“Did you tell Martha to try and give me the benefit of the doubt?” I ask, plopping down onto my bed and staring up at the ceiling at a poster of Flashdance, which is totally eighties, but as a dancer I can respect the movie.
“Shit, she told you that?” He curses under his breath and I smile to myself, knowing that if nothing else, Bryant’s going to chew her out for doing so.
“Yeah, after she told me that she wasn’t going to do it anymore,” I tell him, twisting the phone cord around my finger. “And that I was a bitch.”
“And were you being a bitch?” he asks.
“Maybe,” I admit. “But she called my mom a whore.”
He pauses. “But she kind of is.”
“Yeah, I know, but it doesn’t give her the right to say it.”
He sighs. “I know. I’ll talk to her.”
“Don’t bother.” I roll onto my side and prop my elbow onto the mattress so I can rest my head against my hand. “I know you want us to get along, but without you, it just feels awkward.”
“But I worry about you,” he tells me. “You don’t have a lot of friends, and I’m worried that you’ll just sink.”
“You make me sound suicidal,” I reply. “And I’m not.”
“I know you’re not,” he replies. “But you can be self-destructive when you’re by yourself.”
“How do you figure?” I ask, not sure whether I’m curious or offended.
“Remember when I went on that family vacation during the summer,” he says. “When we were thirteen.”
I frown at the memory. “I was going through a phase.”
“Delilah, you almost got arrested.”
“I was bored,” I argue. “And Milly Amerson was the only one who would spend time with me. It wasn’t my fault she was a klepto.”
“But it was your fault you tried to be a klepto. And a very bad one at that,” he says. “You chose to do it because you were bored and have such a hard time making friends. In fact, you’re better at making enemies than anything.”
I sigh heavyheartedly. “All right, I get your point,” I say. “Sheesh, you’re such a mom.”
“Well, someone has to be,” he says. With anyone else I’d get offended, but I always let Bryant off the hook because he was there right after the divorce when my mom hit rock bottom and she drank herself into depression and would barely get out of bed for three months. She did eventually get up, though, and start taking care of me again, and people are allowed to break every once in a while.
“Thanks for taking care of me,” I say. “But I promise, even if Martha and I don’t hang out, I’m not going to go back to my klepto days with Milly.”
“Just be careful,” he says. “I worry about you.”
“I know you do,” I tell him. “But I promise, if things get too bad, I’ll let you know.”
“Good,” he says. “Now, I gotta go. My mom’s nagging at me to help her finish unpacking.”
“Okay, call me when you get a chance,” I say. “And I’ll tell you about my hot neighbor.”
He laughs. “Okay, that definitely sounds call-back worthy.”
We say good-bye, hang up, and then I lie in bed, staring up at the ceiling. It’s quiet, and I’m guessing my mom went to work already, which means I have the house to myself until three, an hour after the bar closes, because she always spends an hour with whatever guy she’s tempting to come home with her.
Boredom starts to set in. I hate being alone. It makes me feel even more invisible. If I had my way, I’d have someone around me all the time.
Finally, I can’t take the silence anymore. I get out of bed, put on a pair of sweatpants and a tank top, pull my hair up and grab my classical music record from the stack of records on the floor. Moving to the record player on my bureau, I place the needle on it and Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata comes on.
I start to dance, letting the music own me as I picture myself on stage and everyone is watching. Fouetté en tournant. Grand jeté. Pirouette. My movements are slow, but graceful and powerful. Each brush of my toe, each twirl, each leg lift perfectly flowing with the music. I create a story simply by using my body, one of a girl who is not necessarily sad, but searching for something—she just doesn’t know what it is yet.
The longer the song goes on, the more into it I get. The more overpowering the story becomes. I transform into someone else. Someone alive. Someone noticed. Someone not overlooked. I can picture myself on the stage dressed in tulle and feathers, starring as Odette in Swan Lake, and everyone sees me. Notices me. Is in awe.
By the time I’m finished, I’m almost in tears and I don’t know why. I don’t feel sad. In fact, I feel content.
I wish I could go back and savor the moment, realize just how amazing it was that I could feel that happy. It was the last summer I ever felt like that. Danced like that. Felt content. Eventually, I’d lose the will to do it anymore, and my pointe shoes would go in a box along with my Barbie phone and my Flashdance poster, everything that made up who I was at the start of the summer.
When I did dance again, it wouldn’t be the same—I wouldn’t be the same. Yes, I would cry, but not because I was moved. It would be because I was dancing topless on a stage in a front of a bunch of screaming strangers who wouldn’t really see me, at least the real me who once dreamed of being Odette. To them I’d just be a plastic doll.
Chapter 3 She-Devil
Later that night, as I’m sitting in front of the television, debating whether I want to watch late-night reruns and keep folding laundry or go to bed, I hear the sound of music from next door. This isn’t out of the ordinary. At least one of the houses in the neighborhood usually has a party during the weekend.
But this sounds like it’s coming from next door, which doesn’t really happen. Before Dylan’s parents moved in, an elderly couple used to live there until they got sick of the noise and headed to Florida. And I rarely hear anything from Dylan’s parents, except for maybe yelling.
Not wanting to be a stalker again, I try to resist the urge to look outside. But eventually it becomes too much, and I get up from the couch and pad over to the window. The driveway is packed with cars, along with the front of the house, and people are standing outside, laughing and smoking and drinking out of plastic cups. It’s a full-blown party, topped off with a guy dancing in the front yard, high off his ass, and a blond girl wearing a leather dress, shaking her hips to the beat of the music on top of a car.
I’m about to look away, figuring I’ll take Bryant’s advice and steer away from any potential self-destructive behavior, when Dylan appears beside the guy smoking the joint. Dylan says something that makes the guy laugh, then he offers him the joint. He takes the joint and puts it up to his lips, inhaling slowly and deeply. I’m completely mesmerized watching his lips, the way he presses them tightly together when he pulls the joint out of his mouth. When he releases the smoke from his lungs, his tongue slips out and he licks lips.
I wish I was the one licking his lips. If I were my mother, I’d get out of my sweats and go over there. Put on a leather dress like the girl on the car and laugh and touch his arm until he came home with me.
But I’m not my mother.
I’m just Delilah.
So instead I just stare out the window, a little longer than I should, and he ends up glancing up at me. Because I left the light on in the kitchen, it lights the house just enough that he can see me.