“Mmm, sounds delicious. I’m going to go take a shower.”
He drops his bag on the floor—he refuses to carry a briefcase and instead has a leather messenger bag—and heads upstairs.
He hasn’t been upstairs long when the door opens again and my mom steps inside. She immediately kicks off her heels and comes to join Harlow and me on the couch.
“How was your day?” she asks the two of us.
“Uneventful, if you don’t count the part where I had to beg Willa to bring my essay to school because I forgot to print it.”
My mom gives her a look.
“What?” She shrugs innocently. “It was an honest mistake.”
“And what about you?” Mom looks at me.
“I went to the beach and grocery shopping.”
Suddenly, I remember Spencer and I feel blood rush to my cheeks. I’ll have to remember to ask Harlow about him. The encounter had completely slipped my mind.
“Well, that’s good.” She smiles wide. “I’m happy you didn’t stay here the whole day.”
“Yeah, I’m thinking about getting a job,” I blurt.
I don’t know where the words come from, but in my gut, it feels right. I’m seventeen, almost eighteen, and I can’t mope around here forever. I have to get on with my life—and seriously figure out what the heck I’m going to do about going to college.
“Really?” she asks, her eyes widened with surprise. “You know we don’t expect that of you. You have a lot on you. And honestly, Willa, I’m going to advise against it.”
“Why?” I ask, surprised by the angry tone to my voice.
“It’s … it’s been three years of waiting, and … I’d think you’d be getting a call any time now.”
I duck my head and play with a thread on the blanket draped over Harlow’s legs. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”
It wouldn’t make sense to get a job now and a month or two down the road, finally get a kidney, and have to be off of work for weeks on end. It’s a major surgery after all, so I wouldn’t be able to work right away.
It’s one of those things, even after three years, it feels like I’m never going to get that call.
I know that’s not true, it has to happen one day, but one day is so ambiguous that I hate even thinking about it.
“But after,” she says, snapping me from my thoughts, “I think it’s a great idea to get a job. Have you thought about starting dance again?” she asks, and I flinch.
There’s no reason why I couldn’t dance now. Yes, the tube in my stomach would be an eyesore in the tight leotards but it wouldn’t be a hindrance.
I shrug. “It’s been so long. I doubt I’d be any good now.”
My mom gives me a look that clearly says she thinks I’m being an idiot.
“Willa, you were a brilliant dancer. Talent like that doesn’t get up and walk away.”
“It …” I stop and look away.
It’s hard to describe to someone how that part of myself feels so far away, like an entirely different person altogether. When I look back on who I was then, and things I did, it seems like someone else’s life. I couldn’t have possibly done those things or been that carefree.
“I can call them for you?” she suggests, not noticing my lag. “I’m sure they’d let you practice on your own. Ulysses loved you, remember him?”
“Of course I do.”
Ulysses Gordon was the owner of the studio. He’s in his sixties now, but he’d been a brilliant dancer back in the day, traveling the world. His studio was one of the most sought after in all of California to be a part of.