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  “I think I held my own.”

  Claire led me around back to a staff picnic area bordered by a couple of pine bushes. She offered me a spoon to share the sundae, but I thought about those spandex unitards and shook my head.

  “Are you sure?” She shrugged and helped herself. It didn’t look as though working in an ice cream store had hurt her figure any.

  “We miss you at the studio.”

  “I hate to say it, but I don’t miss the studio that much. I miss the girls, but—I’m having fun this summer. I feel so much older now that I have a job. And I met this guy …”

  “Really?”

  “He kept coming into the store. I was like, no one eats that much ice cream! When I bugged him about it, he got really red—it’s so cute when he blushes—and asked me out. We ride our bikes everywhere and play tennis and stuff. His older sister has a car and sometimes we go places with her and her boyfriend. We’re all going camping next weekend.”

  Claire’s coworker called for help and she left the sundae behind. A breeze stirred the bushes and the smell of pine sap took me back to the lake. The rough planks of the picnic table turned into the wooden dock. The memory of lying there with Kevin stirred me up inside. I felt a tingling in my crotch and wanted … him. What did it mean? Was I a slut like Sasha said? What Claire had described with her boyfriend sounded so innocent and safe. Not like what I had done with Kevin. Slut, tramp, whore, slut, tramp, whoreslutrampwhoreslutrampwhore …

  I found myself staring at the bottom of an empty ice cream dish. I had grabbed the half-eaten sundae and wolfed it down until chocolate burned the back of my throat. Nausea pulled me out of my trance. What a relief it would be to throw up. There was a name for that: bulimia. We saw a film about it in Health class. Well, I’m not interested in turning bulimic. I just need to start exercising some self-restraint.

  I threw away the dish and strolled back to my bike. As I was unlocking it, someone said my name.

  I turned and stared: Kevin in the flesh. For a split second, I thought I was imagining him. I shivered to shake off the dream. He leaned back on his bike, one hand resting on the seat, the other on the handlebars. The position pushed his shoulders into a shrug.

  “Hey. How you doing?” he said.

  “I’m okay. How are you?”

  “I’ve been better.” He wrinkled his forehead. “Maybe you heard?”

  “Yeah.” Talking to Kevin made me feel exposed and prickly. It was hard to hold up my end of the conversation, and all I really wanted to do was ride away. “Do you have a court date yet?”

  “Still waiting.”

  I searched for something to say and remembered the Camaro. “Some of your friends came by here looking for you.”

  He glanced at his watch. “I missed them, huh?”

  “You don’t sound too disappointed.”

  “Ever since the accident, those guys’ idea of fun seems more and more like a death wish. You know?”

  “I can imagine.”

  He shuddered as if to put it all behind him. “What are you doing out by yourself on a Saturday night?”

  “That’s a popular question.”

  He smirked. His eyes reminded me so much of Sasha’s that I blurted, “My best friend suddenly stopped talking to me.”

  “You mean my sister?”

  I nodded. Kevin bent his head as if to scan the ground. “Things are pretty crazy at home right now. You shouldn’t take it personally.” He hesitated, then raised his head. “Look, Natalie, you’ve known our family for a long time, but—”

  Claire bounced back outside. “Sorry! Usually I get at least fifteen minutes.” She noticed Kevin and added, “Oh! Hi.”

  “Nat and I are just heading off on a sunset bike tour. Want to join us?”

  I glared at him: the nerve. Claire would think Kevin and I had planned to meet here—that we were on a date. But if she felt surprised, it didn’t show. “I’d love to, but I have to work for another hour.” She winked at me as she gathered abandoned ice cream dishes. “Have fun!”

  “Don’t look at me like that!” Kevin said as soon as Claire was out of earshot. “As long as we’re both on bikes, we might as well ride together. Besides, I know a great route.” He put his helmet on. “You coming?”

