6
“HOW COULD YOU?” TATIANA screams, her voice so high-pitched it’s terrifying.
She is standing on the sand, her hands trembling, tears running down her cheeks. She looks like someone has just told her that the world is ending and she won’t make it out alive. There is a twist of heartbreak, betrayal and pain in her eyes that I have never seen on her expression before.
What the hell is going on?
Aggie is standing about five feet away from her, and Kellen is holding her arm, stopping her from going any closer.
She struggles, like she needs him to let her go, like she has so many things to say, but Kellen isn’t letting her move.
Zeke is standing behind Tati, but he’s not holding her back. Adrian is nowhere to be seen.
“Hey,” I say, rushing over, breathless from the run to get here. “Hey, what’s going on?”
“It was her,” Tatiana screams so loudly it makes me flinch. “She fucking ruined my life.”
I’m confused.
I look to Rachel, who is biting her lip. She glances at me, and then says low, “Aggie was the one who got Tatiana thrown from the lead role. What they didn’t tell you is that when they got home, Tatiana was going to be suspended.”
Wait, what?
I look to Aggie. “What is she talking about?”
Aggie is crying, heavy tears falling down her cheeks. “I didn’t... it was an accident.”
“How?” Tatiana screams.
“Stop,” I yell, throwing my hands up. “Just calm down and someone tell me what the fuck happened?”
“Aggie reported me for drug use,” Tati wails. “She is the reason I got kicked out of the lead role and she is the reason I’m going to lose my fucking career when I get home.”
My heart skips and I look over to Aggie, who has her face buried in her hands.
“Aggie,” I say, my voice shaky but careful.
“It... I was worried, okay? I knew she was doing drugs to help with her injury, and I could see that it was getting worse. She missed practice more than she should and we were all suffering because of it, so I made a report.”
Oh.
Gosh.
“You could have talked to me,” Tati yells. “You could have fucking come and talked to me. Instead, you went behind my back so you could get what you wanted, and you did, the lead role.”
“We all worked hard for our career,” Aggie screams, her voice rising higher than I’ve heard it. “We all fucking worked for it and you’re there, high as a fucking kite, getting everything. It’s not fair, Tati. It isn’t fair and you know it.”
“I’m your best friend,” Tati bellows. “You should have come to me.”
“Okay,” Zeke says, taking Tati’s arm. “We all need to calm down. Tati, you’re going to walk with me. We will revisit this when everyone has had a minute to process.”
“Good idea,” Kellen mutters.
“No,” Tatiana jerks her arm from Zeke’s grip. “No, I’m not going anywhere.”
I see it coming a full half second before it happens. My feet don’t even have time to react before Tatiana launches at Aggie across the sand, a screaming blur. Her fist winds back, and the next instant both women are tumbling in a frenzy of hair and fingernails and knees.
“Jesus Christ!” I yell, but it’s already chaos.
Tati grabs Aggie’s hair and yanks her down, hard, but before she can get a second shot in, Kellen and Zeke are on them.
Kellen wraps his arms around Aggie’s waist and hauls her off the ground, while Zeke tries to catch hold of Tati without, I guess, breaking her.
Tati kicks out at Aggie even as she’s midair. An arc of sand explodes into the wind.
Screaming—so much goddamn screaming—rises over the shoreline.
“Stop it!” I bellow.
It’s useless.
Tati has tears streaming down her cheeks, hair wild, and she’s shrieking as she tries to break free of Zeke’s grip.
“How could you!” Tati cries, still fighting. “You ruined everything! Everything!”
Zeke starts to drag Tati away, pinning her arms to her sides. She writhes and screams, but she is no match for him. They disappear down the beach. I glance at Rachel and Ace, then turn just in time to see Aggie running off towards the rocks.
“I’ll go,” I say to Rachel. “Make sure Tati is okay.”
Rachel nods, and jogs off.
I find Aggie sitting on a rock, tears rolling down her cheeks as she stares out at the ocean. I sit down beside her, bringing my knees up and leaning on them. “You okay?” I ask, knowing what the answer will be.
She doesn’t look up. “I didn’t want to hurt her. I know you all don’t believe me, but it wasn’t my intention.”
“Why did you do it then?” I ask, softly, carefully.
She looks to me, her eyes puffy and cheeks streaked with tears.
“I just wanted a fucking chance,” Aggie says.
“I knew she was using. I caught her taking pills. She was dancing so fucking good because she was high and letting everything go while the fucking rest of us had to work our arses off. I know it was wrong.”
