffle through the files. The first one has pictures of each person in my class, their names scrawled along the bottom in black marker. I set them out on the table like I’m a ballet master placing dancers into a piece of choreography.

  Giselle Stewart

  E-Jun Kim

  Eleanor Alexander

  William O’Reilly

  Henri Dubois

  Sei-Jin Kwon

  Alec Lucas

  I run my fingers across Alec’s face, missing him. He hasn’t called. Not once. I haven’t exactly reached out to him. I couldn’t bear the idea of calling him and being clicked to voice mail or sending a text and having it go unanswered.

  I comb through the boxes and lay out all the evidence that led to the settlement with Gigi’s family:

  1) A copy of Henri’s statement saying that he saw me push Gigi in front of that taxi.

  2) Pictures of the crime scene: the street outside the club, the curb where we stood, the hood of the taxi bent with an indentation from Gigi’s body.

  3) The police report from that night.

  4) A copy of Will’s statement about past pranks I’ve pulled on other girls. Though there’s no mention of the role he played in any of those pranks, of course.

  Reading these just confirms what I know: I am the most hated person at American Ballet Conservatory. Maybe I deserve to be, according to the quotes from Will, Henri, and half a dozen other dancers, some of whom I’ve never even talked to.

  “Bette is toxic.”

  “Bette has it out for anyone who is better than her.”

  “Bette’s jealousy turns to madness.”

  “Bette terrorizes people.”

  I’m not supposed to be going through these files. The Abney family therapist said I shouldn’t fixate on things that I don’t have the power to change at this moment. But she should know by now that I don’t listen, and I don’t follow directions well unless they’re doled out by Madame Morkovina. I wonder what Morkie thinks of me now. I feel a hot pinch in my stomach. One I can’t ignore.

  I look at a lawyer’s crude drawing of the scene. They’ve used basic, almost stick figures to draw where I said everyone was standing that night. I’m on the curb next to Alec, Gigi, and Eleanor. Henri is off to the left or maybe it was the right. This summer my memories of the night skewed each time I was asked to replay them out loud for the lawyers. Sometimes Henri was on the right. Other times he was behind me. Sometimes Will lingered behind Gigi.

  I bend the edges of Gigi’s picture. The audition photo she took before getting accepted to the conservatory smiles up at me. Bright white teeth, happy eyes, and perfect sun-baked skin. I look at my own picture. My mother had a famous fashion photographer take it. I don’t think I’ve ever been as happy as Gigi is in that single photo. I remember her first ballet class with us. She stuck out. It made me realize, for the first time ever, just how white the ballet world is. Even the Asian girls sort of blend in at initial glance, with their pale little arms and tiny frames and quiet personalities.

  But not Gigi. She barreled into the room, her hair a burst of wild curls, pins between her teeth as she wrestled it into a bun, and she wore a hideous, multicolored leotard, totally ignoring the very specific ballet class uniform instructions in the conservatory packet we all received. I remember thinking she was gorgeous, despite it all. Her skin glowed like she’d just run three miles.

  I close my eyes and can see her dancing. I see how loud it was. How riveted everyone was. How much fire she had in her movements. A hot and angry knot forms in my stomach. I throw her picture back in the cardboard box and slam the lid on it. I may hate her but I didn’t push her. I didn’t hurt her in that way.

  I tak
e my phone from my pocket and dial Eleanor. Voice mail. I hang up and dial again, and again. She still doesn’t answer. I leave her several messages, telling her I need to talk to her, that I miss her and she’s my best friend. My only one.

  I build up my courage and dial Alec just once. I leave the smallest, vaguest message ever: “Call me. Need to tell you something.” I’ll regret it in an hour, but the adrenaline of it all pushes me. If he calls me back, I need to figure out what that something is.

  I pace around the room for what feels like hours. That night floods back to me—dressing up June to come with us to the club, the cab down to SoHo, seeing Gigi dance with Alec. I remember trying to be nice to her and buying her a drink, making a truce, and owning up to some of the petty things I did. I think through every step I took that night after we left the gala, like it’s a difficult variation I have to learn. In slow motion, I try to recall every detail again: the slur in Gigi’s laugh as she and Alec were tripping on cobblestones in front of us. The spring mistiness in the May air. Alec’s hand resting on the small of Gigi’s back as we walked toward the street. The look on Will’s face as he caught that same moment. It must have mirrored mine.

  And then, the light shifting from red to green as Gigi stumbled forward, traffic taking her with it. I shudder at the memory, so vivid in my mind.

  “Who hates me?” I say out into the room.

  A voice inside answers: Everyone.

  Tears prick my eyes. I shake my head. This is not the time to fall apart. My mother would say Abney women never fall apart. I pull my hair out of my face, sweep it up into an easy knot. It is trained to behave even without the bobby pins and hair spray and water.

  I pore through the papers again, trying to figure out who could have done this. The obvious choice: Cassie. But Cassie wasn’t there that night. Henri made his intent to destroy me clear last year, with Cassie as his impetus for the whole thing. And I can’t remember where he was standing. The feeling that I’m right is overwhelming as it bubbles up inside me, ready to erupt.