Jersey Tomatoes are the Best (18 page)

“Would someone please
make her
go back to her side of the court?” he demanded, looking at the coaches. Missy motioned to me to walk away. I complied, but as I sauntered off I turned toward the crowd assembled on the balcony and gave them all a royal wave. One of those pivot-at-the-wrist jobs. Screams of approval, especially from the girls.

David was standing not far from where I’d parked my water bottle and tennis bag.

“Okay, Attila. Enough,” he muttered. I looked at him. The expression on his face caught me up short.

Disapproval. Disappointment. I felt something leaden in my gut.

“Play it pure, Henry,” he said. “You can beat him on your game alone.” He gave me one short, reassuring nod. Then David went to sit with the coaches.

All I can say is I must really like this guy. Because even though a million little snarky comments and crowd-pleasing, mind-game-playing moves popped into my head, I buried them beneath killer forehands and point-ending overheads. I made my face impassive on every stroke. I forced my tone to be neutral every time I called the score, and as I watched the Perv self-destruct on the other side of the net, I focused on finishing him off with the best tennis I’ve ever played. When it was over, 6–4 in the second set, and we shook hands at net, Dundas didn’t make eye contact. He looked sick, literally.

I didn’t care. I was too busy trying to catch David’s eye. When he did look my way, he didn’t just smile. Didn’t just wink, or flash me a thumbs-up. He stood up and started clapping. Standing ovation, totally, and within seconds the whole crowd joined in.

It was a sweet first for Mark Lloyd’s daughter.

*   *   *

Someone pounds on the door. We had slipped in here, the kitchenette off the Overlook snack bar, so I could hear myself talk to Eva. Now the natives are restless. They want to party. Celebrate my straight-sets win over Jon “the Perv” Dundas, my
overturning the repeated humiliation of number one girls losing to number one boys, and throw me, still in my tennis whites and sneakers, into the pool.

I would
so
prefer to be kissing David Ross in the kitchenette, but … duty calls.

“We should go before they break it down,” I say. He sighs but doesn’t argue, which is … disappointing. Maybe I want him to say, “Let them all go to hell; I’m here with you.” But he doesn’t, and when we open the door to a wall of chanting people and pointed wolf whistles, I have to confess: I feel a little drunk on the energy.

“Grab her!” somebody yells, and I’m swept off my feet, lifted and somehow carried. Hands all over me, but I’m laughing too much to really care. I feel like one of those concertgoers who falls back into the crowd and gets passed over everyone’s heads.

Out of the Overlook, down the stairs … “Do
not
drop her!” I hear Missy’s voice … across the campus to the Olympic-sized swimming pool, and with an enthusiastic “One! Two! Three!” I’m hurled into the deep end. I make an enormous splash, I sink beneath the aquamarine chlorinated coolness, and once I get over the weird sensation of being fully clothed, with shoes, underwater, I realize what a welcome break the silence is. I open my eyes. I can see them, above me, ringing the pool, and while I can’t hear them, I can tell they are chanting, jumping, yelling. I hold my breath, savoring the final seconds before I emerge from this baptism. Because when I come out, everything will be different.

Chapter Eighteen

I
know something is wrong the instant I land. I know it’s not possible to hear the crack, but I swear, I hear it. The infinitesimal, unmistakable crack of small bone travels from my toe to my ear, the way an electric current travels along copper wire. It’s instantaneous, invisible and true. A light flickers on, and hidden objects reveal themselves.

It’s already been such a not-great day.

It began with breakfast in the canteen with the zombie ballerinas from hell. They came, as usual, splay-footed and bunned, into the big, fluorescent-lit room, wrapped in leggings and loose, soft sweatshirts. They lined up, yawning, for egg-white omelettes, filled cups with black coffee and selected their grapefruits. They watched each other chew and swallow, measured and compared each morsel the others put in their mouths, not unlike the way they measured and compared the height of each other’s jumps.