  I shrugged and donned my helmet. He led the way down alleys I didn’t know existed, along dirt paths so narrow that salal branches scratched my arms and legs, and up steep hills that led to glorious stretches of downhill coasting. Wind whipped past. Gardens scented the evening air: cedar, jasmine, honeysuckle. At times I didn’t even know where we were. When he called over his shoulder, “Having fun, Natalie?” I squealed in reply.

  We must have been riding for close to an hour. We were scaling a big hill and I was just getting ready to demand a break—the guy is in great shape!—when the path spat us out onto rocks, bald except for moss and broom bushes. He screeched to a halt and I veered just in time to avoid a crash. He grabbed the frame of my bike. The rocks fell away to streets, houses, and ocean far below. The air had thickened, somehow. Dusk hung in it like fog.

  “Turn around.”

  The sky blazed fuchsia. The disc of sun slipped, second by second, behind purple hills on the horizon. Clouds sponged the light and the sky shimmered peach, pink, yellow, and even green. A plume of airplane exhaust twisted vertically, like a tornado. With every breath, the colors changed. The brilliance faded, slowly, and left us standing in the dark.

  The last time I’d been alone with Kevin at night, we were parked in his car. He’d pulled me towards him and kissed me. Would he make a move now? My bike stood between us, like a wall. I casually rolled my wheels back to open up a passage way.

  He snapped his head at the motion. “Ready to go?”

  So much for romance.

  Then it hit me. “I’ve got no light!” We were miles from home.

  “Don’t worry. I know this neighborhood even better in the dark.”

  The ground was rapidly disappearing underfoot. “What do you mean?”

  “I was a bike-riding outlaw for years before I ever had a driver’s license. This takes me back to my roots.”

  I stayed close to his rear wheel as we wound down narrow, unlit streets. When we hit the major roads with their streetlights, he sped up. I played it safe and hung back. I didn’t want to hit a pothole, or a cat—or get hit by a car, for that matter. But then the distance widened between us.

  What the hell? I pedaled harder. I caught up to Kevin’s rear reflector so that we were almost riding tandem. Keeping pace with his skinny-tired road bike on my mountain bike nearly killed me. I was so absorbed that I paid no attention to where we were going. My street loomed up and surprised me. Before I could call out, Kevin swerved. He did know his way around. He escorted me to my driveway, where we stopped, and he balanced, his feet wedged in toe clips. Finally, he wobbled too far off center. He freed one foot just in time to catch his fall and ended up close enough to hear my huffing and puffing.

  He laughed. “Need to add a little cardio to the routine, hey?” He leaned forward—moving in for a kiss? I gasped. He pressed two fingers against my throat and held them still as I gulped air. “Your pulse is dangerously fast! I’m serious.”

  At least it was too dark for him to see me blush.

  He let his hand fall. “Maybe we should do that again some time. Get you in shape. I could be your personal trainer.”

  I was gaining control of my breath. “Get real! Have you seen what I’m riding? Look at how fat these tires are. Let’s just switch bikes next time. I’ll kick your ass.”

  He dropped his chin to his neck and grinned at the ground. “That sounds like fun.” He mounted his bike. “So long, Natalie.”

  He rounded the corner and vanished. I didn’t know where he was staying or when I might see him agai
n. I stood in the driveway long enough for my heart to slow down, then stowed my bike and headed for the shower.

  Sunday, July 18th

  This morning I woke up to the sound of a softball landing in a glove, mixed with Paige’s chatter. The soft noises drifted through my bedroom window, much more pleasant than the squawk of an alarm clock. Sunday: nowhere to go. I stretched and resettled, then remembered: this kind of movement was Petra’s raw material. As I rolled and flopped, I paid attention in a new way.

  A deeper voice rumbled in response to Paige’s. I flung off the covers and pried the blinds apart. Paige was playing catch on the front lawn with a man I’d never seen before. I pulled on shorts and ran outside. “Paige!”

  “Hi, Nat. You’re finally up. Mom says teenagers need more sleep than anybody else, but I don’t see why.”

  The man chuckled and looked at Paige like she was the most adorable thing he’d ever seen.

