You in Five Acts(78)

“I didn’t come this far to quit now,” you’d said. But still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off.

“Are you ready?” I asked. Onstage, the second group piece was approaching its finale. In about two minutes, we’d enter on cue. We were the last act, the closers. It all came down to us.

“It’s fine,” you said, not looking up.

“Don’t lie to me now,” I said.

“Fine, it’s worse today.” You exhaled slowly, bouncing a little. Before a performance, we usually did jumping jacks to limber up, but I felt like if I jumped right then I might puke, and from the tears in your eyes I could tell you could barely tolerate any warm-up at all. “It’ll have to do,” you said with a grimace.

We’d already been at school for hours. The Drama Showcase performance had been that afternoon, so out of curiosity we’d gone to check out Ethan’s one-man revenge special (we’d looked around for Liv, hoping that she’d show up in protest, but no luck). It had been . . . talky and self-important but thankfully short, just like its author. You’d been too angry to go see Ethan afterward, but I caught him just as he was leaving to go celebrate at P.J. Clarke’s with his fifty Russian relatives. I asked him if he’d heard from Liv, but he told me “there weren’t enough rice grains in the Goya factory” to ever make her talk to him again. I didn’t get it.

Then we’d convened in Studio 1 with the other dancers and Ms. Adair had led us in a warm-up while casually dropping the news that reps from City Ballet, ABT, Joffrey, Alvin Ailey, Atlanta, San Francisco, Miami, and Boston had been confirmed for the show. “So, please, don’t dance like no one’s watching,” she’d warned. “Dance like everyone is.”

I clenched and unclenched my fists. Everyone would be watching, you were dancing on a foot that could give at any second, and I was more nervous than I’d ever been before a performance. My head was all over the place. When you and I had rehearsed alone, it had felt like we were in a bubble; all I could see was you. But then, I couldn’t focus. I could barely breathe. So much was riding on what I was about to do—one minute to curtain and counting—and I couldn’t pretend that I had no control. I had to pull it together.

“Relax your face,” you whispered, elbowing me in the side. “Make it look joyful.” But then you must have seen the fear in my eyes because you grabbed my hand and said, “Oh, no. Oh, shit. You’re really freaking, aren’t you?”

“I’ll be OK,” I said, closing my eyes, shaking out my legs, trying to clear my head.

There was a swell of applause as the ensemble struck their final pose, and the curtain swished down from the fly loft. Our classmates filed quickly offstage, but I couldn’t look at them. I couldn’t lose what little focus I had left.

“Places,” the stage manager whispered from behind us, and you stepped in front of me without letting go.

“You got this,” you said under your breath.

“I know,” I said. “I just can’t stop thinking about what happens out there.” Out there onstage, out there in the world. So many trains and so many tracks. No way to know which ones might derail. “I need to make sure I hold you up so—”

“Stop right there,” you said. “Don’t you worry about me for another second. I know this choreography inside and out. I could do it on one foot. I could do it on no feet. I could probably do it on my hands if I had to.” You smiled, a beam of light in the dark. “You don’t have to be my crutch anymore,” you continued, “because you already hold me up. As good as we are by ourselves, we’ve always been better together. It just took me too damn long to notice.” You pulled me into you and kissed me just as the orchestra started playing our intro music.

“Ten seconds,” the stage manager said.

“You and me,” I whispered, with our noses still touching.

“Blowin’ up like spotlights,” you finished. The curtain rustled to life, racing away from the stage floor faster than I was ready for. Two feet, then six, then ten. There was nothing standing between us and what we were about to do together. Except one thing.

“I love you,” I said. “You know that, right?”

“I do now,” you said, with a grin that lit my world on fire.

And then we were on.





Chapter Thirty


    May 13

Two hours left


ONCE YOU’RE UP ON STAGE, there’s no way to tell what the audience sees. All you have to go by is how it feels. There’s an energy, a rhythm, that takes over when everything lines up right. We were always being reminded that the human body was our instrument, but mine never felt like one when I was performing. Calling it an instrument reminded me of something delicate or breakable, but on that stage that night we were a force of nature, like a fire spreading, alive and unstoppable. We ate up space.

Watching you made the rest of the world fall away. We flew, and time stopped. I watched your calves carve arrowheads in your legs as you nailed your manège of piqué pirouettes, smiling softly like it was the easiest thing in the world even though my heart paused for those thirty seconds. After that, though, it was on. Every step felt spontaneous, like the first time we’d ever danced it. You were right: As good as we were on our own, it was no contest. Together we were like two currents converging. A perfect storm.