Second Position

It was Lizzie who led. But it was me who lied.

Lizzie stood in her bedroom, already in leotard and tights. I sat on her carpet, flipping pages in her Tiger Beat magazines.

"Stand up," she said. "I'll show you."

She positioned my feet—heels together, toes apart. Fixed shoulders, arms out front, round your elbows, fingertips close but not touching, lift your chin.

"Now hold it," she said. "Don't move."

She said it like she'd been born with the instructions.

Bravura (bold, fearless)

Lizzie was the kid who ran straight toward barking dogs.

Who walked the fence rail behind school, arms extended, eyes closed. Who walked the peaked roofs of houses under construction while I watched from the sidewalk. Who balanced on the thin metal rail of the overpass, one hand on my shoulder, while trucks rumbled below.

Who convinced me to climb the water tower, then stayed with me when I froze halfway down.

"Just breathe," she said, her voice steady. "I'm right here."

Even then, she led.

Even then, I followed. Close enough to catch her shadow, never brave enough to match her stride.

Pas de Deux (dance for two)

By seventh grade, she carried herself like mist, rising, ethereal, untouchable.

She’d lance the blisters on her bruised toes with a box cutter, dabbing the raw flesh with vodka from her mother's freezer.

"Pain means you're getting stronger," she said, wrapping her toes in paper towel.

Her mother's prescription bottles lined the kitchen counter like trophies. Valium, Xanax, Percocet. Lizzie knew which ones were dumb and which ones made you float.

"C’mon.” She rattled two blue pills in a loose fist. "You trust me, right?"

I took one. Because she asked. Because I always did what she asked.

We lay on her bedroom floor, arms spread, making angels in the carpet. The ceiling spun gentle circles.

"See?" she said, "a dream, isn’t it?"

Her hand found mine. Our fingers laced. I felt a tug in my chest. I should have said it then.

But the words dissolved before they reached my tongue.

Échappé (to escape, slip away)

The party smelled like spilled beer and Calvin Klein. Lizzie sat cross-legged on the dining room table, some college guy's hand on her inner thigh. Too high. Too familiar.

He kept refilling her cup. Fingers at her waist, I watched him steering her toward the stairs.

She looked at me across the room. Not asking for help exactly. Lizzie never asked for help. Just checking to see if I was watching.

I was always watching.

She laughed at something he whispered, but her shoulders were rigid. Ballet straight.

Her eyes found mine across the room, saying something her lips wouldn't.

I gripped my warm Coors and counted the stains on the carpet.

I counted to ten. Then twenty. Told myself she knew what she was doing. Told myself she'd only wave me off if I interfered.

The philosophy major beside me was explaining Sartre. Bad faith. How we lie to ourselves to avoid freedom's weight.

I watched them climb the stairs.

Tombé (to fall, giving in to gravity)

"I tried heroin," she said.

We were seventeen, sitting on my tailgate, sharing a cigarette behind the abandoned paper mill. Same place we'd smoked our first joint, had our first beer.

She said it casual, like she was telling me about a new shade of lipstick.

"Heroin? With who? When?" I asked.

"Derek's cousin. The one from U of M."

"Jesus, Lizzie."

"What?" She took the cigarette back. "You're not my keeper," she laughed.

But I was. Or wanted to be. Standing guard while she walked her high wires, ready to catch her.

Only I never did. Never needed to. Always telling myself she was indestructible, even as I watched her slip.

Fondu (to melt)

Lizze sat on the windowsill, looking and smoking a Kool.

She weighed maybe eighty pounds. Greasy hair. Chapped lips. Those nonslip socks with rubber grips that reminded me of preschool.

"I'm done with it," she said with shaking hands. "For real this time."

I nodded. Convinced.

"I'm thinking of going back to dance." She inhaled sharply. Winced. "Maybe teach little kids," she exhaled.

We played gin rummy while she dozed between hands. I stared into her, remembered her at twelve, spine straight, chin perfect, rising onto her toes like gravity was optional.

I wanted to believe it. Wanted to believe that Lizzie could quit anything through sheer force of will, the way she'd learned to stand en pointe until her toes bled.

