CHAPTER 16
Lex
My heart lurched when I saw a figure cross the window. It was probably Fred making one of his rounds. He was one of the reasons I felt safe here instead of back at my apartment. I had grabbed the first studio I saw, and since I didn’t have Winter’s set-list music, I used my own playlist of singer-songwriter tunes to freestyle to.
As the music played on, I found myself moving more lyrically than what my body was used to lately. Hip-hop was so hard-hitting at times. While I still felt every hit and roll, there was something about slowing it down and stretching my limbs into arabesques and relevés and inverted turns that helped me connect with whatever darkness still swarmed inside me.
I could let it all go through dance. At least I would try.
Lex, Seventeen Years Old
Shane and I arrived together to the party on the lake. The sun had dipped below the horizon, and a beautiful purplish-orange glow lit up the sky. We’d marveled at it, taking our time to join the growing crowd that began filling the porch and yard of my longtime crush’s house.
Justin Windsor, the boy with the shaggy chocolate hair and easy smile, hadn’t so much as borrowed a pencil from me since the sixth grade. He was the first boy to make my heart beat fast, even when he hadn’t noticed me. But something had changed recently. Flirtation rippled between us in the halls between classes, and at lunch one day, he finally asked me out.
We’d shared our first kiss—my first kiss—the weekend before. I couldn’t even remember the plot of the action movie we’d been watching when his arm slipped over my shoulders and he practically burned a hole through the side of my head. Exactly one hundred heartbeats later, I drummed up the nerve to look back.
“You’re so beautiful.”
I watched his lips move while my chest felt as if it would explode. He leaned in—pausing an inch from my lips, as if in warning—then kissed me. And he kept kissing me until the credits rolled and the theater lights flicked on. My heart never left my throat.
I never fit in with a specific crowd in high school. It was always Shane and me and whoever we chose to surround ourselves with. We didn’t believe in cliques or popularity. We were smart enough to understand that high school politics was bullshit, and all that mattered was where we went once we graduated.
But that night at the lake, staring at Justin’s sky after Shane snuck off to mingle with the crowd, I became a version of myself that shouldn’t have ever existed. I wanted to be one of them. To feel as though I belonged somewhere. To be accepted. So when Justin appeared beside me, with the red cup in his hands and that easy smile that swept my heart away, I accepted the drink and took my first swig.
It was cold and bitter going down my throat. I hated the taste, and if it weren’t for the dimply boy beside me, I would have spit it all over the dock. But as we fell into awkward conversation, I found myself using the drink as a crutch to ease my nerves. It seemed to work. My head felt light, conversation flowed naturally, and when he kissed me again, I kissed him back with confidence I had lacked the week before.
I didn’t remember how we ended up on the bed in his parents’ boat or how my clothes wound up on the floor. But when I started to sober and my eyes opened to the moonlight that poured in through the skylight, my lungs burned with fear.
Then I felt his hands. They were exploring my body as if I were his playground. Gripping me, stroking me, he acted as though he had all the time in the world. I moved my arms to stop him, but he batted them away. I turned my body to roll from under him instead. He smashed his chest down on mine to stop me.
“Shh,” he kept whispering. I didn’t know why. No one was there. Every cry and every scream that tore from my throat was drowned by the sound of water rocking beneath the vessel.
A tear slipped from my eye.
He hadn’t entered me yet, but I felt him, bare and hard, as his erection dug into my stomach. My wrists were pinned to the bed with his hands and my thighs wedged wide with his knees. Then he started his descent from my neck to my breast, dropping sloppy kisses on the way. He bit down hard, and my eyes squeezed shut at the pain.
I continued to fight back, my head still fogged with a drunkenness I would always regret. But I was pinned there, my struggle useless beneath his strength, so I howled.
Shane had been searching for me for a long time before his six foot two inch frame came crashing through the bedroom door. He’d seen my shoes on the dock and put two and two together. It didn’t matter if I’d made a choice to be with Justin that night. Shane knew I’d been drinking, and that was enough for him to put a stop to whatever was going on.
But when he entered that room and heard my cries then saw Justin’s naked body on top of mine, he lost it. Shane flew to the bed and ripped Justin from me, pinning him to the wall and holding him there as I scrambled to gather my clothes.
Just before we left, Shane drew back his fist and slammed it into Justin’s cheek, knocking him out cold.
As “New Balance” by Jhene Aiko played on, I gave myself over to the intimate lyrics. The song was chilling yet soothing against a backdrop of light instrumentals, a combination that worked well since I was spilling my emotions all over the dance floor.
It had been awhile since I’d moved like that. Freely, unchained from someone else’s choreography and rules. Dance was my light in a world that held so much darkness. It was the only way I knew to combat the memories of Justin and that night on his boat.
I didn’t dance to dwell in it. Instead, I lit up the floor with hope.