Up, one-two, down.No more chocolate suppers, I told myself with each excruciating lift-up. Up, one-two, down.No more fights with Mum.Now that one was much harder to accomplish, but distance ought to work. Up.No more walks across town in pyjamas.
Fun as it sounded, it had been a total nightmare, and I was not eager for a repeat just like I wasn’t eager to return Mr Umbrella’s umbrella. The thought of seeing him again made my stomach churn.
Could it have been any more embarrassing? Not only once but twice had he found me in a compromising attire. I had made a complete fool of myself, I’m sure, although my memory was a tad bit foggy from all that aforementioned embarrassment. I couldn’t quite remember what we’d talked about. His smug face, however, was clear as day in my mind’s eye. That four o’clock shadow framing his lips so perfectly you couldn’t help but land your gaze there. And that glint in his eyes? He’d clearly had fun on my account and wasn’t going to forget our encounters for a completely different reason that perturbed my thoughts.
I had the class stretch again, deciding I’d had enough torture and that it wasn’t distracting enough. “We’ll spend the last twenty minutes going over the choreography from the previous class.”
Cheers erupted in the studio as I switched the soundtrack and mats were returned to their place in the corner of the room. I stared at my reflection in the floor-to-ceiling wall of mirrors, while the class settled behind me into their positions. Strands of hair fell out of my ponytail, framing buffed red cheeks Mr Umbrella would surely call attention to. The shirt hugged at my curves, highlighting each and every one of them, most importantly the belly that refused to flatten out. The fabric didn’t show, but it was slick with sweat and clung to me almost uncomfortably. The joggers hung low on my hips and pooled around my ankles, being a bit too long for my short frame. I liked the bagginess of them, though, so I wore them anyway.
I was used to being seen in class this way since my students were all in various states of disarray as well, but I wouldn’t walk out of the studio without at least changing my shirt and redoing my ponytail. Why, then, did the thought of me standing in that damned lift with Mr Umbrella in this state of dishevelment cross my mind? Ah, maybe because I was starting to become slightly obsessed. No, that couldn’t be. Just to prove myself how much I was wrong, I took the class through the steps in slow motion only once before rushing us to dance them to the music.
All else faded as the rhythm took over. The lingering embarrassment and shame, the anger at my mother, the anxiety over actually moving out. It became irrelevant as my body moved to the music.
Gracefully beautiful. When I was dancing, that was the only time I really felt like that. As if I’d left my physical body behind, and the light of my soul could finally be seen. That’s what brought me back to the studio time and time again, until I chose to volunteer to give a class at the age of seventeen, and they officially hired me a year later. It was also why following my mother’s footsteps into the stuffy suffocating courtroom had never been a real option. Studying law would have been the complete opposite of the freedom dancing gave me.
And the waitressing on the side? Well, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. While I hadn’t really needed the extra money living under my parents’ roof, it had gathered me a decent savings pot for the flat hunt and would come in handy moving in with Glen.
I let myself get excited about the idea and smiled through the heavy breathing. We completed the set of moves we’d rehearsed, came to a standstill, and rewound the song to start from the beginning once more before our time was up. Yes, this was what I’d needed in the first place. To dance my
heart out.
When you are lookingforward to something, it takes much longer to arrive. I used to look forward to summer when I was a kid, and the rest of the year would always take an eternity to trickle by. Or to my birthday, or Christmas. Getting obsessed with counting hours or days only slowed down the passing of time. It wasn’t a surprise that the two days until the move went by at snail’s pace, despite the decision being rushed and ‘oh-so short notice’ as my mother liked to keep reminding me.
“Are you absolutely certain?” she would ask, passing by my room and seeing me packing up my bookshelf. “You know you don’t have to take all of that with you.” Or an hour later during supper, “Haylee, honey, have you come to your senses yet? Shouldn’t you take more time to think about it? Tell her, Arlo.”
Her jabs had the opposite effect of what was desired, as every time she opened her mouth, my conviction to leave only grew and my resolve to not tell her anything about my arrangement grew. I was almost certain Mum had talked Dad out of lending me the van for the move, and was ready to drag a suitcase full of clothes over to Glen’s to figure out the rest there. So when he stood at my bedroom door with the keys dangling from his fingers on Saturday morning, I did a little celebratory dance.
“Do you want me to drive you and check out the place for you, Haybear?” he asked, trying to tread carefully around the minefield Mum had built around the entire topic.
“That won’t be necessary, Dad. I’ll be staying with Glen.” There, I said it. It was easier to admit it to Dad, and it just slipped out of my mouth without me even thinking about it.
The gears in his brain were visibly turning when he put the entire story together. Crinkles appeared next to his eyes, and his lips turned upward in an involuntary smile. “When did you plan on telling your mum this?”
“When she asked.” I shrugged, pressing my lips into a stubborn pout. “She never even asked.”
“When do you want me to tell her?” Dad pondered.
“When she asks?” I laughed and he shook his head.
“How about I give it a few days and let her know then. You know she’s as stubborn as you are, she won’t ask.”
“Serves her right,” I blurted.
“Haylee, you don’t mean it!”
I dropped my gaze to my feet and sucked in my bottom lip. I thought I meant it, which is why I said it in the first place. I did mean it, didn’t I?
It’s common for people to try to put words in your mouth that you didn’t even think of saying at first. And perhaps speaking in anger wasn’t the best way to go, but taking one’s words back because someone didn’t like the sound of them couldn’t possibly be the right way, either. How would we learn each other’s true thoughts if we tiptoed around one another all the time?
No, of course, I didn’t mean to be rude. I wasn’t brought up like that. I was brought up to eat my own words and pretend I didn’t feel the things I felt, to put my own desires aside and be thankful for every judgemental guideline that turned me into the girl who couldn’t even own up to standing dripping wet in an elevator with a stranger. While my nipples were showing through my T-shirt. Jesus Christ, worse things had happened to people, and they weren’t constantly getting edgy at the thought.
How did I end up thinking about Mr Umbrella again?Shit.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered begrudgingly. “That was out of bounds.”
Dad smiled sweetly, swiping the topic away with a motion of the hand. “Do you need a hand with any of this?”
I did a one-eighty circle in my room, taking in the boxes stacked up on top of each other, and chewed at my bottom lip. This move was about independence. Doing things on my own, in my way. Taking life by its horns and finally being in charge. But then again, wrestling the bed frame and the bookshelf into the van on my own would be a challenge and a half.
