Page 9 of Paper Thin Love

The most important things in my life should be school, social media, and boys. Instead, I spend every waking hour that I’m not in the classroom in the dance studio. I’m more comfortable in my pointe shoes than my own skin.

My dad wants me to think I’m free here at boarding school, but in reality, my entire life has already been planned: college, my career, a husband one day—all the details. I’m just the ballerina stuck spinning and performing in the music box for others.

Everyone thinks I love dancing; they all claim that I’m going to be a famous ballerina like my mother was.

Remember what I said about contradictions?

I don’t love ballet.

I loathe it.

I hate a lot of stuff, but everyone thinks I love my life because I’m really good at smiling. I have a nice smile that two years of braces made perfectly straight and so freaking believable. It also doesn’t help that I have dimples. No one can take dimples seriously. It’s like god designed me to be this adorable doll.

No one sees the real me.

I don’t even know who the‘real me’is.

I’ve been stuck playing roles for so long that I don’t know how to escape them.

What’s scarier is that playing a role is easier than living.

Dancing reminds me of my mother. It reminds my dad of my mom, and that’s why he still wants me to dance. I’m a memory of her on stage.

It’s heartbreaking, and I don’t want to take that memory away from him.

Does that make me an enabler?

Every day I step into the studio and I look for mom. She’s not there, but her ghost is. Me.

I turn off the sink, grab clean bandages, and begin the process that has become as easy as putting one foot in front of the other. Covering up my pain and taking away the control I tasted. Now, I’m going back to being the perfect doll they all think I am.

It’s hard to fight when you consider all the repercussions. It’s simpler to just muster through it.

So I do.

Maybe my thinking is wrong. Maybe I should just fight back and not care how the cards fall.

I want to scream and run. I want to laugh as I hide.

I want… wanting is silly. I’m just a girl born into an empire of men.

Life isn’t about wants; it’s about needs, and I need to stay quiet and be the good girl my father thinks I am.

I need to survive.

***

The music abruptly halts, and so does my heart.“What is the matter?” Mr. LeBlanc, my ballet instructor, screams.

“You keep missing the mark,” Jared, my dancing partner, scorns me. His fingers press into my hipbone harshly as if hoping to snap me out of my daze and wake me up. His other hand reaches for my bicep. His eyes soften when his fingers touch my bare skin, but then they turn darker, and he grips me harder like I’m a kite in the sky that the wind is taking away from him.

I tried to fly away, but the thing about kites is they’re tethered to a string that reels them back down.

It’s awful—tasting fresh air, feeling the wind under your sails, only to be yanked back and shoved into a corner until someone decides to play with you again.

“Jared,” I whisper, my eyes lock on his bruising touch. In a way, it’s my fault. I turned down his affection, so now I get a different form of it.

Does it bother me? Not really. I’ve been numb for a long time. If I reacted, that would mean I’d be waking up and feeling. I don’t care enough to feel about Jared’s bruised heart.

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