“He transferred for his senior year, and he’s going to be mentoring the first-year figure skaters as a favor to Julliard. They’ve been begging him to do so for years, but he was always busy training for the Olympics, this is the first year he isn’t spread thin so he agreed.” Cahya packed his books in his bag, “Happy?”
“Happy?” I repeated, feeling my heart sink at the audacity to ask me those words. “You know as well as I do that no one’s beenhappyin a long time. But I don’t know, maybe he is, he looked it.”
“Hedoeslook it,” Cahya agreed, flipping through pages of sheet music. “Now where is my textbook…”
“Are the girls…are they in New York too?” I wondered. “Sydney was curious.”
“Apparently they’re still in Nottingham, they were…hesitant to return to the US,” Cahya explained, inevitability finding his missing piano textbook and shoving it in his satchel as well, then he paused. “Which is understandable.”
“Yes…understandable.”
“Listen, I’m sorry if you felt blindsided by the news of him coming back, and maybe I should’ve told you sooner but you should just give him back that little book and spare us all theheadache, yeah?” he suggested, placing a fond hand on my head and I glanced down.
“Whatever,” I grumbled to myself, and he smiled, shaking his head.
“Cheer up, Soh. He’sjusta boy.” He helped me stand up by pulling my hand; we then walked out the door and he locked up his dorm. “I have class now, I’ll see you when I see you.”
And then he was gone, disappearing down the hall.
“He wasneverjust a boy,” I whispered to myself, knowing that no one other than myself would ever comprehend the complexities of what became of us by the end of summer seventeen.
Because summer seventeen is when everything changed. When everything built itself up to the skies like Babel and lightning struck it to the ground like it were an aberration of sorts. Maybe it was. Maybe we were.
I figure that this detail might’ve slipped both my mind and yours, so I find it important to emphasize it nevertheless. The truth is that Wynter was my brother’s best friend, probably still is deep down. In the same manner, which I never had any sisters, and found solace and understanding within the Kwon girls, Wynter was able to find that within Cahya. Which is not surprising, considering the fact that they are the same age, two years older than I, and though it may seem like nothing now that we’re all grown up, back then there might as well have been a sea between us.
For a long time, and probably even still to Wynter, I was nothing more than just his best friend’s tedious and eccentric younger sister. In his eyes, I was just that one kid who always wanted to hang around wherever they were. He probably always thought that I knew his sisters far better than he, but that wasn’t true. I observed him always. I knew his patterns and all his most subtle intricacies. Wherever Cahya went, Wynter did to—it wasrather endearing actually. Sydney often joked about how the two were platonic soulmates. I told her she was right, Sydney always was.
The alarm on my watch immediately went off, and sirens blared inside my brain. I’d gotten so carried away, I’d almost forgotten that I had a ballet class that afternoon. I truly hoped that Madame Stacy wouldn’t be on my case if I ended up being a little bit late.
I quickly made my way back to my dorm to grab my recital bag with all my change of clothes in it and made my way to the main building’s left wing. I met Remi along the way, and we decided to walk to class together, but walking anywhere with Remi was like walking down Los Angeles Blvd with the President of the United States. Everybody stopped to say hi to her because she was friends with everyone. She was just the kind of girl that people were drawn to, the one that everybody loved. She was a girl’s girl to her core, and it might just be my favorite thing about her.
We tossed our bags in the corner, changed into our leotards, and immediately started stretching. My joints were a bit sore, which made things far more tedious than they needed to be.
“When was the last time you stretched, Miss Yeo?” Madame Stacy questioned, narrowing her eyes at me with pursed lips, not a wrinkle in sight despite her being in her fifties. “Scratch that when was the last time you practiced?”
“Last weekend Madame.” I swallowed hard and lifted my leg onto the barre to stretch more.
“It does not appear so,” she chided with a bitter tone to her voice. “Need I remind you the auditions for theNutcrackerare in three weeks. If any of you decide to keep going at this rate, you’ll be lucky if you’re on cleanup duty after. This is Julliard, not a back alley studio in Wisconsin. People sell their souls to get their children in here. Acknowledge your privilege and put your best foot forward. I shouldn’t have to remind you of this!”
“Understood, Madame,” I responded. Even though she was addressing the entire class, I knew it was me she was targeting.
She was always stricter with me than anyone else. I didn’t have it in me to ask why. I just did what I had to do to get where I needed to be. And where I needed to be was up on that stage performing at the showcase. I wanted to work hard and become a prima ballerina and do what I loved for the rest of my life.
Practice that day was toilsome, as it usually was, more so since it was the first one of the season. Afterwards Remi and I met with Sydney by the window outside class to eat a very late lunch of garlic rolls and spaghetti bolognese we ordered from the restaurant down the street where we usually got our food between classes. I nearly reached for the last roll but I hesitated, wondering if anyone else might want it. Sydney’s gaze met mine and she narrowed her eyes in suspicion.
“Remember when I was telling you about all the security that’s being set up around campus?” Remi spoke through a mouthful of pasta, accidentally spilling marinara on her leotard. “Shit—”
“Oh yeah, they’ve been putting security cameras everywhere and security at damn near every doorway, which is extra even for Julliard and that’s saying something.” Sydney snorted a laugh. “But why’d you bring it up?”
“Well it turns out the school somehow got Wynter fucking Kwon to transfer here and mentor the freshman skaters,” Remi revealed, but this was not news to me, not at all, but I had to pretend like it was. “Why are you guysnotlosing your shit?”
“Oh! Pfft.” Sydney realized, “That’s because we’ve known Wyn since he had braces and collected rocks for fun!”
“You what!” Remi gasped, damn near choking on her food. “Why was this never mentioned before, it’s like hiding that you’re cousins with the queen of England?”
“It just…never came up, I guess. Oh and Yesoh has a PTSD reaction every time his name is brought up in casualconversation.” Sydney giggled and I smacked her shoulder. “Ow! What? It’s true, everyone knows this.”
“I do not!” I argued. “I do not care about him.”
