How many times have I said no now, I wonder?
And how many times have I wanted to say yes?
I’m a fool.
A fool, a fool, a fool.
But he makes it so easy. He makes it so easy to be stupid and reckless and thoughtless.
He makes it so easy to be foolish.
“Good.” He approves with a short nod. “So you’re going to be careful now, aren’t you? You’re going to wear your daisy fresh dresses and your ballet flats. You’re going to braid your hair like a good girl and you’re going to stop begging for my attention. You’re going tostopmaking me look at you.”
His words, almost snarled from his mouth and dripping in condescension, penetrate my drugged-up mind and make me frown. They make me stand a little taller in my stupid heels when he moves away from me.
And I tell him with as much authority as I can muster right now, “Then you have to stop watching me.”
Reed was in the process of taking another step back and dismissing me. But my words stop him. They make him frown. “What?”
Good.
I’m glad.
If he can give me ultimatums, then I can issue them too.
I raise my trembling chin and say, “You have to stop coming to my practice every day.”
Because that’s what he does.
He comes to my after-hours practice and he watches me dance.
Every day after school, when I practice in the auditorium because I still haven’t nailed down my routine, he comes in.
He sits in the third row, not too far away from the stage and not too close. I don’t know why. And he watches me spin and turn and leap around the stage with my wings on my back.
He watches me like he did the first night at the party.
All eager and intense and at the edge of his seat.
And I dance for him in the same way as well. All restless and excited.
After the pact I was afraid that he’d stop. I was afraid that he wouldn’t watch me dance anymore. But he didn’t and thank God for that.
Because somehow, I’ve gotten addicted to dancing for him.
Somehow, I’ve become addicted to the way he looks at me. Addicted to the way his shoulders seem to loosen up the longer I dance. How he sits back and sprawls out on the seat as if this is the best part of his day, me dancing for him.
So sometimes I dance for him just because he wants me to.
I abandon my practice, pick a song that I love and spin for him like the ballerina I am.
His ballerina.
But it’s stupid, isn’t it? And dangerous.
He’s right.
He’s the worst asshole of all, the biggest villain that my brothers have warned me about.
