Brandy Colbert - Pointe

By the time we get to allégro, my muscles are limber and my legs lengthen straight and assured. I hold myself up with the invisible string Marisa always talks about, the one that makes my leaps sky-high, my neck long and elegant. Even now, even with his music serving as my soundtrack, I am able to put Hosea out of my mind and dance like no one else is in the room. I feel Marisa’s eyes on me. I’m worried she thinks I look tired, so I make my next jeté count even more than the others.

I allow myself to sneak another look at Hosea. He’s good. Very good, like he’s been playing piano as long as I’ve been dancing. It’s the same classical music we’ve danced to for years, yet there’s also a personal connection that makes each note seem fuller, more meaningful, as if the piece was crafted specifically for our ballet class. I couldn’t be more surprised, and I wonder if there are rules about revealing that kind of thing in his world. Like piano is for pussies and you’d damn well better hide it if you don’t want to be labeled as such.

I’m exhausted when Marisa dismisses class. I dance three nights a week and every Saturday. Each time, I leave dripping with sweat, my chest heaving and my legs burning. Today, I wonder just how bad I look and avoid glancing at the piano before I leave the room.

* * *

I have a standing dinner date with Sara-Kate and Phil after ballet on Thursdays. It sounds fancy, but it’s not like we’re sitting in a dimly lit restaurant with tablecloths and heavy flatware. It’s always Casablanca’s and always the back booth with the cracked vinyl seats and a dirty sugar dispenser in place of sweetener packets.

Sometimes we drive around and smoke a bowl before we go into the diner. Today would’ve been a good day for that. The winters are shitty, but nothing beats October in Chicago. I know it means everything is dying, but I could stare at the leaves for days—the burnt gold and burgundy and flaming orange hues bursting from tree branches. I like the fat pumpkins perched on front porches and how the air is perfect—cool but not freezing, warm enough under the sun but not stifling.

But we can’t drive around today because Phil has a trigonometry test tomorrow and wants to study. His boxy sedan and Sara-Kate Worthington’s powder-blue Bug already sit in the lot when I arrive from the train station. I slide into the booth just in time to hear Phil extolling the virtues of Goodwill over independent thrift stores. Phil Muñoz has an opinion on everything and it’s usually the least popular one if he can help it.

“How was class?” Sara-Kate turns to me almost gratefully. Phil’s impassioned rants are too much for even her sometimes.

“Fine. Except—”

“Except what?” She moves a strand of lilac-colored hair behind her ear and reaches for the menus tucked behind the ketchup and mustard bottles.

“Except . . . I was late because of the stupid train,” I say as I stack my bag and coat on the empty seat next to Phil.

He stops pulling his trig textbook from his bag to look at me, his dark eyes narrowed behind the clear lenses of his aviator eyeglasses. The thin gold frames almost blend into his light brown skin when I look at him from a certain angle. “Good story, Theo.”

I make a face at Phil. Then: “I have a question.”

“The answer is probably no.”

“I’ll take my chances.” I lower my voice a little. “Do you still get your pot from Hosea Roth?”

“Of course.” Phil looks at me carefully. “You in the market?”

“No way.” Sara-Kate shakes her head emphatically across the table, her silver lip ring glinting in the light. “Half the fun is freeloading from Phil. You can’t buy your own.”

“I’m not,” I say, laughing at the look Phil shoots her. “But a friend might be. In the market, that is.”

“Pills or grass?”

“Shrooms,” I say, just to throw him off his game.

His face creases. “That’s random. What friend is this?

Everyone at school goes through Hosea.”

“A friend from dance. She doesn’t go to school here.”

“I can check and get back to you.”

“No, it’s okay.” God, what would Hosea do if he knew I was asking about him? “She said all the guys in the city are flakes or creeps, so she was looking for someone chill.”

“Hosea’s the most chill dude I know.” Phil raises an eyebrow at me like this is common knowledge. “If he can’t get them, he’ll find someone who can.”

“No, it’s fine.” I pretend to search for something in my bag so Phil can’t see my lying eyes. “She probably wasn’t serious anyway.”

Sara-Kate twirls a straw among the ice cubes in her cup. “I don’t think I’ve heard Hosea say more than twenty words the whole time I’ve known him.”

“Probably because he can’t get a word in around Klein.” Phil opens his book to the study guide section.

“Why are they friends anyway?” I ask, buttoning my cardigan all the way to the top. It’s pilled from too many washings and the once-vibrant green has faded to a murky olive, but I keep it in my bag for trips to Casablanca’s because it is always freezing in here. Too much A/C in the summer, not enough heat in the winter.

“It’s not that complicated.” Phil shrugs, flips a piece of dark hair out of his eyes. “Hosea has the drugs. Klein has the money.”

“Hosea is cute,” Sara-Kate says thoughtfully before she sips from her straw. “But I do not like his big black boots. They’re oppressive.”

The sixtysomething waitress who’s been giving us the stinkeye since I got here trudges over from behind the counter to take our order. Jana. She hates us and is here every time we are. Or maybe that’s why she hates us. She taps the sole of her dingy canvas sneaker against the floor as she recites the daily specials, sighs when Sara-Kate takes too long to decide between fried pickles and onion rings to accompany her grilled cheese. Phil orders a bowl of chili.

Everyone bitches that the lentil soup here is bland but I choose it because I know exactly what I’m getting. They put it on the menu after someone complained about the lack of vegetarian options, and the cooks either don’t know or don’t care how to prepare it well. So it’s kind of mushy and virtually tasteless, but at least I don’t have to worry about creams or cheeses in my soup.

