Page 33 of Dance Omega Dance

The street.

Sidewalks swarmed with bodies, and I couldn’t tell if they were obstacles or if I was the obstacle myself, a rogue piece out of place in a pattern that would never fit me. It felt like before. It felt like the gunfire. My father’s body on the floor, my mother over him, blood seeping around them. "Go!" she had screamed at me. "Run!" I had. It had saved me. It always saved me.

I could still hear the low throb of Zach’s pacing, of Blake’s voice rising like a storm. I could still smell their argument as it twisted and turned, bleeding through the room until I lost myself in the panic of that memory, in their argument, and my past.

Breathe.

I dodged between two Beta women, heard their huffing voices behind me. Someone else turned to look, but I didn’t care, didn’t care about anything but putting distance between me and them. Distance between now and what had already been. Darkness was still ahead of me, each breath newly wrung from the chill of the night sky.

"Summer?"

The sound of my name again. This time, gentler, softer, landing on skin instead of bone.

"Summer!" A figure moved across the street, quick and decisive.

Maddie.

Her hair was pulled back in a sloppy bun, the loose strands flaming bright under streetlights as they escaped, snapped away from her head. She was a beacon, a warning light. But what was she warning me about?

I didn’t remember crossing the street, only that suddenly she was in front of me, arms out, ready to catch what was already falling.

"I’m..." I said, but the word didn’t finish, lost somewhere behind my shallow gasps and sharp-edged urgency that told me I couldn’t stop, couldn’t stop the tears that bled out of me.

"Oh my god," Maddie said. Her voice rose, and carried me with it. I leaned into her, solid ground after running on clouds, collapsing in her embrace.

"It’s okay," she said. "I’ve got you. I’m right here."

We stayed like that, her arms a constant pressure, until my pulse found something like a rhythm and my breath found something like a pattern.

"You know what we need?" she said, a grin in her voice, teasing out a laugh I didn’t know was in me.

"What?" I managed.

"Hot chocolate. With so much whipped cream, you can’t see the drink underneath." Her hands shifted from my arms to my shoulders, then she tilted her head toward a nearby café. "C’mon. I’m buying."

My legs were stilts, my mind on the carnival ride that bent and warped them.

We stepped into the café; the noise swallowing me up like the best kind of secret. No one noticed us. No one seemed to care. We were two girls, young, nondescript. Her red curls wild, my brown hair tangled. It made us invisible. It made us safe.

Maddie slipped into a booth away from everyone else, and I sat down opposite her. She reached out for my hand. She was warmth and gingersnaps, baked, sweet, and perfect.

After giving our order to a server, she said, “Talk to me,” and I did.

Her eyes stayed wide and worried. The server brought over our hot chocolates, and I curled my hands around the mug in front of me. The hot chocolate burned in the best possible way, scorching through the cold that had taken up residence in me. I recalled it all for her, words tripping out of me like amateur dancers. "I thought I was stronger," I said, hating the shame in my voice. Her hands reached again, like always.

"I thought I could do it," I said, because I’d already said I couldn’t. "I thought I could just pretend it didn’t matter."

"Too much testosterone for you?" she said and smiled.

"You don’t understand," I said. "Blake is like some force of nature. He wants everything arranged, everyone in line." The whipped cream melted and swirled, a blur of sugar, the way my feelings were. "But—"

"But you want him," Maddie said, a small smile of triumph at the edge of her voice.

"I don’t know," I sighed. "He wants me to trust him. But after everything, it’s hard to, you know?"

She nodded. "And Zach?" Her tone was softer now.

I looked out the window, into the depths of the shadows, as if I might see him pass. As if he might look in and grin. Catching me in here with my secrets exposed. "He’s different," I said, voice quieter. "Everything’s a joke to him. He never takes anything seriously."

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