Brandy Colbert: Pointe

I nod and sit down on the steps. Hosea sits next to me and leans against the cool, painted wood. His usual black T-shirt has been replaced by a thick cotton hoodie, the kind you have to pull on over your head. Or maybe the shirt is underneath. My face goes warm when I think of this, as if I were undressing him in my mind.

He knocks loose a clove, holds it out to me. He lights mine first, cups his hand around the flame until it sparks on the tobacco. Then he leans back and lights his own, takes a long drag. His face is defined by a square jaw, hard lines that make him look angry even when he’s not. I wonder if he ever wears his hair down, if it makes him seem softer. Less stoic.

“What does Marisa think about this?” he asks, moving his clove around in lazy circles, sending tendrils of smoke curling out from the end.

“About the smoking? It’s more of a don’t ask, don’t tell situation.”

“And the beer?” He grins and even in the dark I can tell it’s a nice grin.

“A girl can’t live on ballet alone.” I smile at him and look away and I wonder how this snuck up on me.

Hosea Roth. He’s always just been there. I was in eighth grade when he moved from Nebraska, started at Ashland Hills High, but even when we were at the same school the next year, he never stood out to me. Not for more than what he was already known for. Now I don’t know how I ever could have missed it, that something deeper was lurking behind his image.

“You look like you could,” he says as he returns the lighter to his pocket. “Live on ballet.”

“I do?” His words make me feel shy but understood. Happy but nervous. I take a sip of my beer as I process this.

“You’re so in your own world at that place. Like nothing could ever bother you.”

“Oh.” My skin burns again as I think of him watching me dance. I was practically in my underwear in front of him, slick with sweat and stretching my muscles to their limit. Maybe it doesn’t seem like a big deal in the moment, when we’re all in a room together, when he’s there for the strict purpose of musical accompaniment. But now, thinking about it like that . . . I know he’s not playing specifically for me but it seems so intimate, dancing to the music he makes.

“I didn’t know that was your . . . I wouldn’t have just shown up like that if I’d known you go there. You looked like you wanted me to get the hell out.”

“Maybe a little,” I say slowly. “But only at first.”

I sort of laugh and it makes him laugh, too, and there it is again. I could listen to that sound for the rest of the night.

“What do you think about?” he asks. “When you’re dancing.” And when I look up, his eyes are already on me. Mine sweep across his face and I wonder why I never noticed how much I like his face. Even parts I never thought I could care about. Like his nose. It’s a good nose. A strong nose that fits the rest of his strong features.

I hesitate, but his voice is softer and I don’t think he’s making fun of me.

Still, I can’t quite say it. Not yet. I’ve never talked to anyone outside of dance about ballet. Not beyond the basics. No one else understands that when my feet are laced into pointe shoes I feel like I can do damn near anything. And I’m embarrassed to say I have no clue what I’d be doing if I didn’t have dance.

I clear my throat and take a drag so I can stall some more. Finally, I say, “It’s dumb.”

He taps his long fingers against his knee, then looks at me with his clear gray eyes. “When I lived in Nebraska, I worked on this Rachmaninoff piece until I could play it with my eyes closed, play it backward, whatever. My piano teacher loved it. She stared at me like a goddamn groupie. And then I played it for my mom and she cried. Through the whole thing.”

Rachmaninoff. So he knows his shit. I wonder how people would look at Hosea if they knew music is such an important part of his life. Real music, not the crap like Donnie Kenealy and his garage band play. It makes me look at him differently, now that I know we really have something in common.

“How old were you?” I ask.

“I don’t know. Maybe eight? But I guess . . . when I play, I wonder what people are thinking. How they’re interpreting the song.” He points his clove toward me. “Your turn.”

“I think about my future . . .” I pretend that Hosea is Ruthie or Josh or Marisa, the people who get how much ballet means to me. If I think about him like everyone else, even like Sara-Kate or Phil, I won’t be able to finish. “Dancing on a real stage in front of a real audience. With a real company. How different it will feel.”

“That’s what you’ve been working for this whole time?” He stretches his long legs down the steps of the gazebo, his feet pointing toward the enormous, shedding sycamore tree across the yard.

I nod because I don’t know how to say ballet is the only thing in this world that makes me feel alive, that doesn’t disappoint me.

“Then it’s not dumb.” He gives me a small smile. Similar to the one he flashed us his first day at the studio, but this one lingers.

And perhaps it is the cool air passing through the night, but deep down I know the shiver travels down my spine because that smile was just for me.

He taps his clove against the gazebo, spills ashes through the rails and onto the ground. I inhale and hold mine out in front of me, see how long I can go without breaking the long tube of ash that has grown on the end. I let out a stream of smoke and lick my lips. Nobody I know smokes cloves besides Hosea. I’ve only smoked them once, a long time ago, but I’ve never forgotten how they make your lips taste like sugar.

Our gazes gradually shift to the house in the distance. Joey Thompson has muscled his way into the crowd of fringe people and is lording over a keg with one of his football cronies, David Tulip. There’s a ripple in the crowd and Lark Pearson breaks through, grabs Joey by the forearms, and shouts something incoherent in his face. Everyone on the patio cheers, then Joey and David each grab one of her legs and up she goes. Kegstand time.

I tried it once and lasted about two seconds. Something about the unique combination of being upside down and chugging beer doesn’t mix for me.

Lark makes me think of Ellie, which makes me think of Trisha, which makes me think of what I was supposed to tell Hosea when I first saw him.

“Klein was looking for you.”

“Yeah, I know.” Hosea shakes his head. “He’s been texting me all fucking night.”

I don’t know how he deals with basically being at Klein’s beck and call. I guess you’re supposed to bend over backward for your customers, but Klein gets off on pushing people to their limit. Even his best friend.

The color in his face deepens in the light cast down from the moon. “Listen, would you mind not saying anything to Klein or Phil or . . . anyone about my gig at the studio?”

I bite my tongue against asking him why he doesn’t want people to know one of the best parts about him. “Sure.”

“Cool,” he says, his eyes moving back out to the lawn.

The lawn, where another person is walking in our direction. A girl this time. Short, with legs that travel very fast. Ellie Harris.

I should have known she wouldn’t be far behind Lark. Who has been released from the kegstand and is now wiping her mouth, burping into her forearm before she goes up for round two.

Ellie plants herself in front of Hosea, one French-manicured hand holding on to a bottle at her side, the other smoothing down the fabric on her hip.

“Klein’s been looking for you everywhere,” she says in one of those false-bright voices that makes it apparent nothing about the situation in front of her is okay.