Chapter Thirty
SEVEN YEARS AGO
Iwas just another teenage girl listening to Lana Del Rey, wishing life was different than it was.
I lay in the backyard on an old Barbie beach towel draped over a rubber-strapped pool chair. The sun was blazing and the bugs in the trees would have been deafening if I didn’t have in my AirPod knockoffs, blasting “Brooklyn Baby.” My skin pulsed with the heat, and whenever it got too hot and I needed to cool down, I took the hose from beside me and pulled the trigger on the nozzle, letting a fine mist of water fall over me.
Poor-girl pool party.
I’d been out there every day since school ended. I usually did this during the summer, but that summer was different. It was different because usually I knew what was going to happen to me. I knew that I was whiling away the days until the end of August, when school started back up. But I’d graduated in May, and now I had no idea about my life.
In my mind, I was a ballerina. In practice, I was a ballerina. I had been dancing since I was a kid. I had taken every opportunity I had ever been given. I had succeeded as much as a girl can when she comes from Tristesse, Louisiana. And everything hinged on the audition I’d had for the North American Ballet in April. I had thought I’d have heard by mid-July, but I still hadn’t, and it was driving me crazy.
The platonic ideal of an American summer after graduating from high school was usually that the seventeen- or eighteen-year-old had the summer of their life with their friends. They all wore sweatshirts with their future college scrawled across the chest. They made promises about forever that they could never keep. They put their arms around each other’s shoulders and swayed back and forth to songs that felt like their story and they drank cheap beer at a bonfire or keg party or something cliché like that.
They had a summer of freedom between high school and college, before real life started to slowly let them in.
I knew that that was the graduation story sold to me by American movies, especially the teen movies of the nineties that I had watched on loop ever since I discovered them. I knew it wasn’t real real. But also, I knew that for some people out there, it was.
Just not around there. Not in Tristesse.
The people I graduated with, it didn’t look like that.
My closest friend, Sadie, had a week after graduation where she got to relax and have a vacation with her family where they went to a beachside town in Texas. But when she got home, she had to start working full-time at her dad’s restaurant, which he opened after he left his Hollywood career—after all, one day it’d be hers. She’d heard it her whole life.
Everyone else I knew had a similar story. Sure, a few people went off to school, the majority of them going to Louisiana State University, a few others going somewhere further. But most people I knew started life in Tristesse the way they always knew they would. They picked up a job at the grocery store or started bookkeeping at the local HVAC place. Like, four girls in my graduating class were getting their cosmetology licenses to work at the local hair salons.
No one around me had dreams. No one really talked about getting out of there. They talked about getting married, having babies, starting the whole ugly cycle all over again so that in eighteen years, their own kid graduated from high school only to keep propagating the species.
It freaked me out. I couldn’t even think like that. I never had. I always knew I was destined for more.
Destined for greatness.
Not that I wasn’t willing to work for it. For fuck’s sake, I’d spent my entire life so far training for life onstage. Counting the days, even though I didn’t know the end date. My entire life hinged on a success that came to so, so few people in a generation.
With every passing day of hearing nothing from the company I’d auditioned for, my fear grew. I distracted myself by spending hours and hours a day at the ballet studio. Trying not to regret turning down the offer at the regional ballet company. But I was too driven to settle there. I’d had a part-time job all year to save up for my hopeful move to New York. It was the next thing to happen to me, I just knew it.
At first, I was just dreaming. Happily anticipating the yes I knew I had to receive. It was how I had always looked at my future. Even when I was thirteen years old, I used to fall asleep thinking of it. Thinking of how it would feel to be a famous ballerina. To have my whole job be dance .
If I was accepted by the North American Ballet, then I’d get to move to New York City. I’d get to be around other dancers full-time. My life would be hard, but in the way I was willing to bear. In the way I was eager to be strong and resilient.
But after the first week, then the second, then the third week of hearing absolutely nothing, my anticipation turned to dread. I could not hear no . I couldn’t. I couldn’t stay in Tristesse, give up my dream, work at the restaurant with Sadie, and tell my sticky kids one day that I used to be a ballerina and hear them say they couldn’t believe it as they begged for another Lego set from the Costco we’d driven an hour to get to.
Kill me. For real. I could never.
If they weren’t going to accept me, I really had no idea what the hell I would do. I couldn’t stop dancing. I couldn’t stay there. But I also had no money. And how many people like me had gotten a job—just for a while—to save up to get out of their hometown and then, somehow, just gotten stuck?
Despite the heat, chills ran through me.
I thought I heard the phone ring inside and took out one of my not-AirPods to sit up and see if I was imagining it.
No, it was definitely ringing.
I jumped up to run inside to go answer it, but then saw through the window that my mom had already picked up.
It didn’t look like an unusual call, i.e., the company calling to save me from a terrible life, so I sat back down and put the music back on.
Two or three minutes later, I felt the air on my body cool and blinked, shielding my eyes to see that my mom was standing in front of the sun, casting a shadow onto me.
Immediately, I was annoyed, sure that she was going to give me shit for using the hose and wasting water, when the drip by the end of the coil was only a little tiny bit of—
That was when I noticed she was crying. Hand at her mouth.
Oh my god.
I tore out my earbuds and then demanded, “What’s wrong? It’s not Mimi. Right? Is—”
My mom shook her head, catching her breath. “That was the North American Ballet.”
My heart stopped. This was it. I knew it already. I knew I didn’t get chosen. I just knew, deep down in my soul, that the moment of devastation was directly before me. I almost wanted a time machine. To delay the inevitable.
