Free Turning Pointe by Katherine Locke Page A

because I couldn’t stop
staring at that tiny little picture. My whole life I’ve built palaces and
stories and music with my body, but now, inside me, I am building a person. I
understand the science, but not the miracle.
    “So I should call my parents soon,” he says quietly, his hands
gripping the steering wheel until his knuckles turn white.
    I study him, noting the furrow in his brow and the way his
mouth turns into a thin, tense line, the way a toe draws an arc on the marley
floor. “Will it help or hurt if I’m there?”
    He glances at me, then back to the road. “To be honest, I don’t
know.”
    I’m not sure what Zed’s parents think about me. They’re as
close to estranged as a family can get and still send each other Christmas
cards. Zed has done almost all his holidays with my family since we were
thirteen. I’ve met his parents twice but only in passing. They’re deeply
religious and hate that this is what Zed does with his life. Knocking me up out
of wedlock will pretty much confirm the evil of ballet in their minds.
    “Think about it,” I say, leaning my head against the window.
“Whatever is better. There’s no rush.”
    He relaxes a little bit, his thumbs drumming on the wheel.
“Yeah. Okay.”
    He flashes me a quick smile, just before I see his eyes widen
and him wrench the wheel, hard, at the same time the glass around me shatters.
The air’s punched out of my lungs and the world goes upside down, grass into the
sky, sky into the grass, until there’s a sickening crunch of metal. I exhale,
and everything goes black.
    * * *
    I’ve spun down, a top wobbling to a stop, and then two
hands touch my heart, and I’m sent spinning off across the glossy floor. One
day, I want to dance on mirrors. I’ve seen my body from every angle except from
my feet. I’ll never be as good as my feet are. They’ve carried me across rooms,
studios, stages, cities, and countries. I’ve only learned to love them in pointe
shoes, but then the other night, Zed studied my body like I carried all the
answers to the universe on my skin. He ran his fingers over the scars of my
adolescence and kissed my stomach, my shins, the crooks of my elbows, my ankle
bones.
    He said, “I love the parts of you that you forget to love.”
    I’ve loved him for so long that sometimes I forget how to love
him. Sometimes I forget why I love him. Loving him is like breathing. It comes
naturally. I don’t have to think about it. I never worried, before, about the
day when I would not have him to love.
    I never worried about breathing before, either.
    Now, when I breathe, every part of my body splinters apart,
slashed open with a cold knife. A soft, warm hand holds my cheek and whispers,
“Shhh, shhh, darling.”
    “Zed.” My voice comes out raspy, like I inhaled thousands of
shards of glass.
    “It’s Mom,” says the voice after a pause. “Alyona, can you open
your eyes?”
    When I do, no one in the room calls me Aly. I am Alyona to
everyone, and there’s a hollow where my heart should be. My mother, with her
dark hair and deep-set eyes full of tears, grips my hand tightly. She starts to
speak but cries instead. My dad scoots a chair closer and leans forward, kissing
my forehead.
    “Baby girl,” he whispers. “It’s going to be okay. We’re going
to figure this out.”
    We’ll figure this out. Zed told me
that.
    “Zed,” I say again, trying to sit up. Something sticky’s
attached to my chest. My right hand stings. I’m tethered to an IV line and a
heart monitor. I scream and kick my feet, gasping, as the ceiling rolls above me
in the aftershocks of pain.
    “Alyona, Alyona,” cries my mother, holding my arms. “He’s okay.
He’s okay.”
    A nurse comes in and says the doctor will be right by, but my
dad smooths my hair off my forehead and says, “Do you remember what
happened?”
    I don’t, and when the doctor comes in, they tell me the broken
fragments of a life shattered and gone. A car blew a red light and