Mira Jacob - The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“What are you doing?”

“Warming up.”

“Oh. Right.” Jamie followed her lead. They did twenty together and stopped, breathing hard.

Jamie leaned into a lunge. “Remember to stretch your hams and quads.”

Amina nodded, lunging. “And we should do our shoulders after this.”

Thirty seconds later Jamie was chicken winging his arms with vigor, while Amina pulled her elbows across her chest.

“You ready?” Jamie asked.

Amina looked across the road to the darkened mesa surrounding the school. “Absolutely.”

Ten minutes later they panted outside the gate, hands and forearms and shins surprisingly banged up for what was supposed to be an easy hurdle. Amina spat to the side while Jamie paced and coughed.

“Okay,” Jamie said, frowning down at his scratched palms. “Okay, so maybe not? Maybe we just quit while we’re ahead?”

Amina shook her head. No, they would not be giver-uppers in the face of Mesa Preparatory. Now she wanted this.

“I mean, it’s bigger than we thought, right?” he said, motioning to the gate. “Definitely bigger than what you see from the road. So there’s that.”

“You are simply capable of more,” she told Jamie, putting a foot at the base of the ironwork. “Here, give me a boost.”

Jamie held his hand out.

“No, dummy, like …” Amina wove her fingers together, hunched down.

“What am I, a mind reader?” Jamie leaned down.

“I mean, it’s a boost. People know how to give a boost.” Amina shoved up and over, holding on unsteadily to the iron railing. And then suddenly she was falling, the spade points receding. She landed on her ass with a thud.

Jamie smiled at her through the fence. “Nice.”

“At least I got over.”

“Hold on.” He followed her lead, looking decidedly nervous as his groin skimmed the iron points. He lowered himself with shaking biceps and grinned at her.

“We’re in.”

Amina looked at the blank expanse of mesa in front of them, the wooly darkness tinged brown by the edges of sagebrush catching light from the road.

“Don’t worry. If there are any snakes here, they’ve heard us and they’re moving out,” Jamie assured her.

“You’re not going to lay any bullshit on me about them being more scared of us than we are of them, are you? Because I know for a fact that I’m the scaredest animal out here.”

Jamie squeezed her hand and they walked forward. On their right, the campus was clearly visible, rows of lights blazing down the cement walkways and bricked arches. On their left lay the football field, ringed by the track and bordered on one side by a small mound of built-in stadium stands.

“Where are we going?”

“Stadium.” Jamie pointed.

“What about the ninjas?”

“I mean, it’s a football field. What is anyone really going to do to it? Besides, the lights aren’t on, so it’s not like we’d be so easy to see.”

They walked forward for what seemed like fifteen minutes, though of course it could not have been. She followed Jamie, trying to avoid the darkest shadows, until he stopped suddenly, grabbing her arm.

“Shh!”

“What?”

Amina froze, listening. Far away, a car honked at another. Beside her Jamie slowly squatted, holding his finger over his lips. She followed, her heart pounding.

“I thought I heard someone,” Jamie whispered after a moment.

“A ninja?” Amina looked around, eyes wide.

“I don’t know. What do ninjas sound like?”

“Padded footsteps. Chinese stars.”

“It was totally a ninja.”

She laughed silently, terrified of the ninjas and of pissing herself. Jamie waited a few moments, then rose slowly to standing and put out his hand, pulling her up. They looked across the road to the stadium, which rose into the black night like a temple, the empty metal benches watching nothing.

“Beautiful,” Jamie said.

They split a joint on the grass, staring up at the place the stars would have been if there wasn’t a weird, brownish haze clouding the night. The grass was itchier than Amina would have liked, and she needed to pee, but other than that, the campus was bizarrely peaceful, full of the hypnotic symmetry found on campuses everywhere — trees and lampposts and benches evenly spaced. She exhaled a tiny cloud, and it seemed to float right up into the pollution, where it would join gaseous and particle pollutants and come back down as acid rain in some northwestern lake, if that’s how that worked. Was that how that worked?

“Who did you have for chemistry?” She handed the joint back.

“Brazier. Who did you have?”

“Wills.”

“Huh.” Jamie took a long pull. “Why?”

Amina shrugged, not quite sure what she had asked, much less why. She looked over at Jamie, trying to gauge if it was important, but there was a little black seed of something caught in his teeth. She wanted to tell him, but it felt like too much work.

“Remember that night at the dance?” he asked. “You looked so hot.”

Amina smiled in the dark, deeply pleased in a way that made it seem like feminism had never existed. “Yeah, right.”

“I was dying to do this with you.”

“Get me high?”

“No, dummy. Get you next to me.”

“Bullshit. You barely looked at me.”

“That was just part of my moves, man. Play it cool.” Jamie sucked his teeth. “I went to that stupid dance looking for you.”

“You did?” Amina sat up, steadying herself. She peered down at him, trying to see if he was fucking with her. “Are you fucking with me?”

“You think I wanted to be there?”

“Aw, Jamie,” she said, more touched than she knew what to do with. She rubbed his forehead, the little patch between the edge of his eyebrow and hairline that she’d grown especially fond of, and his hand slid under her shirt.

“Hold on a sec.” She stood up and waited for the world to recalibrate so she could walk properly.

“Where are you going?”

“Behind the bleachers to pee.”

Jamie raised his head, assessing the dark hill that held the built-in bleachers. “All the way over there? Just squat here.”

“I’m not peeing in front of you.”

“It’s not a huge deal or something.”

“Yes it is. It’s a commitment.”

“What?” Jamie laughed. “What are you talking about?”

“You’ve been married .”

“What does that have to do with it?”

She did not know, really, but she knew it had something to do with peeing while talking, and showering with the door open, and being optimistic in a way she had never been. Maybe someday his easiness would rub off on her. Maybe someday she’d even become the kind of woman who could hunker down in front of him, but today was not that day. “Be right back.”

She walked across the grass and then the track and then to a little side path that led to the dirt parking lot behind the bleachers. As she rounded the corner and the field disappeared behind her, her skin tingled. It was all patches of light and dark back there. A shaggy ring of piñon trees mostly sheltered her from the bright lights of the parking lot, but the occasional patch of ground glowed eerily, like sun dappling the bottom of a lake. Amina stopped, dropped her pants, and squatted.

Hank Franken. Every time she pissed in the open air, she thought about the boy’s weird, freckled face, teeth that seemed to always be gnashing. Senior year, Hank Franken had sat on a cactus trying to take a shit at a mesa kegger. They had heard his screams from far away, and then the cries with each step as he finally emerged into the ring of taillights, pants mid-thigh, dick cupped in his hand, begging someone to pull the needles out. Had someone pulled the needles out? Amina stood up, pulled up her pants.