“Do you think you could at least pretend to care about someone other than yourself for a minute?”
He held the bottle out so that the black label faced me. “I care about Johnnie.”
“My bad. I forgot you carry your heart in a bottle these days,” I said as I turned and walked away.
“You don’t know shit about my heart,” he shouted after me.
Yeah, I know you don’t have one.
Lincoln needed help, but I didn’t have the energy to give it to him right now.
I opened the door to my room, and a lifetime of memories immediately assaulted me, like a swarm of bees stinging my heart. I saw Lyric and me sitting on the floor, leaning against my bed while we gave ourselves pedicures, using blow-out brushes as microphones while we sang Taylor Swift break-up songs at the top of our lungs, and lying on our stomachs on my bed, crying over Nicholas Sparks movies. She was here. She was everywhere.
No. She wasn’t. She was in the cold, hard ground, and I would never see her again outside of these memories.
I squeezed my eyes shut as if that would somehow lock the visions inside. Maybe if I closed them tightly enough, my memories wouldn’t seep out. I would never lose sight of her.
“I promise, I will never let them forget you,” I said into the air. “I promiseIwill never forget you.”
It was too much, too suffocating. I didn’t want to be here.
After changing into one of Lyric’s tank tops she’d left at my house and a pair of leggings, I went to the one place I knew I could be free.
***
The lights were off in the studio. I knew they would be. No one came here after hours except me, even though it was located in a corner building on a busy New York City street.
My parents leased this space for me to practice ballet with a private instructor, some world-famous dancer from Russia. I appreciated their effort, but it made me feel isolated and alone, so a few years ago, I asked them to bring in other instructors and open the studio to the public. They agreed, but only if I also agreed to start taking classes at SAB, The School of American Ballet. Dancing was my lifeline. I wanted it to be other people’s lifeline too, so I said okay. I didn’t use books or movies to escape the way most people did. I used music.
For a moment, I stood in the darkness and waited for my thoughts to quiet.
“I’m sorry I didn’t save you.” I finally said the words out loud that I’d been holding in my heart for days. “I wish I could take it back. I wish I could have you back.”
I wish I’d never left with him.Even though leaving with him made me feel things I never knew I was capable of. Things like confidence, strength, and passion. Things I didn’t know if I would ever feel again. But I wasn’t selfish enough to mourn the loss of something so trivial when I was consumed with mourning the loss of something so much bigger.
Tears filled my eyes, but I blinked them away. I took a deep breath, then I flipped a switch and the place lit up. The large, open room was light and airy. The walls were off-white and the floors a soft gray. Heavy, blue velvet curtains covered floor-to-ceiling windows and separated the studio from the busy street on the other side. The darkness of the fabric matched my mood.
I pressedPlayon the sound system remote, and the room was instantly filled with echoes of a sultry voice crooning over the sound of piano keys. I toed my tennis shoes off and pulled my hair up into a bun. I closed my eyes and saw Lyric’s smile.
The music played.
The man kept singing his solemn tune.
I began to move.
I started off slow, letting the tension build, then release, in calculated, fluid movements. My arms gracefully tore through the air in perfect rhythm with my feet. My body moved across the floor—stretching, pulling, swaying with the music. Then I began to turn.
And turn.
My heart beat faster. All the weight of the last few days lifted from my shoulders with every move I made. The song built up to its crescendo. The music got louder.
I kept turning.
Faster.
More deliberate.
The blood rushed to my fingertips and toes, but I refused to stop. The music died down, and the dance became more about the breaths I was fighting to take than the way my body moved. I was exhausted, but I didn’t stop until the very last note.
The song ended and I fell to my knees. Tears stung my eyes as I worked to steady my breathing. I glanced at the mirrored wall in front of me. My eyes were red. My face was splotchy. There were blisters on my feet, and I was gasping for air. But I felt free. For the first time in days, I looked in the mirror, and even though she might not have looked her best, I recognized the person staring back at me.
This was it. This was my therapy. All of my sadness, all of my anger, and all of my pain faded away the moment the music started. This was me.
My life had been shaken, rearranged, and flipped upside down all in a matter of days. But maybe that was the point. Maybe being turned inside out was the only way to see who we were always meant to be.
Looking in the mirror now, I saw who I was. I may be broken. I may be damaged, but I was strong.