Brandy Colbert - Pointe

Year-round ballet school—which could lead to a contract at a major company someday.

I’d be away from home but it would be nothing like Juniper Hill, with its drawn-out therapy sessions and ridiculous art shed. They would understand why you can’t throw everything away just because some woman in a caftan doesn’t like the number on your scale.

My skin is peppered with goose bumps. The last time I got them like this, I was being fitted for my first pair of pointe shoes. If I were in a professional company, I don’t think they’d ever go away when I was performing. Not even if I were only in the corps.

Josh gives me a look, the same one I am already giving Ruthie.

We had faith in ourselves, but now it’s official. We’re ready to move on.

Ready to move up.

* * *

The house is empty when I get home. Mom left a note on the kitchen island in her loopy cursive. They went to a matinee.

The paper lies on the kitchen table next to Dad’s empty coffee cup but it’s been turned over so Chris Fenner’s mug shot is facedown. My hands shake as I pick up the paper, slowly turn it over so I can see his face again.

I don’t know why I want to look at him. Once was all I needed and it doesn’t change anything. Not the fact that his face is deceptively friendly or that his smirk is playful. Almost cute. It doesn’t matter that he looks young and normal and maybe even charming.

His eyes peer at me, like he’s alone with me in this room. The twist of his lips is so bold.

His eyes.

I leave the Tribune lying on the kitchen floor, pages tented haphazardly over the tiles. I take the stairs two at a time until I reach my room and flip open my laptop, type Chris Fenner’s name into a search engine. I don’t know how my hands stop shaking long enough to pull up the associated images.

His hair is longer now, his face a bit older, his jaw concealed by the beard.

But it’s him.

He told me he was eighteen. But if he’s thirty now and we were together four years ago—that means he was twenty-six then.

My boyfriend was Trent and Trent is Chris and Chris is the person they think kidnapped Donovan.

Abducted him. Drove him across the country. Violated him.

But would he do that? Could he do that? He was my boyfriend, but Donovan knew him, too.

They were friends.

Or maybe they were more. Donovan had a good family and a nice house and friends who cared about him. I don’t think he’d have run away to live with Chris if he didn’t want to be with him.

I squeeze my eyes shut, try to think about this with a clear head, but it doesn’t help. Nothing can help. There are only two options, and I have to find out the truth as soon as possible.

Because either Donovan ran away with my boyfriend after he abandoned me, or I was charmed by the scum of the fucking earth.

MY ROOM AT JUNIPER HILL WAS PAINTED THE COLOR OF CELERY, which is funny because that was a safe food for my roommate, Vivian. Sometimes I’d catch her staring at the walls almost dreamily, like she was fantasizing about her old meals of celery and rice cakes and apple slices.

Juniper Hill accepts only a few patients at a time and costs a lot of money. I didn’t know this when my parents dropped me off, and the counselors and Dr. Bender wouldn’t discuss money with me. Once I came home, I snooped until I found the bills and felt bad that they’d spent so much on me. Especially when all I’d needed was some time. It’s not like things were easy back then. Trent stopped showing up to his job, stopped answering his phone, stopped loving me. Then Donovan disappeared.

They said I was a restrictor—that I was trying to lose weight by severely limiting my diet. All I know is that Donovan consumed all of my thoughts and I lost my appetite each time I imagined him dead in a ditch somewhere—or being abused. And I thought about those things every single day. Multiple times a day.

And Trent. Was he with another girl, telling her all the things she wanted to hear? His favorite food to steal from the convenience store was packaged snack cakes, the sticky, chocolate kind loaded with preservatives. We’d shared them as we sat on the hood of his car and the taste reminded me of his kisses, so I couldn’t eat them after he left. Then chocolate was banned altogether because it reminded me of him, too. Same with foods that were baked or sweet or wrapped in cellophane. Soon I could hardly eat anything without thinking of him, and by the time Marisa forced me onto her office scale in front of my parents, I was finally down to double digits and that much freer of Trent.

I was thinner than anyone else in the junior company. Even Ruthie, who’d been more or less the same size as me since we were toddlers. I was probably thinner than every student in my class at school, too. Sometimes I caught the other girls glancing at me too long when we changed before gym class, and I wondered if they knew how marvelous it felt to truly take control of your body, to possess the kind of daily discipline most people won’t know in a lifetime.

But Mom and Dad trusted a bunch of Middle America hippies over me telling them I was fine, so I spent the summer before my eighth-grade year at a yellow Victorian house in Wisconsin. The director of the program was named Dr. Lorraine Bender, but she didn’t look like any doctor I’d ever seen. None of them looked even remotely like they worked in a place that treated medical issues. They wore flowing linen pants and ratty overalls and Jesus sandals. They harvested their own fruits and vegetables and purchased milk, meat, and eggs from local farmers because they wanted to show us how beautiful food can be when it’s lovingly produced.

We were greeted with patience and soft smiles in the hallways, in the garden, or when we were throwing clay in the art shed. But when it came to eating and talking, they never let us forget who was in charge.

“Who’s your counselor?” Vivian had asked as she sat on her bed watching me unpack on my first day. Her side of the room was a mirror image of mine: a twin bed, a small desk, and a dresser.

