Free One True Thing by Lynne Jaymes Page A

behind her.
    “I think she actually acknowledged your existence,” Mitch says, standing next to me and watching her go.
    “Hmpf,” I grunt. “Good thing I’m not doing anything about it.”
    “Speaking of,” Mitch says, falling into step next to me. “I’m going to watch Nina’s dance recital tonight. Want to come along?”
    Nina’s dance recital is also Jenna’s dance recital. “I don’t think so.”
    “Come on,” he says. “Nina told me what happened with you guys. At least, Jenna’s version of it.”
    “Which is what?”
    “That you made out with her and then bailed like she’d asked you to marry her.”
    I shake my head. “It wasn’t exactly like that.”
    “Well,” he says. “Do you like her?”
    “Yeah,” I answer honestly. “She’s great. I just…I just can’t handle anything heavy right now and I didn’t see a way to make Jenna a casual thing.”
    “Maybe that’s all she wants.” Mitch shrugs.
    I flash back to that night like I have hundreds of times in the past week. There’s nothing casual about Jenna, and if I want something more with her, I’m going to have to come clean about my family and that will ruin everything I’ve been working for this whole year. It’s bad enough Nina knows about me—I have to control the damage. “Why are you so concerned about what goes on with me and Jenna?”
    “Honestly, I’m not. But Nina is. And a happy Nina is a happy Mitch. So how about it? Why don’t you come tonight? What else are you going to do?” He pauses. “You don’t even have to talk to her, I promise. We’ll sit in the audience and she won’t even know you’re there.”
    I’d actually like to watch Jenna dance. She’s so graceful just walking down the hallway, I can only imagine what she can do on a stage. But only if she doesn’t know I’m there. “You only want me to go because otherwise you’ll sit there by yourself and fall asleep in the seat and Nina will kill you.”
    Mitch laughs. “Nothing gets by you, does it?
 

     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Eight (Jenna)
     
    It’s chaos as usual backstage with half-dressed people running around and the hum from the audience filling the theater beyond the deep red velvet curtain.
    “Ten minutes until showtime,” the theater manager says, clapping his hands as if we aren’t all frantic enough.
    I’m in the short, flowing black dress I’m wearing for the modern dance number that’s first up and trying to keep my lip liner straight as I lean closer to the mirror with the pencil. I only have seven minutes to change out of this outfit and into the one for the ballet and I’m not going to have time to redo my makeup. Leaning back to look, my phone starts to buzz from inside my bag.
    “Crap,” I whisper and fish around for it.
    “Jenna, honey,” Mom says as soon as I answer. “Gram forgot the handicap tag for the car and we can’t figure out where to park that’s close enough to the theater so that she can walk.”
    I hear the warm-up music start out in the audience. “Just drop her off at the front and then go find a spot in the big lot behind the theater.” Several dancers all dressed exactly like me run by me on the way to the stage.
    “But I can’t drop her off, I have the tickets,” Mom insists and I hear Gram and Gramps murmuring in the background.
    “Mom, I love you but I don’t have time right now. I’m about to go on.” One girl motions for me to hurry.
    “Well, we don’t want to miss you.”
    “You’re about to,” I say. I feel bad, but I don’t have a choice. “I have to go.”
    “Break a leg baby. We’ll see you after.”
    “Bye Mom.” I toss my phone in my bag and shove the whole thing behind a chair in the dressing room.
    I race through the corridors until I come to the stage where everyone is already frozen in their places, waiting for the curtain to go up.
    “You’re late!” the stage manager whispers as I rush by him to my spot on stage right.
    “Nice of you to