How It Feels to Fly(67)

“I’m glad I came here,” I say instead. It’s a surprise to me, and I think it’s a surprise to Dr. Lancaster, too. She looks thrilled.

“I’m glad you’re glad, Sam.” She makes a note on her ever-present legal pad. “Next week, we’ll be focusing a lot on the future. In fact, our end-of-camp ritual has everything to do with your hopes for your future. I ask each camper to write down something positive about his or her experience here, tie it to a helium balloon, and set it free over the lake.”

I can picture it, the six of us watching our balloons float higher and higher. I want to write My body is flexible, and strong, and beautiful a hundred times and send up a hundred balloons.

“Since you’ll be going straight from here to your ballet intensive,” Dr. Lancaster continues, “I hope you’ll give your full attention to everything we discuss about moving forward. You’ll get to put it into practice almost immediately.”

“Okay,” I say, still imagining my flock of balloons vanishing into the clouds.

“You’re talented and ambitious, and there’s no reason to let poor body image hold you back from achieving your full potential.”

“Right.” Almost exactly what Andrew said two nights ago, at the lake: You can’t let how you feel about your body ruin your life.

“There are opportunities out there for you in the dance world. You have to be willing to chase them. You have to be willing to take the leap.”

“Take the leap,” I repeat. “How?”

“When you want something, and you believe in yourself and in it, but there’s a gulf you have to cross to get there—in this case, how you’ve been feeling about the changes to your body—sometimes you have to just decide to leap across that gulf.”

“Take the leap. I like it.” I know she’s talking about ballet, but I’m still thinking about Andrew. Maybe it’s time for me to take the leap into what I think could be a really wonderful thing. Not just for me. For both of us.

I keep repeating Dr. Lancaster’s words to myself for the rest of the day. I think them as Jenna and I do an afternoon ballet barre together, as my spine bends and stretches and my toes reach toward the sky. I murmur them as all six of us Crazy Campers relax on the couches after dinner. I tell them to my reflection as I wash my face and brush my teeth before bed. I write them in my notebook, over and over, while Zoe and I wait for midnight to arrive so we can sneak back out to the lake.

“Do you want to go down to Dr. Lancaster’s office again tonight?” I ask Zoe, closing my notebook and setting it on my nightstand.

“Got another important phone call to make?”

“I need to send an email.” I’ve decided I have to tell Bianca what’s going on. There has to be someone in my life who knows the whole story. And if I start by telling Bianca about Andrew—about how he makes me feel—then I can work my way back and tell her about everything else. The reasons I’ve been so . . . not myself. I can apologize for shutting her out. For taking her friendship and support for granted.

“Sure,” Zoe says. “Sounds good.”

“Thanks.” Knowing I’m about to come clean with my best friend—it makes me even more excited. And anxious, but the good kind of anxious.

I feel like I’ve been on a roller coaster since I got here, and now I’m racing toward the final loop. It’s up to me to keep the momentum going. And I want to keep circling. I want to go up and up and up.





twenty-four


I’M FLOATING ON MY BACK, WATCHING THE CLOUDS blow across the sky. They hide the moon and the stars. Change the night’s deep blue to a deep gray. It’s darker tonight than it was on Tuesday, and I’m glad for the flashlights Andrew and Yasmin brought. They’re positioned on the dock like spotlights, pointing out over the water. They light up the area where we’re swimming, but the rest of the lake is a dark void.

Yasmin is singing, accompanying herself on the guitar. It’s a soulful ballad I don’t recognize, and I wonder whether she wrote it herself. Her voice ebbs and flows like the water lapping around my head. A lyric jumps out at me: “our fingers intertwined like vines, yours and mine, catching the sunshine.” I like that image. I picture myself walking with Andrew, holding hands. It makes me smile.

When I’m tired of floating, I paddle over to the dock and climb up. I wrap my towel around my body fast. I’m still not ready to sit there in only my swimsuit.

Baby steps.

Jenna swims over to join me. As she hoists her body up onto the deck, her tankini shifts, revealing a wider swath of midriff. And something else, on her hip bone, peeking out over the top of her swimsuit bottoms. A row of thin, raised scars. Spaced so uniformly apart, it’s like they were drawn in with a ruler. Jenna moves the flashlight as she comes to sit next to me, and without the light hitting them, I can’t see the scars anymore. But I know what I saw. I can guess what it means.

Jenna looks at my face, then down at her swimsuit bottoms, and immediately puts her hand across her hip.

“Oh,” she says.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . .”

“It’s fine.”

I can tell by her voice and her expression that it’s not fine. She sounds like cold, brittle Jenna from day one. Not the girl who’s finally begun to thaw toward me, toward this place.