We weren’t allowed to bring much—not even cell phones—but I had my pointe shoes. There was a huge discussion about whether or not I should be able to keep them. The woman who admitted me thought they could be considered a trigger. In the end, Dr. Bender decided against confiscation but said I was not to put them on, under any circumstances. She claimed I was too malnourished and weak to even think about dancing.

I’d shrugged at Vivian as I placed the shoes neatly on top of my bureau, ribbons dangling over the sides. “I think her name starts with a D or something.”

The name of my primary counselor was written in my welcome packet, which included my daily schedule, the rules of the facility, a map of downtown Milwaukee for the days we went into town, and a sheet of paper with a layout of the house. Which seemed unnecessary. The place was big but it wasn’t that big. It’s not like I was going to mistake the dining room for Dr. Bender’s office.

“Oh, Diana.” Vivian nodded and kind of smiled and I didn’t know if that was good or bad, so I stared at her until she said, “She’s okay. Better than Pete or Ivy or Dr. Bender.” She shuddered.

“But?” I turned away from her to place a stack of underwear in the top drawer.

Vivian appraised me with her kohl-rimmed eyes. They were big and blue and so serious.

“But Diana’s tough.” Vivian ran a hand through her stringy blond hair. Later, I’d notice the bald patches when she was carefully brushing it out before bed. “She won’t let you off easy. Not even if you cry, so don’t waste your time. It works on Pete . . . and Ivy, when she’s in a good mood.”

“What about Dr. Bender?” I stopped to wrap my sky-blue cardigan tighter around my shoulders, but it was useless. All my clothes were falling off by then. It had been that way for a while, months before anyone noticed. And it was hot. Stifling, but I didn’t want anyone to see how skinny I was that first day—really see—or I thought they might do something even more drastic. Like, send me to a real hospital with doctors and nurses who looked like what they were. Who put tubes down your nose and held therapy sessions in cold rooms that smelled like bleach.

“I’ve never been brave enough to try.”

I almost laughed when I first met Diana Porcella. She looked like a college student, and from what I could tell, she was the only person on staff who believed in closed-toe shoes. She smiled big when I walked into the parlor-turned-office and said it was nice to meet me as she gripped my hand in a firm shake.

Her questions started out simple enough but it was clear she already had some type of file on me. Despite the toothy grin plastered on her face that first day, I knew she was feeling me out, trying to see how far she’d be able to push me. She nodded as I told her about Ashland Hills, like she was already familiar with my life, down to the name of my best friend. I could have lied when she asked if I had a boyfriend. I didn’t have to tell her about Trent.

About how he made me feel wanted. How I always felt I had to prove myself to him because he was older, because he was putting himself on the line with our relationship. (“Five years isn’t a big deal to us, but other people care,” he’d said to me the first time we kissed. I was still in a daze, a haze of bliss and disbelief that his lips had been on mine. “We can’t tell anyone, Theo. I want to keep doing this”—he’d grinned at me, kissed my nose, caressed my cheek—“but we have to keep it a secret, or I could get into a lot of trouble.”) And then, how when we started having sex, I wanted to show him he wasn’t making a mistake, so I pretended I was always into it—always wanted him—so he wouldn’t get bored and choose someone more experienced. Someone older, who didn’t have to be a secret.

During our first couple of sessions I was too nervous to talk about Trent. The counselors were adamant about the fact that, except for cases where they were concerned our lives were in danger, everything we told them was confidential. But something changed the first time I mentioned him by name.

I felt a release so beautiful, I could have cried.

I’d never spoken to anyone about him before. Donovan knew, but we had a sort of silent agreement that he wouldn’t ask what Trent and I did when he wasn’t with us, and I wouldn’t say anything about it at all.

I never stopped looking over my shoulder that first day, afraid someone would burst into the room and take me away now that I’d finally said Trent’s name. Each day after that, it became easier to tell Diana Porcella about how he called me Pretty Theo and the tender note in his voice when he talked about growing up a half hour outside of Detroit. Or how after we had sex, he would burrow his head into my shoulder and doze off instantly, how it made me feel special that he could fall asleep so easily with me.

I couldn’t tell her how old Trent was, though. If she had known he was eighteen, that would have trumped any confidentiality agreement. What if they tried to find him, tried to press charges against him because of something as stupid as a five-year age difference? Or worse, what if he came back but they’d found out and said I couldn’t see him?

So to Diana Porcella, Trent was fifteen and he moved away suddenly when his father got a new job and that is the guy she thought I missed. I didn’t trust Vivian, either, so I told her the same story and that is the guy she thought I was crying about when she woke in the middle of the night to my tears, when I hiccupped out how much I missed him.

The really hot nights were worse than the ones when I couldn’t stop wondering why he’d left. The restlessness worked its way through the bones of the house; you could practically hear the rustling of the other patients trying to get comfortable in their rooms down the hall. I knew Vivian was awake on those nights just as she knew I was lying there staring at the ceiling. But we never said a word to each other. We simply lay on top of our covers, breathing around the tick-tick-tick of the rickety ceiling fan in our celery-colored room.

WHEN I WAKE UP MONDAY MORNING I IMMEDIATELY TURN ON my laptop and type in Chris Fenner’s name. Then I stare at his face and wait for his features to rearrange themselves so his eyes are not that gorgeous amber color, so his lips aren’t the same ones that kissed me all over my body.