Tiny Pretty Things

Alec’s at a table by the window, wrapped up in a striped scarf and a cashmere sweater. Freshmen and sophomore ballet girls watch him over calorie-filled cups. Even a study group of girls from the nearby Catholic school snatches glances at him. I hate being just one of the many girls drinking in Alec’s good looks. But here I am, standing just inside the little coffee shop and letting my gaze linger before I approach. I like seeing him when he can’t see me. No games. No pressure to look pouty and together. Just the pleasure of seeing someone beautiful and sure.

It doesn’t last.

From her corner, Liz smiles, flashing me a knowing look, as Alec waves me over. I’ll owe her one. I don’t go over to Liz’s table, not wanting Alec to know she texted me. That I have eyes everywhere. Will is behind him, partially hidden by a wooden beam. Too close to Alec. I grimace at how pathetic it makes Will look. I can never decide if I’m pissed at him or just feel bad for him.

“Here to see me?” Alec says, lighting up. I love that I have that effect on him, still.

“Of course she is,” Will says. His eyebrows reach toward each other. He used to be so fun. He used to be normal. He used to keep his feelings to himself.

“Aren’t you going to offer me a seat?” I say. I keep my lips pursed and let Alec look me over.

“I like you standing,” Alec says, trying to be edgier because I told him I liked it. Another girl could get shy in a moment like this. But I’ve been ass naked in front of costume designers and teachers and classmates. I’ve had them pinch my sides and weigh me in public and measure every last inch of me to see how far away from perfection I am. So I’m not shy. I put a hand on one of my hips. I let him take me in. He’s probably right. They’re probably all looking at me. I’m a prima ballerina, no matter what Mr. K has to say about it, and the rest of them can see it all over me.

“You look great,” Alec says at last. Which means I’ve won this round.

Will sighs loudly. I sit down hard on the chair, drowning it out. Finally, I wrap one of my feet around Alec’s ankle. He responds by pulling me into him and kissing me on the mouth, hard. He smells like coffee and hard work: he got his extra practice in. Smelling his sweat, I feel a pinch of guilt at being in here snaking my foot up Alec’s calf instead of throwing myself into practice, doing pirouette after pirouette, and using the early rehearsal end to keep working on my variation. I kiss him again to make me forget.

“Okay, enough, you two,” Will says. His voice is tense now, too. Just like his face. He’s saying the same words he always has, but they sound so, so different.

“Can’t you give us some alone time?” I snap. I can’t take any of his little jabs tonight. I press myself even harder against Alec, shrinking that centimeter of space between our bodies. Will looks like he’s about to say something else, but something in him must melt a little, because he nods and gathers up his stuff. The tiny surrender is enough to make me smile his way, but he misses the look and he’d probably misinterpret it anyway. The secret smiles and eyebrow raises we used to share don’t work anymore. He stopped being my surrogate little brother this summer, and now I just don’t know what we are.

“Alec, call me later?” he says. He lands hard on Alec’s name, and even pauses to accommodate the space where my name would have been. Just one more person who hates me. I know it won’t help matters, but I lean my head on Alec’s shoulder and put a territorial hand over his. Will leaves, taking long dancer strides across the coffee shop. I still like watching the way his limbs move, still admire his impenetrable grace. I’d love even half of his passion. I’d tell him so, if we were speaking in anything but clipped, one-syllable words.

“Get your own boyfriend!” I call out, when he is already half out the door. Will’s shoulders slump and everyone in the shop has heard me. He turns bright red, like his hair. He’s not quite out beyond the conservatory walls. Boys from Kentucky aren’t supposed to like other boys. His eyes look sad when they meet mine. I hadn’t meant to hurt him. Not really.

“Harsh, B,” Alec says. “Can’t you guys get over your little spat?” He smirks and puts a huge hand on my thigh. The warmth of his hand travels through my thin tights.

“Not yet.” His hand feels good on me, so I don’t move it away. “So stay out of it,” I say back, so he knows I’m not some weak, delicate flower scared to tell him what to do, like the other ballerinas who would love a chance to be with him. He loves me because I’m fiery, feisty, stronger than anyone else.

Neither Will nor I have told Alec the details about our fight. Because the fight is about Alec. Sometimes the words tickle my lips, and I want to tell Alec the secret Will told me, but the bigness of it keeps me quiet.