“Yeah.” I try to keep my voice even, because if I don’t, we are all stuffed. “She should have heard it from you. You know that, right?”
She squeezes her hands into fists. “I know. At the time, I was just so fucking angry. Now, I know where I went wrong.”
I put my hand on her arm, and for almost a minute neither of us speak.
“You need to talk to her,” I say. “But not right now. Not for a while. Let her process this, let her cool down.”
Aggie nods, then wipes her face with the back of her hand. “She’ll never forgive me,” she mumbles. “If we ever get out of here, she’ll never even look at me again.”
“She might surprise you,” I say, even though I’m not sure I believe it. Then, quietly, “Or she might not, but you’ll have tried. That’s all you can do.”
She swallows, blinking at the sea. “Why are you even talking to me? You should hate me, too. I just made everything harder for everyone.”
I try for a laugh, but it comes out brittle. “Hate you? I could never hate you, and honestly, I don’t think Tati can either. It will be okay, it will.”
We sit like that for a while, in silence. At the water’s edge, the waves lurch in and out, never the same twice. The blue is so perfect it could swallow you whole, and for a moment, I want to let it: to let the ocean bleach all the rotten things out of us so we can be new again.
“I am starting to wonder now if we ever even stood a chance at being normal. You know? After what that bastard did to us—and all our training, and the way we lived for the stage, like it was the only place we actually mattered.” I pause, chewing the inside of my cheek.
“We’re all the same, in the end. All just trying to find a way to survive. ”
Aggie sniffs and nods, then draws her knees up to her chin. “I miss my mum,” she says, so quietly it nearly breaks me.
I don’t know what to say to that. So I just sit with her, both of us staring at the horizon, motionless while the world keeps turning.
I turn to look back at the others. Secrets have a way of getting out, don’t they? Like oil spills, like red wine on white linen. And now everything is stained, even the good memories. Even the pieces I wanted to keep.
I don’t know how we’ll make it out of this with any of us intact. But I know that, at least, I’ll be the one who tries.
The wind catches my hair, and I close my eyes, listening to the hiss of the waves, and the distant, ruined sound of Tati crying.
How the fuck do we come out of this?
“HEY.”
Space.
That’s what we have been giving Tatiana for the afternoon, but I don’t want to stay away any longer.
I feel horrible for her, because I know that what happened with Aggie has changed everything.
A friendship that has spanned through the years, grown through the hardest times, and is now balancing on the edge of a cliff.
There is probably little I can do, but I have to at least make sure she’s okay.
She’s sitting in a patch of sand by the shoreline, letting waves wash up over her feet.
She’s just staring, her face blotchy and red from crying.
I feel for her, I truly do. It would feel like the world is closing down around her.
Especially out here, where there is no escape.
We have all had moments of desperation out here, where it feels like everything stops and there is no way out.
She doesn’t answer me.
“I’m not going to push you, Tati. I just want to check on you. I’m not even going to ask if you’re okay, because I know you’re not, but I just want to let you know I’m here. No matter what, I’m here.”
“Aggie is your best friend,” she finally whispers, low. “Don’t act like you’d ever take my side over hers.”
“You’re my best friend, too, Tati,” I say, not offended by her words. “And I’m not taking sides.”
She exhales. “I know you’re not, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t say sorry. You have nothing to be sorry about.”
“It hurts,” she whispers, and another tear falls. “It hurts because I would expect something like that from Rachel, but never Aggie.”
“It’s probably worth nothing right now,” I say, carefully. “But what she did was wrong, however I don’t think it was to hurt you.”
“She basically destroyed my career.”
“It won’t be over for you, this will all be forgotten. You’re an incredible dancer, Tati.”
She turns to me. “What you don’t understand is that they already told me I’m not getting any chances as a lead now. I have basically been stood down.”
I exhale. “We’ll work it out, I promise you.”
She shakes her head. “Believe me, it isn’t going to make a difference. You can all try and do something but it is done for me, I have a mark against my name and nobody is going to take me further knowing that.”
She’s probably right, but that doesn’t mean we won’t do everything we can.
“I know it isn’t just on her,” she goes on, “I know I fucked up. I was using, that’s on me, but she’s my best friend... that alone is fucking enough, right?”
“Yeah,” I say softly, staring out at the horizon.
That’s when I notice it.
A ship.
Closer than the last, but enough for me to see it looks the same as the one that stopped.
The pirates.