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“Why not?” Faith asks me. “I talk to everyone at school, even the people who I don’t like too much.”
I shrug and give Faith a fake smile.
“They turned out to not be the friend I thought they were. I haven’t seen them foryears.”
25
EMMA
I’m back at mine from Diana’s home very, very late.
I’m quiet when I enter the small apartment I share with two other girls. There’s scarcely enough space for two people to live between these walls, let alone three. Any sound you make reverberates around the place like a roaring chainsaw, so I’m incredibly careful to be as silent as I can, especially at this time of night.
I don’t really know my housemates; I’m barely in this place long enough each day to make lasting conversation with either of them. Besides, one of the girls seems to only ever speak Spanish and never a word of English. Our unfamiliarity with each other comes from all our busy schedules and lack of any downtime to actually sit down and properly chat. I had to move in here fast after there were issues with my roommate at my last place. She turned out to be running some kind of insane drug operation from her bedroom, so I needed to hop out of there quick. It was a whole thing that I never knew about. The minute I did understand what was going on back there, I found the listing for this apartment and moved in on the same day. It was the cheapest place advertised on the real estate website, and I can see why. It’s the smallest apartment I’ve ever lived in, and with Mom and I traveling around the country our whole lives, we’ve lived inmanya small apartment.
But the placeischeap, and it is close to the train station, and it gives me a tiny little space in this mad city which I can call mine. That’s all I need.
I tiptoe into my closet of a room and gently shut the door behind me. There’s not enough space in here to even spread out your arms - this is why I choose to dance in empty rooms at the hospital after work, where there is actually space to move and be free.
I switch on the dim light. There’s a big poster on the wall of Swan Lake. Dancers in amazing costumes and perfect faces of makeup stare down at me as I sleep. It’s good inspiration. And I also have the application form for the city dance school stuck on the wall above my bed. I have memorized all the questions on the form after looking at it every single day. I’ve had it here for so long, but I’ve yet to fill it in and send it off.
What if they reject me?
What if I fail?
What if my one and only dream in life fully crumbles away? What would it have all been for – all the cleaning and the saving and the living in crappy small apartments and the late nights dancing in empty hospital rooms? What have I been working for if, for some reason, the audition panel thinks I’m hopeless?
That would break my heart into a million pieces, and I am terrified that I wouldn’t be able to put it together again after everything I’ve endured.
I crawl into bed, exhausted after a long day of work and looking after Faith, and I put on my headphones before my head hits the pillow.
And, like every night, I fall asleep listening to the Swan Lake soundtrack on repeat.
And I dream fantasies that I worry will never come true.
26
EMMA
I hate cleaning, but I hate cleaning toilets above anything else. I wish I could pinch my nose permanently as I scrub the rim of the porcelain bowl. I wish I could clean my hands all day after I’ve touched the toilet, even though I’m wearing gloves.
I feel so tainted.
“Yuck,” I groan over to Diana in the next stall as I’m on my hands and knees in front of the hospital toilet bowl.
“This is always the worst task of the week,” my friend calls back over the wall. “But, hey, I’m glad to be doing it with you, out of all people.”
“Me too.”
“Even if I want to be sick every single second.”
We’ve blocked off the female restroom for cleaning - plastering the door with multiple big signs, but we’ve learned the hard way from many past experiences that it never deters folks from barging in when they feel like it. There’s something about a hospital toilet that triggers a mindset in people to feel free to unleash as much of a mess as possible in here.
And it is always Diana and my job to clean it up, no matter how bad the mess is.
“How did the date go?” I ask my friend over the stall, praying to get my mind off the toilet bowl mere inches from my nose.
“It went very well.”