For some reason the Three Musketeers (Marguerite, Anna and Caitlin, thus named by
moi
because they are as laughable
and lethal as the original Dumas trio) have decided to adopt me, so even though I’d gotten down to breakfast before everyone, and had assumed my most convincing Do Not Disturb posture, engrossed in my coffee and magazine, down they sat. Wonderful. Every damn morning. It’s always the same: Marguerite eats yogurt and granola; Anna eats toast, eggs, juice and fruit; Caitlin eats a sizeable portion of everything, getting up three or four times to refill, then bolts from the table before the rest of us have cleared our trays.

While she’s off worshipping the porcelain god, the remaining two zero in on yours truly. And the morning of the not-great day, they had their knives out. Freshly sharpened.

That’s because the day before, Madame DuPres made an example of me. We were practicing
chassé
, this step where one foot literally chases the other foot out of its position. Like ballet skipping, with graceful arms making a round, open sweep over your head while your tutu bounces. Of course, in Madame’s class, no one wears tutus. But when I was a little girl in Sonia Fleisch’s class, I wore tutus and loved
chassé
.

Madame was frustrated. You could hear it in her voice. Sighing with exasperation as dancer after dancer skipped inexpertly across the studio. Finally, she called my name.

“Eva, step forward, please.” She called me out of sequence. A choice not wasted on the other zombies.

“
Chassé
across the room.”

Obediently, I
chasséd
. I thought,
Light! Bright! Arms sweep!
My imaginary tutu bounced. I could feel my own smile.

I could feel the eyes bore into me.

“Yes!”

Madame’s excited voice.

“Precisely! Eva, again, please. I want you to watch her arms. In one sweeping, fluid motion she tracks her progress across the floor. Even down to her fingertips, she is one complete thought.”

Once more, across the room, and I couldn’t help it: I showed off. I skipped higher, kicked one foot before the other just a bit more sharply, and for effect, doubled the length of the run and circled my arms completely, twice. I turned to Madame when I finished, I leveled my gaze at her and I allowed myself to think, to speak, with my eyes.

She smiled back.

“Thank you, Eva.” She didn’t need to say more. I rejoined the clutch of staring dancers, willing my face to appear neutral. Eyes downcast, demure. But irresistibly, I looked up, where I knew Marguerite stood.

Let’s just say, if looks could kill, I’d have been a splattered, gory Capezio mess on the hardwood floor.

I managed to evade her the rest of that day and evening, but there’s no escaping them at breakfast. Especially not after
chassé
day.

“So,” Marguerite begins. “I wonder what Madame will have you teach us today.”

I am dissecting my first egg. I tap it gently against the table until hairline cracks, like a web, spread across the shell.

“Excuse me?” I say politely.

“Frankly, I don’t know why she didn’t ask Hillary to demonstrate
chassé,
” says Anna. “I think she does it best.”

“So do I,” agrees Marguerite. She waits for a response from me. I give her none.

Tiny shell fragments fall from the egg as I run my thumb over the smooth surface of the white. I skim the rubbery flesh until it is absolutely clean. Not a pinhead of shell remains. I place the egg in an empty white bowl and move on to egg number two.

“Where did you study before coming here, Eva?” Anna asks. “Donna tells me you went to Nutmeg.”

“No, I’ve never done a camp before this,” I say. Tapping, tapping. Little cracks begin to form. We all watch my egg.

“Really? Donna swears she saw you there last summer,” Anna insists.

“Must’ve been my stunt double,” I say, without thinking. It’s the type of comment that would make Henry laugh.

The zombies don’t even attempt a smile. Meanwhile, egg number two is deposited in the bowl. Next comes the surgical removal of the dastardly yellow. The source of all evil, artery-clogging fat. I take a knife and run it longitudinally down the egg, a perfect slice from tip to toe. The egg splits neatly in half, and the yellow falls out in two intact demi-spheres. I deposit them in a second empty bowl.

Sitting with these people makes me want to scream, but it’s like I’m glued in place, and as I sit I feel my thighs spreading over the plastic, institutional cafeteria chair. I need to get out of here, need to move.

