Free Skin and Bones by Sherry Shahan Page B

hour—”
    “Your parents?”
    “Well, yeah, like nonstop.” She laughed. “But I meant the choreographer. Sometimes it’s for the slightest thing, like a finger that isn’t held just right. He’s god—the creator and ruler and source of all power—the supreme being of the stage. Dancers? We’re his puppets.”
    Bones was starting to realize that dancing wasn’t just something she did; it was who she was.
    Alice took his hand and pressed it on her chest just above her breast. “It comes from the core.”
    He tried to stay focused. “The heart?”
    “Precisely.”
    Alice lifted one leg, untying her shoe.
    “Need help taking the other one off?” he asked.
    She leaned back on her pillow, holding her leg in the air.
    Bones untied the satin knot carefully, until the ribbon fell, all crimped. He smoothed the wrinkles as best he could and set her shoes on the dresser.
    It was time for Sexuality Group Therapy.

14
    Alice had pulled a sweater over her damp leotard and was combing out her silky hair. Tape was still wrapped around her toes. Unfortunately, the arrangement of chairs didn’t let them sit together. Lard was against the wall, rocking on the back legs of his chair. He sucked a toothpick, bored. Bones knew he’d rather be in the kitchen.
    Bones avoided eye contact with Elsie, who looked like she’d spent the night under a train. She was talking to Sarah. “Once I was so sick I forgot to flush the toilet,” she said. “Anyways, my mom saw the blood and figured out what I’d been doing.”
    That meant Elsie had ruptured something—probably her esophagus or stomach lining, Bones knew—because only a person sticking her finger down her throat several times a day threw up blood. He wondered if she had scars on her knuckles like the other VIs he’d met in groups like this.
    “Our toilet kept overflowing,” Sarah put in. “Pipes couldn’t take whole chunks of food.”
    Lard’s chair slammed the floor. “Can’t you at least try to whisper?” he said, all edgy.
    Elsie stood up ready for a fight and sat back down when Dr. Chu appeared. “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for being on time.” Then he made a lame joke about the topic getting their attention.
    “Anyways,” Elsie said. “I’ve been on the pill since I was thirteen and my boyfriend uses condoms if that’s what this is about.”
    Dr. Chu said something about responsibility being a sign of maturity and opened his briefcase. He passed out photographs of men and women of all ages. Some were in swimsuits, others in regular clothes. “Alice? How would you describe the women in these pictures?”
    Except for a cute girl, Bones would have said fat, ugly, and lacking willpower. He wondered if Dr. Chu was going to hand out childproof scissors so they could cut out paper dolls to hang over their beds, a reminder of what normal should look like.
    Alice was cool as a chilled cucumber. “Are you totally satisfied with your body, Dr. Chu? No, of course not. How do I know? Because no one is.”
    “That isn’t the—” he started.
    “Let’s face it, you suffer from male pattern baldness, which explains the ponytail, and have an extraordinarily large nose.” She stretched her amazing legs out in front of her. “Face it again, you’d like to lose those ten pounds you’ve put on since I saw you last summer.”
    “You’re definitely a candidate for the lap band treatment,” Mary-Jane told Dr. Chu.
    Bones thought Dr. Chu may have seemed as calm as his Hallmark smile, but experience with shrinks told him the doctor was probably as uncomfortable as the rest of them.
    Sure enough, Dr. Chu cleared his throat. “We all have target areas we’d like to change. But there comes a time when we have to look at ourselves in the mirror, smile, and say, ‘Thank you for standing by me. For hanging in there after all the crap I’ve put you through.’”
    “Explain this,” Sarah said. “Anorexics think they’re fat, right? Then why