“You’re all wound up today. And I’m guessing that’s why you put that message up about Gigi,” Alec says. I put several inches of space between us, losing the warmth of his hand on my legs. I hate that he said her name. That he ever has to say it. Sounds too pretty coming from his mouth.

I think about lying to him. Saying I didn’t write the message. But he keeps talking.

“Look, just because Mr. K didn’t cast you as the Sugar Plum Fairy doesn’t mean what you think it does. Don’t be like those other girls who get all catty and start messing with each other. You’re better than that.”

I’m not better. I am that girl. I’ve just been good at hiding it from him.

“The Snow Queen is an opportunity to show Mr. K—”

“I’m fine,” I say, louder than I’d intended. “Stop looking at me like everyone else is. You know I’m fine. I’m great. Can’t I just come visit you?” I hear the edge in my voice and try to soften it into something sexy, kissing his neck and letting the last few words land on the stubble just below his chin. “We haven’t been able to hang out much.”

“Always happy to see you,” Alec says, but it takes him a moment to reach for my body again. He sounds sad, disappointed in me. It’s a familiar cadence to his voice these days. He grabs the menu from under his coffee mug. He starts making creases and folds in the paper. “You need your congratulatory flower then, if we’re celebrating,” he says. He’s been making me paper flowers since we were little kids. His Japanese nanny taught him origami and it’s a strange hobby that girls tease him about but clearly think is secretly sexy. Which it is. I love watching his hands manipulate the paper. Every crease is careful, gentle. Like him.

He finishes, and it’s a perfect rose, made even more beautiful by the menu’s text on the petals.

“For you,” he says. “And if you want to talk about it …” But his voice fades out because we both know that’s not going to happen. “Well, I’m sure you’ll enjoy working with Henri,” he finishes, the smirk firmly back on his face, like it never left. “He’s been asking about you. Tips for partnering you.” Henri and Alec are roommates. “Dancing with him might get you in one of those magazines.” For the first time ever, I hear a small pinch in his voice, and I know he doesn’t like Henri.

“Maybe it will.” I shrug, putting the paper flower behind my ear, where I secure it with a bobby pin. We’ve never danced with other people before. Alec and Bette are always paired. Our names have been listed beside each other so often that it’s burned into my memory. I don’t want his name next to Gigi’s. I don’t want to dance with Henri.

“I guess at some point we’d have to get used to partnering with others. It’ll be weird at first. Gigi’s got a different—” I kiss him to erase her name. It feels good to let go and to have him here with me. Just us. For at least this moment, Giselle Stewart can’t take anything else from me.

I take Alec back to my room. Sneaking him in is as finely choreographed a dance as any we do onstage. We shuffle past the sleeping guard and into the elevator together. We push the fourth-floor button first, to check that the RAs are all still there. Their office spans the entire floor. They continue to answer the phones and dole out meds to several puffy-faced freshman girls who’ve no doubt cried themselves headaches. Not one looks up at us as the doors ping open. Then Alec goes to his floor on the tenth, because the RAs watch the elevator video feed. I go to mine on the eleventh, and let him onto the floor through the staircase exit.

“Out,” I say to Eleanor, but smile to soften it after I open my room door. She’s stretched across the bed, I’m sure doing her “visualizations,” but if she were a real threat, she’d know she’d be better off actually still in the studio dancing instead of lying there thinking about dancing. One of Adele’s performance videos—the ballet La Bayadère from three years ago—is on my flat screen. I click it off and don’t comment. She’s been watching old films of my sister a lot lately. And I wonder what’s next. Will she show up at Adele’s apartment like a fan girl? Will she ask my sister for technique tips?

“We’re roommates, Bette,” she says, in a voice I’ve never heard come out of her before. “I’m not your little slave. And hi, Alec. Congratulations on your role.”

“I let you be my roommate,” I say. I don’t even have to lie. Eleanor couldn’t afford this room—Adele’s old room—the only one on the hall with a private bath. “Don’t make me remind you, okay? That’s embarrassing.”

“Bette,” Alec says. He never used to scold me like that. He liked that I said what was on my mind. Plus, Will used to be my snarky sidekick, and the two of us would make Alec laugh with our snide little comments.

