Page 80 of Barre Fight
Justin froze and whipped around to look at the screen. With a gasp, Ivy imitated him, and after a long second, she reached for the phone and held it out to him. Justin stared down at it, taking in the image of Miss Mary, her face far more lined than it was in his memories, standing next to one of those camp beds. Her hair, which he’d remembered as dark brown streaked with grey and white, was all grey now, but it was still pulled up into her trademark French twist. She looked thinner than he remembered, but still strong and vital.
“It’s a terrible loss,” she was telling the reporter, who was holding a microphone and nodding in solemn encouragement. “But the fires have been getting worse with every passing year, and we always knew it was a matter of time.”
“Mary Lawson. Lawson, isn’t that—” Ivy started.
“Yeah. That’s Miss Mary. Shit.”
The church hall had burned. The church itself, which was built from solid sandstone bricks, might still be standing. But the hall was all timber, with a corrugated iron roof—it had been drafty and cold in winter and almost dangerously hot in the summer—and of course it had burned. Justin’s heart was hammering and his brain seemed to be stuck between recognition and denial. He’d already lost his family’s home, and now the fire had claimed the one other place in the entire town of Hillstone where Justin had felt safe to be himself. Of course it had burned, but also, it couldn’t have burned.
As Justin reeled, clutching the phone tight in his hand, the news report cut away from Miss Mary and her camp bed, and showed a wide shot of the school gymnasium. Kids of all ages, some of them in baggy donated clothes, all of them barefoot, were lined up along one inside wall of the building, each with their hand resting on the back of a folding chair. As Miss Maryclapped and counted, the kids bobbed up and down in first position pliés. Their movements were jerky and awkward. But every single one of them was smiling.
“Lawson says the loss of the building won’t stop her from teaching, starting with the children who’ve been displaced by the fire,” the reporter said over the footage. “While their parents rest and file insurance claims, Lawson is already hard at work looking for the next Billy Elliott.”
Affection for Miss Mary, and for those kids he’d never met, swept through Justin, the strength of his emotion making him slightly unsteady on his feet. Ivy looked up from the phone and reached up to set a hand on his forearm.
“Sit down,” she said softly, and she guided him onto the couch.
Justin sat, feeling his legs tremble slightly as he did.
“She’s okay. They’re all safe,” Ivy said firmly. “Safe, and already dancing.”
“I know. I know,” he repeated. He ran a shaking hand through his hair, trying to calm his heart, which was pounding as though he’d just danced a long, demanding grand allegro combination. “I just… Fuck, Ivy, I’m a terrible person.”
She closed YouTube and put the phone on the couch, screen down. Then she turned to face him again, brows cinched in confusion and concern. “What are you talking about? What’s going on? And don’t lie to me and tell me it’s no big deal because… Look at you.”
Justin balled his fist and pressed it into the couch, but he knew Ivy had already noticed it was trembling. He looked at her, knowing it was pointless to try to hide the truth from her, and knowing just as surely that this was the end ofmore. Once he’d told her, she’d want nothing more to do with him.
“Before you came back, I was watching the news because Iwas… trying to make myself feel something. Something different than what I’ve been feeling.”
Ivy nodded as if she understood. “You’ve been feeling numb? I think that’s pretty normal when something like this happens.”
God, if only.
“No,” he said, and it came out croaky. “No, not numb. I was feeling… Fuck. I was feeling happy.” He spat the word.
Ivy tipped her head to the side and her brows pulled further together. “Happy?”
“No, not happy. That’s not right.” This was why she was the writer, because she always knew the right words to use. “But not sad. Not sorry. I… I know it sounds awful, and I know it makes me a terrible person, but once I knew my parents and my aunt were safe, I started thinking about how much I hate going home and then… I wasn’t happy about what’s happened, I promise. But I’m also not sorry about it either. I know how bad that sounds.”
Ivy looked at him, her expression unchanging, for a long minute. He all but gripped the couch cushions to keep himself from standing up to pace the room as he waited for her face to twist into disgust. He deserved it, but he’d still feel like shit when she told him he ought to be ashamed of himself.Already on it, he thought.
For a long moment, she didn’t say anything.
“I know how bad it sounds,” he repeated, a note of desperation in his voice.
The lines between her brows relaxed somewhat, and she inhaled through her nose, preparing to speak. Here it was. She was about to tell him that, whatever it was they were doing here, it was over, because he was a heartless piece of shit. No moremore.
“It sounds really bad,” she said quietly, and even though hethought he’d prepared himself for them, the words hurt, a deep and all-encompassing pain around his heart, like that time he’d caught a pas de deux partner wrong in a fish dive and pulled all the muscles around his sternum.
“I’m sorry,” he said miserably.
“Me too. What happened to you as a kid was even worse than I realized.”
“What?” he blurted.
“Have you ever talked to anyone about what you went through?”
“Yeah, Missy knows. And my parents. And you know, too, now, I guess.”
