Anything for Her - By Janice Kay Johnson Page 0,36
in Firebird had resulted in a feature on television.
Her parents had explained to her that, if a young dancer of her talent and training should suddenly appear elsewhere in the country, it would draw attention. Someone would recognize her. They were very sorry, but she had to give up dance.
Only for now, her mother had hastened to add, although her eyes didn’t want to meet Chloe’s. Once the trial was over, well, it might be possible...
“But dance is my life,” she had cried, and begged to be left behind. She could live with the family of one of the other dancers, or Grandma. She was sure she could. “I won’t go!” she had tried storming, and her father’s expression had cracked to show real anguish, but Mom’s was only set and white.
“You have to. If it’s at all possible, later...”
But Chloe had known perfectly well that “possible” was a lie. Months or years lost in a young dancer’s training and experience were gone forever, never to be regained.
As things turned out, that later never came anyway. Chloe Marr had died when the entire Marr family fled in the night. Allie hadn’t even dreamed about her, not in a long time.
Dragging herself out of bed, showering until the hot water ran lukewarm, getting dressed, she felt stiff and every movement mechanical. She was unable to escape the residue of the dream, weighing her down like a hangover.
It was telling Nolan she’d lived in Florida that had done it, even though she never exactly had. But Dad’s parents did, and her family had gone there so often for family vacations, it had just slipped out even though that wasn’t Allie Wright’s background. Allie Wright had lived in Montana and Colorado and Idaho, never staying long enough in any place to develop any sense of belonging. That’s what getting flustered did to her. It made her open her mouth and say something careless and stupid. It was exactly what scared her mother. I’m lucky, Allie thought, that people hardly ever ask.
“Did you graduate from high school around here?” They asked that, or where she’d gotten her college degree. But not since she was seventeen, a senior in high school who’d had to transfer midyear, had anyone cared where she came from. Back then, the newest lies were memorized fresh, and teenagers weren’t really that interested in anyone but themselves anyway. They didn’t push, not the way Nolan had. Would keep doing.
Telling him about Florida wasn’t that big a deal. Lots of people had lived there at some point in their lives, and at least she really had been there.
What had most paralyzed her was the fear that she’d run into someone who had actually lived in one of the places she was pretending she’d come from. Or that she’d get her stories tangled.
She’d been sure she would, even after her family’s first move, when there had only been the one new background to memorize and recite when required. That easily, she’d been made nearly mute from panic. It only got worse after they were wrenched away again, and she had yet another new name and completely different story to recall.
Well, she’d had other issues then, too, like losing Dad and Jason and what pretense of a life they had built after giving up their real lives.
I am all tangled up inside, she thought miserably, picturing what happened to three delicate silver or gold chains, stored loose in a box for too long. Seemingly all by themselves, lying loose, nobody moving that box, they still somehow wound together in a confounding snarl that defied the deftest of fingers. That’s me. The three of me, intertwined and knotted. And...I don’t know what would happen if I could be untangled, separated into three. There is Chloe, there’s Laura, there’s Allie. What would happen to me?
Wow. Split personality, anyone?
No, she knew better. She couldn’t be separated into three. That was her trouble, at its heart. She had spent eleven years now trying to live as Allie alone, and she couldn’t. Not really. But recovering all of her, even privately, could be dangerous.
Her parents’ voices whispered in her ear, so stern. We’re starting all over. You can’t ever forget our new names. Never, never, never tell anyone who we used to be. Remember. Never.
The dream, she decided, was like a crack in a dike. A trickle had made it through. How to keep it from becoming a stream and then a flood?