Page 2 of Teach Me to Fly

When I can finally stand, I limp toward my duffel bag, my muscles screaming with every step. I shakily peel offwhat's left of my leotard and tights and use them to wipe the blood from my thighs before tugging on my sweatpants. The softness of the fabric against my torn skin feels like a mockery.

Before I leave, I catch my reflection in the mirror again, but the girl staring back at me isn't the same person she was only hours ago. The guilt hits me like a truck, shame seeping into my bloodstream.

"I let this happen," I whisper, voice barely audible. "I let myself get raped."

I cry again, silent, broken sobs that only I hear.

I don't goto rehearsals the next day, or the day after. Instead, I stay curled up in bed, limbs sore, stomach twisting every time I close my eyes and see his face. It takes four days before my absence is escalated to the company director, who happens to be my mother. She summons me to the company with a clipped email. No warmth or concern, just a demand that I meet her in her office at three this afternoon.

When I step into the building, I'm drowning in the baggiest sweatpants I own and an oversized T-shirt that hangs off me like a curtain, swallowing every curve of the body that no longer feels like mine. A black baseball cap shadows most of my face, concealing the hollow, sleepless bruises beneath my eyes.

I keep my head down, praying that no one looks too closely. But I can't shake the suffocating paranoia that everyone's watching. That somehow, they all know what happened, and they’re silently judging.

I hold my breath the entire walk through the halls,flinching every time I hear footsteps behind me, terrified that it's Alec. That he'll corner me again, touch me again, break me all over again as if it’s possible to break any more than I already have.

When I reach my mother's office, I knock softly, my knuckles barely making a sound.

"Come in," she calls, distractedly.

My mother, Analise Sinclair, is seated behind her massive oak desk, manicured fingers flying across her keyboard, the rhythmic clicking the only sound in the room. Her long blonde hair is pulled into a high ponytail, so tight it tugs at the edges of her already botoxed face, not a single strand out of place. Her skin is pale, porcelain-like, a stark contrast to my tanned brown complexion—one of the many reminders that I belonged more to my father than to her.

When I step into her office, her green eyes lift and scan me, taking in the baseball cap, the baggy clothes, the hunched posture. But then she returns to typing, like none of it matters.

"Take a seat," she says, chin jutting toward the chair across from her like I'm just another staff member she's too busy and annoyed to deal with.

I move stiffly across the room on trembling legs, and lower myself into the seat, wincing when my body touches the cushion, still tender. I sit upright, rigid, hands folded tightly in my lap as I try to breathe past the pain. She finishes her typing with an aggressive tap of the Enter key, then turns to me with a tight-lipped frown.

"Care to explain why our principal dancer has been skipping her rehearsals?" Nohellooris everything okay?

"This production is crucial, Angelique,” she continues before I can reply. “Your understudy has had tofill in for your parts, and frankly, she can't compare. The board's been breathing down my neck to make sure everything runs flawlessly. You disappearing? It's put me in a tough position."

I stare at her. The woman who used to kiss the bruises on my knees once upon a time and tell me I was born to dance. The one who, as a child, I believed would burn the world down to protect me. But all I see now is the director. The brand. The mask she wears for the company that's consumed her since she divorced my dad ten years ago and moved here. Whatever warmth existed in her eyes back then is long gone.

“Something happened,” I manage, my voice quiet and raspy. It feels like the first time I've spoken since that night.

Because it is.

She stiffens, pausing mid-scroll. “Elaborate.”

“Alec.” I almost vomit at the sound of his name coming from my mouth.

Her eyes narrow and there's a long pause before she speaks again. "Did you two fuck?"

I blink. "What?"

"Are you pregnant?" she asks, folding her arms across her chest, jaw clenched, tone ice-cold.

The breath leaves my lungs in a gust. "No, mom…he raped me," I whisper. "He…he held me down and—" The words die on my tongue, caught in the barbed wire of shame and agony. My throat burns and I feel like I'm choking on the words.

Silence stretches between us, thick and suffocating. I fidget with my fingers while I wait for her to erupt. For her face to twist with outrage on my behalf, and for her arms to open as her voice trembles with horror. I wait for the mother I thought I knew, but when she finally speaks,it’s like she's picking her words from a crisis PR handbook.

"Angelique…do you understand what you're saying?" she asks, as if I'm delusional. "Alec is one of our senior dancers. His parents donate hundreds of thousands to the company every year. If this story gets out—if the press gets wind of it—it won't just be him they come for. It'll be the company. It'll be you. Do you want the world to know that you’ve been raped?"

A sharp ache slices through my chest, sudden and deep, as if something inside me has cracked clean in two.

That would be my heart.

"I don't give a fuck about the press," I say, my voice rising. "Or what the world thinks."

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