New Girl in Town

Chapter 41

LJ User: Xx_RubyJane [Private Entry]

Date: July 30, 2012

[Mood:]
[Music: "My Happy Ending"-Avril Lavigne]

My mom called me today. Not the other way around. That's how I knew I was in trouble.

I was right about Madame Rosard reporting back to her. Mom started out all sweet, which of course put me right on edge, because Mom is not sweet. But when it was clear I wasn't buying it, she launched into her whole spiel.

She said she's worried about me. This whole summer I've been acting strangely. "Disconnected" she called it. She kept asking me if I was having boy troubles or something. She said that teenaged boys are flighty, but she knew that Kai cared about me, deep down, even if he was a flirt, and I wanted to tune her out, because God, of course it has to be a boy, right?

It can't be that Mom's got a stranglehold on my life and a step-by-step plan for my future and didn't even consult me about any of it. Or that I get to see my dad in bits and pieces and he tries so hard but it's not the same as living with him and eating breakfast together and going to bed at night knowing they're there in the house with you.

I see how Suzy looks at herself in the mirror sometimes. Like she's already looking for flaws. And she's a baby; she doesn't have any flaws. And then I ask myself when did I start doing that? Her age? Younger? And I ask myself: Where did I learn that? And the answer isn't a good one.

How am I supposed to love myself when everything I was taught steered me away from it?

Be silent, Jennie. Be still. Mom used to tell me that when I was little. I think maybe it's why she put me into dance in the first place: she thought I could burn up all the energy so I could be her pretty little doll the rest of the time.

I'm not a pretty little doll, though. I'm a broken doll. A fucking mess.

No one wants me.

No one should want me.

Why did Lisa want me?

Why can't I stop wanting her?

-Jennie

LJ User: Xx_RubyJane [Private Entry]

Date: July 30, 2012

[Mood:]
[Music:]

It's after midnight and I'm hiding in the computer room like some sort of loser. I had the studio booked late, and then no one came to kick me out at ten like usual, so I kept going, because Hanni's going to gloat if I still can't get Madame Rosard's choreography down right.

When I finally packed up to go, I heard something down the hall in studio C. Giggling. I thought someone was having a secret party or something.

I guess the "or something" was right.

I've never seen two girls kiss before.

Isn't that strange? To have experienced something as common as a kiss before you've ever seen it. It's a fuzzy idea in the visual, until it's not.

They were kissing in studio C. Hanni and Orion, Madame Rosard's other assistant. Up against the mirror, finger-interweaving, my-smile-against-yours, I'm-about-to-lift-you-onto-this-barre kind of kissing.

I couldn't move. They couldn't see me, and I just stood there for like a full thirty seconds before my legs starting working again and I ran all the way here to the computer lab and I just... I want...

Is that what Lisa and I looked like that day by the railroad tracks? Soft and so happy it's like you're full of light?

Does it really look like it feels when it's right?

Because Hanni and Orion ...

They were beautiful.

-Jennie