After pouring a generous amount of wine into the cup, I check my phone. It’s nearly ten o’clock, and no Angel. Tomorrow is Sunday, which means I don’t have work until late afternoon. I might as well head back to my room, finish the bottle myself, and binge-watch something on my phone until I fall asleep.
Maybe the Angel’s task is done. He gave me lessons, encouraged me, prompted me to audition for the first time, and now he’s finished with me. He’s gone off to be the muse for some other struggling artist or singer.
The thought makes me irrationally angry. A desperate panic swells in my chest, quickening my breath into frenzied gasps. I slam down my cup, sloshing the wine, and I jump to my feet, fists clenched.
“No!” I scream into the echoing stairwell. “You can’t leave me, you asshole! You can’t leave me here, in this place, alone… I won’t allow it. I can’t bear it.” Tears race down my cheeks, and I dash them away furiously. “You can’t justdecideI don’t need you. That’s not your choice to make. I want something onmyterms for once, something that’smine, that no one can take away from me. You, this,us…it’s all I’ve got. It’s everything.”
I sink down again, limply, slumped against the railing.
“Don’t leave me,” I whisper. “Don’t do this. Not yet. Not likethem.”
For a while longer, I sob and I drink, first from the cup and then straight from the bottle, until everything blurs and fades. I’m dimly conscious of my face pressed to cold, wet concrete, of my eyelids weighed so heavily that I can’t open them, not even when I’m lifted and I seem to float through cool air and darkness. There’s a sliding sound, and thenI land on a soft surface that smells familiar, like peach-scented lotion. My bed. I curl up into a ball, and a blanket drops over me.
Soft, warm lips brush my temple. The kiss feels good, and though I can’t manage to open my eyes, I smile. The strange sliding sound happens again, and that’s the last thing I remember until I wake up the next morning.
I don’t return to the stairwell that day or the next. In fact, a whole week passes, and though I want to visit the Angel again, I don’t. If he’s still around, he needs to know that I’m angry with him for not meeting me after the audition. And if he’s gone, I can’t bear the thought of calling for him again and receiving no answer.
Maybe a normal, undamaged person would be more likely to grant second chances. But I grew up with parents who were anything but normal and made startling, traumatizing choices all the time without consulting me, even when those choices directly affected my life and my well-being. I’m heartbroken over the one reliable person in my life just…disappearing. Especially when I needed him to celebrate with me over my successful audition.
What if my perception of the whole thing was twisted? What if I sang badly, and the Angel was so ashamed of me that he left? I haven’t heard anything from Raoul de Chagny or the other audition judges. I know it can take weeks to decide on casting, but I’d hoped Raoul would at least text me to hang out. But maybe I misread that, too. Maybe he isn’t interested in me, as either a singer or a friend.
I’ve struggled with depression all my life. It’s like I exist on the edge of darkness, on the brink of a ravine with a sludgy river at the bottom. One misstep can trigger a downward slide, and if I don’t claw my way out with all my might, I’ll be sucked into that river, pulled down into the thick, black mud. It will close over my head, pushing me lower and lower, crushing me down until I can’t breathe or swim back up.
I’ve drowned in that river many times since the age of eight, when I endured my parents’ first great betrayal. Sometimes, the drowning lasts for days or weeks—or months. Against hope or understanding, I’ve managed to resurface every time, and I’ve struggled back up to some semblance of normal. But I live with the fear that the next time it takes me down, I won’t survive.
I’ve thought about borrowing or stealing medication, but I wouldn’t know the right dosage for someone with my…complicated anatomy. I can’t go to a regular doctor for a prescription. They would do tests, and the medically impossible results would land me in someplace worse than a mental health facility. And I absolutely refuse to go to a Progeny physician. My mother would have taken me if I’d asked, but I kept the dark times a secret from her as best I could. Not too difficult, with my parents so busy whenever they were in Nashville, not to mention their abrupt departures for long trips.
The only hope of surviving my depression is me. So when I start to lose ground, I kick my feet, hoping for traction as they slide in the mud. I hang on by my fingernails. I fight to stay out of the pit.
I practice my dancing whenever I have free time because movement helps and music unlocks me in a way nothing else can. If I don’t keep moving, I will go still and silent. My limbs will be too heavy to lift, and the darkness will descend.
I eat protein, take generic-brand supplements, and hope they’ll do something good for my body. I focus on my work.
Most of all, I fight the pull to go out every night and lure men into dingy motels. In this mood, I’m not sure what I would do to them. Could I stop myself from going too far?
Instead of hunting, I stay in my room and drink more than I should, trying to drown the predatory urge.
I’m in a really bad place a week after the auditions when an email comes through with the casting selections forSidewinder.
The moment the notification pops up on my phone, my stomach pitches horribly, and I have to leave the front desk and run for the bathroom to throw up.
The sickness isn’t just nerves. I’ve waited too long to hunt, and Ineedto go out tonight. But I’m scared to, because whenever I hunt in this depressive state, things get messy. My inhibitions are already low, and my brain desperately craves dopamine, serotonin—all the things.
But if I don’t hunt soon, everything will get much worse.
After flushing the toilet, rinsing out my mouth, and walking back to the desk, I screw up my courage and open the email.
Carlotta Vanetti got the role of Eugenie. I’ll be dancing and singing in the chorus. Beside my name, in parentheses, are the words “understudy for the role of Eugenie.”
I’m disappointed and relieved at the same time. Yes, I wanted the triumph of scoring the lead role, but did I really want all that pressure? Did I want to be in the spotlight, with an entire audience focused on me? I might be a good singer, but I have no training as an actor, and Carlotta does. They made the right choice putting me in the chorus. And that little parenthetical note, that I was chosen to be her understudy, soothes any lingering wound to my pride.
This is good news. This is the relief I’ve been needing, the lifeline to drag myself up out of the sludge. Or it should be. But depression doesn’t care about good news. Only time will tell if this is enough to lift me out of the danger zone for a while.
For now, I pretend it’s enough. I pretend I’m happy.
After work, I put on makeup and a cute outfit, and I give the mirror wall a beautiful, brittle grin while humming the lyrics to Taylor Swift’s “I Can Do It with a Broken Heart.”
I consider going to the stairwell to see if the Angel is there, to tell him I’m in the chorus forSidewinder. But the thought of hearing his voice again is almost as painful as the idea of sharing the news with empty air. I’m not sure I can handle either a confrontation or another disappointment.