But another part of me wanted her to rip off the Band-Aid. Just to tell me they’d rejected me so that I could get on with figuring out what the fuck to do with the rest of my life. And how.
“And?” I asked, my fear making my voice sound irritated and disinterested.
She nodded and said, “They want you.”
My heart started back up, now working overtime.
“Shut up.”
“I’m not kidding,” she said.
“Are you fucking serious?” I stood, both hands at my mouth. “Are you serious right now?”
She nodded again, still crying. “You’re going to New York, baby.”
I let out a breath I could swear I’d been holding my whole life, and then screamed and ran to her. We hugged hard and long, both of us crying, neither of us caring that I was covered in hose water and sweat.
“We have to celebrate!” said my mom. “What do you want for dinner? Do you want to go out to a restaurant? Make something here? What do you want? Anything.”
“Anything?”
“Anything. Let’s not worry about the diet or anything like that tonight. Just having fun. You earned this. We earned this.”
I bristled a little at the use of we , but then answered her question. “I want to go have tacos at Mimi’s house. The kind she makes.”
I saw a small flit of something in her eyes, but then she smiled and said, “I’ll call her right now.”
“No, let me, I want to tell her.”
I ran inside and called Mimi, hardly able to say the words, afraid that when I said them, my mom would burst into laughter and say gotcha!
I knew my mom wouldn’t do that. She’d never fuck with me like that. It was an irrational fear.
Mimi was overjoyed and told us to come over at seven, she’d get a bottle of champagne.
I felt completely out of my skin when I hung up with her, finally calming down just enough to get the details from my mom. I asked a million questions.
When do I leave?
Do I have a roommate?
What do I bring?
When do I actually start?
How much did they say I’d be making?
How am I getting there?
Did they say anything else?
Are you sure, a hundred percent sure, this is for real?
It was happening. She had all the information, and most of it had been emailed to me.
Once she’d told me everything she knew, I took her laptop to my room, shutting the door on the rest of the house, and my mom, and squealed in the privacy of my room.
My hideous, awful room. I hated it. Hated the floor, hated the walls, hated the ceiling. I was going to have a new life. One that took me far, far away from there. I’d be traveling the world. Paris! London! Barcelona! Sydney! Montreal! Mexico City! Vienna!
The world was about to be my stage.
Being in my room, it already felt like I’d moved on. Like I was future me, looking back on that very moment. How long ago my present already felt.
—
That night, we went over to Mimi’s, where the house smelled like garlic, onion, and cumin. The tacos I wanted were the Old El Paso kind that came in the yellow box at the grocery store, ground beef sold separately, a big tub of sour cream ready to be scooped, powdery shredded Mexican cheese on top. It was my favorite trashy meal, and I was rarely allowed it. Or, actually, the truth is that I was never allowed it, but Mimi made it for me anyway sometimes.
I was buzzing. I felt like I’d been asleep my whole life, and I was only just waking up.
Mimi gave me a huge hug when she saw me, and I said, “I couldn’t have done it without you!”
She smiled and squeezed me again.
“I got a bottle of bubbly, if you want to open it, Brandy,” she said, gesturing at the fridge. “I think we can let Jocelyn drink a glass or two, just tonight, don’t you?”
I waited, ready for my mom to be a big drag like always, putting the kibosh on all the fun. But instead, she said, “I think that’d be more than okay tonight.”
I beamed.
We drank Cupcake prosecco out of Mimi’s fancy champagne flutes, which had been covered in dust and needed to be thoroughly cleaned before use.
It had been a while since there’d been anything to really celebrate.
After we’d all had a few tacos and were on to our second glass each of champagne, I was giddy with the little alcohol I’d had and the news of the day, and honestly could not stop smiling.
“So when do you go?” asked Mimi.
“In two weeks,” my mom answered. “I think we’ll fly. I was considering driving, but I don’t think that’s a good idea with the state of the car. It needs so much work done.”
I wasn’t sure what I was hearing. “What do you mean, we ?” I asked.
The phrasing was a little cold, but I meant the question. What did she mean?
“I mean…you and me,” she said, smiling a little.
I felt suddenly out of control. “You’re not coming with me,” I said.
Mimi put down her glass and looked between us, an expression of worry on her face.
“Of course I’m coming with you,” said my mom. “We’ve been in this together the whole time.”
“No—what are you talking about?”
My fantasy was crumbling before my eyes. I envisioned being on my own. Free. Walking around the streets of Manhattan as late as I wanted. Never having to check in with anyone. I felt panicked, like she was suddenly telling me the NAB that had accepted me was actually just a small company in Tristesse that I’d suddenly never heard of.
Nothing about my life would change. Nothing good was coming. My misery would follow me.
“Jocelyn, stop this,” said my mom. “I thought I’d sell the house, that—”
I gave a loud laugh. “Sell the house ? Are you crazy? No, this is my thing, Mom, I’m going by myself. This isn’t, like, our thing, this is my job, this is my future!”
I had salt on my fingers from the hard-shell tortillas, and I rubbed it between my fingers anxiously in my lap.
Mimi cleared her throat. “Jocelyn, you need to adjust your tone. Your mother has sacrificed everything for your ballet—”
Oh my god. Not Mimi, too. No, no, no.
“I’m the one who woke up early and worked out and ran and did yoga and Pilates and went to dance class every day for the last decade. Mom doesn’t do anything but—but”—I was seething—“fuck random dudes and try to get a free ride off someone. Well, guess what, it’s not going to be me.”
I threw my napkin down and burst outside, letting the screen door slam behind me.