Eleanor’s face falls. I guess it was my intention, but I’m not some robot, and she’s supposed to be my best friend. I take a deep breath. We’ve been getting into fights like this a lot lately, and I promised myself I would try harder to get back to the way we used to be. But some days I can’t even remember how it used to be, who I was, who she was, and what made us friends. Since I didn’t get the Sugar Plum Fairy role, nothing feels right. And she’s been watching these videos and disappearing for blocks of time and not telling me where she’s going. She’s keeping secrets from me. She’s making things weird lately.

“Alec’s just gonna hang out for, like, an hour. Could you work in the lounge maybe? You’re looking hot lately. We all know you’ll be bringing a guy over sometime soon, right?”

I even wink. And pout.

Her cell phone rings. She jumps to silence it, then caves. “Holding you to that,” she says on her way out the door.

“Cross my heart, hope to die,” I say and grin. It does feel good, remembering that we actually kind of love each other. I miss her a little, the second she’s out the door.

“Just an hour?” Alec says into my neck.

“We can make it a good hour,” I say.

And we do. But the whole time feels like another big audition, and this time the challenge is to be the sexiest, the most desirable, the wildest. I wrap my legs around him so tight I’m surprised he can still breathe. I can be the girl he fell in love with years ago. The girl he still loves now. The only girl he wants to partner with.

We don’t have sex, though. Alec says he’s tired and needs to conserve his energy for tomorrow’s rehearsal. I’m naked by the time he throws that one out, and I can feel my face shift from sexy to pissed.

“We always have rehearsal—” I say.

“I have a huge role. And a pas to practice.”

“With Gigi,” I grumble, then explode. “You shouldn’t have come up here then. Where the hell is my shirt?” I scramble out of bed to find something, anything, to cover up what he’s rejected.

“I thought we still had fun,” Alec purrs in my ear. He kisses the lobe, and then down my neck.

“Just seems weird that you don’t want—”

“I want you. I always want you. Just freaked out about impressing Mr. K tomorrow. I swear. This weekend I’ll be back to my normal self, okay?” He’s blushing, like we’ve both failed at our sexy, romantic relationship tonight.

When he leaves, he kisses me on the head and for just that one moment when his lips hit the space where my hair meets my forehead, I’ve won. It isn’t about Gigi.

“Tell Eleanor to come back in, okay?” I can still make him do things for me. He nods.

“Can’t wait to tell her all about me?” He likes to tease me, and even reaches down to tickle me. I squirm and hold back laughs. I could do this forever with him.

“Eleanor and I don’t sit around talking about our boyfriends all night,” I tease back. “Don’t get the wrong idea.” I let out a flirtatious laugh and touch his shoulder. He’s surprisingly tense. He even blushes a little. “Even if I love you,” I tack on, like maybe that’s what’s bothering him.

He doesn’t say it back, just kisses my forehead again. I almost repeat I love you, like maybe he just didn’t hear, but I can’t take the risk.

It’s a long, lonely five minutes before Eleanor reappears. I don’t want us to have another awkward spat right now. I just want my old friend back.

Eleanor throws the door open. “Done?” Her face is still rosy, like the first day I ever met her. Six-year-old would-be ballerinas auditioning for the conservatory, standing in tiny leotards, hands and feet ready to be examined.

“Can we watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s?” I say. My voice is quiet and I just want her next to me, sharing a blanket, watching the TV like it’s a portal to a world outside this stupid dorm. Eleanor sighs. I’m sure she thinks she’s supposed to stay mad, but I know she just can’t do it. Not strong enough.

We lie on the futon-couch thing we have set up and get to the part when Audrey tears up her apartment in grief. Eleanor’s breathing has slowed. She always falls asleep first. Her head flops on my shoulder. I wish I could sleep as soundly as she does. But I know I won’t be able to for a long time, until the spring ballet and my second chance to snag the lead.

“What do you think of Gigi?” I whisper into the dark, knowing she won’t hear, except in her dreams.

“Mmmm,” she says, which I decide means Gigi’s no big deal. Nothing special.

“She can’t take everything from me, right?” I say, and listen again for Eleanor’s nondescript sigh. It comes, and I try to let it comfort me as much as it would if we could actually talk about this.

A few tears come before I finally fall asleep. Quiet ones. Just between me and the dark.