  “Who are you?”

  He shifted the ball to his left hand and stuck out his arm. I ignored it until he let it fall to his side. “Phil Ainslie. My parents live across the street; you must have met them?”

  I looked at this Phil person more closely: salt and pepper hair, receding hairline, a paunch forming over the waistband of his Bermuda shorts. “There’s an old couple across the street,” I said.

  “That’s right, they’re my parents. They moved out here to retire. I’m just visiting. from Ontario. Got here last night. They’re having a rest right now, and I was just heading out for a walk when your sister here,” he winked at Paige, “asked me to play catch with her.”

  I put my hand on Paige’s shoulder. “Ontario. Isn’t that a little far? What happens when there’s an emergency? You’re not much good to them way out there. We had snow this winter, you know. I saw your dad out there shoveling and I was a little worried about him. He could have keeled over from a heart attack.” I was getting off topic. “Do you always play with little girls?”

  Phil’s expression hardened. He set the ball down on the grass and backed away. “I’m sorry I intruded. I wouldn’t have done this back home, but it seems so small town here, I thought a person could be neighborly without—”

  Paige whined. “He was playing with me!”

  “I’ll play with you.” I picked up the ball and let it smack against my palm several times, as if it might come in handy as a weapon to bean Phil’s head. He kept retreating until he reached the pavement, then he turned and strode back to his parents’ house. Apparently, he’d changed his mind about the walk.

  Paige placed her fists on her hips. “Why were you so mean to him?”

  “I’ll get Mom to explain it. Come around to the back.”

  “Hey! You said you’d play with me.”

  “I will, I will, just let me eat breakfast first. Mom!” I sprinted to the back porch with Paige in tow. Mom was stretched out on the chaise longue, a hardcover book propped open on her stomach, a glass of orange juice in one hand. “Mom! While you’re back here reading yourself senseless, your ten-year-old daughter is out front playing with a creepy old man!”

  Paige protested. “He wasn’t creepy!”

  I left Paige and Mom to sort things out and shut the sliding glass door behind me. I grabbed a box of bran flakes and shook it into a bowl. A strainer filled with rinsed raspberries sat next to the sink. I dropped a few berries onto my cereal and stirred in some milk. Boring. When Dad lived with us, he made pancakes on Sunday. I stared past my bowl at the phone.

  Dear Dad,

  All you are to me is a voice, tinny and two dimensional. We can’t do stuff together. I never see you. I don’t even think of you as flesh and blood anymore.

  And it’s all your fault. You chose to move 3,000 miles away. Nobody made you.

  Damn it. Don’t you miss me?

  Don’t answer that. You don’t deserve to see me. You don’t deserve a daughter, let alone two.

  I couldn’t finish my cereal. My stomach cramped up. I stormed back out to the porch, where Mom was just settling back into her book.

  “I hope this makes you realize how dangerous it is when a little girl grows up without a father. She’s a sitting duck for any man who pays attention to her.”

  Mom held her place in her book with an index finger and pushed her sunglasses into her hair. We looked each other in the eye. “Don’t you think you’re overreacting? We know who the Ainslies are.”

  “That’s not the point. He could have been anyone! And you, did you even know he was out there? Why don’t you wake up and do your job as a mom?”

  At that, Mom carefully placed her bookmark between the pages, shut her novel, and stood up. I didn’t know what she was doing.

  She bent over the wooden side of the balcony. She was wearing shorts, for a change, made of sage green cotton. When she rose on tiptoe, her calf muscles rippled. Apart from a few varicose veins, her legs are still in decent shape. It annoys me that they’re thinner than mine. “Paige?”

  Paige responded from down below. “What?”

  “Do you want to play catch?”

  “With who?”

  Mom winced, as if Paige’s response confirmed her guilt. “With me.”

  Paige didn’t say anything for a second. “You mean you want me to teach you? Okay!” She ran to the foot of the stairs. “I can show you everything I’ve learned at softball camp!” Holding the banister, Mom glanced back at me and raised her eyebrows.

