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The more I watch, the more I become that girl.
It was three months after the hurricane, and for some reason I’d agreed to do what I usually do for the school talent show.
I’d agreed to dance.
I’d just lost my dad and I assumed this was a great idea, a way to bring normality back to my life.
BecauseIwasn’t going back to normality.
The whole world let me know that.
Our house didn’t exist. Our school didn’t exist. Dad didn’t exist. And Mom began drinking.
I never cried when they told me my dad had died.
I never cried over it, until then.
Watching it back feels unreal.
My American high school reality as seen on Scottish soil.
I find myself looking more at Rory. I know what happens in the video but I don’t know what Rory thinks. He watches it with his brows furrowed.
Music begins to play. An elegant string version of Barber’sAdagio for Stringsthat morphs into a blood-pounding dance remix.
And on stage, I’m doing nothing.
Emotion thickens in my throat with every crystalline stab of shrieking electro synths, like the sharp end of a broken bottle.
It should have built to something dark, beautiful, perfect.
I should have taken the pain and let it consume the dance.
Instead, the pain had consumedme.
The moment the classical music switched into electronic dance, every jagged part of my soul — every part I’d tried to keep neatly filed down — had erupted.
I’d missed my cue.
I’d forgotten to fake my smile.
I reverted to a girl, not a performer.
I stood on stage, alone, a girl who’d lost her father.
To salvage the dance, I’d switched from the classical into the electro with an ambitious leap and landed with a crack on my ankle. The pain had rushed up through my bones, splintering my rebelling body. I’d landed with a flump, like some kind of broken ballerina crumpled over herself.
Underneath the slamming dance music, my sobs permeate the thick, cold air.
My mom, who’d expected perfection at all costs, even in the face of grief… My mom, standing up in the audience, drunk out her mind, pointing at me and yelling something no child should ever have to hear.
It should have been you.
It should have been you.
Gasps.
Nervous laughter.
