Brandy Colbert - Pointe

“She doesn’t understand you. Not like I do.” My voice works hard to claw its way up, but it still comes out so very small.

“Maybe that’s my fault,” he says, with a long, heavy sigh. I look down at his hands. They tremble as they squeeze the edge of the table.

Klein coughs. We ignore him.

“Do you love her?” It chokes out of me in a ragged burst of air. Because it feels like someone is crushing my throat, like those could be my last words.

He’s hunched over the table, but his face says it all, reflects an emotion too painful to acknowledge but too serious to ignore: regret. “I . . . We’ve been together so long and—”

“Do you love her?” I stamp my foot against the floor. Like a child.

“She’s my girlfriend, Theo.” He’s still staring down at the table, but I don’t miss the irritation behind his words. Like I’m a nagging fly he’s been trying to swat away for months. Like he never felt anything for me at all.

He stands up straight, instantly shoves his hands into the pockets of his dress pants. Then he hesitates before delivering one last crippling blow. “Yes . . . I love her. I have to try to work things out. I can’t—we can’t be together. This is done.”

He blinks at me a couple of times before he starts walking toward the door. Chasing Ellie. Leaving me again. Forever, this time.

“Hosea, please —” I follow him. I grip his elbow before he can walk away from me. I failed with Chris, but I can make this work with Hosea. “I need you. Please stay and we can figure this out. We can, I know it.”

He shakes his head as he looks back at me one last time. “Theo.”

That’s it. My name used to sound like a promise from his mouth and now all it means is no. He doesn’t want me. He won’t love me. We are done.

He bumps into Klein as he passes. Hard. Shoulder to shoulder. A challenge. But even Klein isn’t stupid enough to screw with him now.

My body is leaden. So weighted down with disappointment and longing that I don’t think I’ll be able to walk back to the cafeteria, to find Sara-Kate and Phil and tell them to take me home.

My knees buckle and I crumple to the floor of the dirty science lab in my pretty purple dress. I could be sick right here, think I might actually vomit. But nothing would come up.

I’m empty.

I press my cheek to the cool linoleum as I wait for Klein to leave, for my breathing to return to normal, for my stomach to stop churning with shame. I have nothing left now. Ellie is right—everyone will know about this by Monday, if not by the end of the dance. I was Hosea’s secret because he didn’t want me as much as I wanted him. I was a diversion and he walked away from me as easily as Chris did.

I lie in a heap between the abandoned lab tables until Klein’s footsteps shuffle off down the hallway. I lie there alone and I think of all that I’ve lost and I wait for the tears to come but they never do.

THE MORNING I TESTIFY IS BITTERLY COLD.

An unforgiving Wednesday, with a wind that chills your bones as soon as you step outside, no matter how many layers of scarves and hats and gloves are wrapped around your body.

I watch the sun rise. Tucked behind the clouds, but it’s there. Lightening the sky’s inky canvas as the stars burn out like teeny-tiny lightbulbs, one by one. I’m standing in front of the window because I was tired of lying down. I didn’t sleep, not for more than a half hour or so at a time. The last couple of nights were like this, but last night was different because today I’ll be called to the stand.

Dad gets up to start the coffee. Once his footsteps have faded down the stairs, I pad across the hall to their bedroom. It smells like stale air and sweat. Sleep. My mother’s eyes open when I say her name. Slow and fluttery and a little confused.

Then she sits up and motions me toward the bed and I crawl in on Dad’s empty side. Mom pulls up the duvet to cover my shoulders. “How are you feeling?”

I curl into a ball, try to become as small as I feel inside. “Tired,” I say in a little voice. “Scared.”

Her hand smooths down the back of my hair as I close my eyes. “I know. But it’ll all be over soon and then things can go back to normal.”

Normal. Maybe. Maybe not. I’m no closer to a decision about what to say than I was four days ago. I even called Donovan’s house one last time, on Saturday night, and they ignored the call one last time.

“You’re going to do just fine,” Mom says, her voice soft and smooth as satin. “Do you remember your first recital?”

I remember it. Vaguely, but I do. I was three years old and I completely choked. Somehow, even though we’d practiced on the stage in the high school’s auditorium, it looked bigger that night. Enormous. And the seats were full of adults I didn’t know. And the lights were too hot and too bright. I’d clung to the heavy stage curtain like it was my salvation.

“I wanted to pull you offstage, bring you down to sit in my lap, but your father wouldn’t let me,” she says. “He told me to let you stay up there, that if you didn’t want to go back to class after that night, we’d know ballet wasn’t for you. But if you still talked about it, you probably just had a little case of stage fright that would work itself out.”

“He said that?”

“He did. And he was right. Because the next year you were up there without a care in the world, front and center.” She bends her head to kiss my temple. “You were brave back then and you’ll be brave today. I know it. I love you, sweet girl.”

I take in a breath, exhale beneath the covers as I wonder if she’ll feel the same way when I’m done with my testimony. “Love you, too.”

We lie there in a cocoon of warmth and silence until the aroma of coffee wafts up the stairs, until Dad calls out that we need to start getting ready. We don’t want to be late.

Mom makes thermoses of coffee for her and Dad, one with green tea for me. Even my father looks like he has trouble eating this morning. He chews each bite of toast for a ridiculously long time. I manage two bites of a cereal bar and am genuinely surprised when it doesn’t come right back up.

We drive into the city with the soothing voices of NPR as our soundtrack. The cold, gray expressway matches the cold, gray skyline, as if all of Chicago is observing Donovan’s trial.

I look down at my phone, at the text from Phil telling me to kick some judicial ass, at the email Sara-Kate sent last night that says she loves me and knows I’ll do awesome. There’s even a text from Ruthie, sent late last night, telling me to call her if I needed to talk.

Nothing from Hosea, of course. I haven’t talked to him or seen him since the dance. I haven’t talked to anyone since winter formal. Opening statements were Monday, and my parents let me stay home because we knew I’d be called either the second or third day and it’s not like I could concentrate much on schoolwork anyway.

When I told Phil about Hosea, I think he was more annoyed than anything else—that he didn’t know we were hooking up, that it seemed like I didn’t trust him enough to keep my secret. Sara-Kate could have easily gone the “I told you so” route, but that’s not her style. She said she was sorry things ended so badly, and I knew she meant it.

If I close my eyes and think very hard, I can still feel his arms around me in the science lab. I can feel his warm lips pressing against mine, remember the way his heart beat steady and strong against my chest.

The reporters and photographers are stationed outside the courthouse because nobody can stand to miss a moment of this. We get a few looks as we walk up the steps; a few of the reporters shuffle over after they see photographers snapping pictures of us, figure we must be at least marginally important.