Someone asks Jana to turn up the television when she walks back behind the counter, and that’s when I notice. That every person on a stool and in a booth, every server and busboy and fry cook is staring at the television hung in the corner of the diner. Usually it’s tuned to soap operas or Bears games or crappy made-for-TV movies.

But today, everyone’s eyes are glued to the breaking news report on the screen, and our eyes follow. At first I think it’s the exhaustion from class catching up to me now that I’m able to relax. Because as I look at the news anchor, the camera flickers from her face to a picture of my old best friend.

My dead best friend.

I’m standing and then I’m walking toward the counter without thinking, oblivious to Sara-Kate and Phil, who are close behind.

Donovan’s name comes up once or twice a year—on the anniversary of his disappearance or when someone submits a false lead. Like, someone saw him in a Burger King in Vermont, or he was spotted in line at an amusement park in Utah. I figured out a long time ago to stop believing I would see him again. He was my best friend, but everyone knows kids missing longer than twenty-four hours were sexually abused or killed or both.

But this time is different. The news anchor’s glossy lips are stretched into a smile and she stumbles over her words, trips over the last-minute script. She’s telling us that he’s alive. Donovan’s been found.

My ears are the first thing to go. I can no longer hear voices, just this buzzing. Raw and unstoppable and I can’t tell if Sara-Kate and Phil and the rest of the diner hear it, too, because then my eyes get stuck on the school picture that was taken the last year I saw him. I used to keep that picture in my nightstand, separate from the photos of my other classmates. Seeing it on-screen, I feel like someone has stolen my journal and displayed it for the world to see.

I am somewhat aware of the silence as I take in that for the first time ever, no one in this greasy spoon is saying a word. That they’re all looking from the television to one another, slack-jawed. That Sara-Kate is stepping forward for a closer look, and Phil is rubbing my back, searching my face with his huge, dark eyes.

Donovan is alive.

“They found that boy,” Jana says, her hands gripping the black handle of a coffeepot.

I try to hold myself up, but these legs, these same legs that will dance me all the way to New York—they can’t. They are made of jelly and I would fall to the ground if Phil didn’t catch me. This particular combination of relief and confusion and elation is too big to comprehend, too big to do anything but lean on Phil in front of the counter, tears streaming down the hills of my cheeks until he and Sara-Kate lead me out on my jelly legs.

Outside into the brisk autumn air, where I catch my breath for the first time in minutes, where I say it aloud to convince myself it’s true:

“Donovan’s alive.”

Donovan came back to us.

MY NEIGHBORHOOD IS A SHITSHOW.

The Pratts’ house—Donovan’s house—is two doors down from us, so our street is blocked off. I stop at the corner and show the policemen who I am, pull out my ID with unsteady hands as I try to look down the street to see what’s happening. I’ve dreamed about this day plenty of times, but in my version, Donovan was standing outside on his porch—waiting for me like I’ve been waiting for him all these years. My version didn’t look like this.

I receive an escort to my driveway and a couple of officers hold back the reporters while another walks me to my front door, smiles, and makes sure I’m safely inside before heading back down the porch steps.

The house is quiet and calm, the antithesis of the clicking shutters and shouted questions and hum of too many people on the other side of the door. I breathe in the silence.

“Mom?” I call out.

But I know she’s not here. She works part-time in the research department of the library and today is her late day. Dad won’t be home for another half hour, either. And I don’t know what to do with myself, so I sit on the couch with my coat buttoned up to my neck and I wait.

Exactly thirty minutes later, I hear the slow crank of the garage door, my father’s car pulling in, the creak of the door as it shudders to the ground. Then I hear his urgent footsteps, the flipping of light switches as he navigates his way through the dark house, looking for me.

“In here,” I say when he rushes past the living room doorway.

He loops back down the hallway and into the room, stands in front of me while he scratches the back of his head. “Did you get my messages? Mom and I both called you a few times.”

His eyes are slightly dazed, his silver tie with teeny black polka dots askew. I gave him that tie for Father’s Day last year. He uses everything I give him. Even the misshapen ceramic pencil cup I made in third-grade art class sits on the desk at his accounting firm in the city.

“Oh, yeah.” I looked at my phone once, I think, to check the time. I don’t remember hearing it ring or seeing the missed calls. “Sorry. I got distracted.” I gesture toward the commotion on the other side of the curtains.

He smiles a bit. “Right. It’s kind of a zoo out there. But what do you say we brave the paparazzi and go out to dinner when your mother gets home? We should celebrate.”

“I already ate,” I say, digging my fingers into the empty cushions on either side of me.

I don’t realize this is a lie until I think about the cup of lentil soup that never came to the table. I wonder if Jana ever brought out our food, if she was pissed that we left without canceling our order.

“Could I stay here instead?” I twist my hands in my lap as I look at him. “I want to watch the news.”

Dad has too much energy. He wants to get out. He can’t stop fiddling with his collar and glancing toward the windows. But he smiles again, bigger this time. He says, “Of course, babygirl. You’re right. It’s probably best if we all stay in.”

So that’s how Mom finds us, side by side on the sofa in the den, watching the same story play out on different channels. She settles on the other side of me, and when our eyes meet, I have to look away because I see the happy tears in hers and if she starts crying, mine will spill over again. She puts her hand on top of mine as I turn back to the television.