She fell asleep mid-sentence, cards spilling across the table. I gathered her up, carried her to bed, careful not to wake her. Careful always never to disturb the surface of things.

Arabesque (extended position, on one leg)

"Did you ever think? I don’t know…me and you?" she asked one night.

Six days clean. We sat in her mother's kitchen, the smell of Pine-Sol failing to mask something sour underneath. Her hands shook too much to light her own cigarette.

I lit it for her, buying time. Watching her lips close around the filter.

"I mean, was it ever like that for you?"

Outside, wind chimes made ghost sounds. The refrigerator hummed.

All those years. All those moments. Her hand finding mine on her bedroom floor. The way she sat on my lap every chance she got, next to me in the front seat, leaned into me at the movies. How she'd call at 2 AM just to talk. The time she kissed me on New Year's—quick, laughing, pretending it was nothing.

“What, you the dancer, me the construction worker?” I said, “Living in a camper out by the paper mill? Fourteen little rugrats playing in the yard. I can see it now, Lizzie.”

We laughed.

Her bare foot brushed mine under the table. Deliberate or accidental, I couldn't tell. I froze to let it happen again.

She exhaled smoke toward the ceiling, studying something I couldn't see.

"Sometimes I wish..." She stopped. Tapped ash into her mother's coffee cup, locked eyes with me, tried a smile, and looked away. "Never mind."

I almost said it then. That I'd loved her since third grade. Since she positioned my feet and lifted my chin. Since she showed me how to stand, how to dare, how she would never let me fall.

Instead, I watched her stub out the cigarette. Watched her rinse the cup. Watched her walk away.

Always watching. Never reaching.

That was three weeks before she died.

Battement (to beat, a striking movement)

I found his address scribbled in her journal.

Thirty-seven Maple. Shotgun shack near the railroad tracks. Gravel streets and two-tracks. Fenced front yards. Abandoned houses. Like a train derailed, and squatters moved into the scattered boxcars.

Pulled up at 2 AM, headlights off. Louisville Slugger on the seat beside me. Hunting knife in my boot. Tireless rage in my chest.

A cheap yellow bug light, spackled with tiny black carcasses, buzzed above his porch. The television pulsed through thin curtains. Muffled voices leaked through crooked asbestos siding. Canned laughter, sitcom maybe.

His Rottweiler lay in a bare patch of beaten-down earth, watching me through the chain-link. Silent as a priest.

I sat in my own sweat, waited until my hands stopped shaking. Until the sun threatened to expose me. Until there was nothing to stop me.

Then I drove home and threw up in my kitchen sink.

Révérence (bow, final curtain)

At the viewing, her dance teacher set up a photo display on golden easels.

Lizzie at eight in her first recital tutu.

At twelve, en pointe, arms perfect, neck endless.

At fifteen, arms extended, arabesque, reaching for something just beyond the frame.

At eighteen, mid-leap, suspended, an angel afloat. Like she could fly anywhere, anytime she wanted.

Coda (the final movement)

I drive past the dealer's house sometimes. He has kids now. A rusty swing set. A Weber grill on the patio. Tricycle on its side in the driveway, behind a minivan with a "My Child Is an Honor Student" bumper sticker.

He gets to push his daughter on the swing. Teach his boy to ride a bike.

Lizzie doesn't get to teach little girls how to stand tall.

On nights I park across the street, engine off, I imagine walking up his driveway. Imagine what I'd do. Every last thing I’d say, how I’d say it, how scared, and sorry, and worthless, and pitiful he’d be.

But I just sit there, counting streetlights, the way I counted carpet stains. The way I counted the pills. The way I counted on Lizzie to always lead the way.

Final Position

The last time I saw her alive, she was dancing barefoot in her mother's living room.

No music. None that I could hear. Just her body, remembering it could float.

In my dreams, I'm at that party again. I stand up. Cross the room. Tell the college guy to get his hands off her. I speak up. Take action. Lead for once in my goddamn life.

But I wake to myself still clutching that warm beer while his hand slides lower down her back. Still watching her laugh with dead eyes while his fingers steer her away.

Sometimes I dream I answer the phone that night.

In the dream, she says, "I need you to come get me."

And I go.

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