  She was admitting I was right. I’d won.

  So why did I feel so bad?

  Monday, July 19th

  Ms. Kelly kicked me out of the studio today. Every jazz class, she has harassed me, and today she finally said, “Natalie, we only have four rehearsals left before the showing. I’ve been waiting for you to get over your slump, but it’s just not happening. You’re putting the other dancers in jeopardy. I’ll have to take you out of the piece if you can’t turn your attitude around—and I mean all the way around.”

  I couldn’t believe she was interrupting rehearsal to chew me out in front of the other girls. I had actually semi-enjoyed the warm-up, and we had only run the dance once. “What did I do?”

  “It’s what you’re not doing, Natalie. You’re half the dancer you used to be. You’re one of the most advanced dancers in the school and people used to look up to you. But now you act bored and …” She paused, her hands on her hips. She was wearing gold spandex pants, a white blouse open over a leotard and knotted at the waist, and white jazz shoes. A pair of high-heeled sandals lay on the floor beside the stereo—she would slip into those after class, as if she had Barbie-doll feet. She always wears full makeup—foundation, blush, the works, like she’s about to go on stage. She must be close to Mom’s age. “And you seem disgusted! As though the movement is beneath you.”

  I muttered, “Just because I don’t want to look like a slut …” I don’t think Ms. Kelly heard me, but some girls nearby tittered. She definitely heard them.

  “Your attitude is damaging the morale of the class and setting a bad example for the younger girls. You’re excused for the rest of the day. I suggest you go home and think about your behavior.”

  “Fine,” I snapped. As I passed Lisa, she mouthed, “I’ll call you.”

  I changed into my shorts and hurried down the street. In the window of Con Brio, Petra was bent over a notebook, twisting a strand of blonde hair around her finger. Every so often she jotted something down with a pencil. I entered the café and approached her. She raised her head and smiled. Her sea green T-shirt set off her tan and her platinum hair so well, it took my breath away. She glanced at her watch. “It’s not like Ms. Kelly to end class early.”

  “She kicked me out of the studio.”

  Petra hooked the barstool beside her with her foot and pulled it out. “Have a seat. What happened?”

&n
bsp; As I explained, Petra frowned and fidgeted with her gold necklace. “I think this might have something to do with me. I’ve been raving to Ms. Kelly about your facility with modern.”

  “You have?” I felt too shy to look at her. I knew I felt a deep connection with Petra’s movement style, but I had no idea whether or not it showed. As far as I could tell, she praised everyone equally.

  “Oh, yes, Natalie. You’re a natural. I try not to play favorites in class, but under the circumstances, it’s only fair to tell you. You’re very talented.”

  Ms. Kelly’s insults and Petra’s compliments tumbled in my head. Criticism was familiar, but I didn’t know how to handle flattery. It seemed safest to let it slide off me without taking it to heart.

  “You probably know she wasn’t too happy about my setting a modern piece in the first place. Maybe she feels that you’ve transferred your loyalty.”

  I heard Ms. Kelly’s words in my head: You act as though the movement is beneath you. “I just don’t like her style of jazz anymore. It makes me feel sort of like a machine, or an object. A sex object, I guess.”

  I wasn’t sure Petra would know what I meant, but she nodded. A couple of men in shorts and baseball caps entered the café and rubber-necked at Petra. She didn’t seem to notice them. “That style of jazz started in the showgirl industry in Las Vegas and L.A. It’s all about pleasing customers. Artistic expression hardly enters into it. Frankly, I’m surprised she hasn’t phased it out by now.”

  I slouched on the stool, chin propped in my hand. I was thinking what a relief it would be to quit dance: I could scoop ice cream and ride my bike. This was the last week of the intensive. Maybe I should just drop out.

  Petra touched my arm. “I’m thrilled with your work in my piece, Natalie. I really hope that you’ll keep coming to my ballet class and to rehearsal for the rest of the week.”