You fat pig! You pathetic, sorry excuse for a dancer. You tub of lard. That yellow is like the flab hanging off your big fat butt
.

“I didn’t know Donna went to Nutmeg,” I struggle to say. “That’s really cool. Why’d she come here this summer?”

“Are you kidding me?” Marguerite says. Like she can’t believe how stupid I am. “This place is the
best
. Everyone wants to be here.”

I shrug. I take one tiny, mouse-sized bite of egg white. I can’t swallow.

“I guess,” I say. I have to get out of here. I pass a napkin over my lips and spit out the white. I start to gather my things, but my indifference to the unquestionable greatness of the New York School of Dance is too much of an affront to Marguerite. My shrug has had the effect of waving a red flag in front of a gored bull. And yesterday my
chassé
gored her good.

“You guess?” she says. “You
know
it. Here’s what I don’t get about you, Eva. We’re trying to be your friends, but you avoid us, you’re practically rude, and you hide the fact that Madame has singled you out. I mean, be honest. Has she invited you to the full-year program?”

Ha! What a joke! Who would invite a gross loser like you?

The primal scream that has been building at the back of my throat is so close to emerging that I feel actual, real panic. Screw the tray; if I don’t vacate this room immediately, I’m going to totally lose it. Now. I pull myself into a stand, heave my thighs off the chair.

“Since you’ve been here for
three
summers, you know those decisions aren’t made until August. So don’t accuse me of being dishonest.” I grab my magazine and push my chair back
with my foot. “See you in class.” I leave the canteen before she has a chance to reply.

The three of them don’t speak to me from then on. They don’t change with me in the locker room. They whisper and glance my way until the moment I look
their
way. Then they turn their heads.

I want to hurt them in ways that show. Like, with a machete.

Instead, I dance.

I flash Madame my brightest smile and loudly say, “Good morning!” to her when we all file in for class. The sphinx startles. Who is this putty, she wonders, addressing me? This clay, meant only to be twisted into lovely shapes of my design? But then our eyes lock and she reflexively replies, “Good morning, Eva.” A smile begins to form before she catches herself and smooths the lines of her face back into expressionless.

I’ve hurled my first grenade. And when I glance at Marguerite and Co., I can see it was an accurate throw.

It goes on all morning. A glorious morning of dance. The sun shining through the high studio windows is bright, one of those perfect, cloudless New York summer days when light glints off the skyscrapers like diamonds, city birds soar and colorful banners flap outside the Met, along Fifth Avenue, in front of Lincoln Center. New York is the city of dreams on mornings like this, and I’m in the zone. I’m there, but not
there
. The space I inhabit is pure movement, insulated from every competing noise: from Marguerite’s sneering questions;
sounds of traffic on the streets below; the relentless, CNN-like ticker tape of doubt and fear that plays inside my head all day.

I don’t think I’ve ever danced like this before, and I allow myself to feel Madame’s approving gaze. I allow myself to imagine that come September, I’ll be one of the chosen. Granted a coveted spot in the full-year program, the gateway to the
corps de ballet
. A brilliant career. A brilliant life. I allow myself to relax in the promise of my abilities, and dance as if I’m already there.

Then it cracks. Of course. Who was I kidding?

The pain, and the freakish sound that I swear I hear but that everyone later tells me could not possibly be heard by the human ear, take me right out. I collapse like a fistful of little sticks dumped from a bag: inelegant, askew. I hear my bones rattle on the smooth wood floor. Fresh pain shoots up my elbow. The room starts going dark, then light, then dark again, and bees are buzzing. Miraculously, I don’t faint. But everything from that point on seems dreamlike.

I remember sounds: the muffled staccato of
pointe
shoes and high-pitched exclamations; Madame strident, ordering, asking me to tell her my name, count to five. Strong arms scoop me up, carry me from the studio. There is a cab ride, and I’m taken to a hospital.