I WALK TO MORNING BALLET class alone, super early, so I can have studio C all to myself and get my head together before it starts. I’ve piled on the layers—it’s late October and the chill has already started seeping into every pore. Plus, layers give me just enough invisible padding. I blend right in with the rest of them. But I know, really, that I need to make Morkie see me. That’s how you become a star. Catch your teacher’s eye.

Right outside the studio, I almost drop my thermos. Sei-Jin’s boyfriend, Jayhe, sits on a booth seat in front of the glass, where everyone gawks in at us. He’s slouched, in unlaced Converses and slim black pants. His red hoodie is up and he’s looking at his phone.

I haven’t seen him since Sei-Jin and I stopped being roommates and friends. Almost two years ago. When did he start wanting to watch her dance? He looks sort of the same. But cuter. Less awkward. I’ve known him longer than Sei-Jin. We went to the same Sunday school as kids, he lived three blocks from me, and before I moved to the conservatory his halmeoni used to watch us both after school. She’d call me her little granddaughter, and I would swim in his blow-up pool. I even know he has a blue-bottom birthmark on his butt. But now, Sei-Jin and Jayhe are like a version of Bette and Alec: made for each other, perfect, royalty in our Korean community.

He leans forward and looks up at me.

I feel my face get hot. I’m afraid my makeup will run. He doesn’t say anything, just stares.

“Hi,” I say, not sure why I’m even talking to him. In the ninth grade, I lost all my friends when Sei-Jin turned on me. Everyone disappeared. Even him. Especially him.

“Hi,” he mumbles back, rubbing his sleepy eyes.

“What are you doing here?” I say, taking another sip of tea to fill in the space between his delayed responses. I wonder if he’s skipping school. I wonder if he’s changed.

“Sei-Jin,” he says. “Supposed to watch now, I guess.”

I try to make more small talk and realize that this is the first time I’ve actually spoken to a boy from outside the conservatory in a long time.

“Are you going to finally join ballet class with us? Remember when you used to try to do pirouettes in your basement?” I laugh, surprised at myself. For a second, I feel like I’m back in my old life. The one with friends and people who wanted to be around me. The one where I had inside jokes and memories and traditions. The one where I made room alongside ballet for hanging out, marathon chats, and adventures outside of school.

He kind of smiles. His cheeks are fuller, and there’s a touch of stubble that wasn’t there before. It makes my breath catch, with regret or maybe something else.

A throat clears behind me. Jayhe squirms and looks away from me, like I’m not there anymore, like he wasn’t talking to me at all. The tiny connection is lost. The feeling of my old life disappears in an instant like a popped bubble.

“Not so pretty this morning, are we, June?” Sei-Jin says, pursing her perfect pink lips.

She startles me. She sounds the way a snake might, if it could speak. The other girls twitter behind her, too scared to say anything themselves, but happy to look me over, laugh in my face, whisper in fast Korean, and point at my body like it’s a dartboard for their own insecurities. The new Chinese girl is on the edge of the pack, arms crossed, lost in translation, but still finding a way to nonverbally participate.

“Oh, you don’t look that bad,” I say in response, proud for a half second that I came up with a comeback. Sei-Jin steps closer. I can smell her breakfast and make out the scent of that same soft pink lipstick she’s worn since middle school. Trying to be like Bette.

When we first moved to the high school dorm floor, Sei-Jin and I were inseparable, jeol chin. Best friends. She was the sister I never had. But at the start of tenth grade it all changed. That was when she started a rumor about me, forced the RAs to move me out of our shared room, and never spoke to me again. It was really early on a morning like this one, a cold fall day, and we’d been sitting at the twin vanities her mom had bought for our room—just like the ones in the American Ballet Company dressing room. Sei-Jin’s mom was nice enough to get me one even though my mom couldn’t afford it. The bulbs cast a warm glow on our faces.

Sei-Jin opened her makeup case. “You should start wearing more makeup,” she’d said, removing a blush, lipstick, and powder. “Especially to ballet class.”

“I’ll just sweat it all off,” I said. I was so clueless then.

“Real ballerinas dance with it on, without a drop of sweat on their faces.” Leaning in close, she took my chin and pulled me into the light, like she was one of the makeup artists that made us up before our tiny girl parts in the company ballets. “You ever notice that?”

I didn’t answer.

“Close your eyes,” she said. I obeyed. I always obeyed.

