Page 12 of Forbidden Dance
“She didn’t,” Mindy assures me. “I don’t think she knows. She doesn’t pay attention to stuff like that.”
“They’ll take me out of dance classes for sure if they know someone like Blitz is there,” I say.
“I get it,” she says. “I know.”
Mindy doesn’t know about Gabriella. I’ve considered telling her a dozen times, but I just can’t. It’s too big a secret. My parents have never spoken of their granddaughter and have forbidden me to bring her up. I love Mindy and being rebellious with her, but giving my baby up for adoption is not something I can talk to anybody about.
“Are you sneaking Internet?” Mindy asks, glancing around for the telltale laptop.
“I was!” I say. “I found censored images of Blitz Craven!”
“You didn’t!” Mindy plops onto the floor. “How?”
I sit next to her and pull the laptop back out from beneath the shelf. “There was a dance they had to edit because the dancer stripped naked,” I say.
“Show me, show me, show me.”
Her eagerness is childlike, and I know we’re being immature and silly. We’re both sheltered, living in a bubble of homeschool and church created by our families. Mom found Mindy’s mother through a homeschool group and eventually recruited the family to our church. Mindy also has a younger brother, so they can all congratulate themselves on socializing us even while keeping us away from the evils of public school.
But while Mindy has more access to media and the outside world, I had the benefit of a normal life up until I got pregnant. So we can swap stories, her regaling me with current movies and world news, and me explaining what it was like to have P.E. and sit next to boys in darkened classrooms.
I show Mindy the image and she squeals. “Oh my God, look at those boobs!” She presses her hands against her chest. “Is there anything showing more of Blitz?”
I hadn’t even thought of that. My fingers click back up to the search box and my body flushes as I type the words “Blitz Craven naked.”
Results begin appearing. Blitz has done a million nude shoots, it seems, although they are all proper, for magazines. Still, we click on one after the other, Blitz stretching on a stage in nothing but his own skin, leg carefully blocking the goods. Laughing as he’s surrounded by women in leotards, probably contestants on his show. They cover him with their hands. And one particularly sexy one on a black leather sofa, a satin sheet wound across his hips.
I can’t take my eyes off him. This man was dancing with me just an hour ago.
“Man,” Mindy says. “He’s really something. So what happened?”
I tell her about meeting him, and the ballet class and the corset in the storage room.
She starts fanning her face. “Oh my God! You were alone with Blitz Craven in the dark?”
I nod, the memory of it flooding back to me.
“Are you going to see him again?”
“I guess,” I say. “I don’t know which classes he’s doing. But next week, for sure.”
Mindy stands up and paces back and forth. “This is incredible! Imagine! My friend and Blitz Craven!” She drops down beside me again. “How old is he?”
I check the Wikipedia entry. “Twenty-six,” I say.
“You’re nineteen,” she says. “That’s not bad.”
I shove her shoulder. “Blitz Craven and I are not going to be a thing,” I say.
“You don’t know that,” she insists. “It sounds like he was flirting with you pretty hard.”
“I guess.” I don’t know. This is where my experience is definitely lacking. I’ve never had a proper boyfriend. I couldn’t call Gabriella’s father that. I’ve never been flirted with, not by anyone as old and experienced as Blitz, for sure.
“He probably acts like that with everyone,” I say, gesturing at the pictures. “He’s known for liking tons of women.”
Mindy takes the laptop and types in “Blitz Craven girlfriend.”
The hits go on and on. Picture after picture of him with one woman or another. Getting out of limos. Walking on red carpets. Dancing. Kissing. Holding their hands up as if to ward off the photographer.
