Under the Light - By Laura Whitcomb Page 0,29

left us. Finding out that Billy and I had been together—that was unbelievable, that I’d missed having my first boyfriend. My head felt light and fuzzy.

I stared at Billy in the mirror—there I was, standing right next to him, but it was like I’d gotten off a bus at the wrong stop.

I knew mirrors lied. You always see yourself in a reflection, so you’re used to it. But when you see the face of someone you know in a mirror, it looks backwards. Did I know Billy well enough to think he looked wrong?

“Just warming up,” he said.

I liked him and he was paying attention to me—I should be happy. I went up on pointe in second position.

“Hold my waist to help balance me.” His hands were warm even through my shirt. “Not so tight that I can’t move.”

He loosened his hold. My toe shoes pressed into the carpet, different from the dance floor at the studio. I lifted into an arabesque. Bent my knee—attitude. Billy was better at this than I expected. Maybe skateboarding or bicycling gave him a strong center of gravity.

“I’m going to spin,” I told him. I lifted my knee and did a single pirouette, my arm bumping into his shoulder. “Sorry.”

He watched me in the mirror, his face still and serious with concentration.

The phone rang, but I didn’t care—it was almost never for me. Billy didn’t seem to notice. But on the third ring the machine picked up. There was a three-second pause while the outgoing message played, and then the sound of my father’s voice froze my heart. I dropped to flat feet and Billy let go of my waist. As if he didn’t know what to do with his hands, he put them in his pockets.

My father’s voice rumbled through the halls, indistinct, like those recordings of spirits and demons that ghost chasers on TV claim to capture.

“You need to get that?” Billy asked.

I held my breath and tried to make out the words, but I couldn’t. Goose bumps ran up my neck and into my scalp. “No,” I said. It was not fair that all my father had to do was speak into a machine and my mood was ruined.

“It’s okay,” I said, smiling at Billy’s reflection. “Hold me up while I lean.”

Billy is here, I told myself. My father is not.

I lifted into an arabesque and tilted to the right, knowing Billy wouldn’t let me fall. He held me hard under the ribs, widening his stance to keep me from slipping. I was not as limber as I used to be, but when I was far enough over, I lifted my other leg until it was fully extended. Billy shifted to counterbalance me.

“Okay, center again,” I said, and he pulled me back. Then I tapped his right leg. “Bend this knee. I’m going to sort of dive toward the floor and you hold me up.”

“You’re gonna do what now?” He looked nervous, but he bent his leg and gripped me tight as I went into a bluebird over his thigh and hooked my crossed feet behind his back. He was trembling a little, but I could extend my arms and throw back my head and he didn’t drop me. I didn’t want to look at myself in the mirror—it might mess up the fantasy that I looked like I belonged in a ballet company. But out of the corner of my eye I saw the shape of us—my arms extended as if I were flying—and something about that felt great and sad at the same time.

I dropped one foot down, and as I stood up he let go of me. Still we stood facing the mirror. Billy watched my mouth in the reflection as if he were reading my lips when I spoke.

“That’s what I can’t do by myself,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Sure.”

“It’s your turn. What do you want?” I asked him.

In the reflection, I was also the backwards me. My father’s voice had faded out of the air long ago. I couldn’t blame it on him when I felt out of place again.

Billy put his hands in his pockets and thought for a moment, his eyes focused on some place in the distance or maybe in the future.

“I want to walk into my mom’s room and have her be awake,” he said. “And not sick or anything. Just happy.”

My throat tightened. I didn’t know what to say. I remembered his brother said their mother had been in the hospital for