She brushed the powder across my face, the strokes like butterfly wings fluttering against my skin. Then she used her soft fingertips to add blush to my cheeks, and rubbed a waxy stick of lipstick on my mouth. “These colors will hide your yellowy undertones. My mother always says you don’t want your skin to be the color of a dead chicken wing.” Her voice was full of wisdom. “This type of palette is best for us.” And I was in awe of the way she used words like undertones and palette, words I’d never heard before.

She wiped a smaller brush across my eyelids. “This will create a shadow. Like you have a crease along your lid. It’ll make your eyes appear less slanted. The Russians don’t like our eyes.” She set the brush down.

“I don’t care if they don’t like it,” I said, hating that so many Asian girls go through surgeries to change their eyelids’ shapes. That Sei-Jin wanted to be one of them.

“Oh, yes you do. Everyone cares what they think. Even though it’s disgusting. Too hard not to care. You won’t get the things you want if you don’t,” she said, rubbing her fingertip near the corners of my eyes. “Look,” she instructed.

I opened my eyes, unsure about what I was going to see. A different, softer girl gazed back at me. Sei-Jin leaned her face close to mine, her eyes big and doelike.

“See? You look different,” she said.

I felt different. Special. I felt like a soloist or principal in the company. Not like myself, who couldn’t seem to do anything effortlessly. I tried to say thank you, but I couldn’t find the words.

She lifted my chin again.

“You look very pretty,” she said, her voice just a whisper. She stared at me, and a weird energy stretched between us. She leaned in close. I saw the two tiny freckles on her nose and felt her breath on my face. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t pull back. Then she kissed me. Her pink lips pressed into mine. Soft, warm, and strange. I’d never been kissed before.

Her eyes closed. I kept mine open. Not sure what to do. I watched her eyebrows lift.

She tried to part my lips with her tongue.

I pulled away. “What are you doing?” I said. My heart lodged in my throat. The noise of it thumped in my ears.

Her nose crinkled, and a deep blush climbed from her chest up her neck and to her face. “Uh, sorry.”

She turned her head to her mirror and took a lipstick from her bag. Her shaky hand applied more to her lips. I wiped the gooey paste from my mouth on a tissue, some of it mine and some of it hers. I watched sweat appear on the back of her neck. I wanted to say something. That it was okay. That she was my best friend. That I didn’t know why she kissed me, but I would be here to help her figure it out. I looked at the clock. It was almost time for class. I got up to leave. Sei-Jin didn’t move to follow me. She sat, transfixed by her own image in the mirror. I didn’t know what to say.

I tried to wait for her to come. She didn’t. I rushed to the door.

“E-Jun,” she called out.

I turned around. She just looked at me.

“Tell them I’m sick, okay?” she said, her eyes brimming with tears.

“Okay,” I said.

“I don’t—I’m not—” Her voice broke. “I was just—”

“Of course not,” I said. Korean girls don’t kiss other Korean girls. They kiss boys. They marry boys. I wanted to ask more, wanted to know why she kissed me and what was really going on. To let her know that she’d be okay, no matter what. That I’d be there for her.

“It’s all right. All of it—” I started to say, but she put her hand up, and I had to go.

Before the end of that day, Sei-Jin asked the RAs to move me out of our room, and a week later a rumor surfaced. That I was a lesbian and she didn’t want to live with me anymore. My mother was called, and the guidance counselor lectured me about making other students feel uncomfortable.

Sei-Jin’s wearing that same shade of lipstick now, and I bet her mouth tastes like it did all those years ago. A mix of lipstick and grapefruit and tea. Probably a lot like mine does, actually.

“You’re always second favorite, aren’t you?” Sei-Jin says, taking a step closer to me.

Sei-Jin’s sweet perfume wraps around me. She bats her big eyes. “Understudy for Gigi. No one’s first choice. You think you’re so great, but no one else does, huh?” Her eyes narrow.

That hits. My momentary quick wit vanishes, and I fidget, trying to squirm out from under her gaze. It only hurts when it’s true, I guess. I feel the jewelry box shift in my duffle bag and hear the tinkle of its insides. I don’t know if she’s thinking of my father, too, but I can’t help myself. The only thing my mom ever said about him was that he started a new family, one he prefers more than us. What Sei-Jin says is true in more ways than one.