afreakingdork

It was another day.

Kendra was heading back to her hovel. It was unfortunate that wasn’t the hyperbole she wanted it to be. She had the luxury once of allowing just that. Fluff to her words to accentuate just how much she despised everything. Puff pieces floated off her lips in her extended vocabulary. With sharp wit, she could reduce the will of those around her in the down economy. The currency that broke the market was smithed from her mind and dropped on everyone else like stones that lowered them and buoyed her.

Not anymore.

Now, she had to work. Life had caught up quickly with her after prison. Felons, genius or not, were treated the same. It was an equitability she learned in prison. Her brilliance shone for about half a second before she was kicked down quite literally. Media played up tips and tricks of the cunning, but they were fiction. In reality, strength really did win out behind bars. No matter how many of her candy coated words came out, they were perceived for what they really were. All intention was immediately wrung out of them as if the reflexive nature she had once ushered them in with turned on itself. In a carnivorous run, opening her mouth was a bite taken out of her own ass until she learned to shut up and become one.

With the gangs.

With the groups.

Therapy.

Parole boards.

Attorneys.

It was all the same.

She was one of a million.

Not special.

Not a gifted teen.

Not an IQ to be heralded.

Just another human body to move. 

Another cog in the machine. 

In life outside, she got turned down for a hundred job prospects before a circled ad in the paper picked her up.

Antiquated back ways were through routes she had learned. The same method of smuggling into prison was bribery and, no matter how advanced security got, that stayed the same. Quid pro quo paid way more and, as people advanced, the old heads weren’t actually left behind. They were still there until they died and even then their bullshit lived on. Through their kids they never taught better or the means in which ex-cons still finding work through a friend of a friend using the same nepotism that got the current jilted generation hired when the market was crashed out by the one before it.

Another instance of eating one’s self.

Kendra really needed to stop falling asleep to those commercial channels.

Rotted spines and snake oil arthritis creams were haunting her waking hours when paired with oozing burger patties in fast food commercials as soon as channels clicked back over to the living who were deemed capable of generating nationwide sales as opposed to geriatrics.

She almost laughed.

She had now rounded back yet again, but this time to how old people persevered in some fucked up sense of rebellion.

The same class as those who had locked her up.

The world was a broken record that way and it wasn’t for her to judge.

For her, it was Wednesday.

Another shitty day to go to work and her mind wandered only because she let it on the short walk. It was all she had since she had blown out yet another pair of earbuds doing the same damn thing she kept doing because despite how smart she was, she was still a fucking idiot.

With a shouldering of her bag, she looked up at the building she worked in.

Four stories and each floor was exactly that. It was a pre-war walk-up that was classified as Queens. The first floor was busted and in a perpetual state of repair or dis- depending on who you asked. For her particular level, the third, her boss would say it was a quack. Exactly like the ducks he let his grandkid feed every Sunday like clockwork. He would talk about quacks when referring to doctors, landlords, and policemen the same as if it were a catchall term. Everyone was in a pond to him and the quacking here was that they flapped a lot of feathers over refurnishing the first floor into kitschy shops when in reality they were never going to do anything about the missing tiles and plywood windows. The coming soon sign was an omen that would never be reached.

What is today, but yesterday’s tomorrow ~ A hack, circa fuck you.

The second floor was storage and athletics. That seemed too broad of a label compared to what was below, but there was no other way to put it. Because of the lackadaisical structure and loose framework of building codes from the time period the framework of this building had come from, Kendra walked up a set of stairs from the broken lobby and had to completely cross the hall through the second floor to get to the next set of stairs which led to her own level. One side was a set of empty doors marked for maintenance, supplies, and boiler respectively. The other was pane after pane of glass that refused to conceal gorgeously aged wood. A finely crafted multi-purpose studio was there and, from the ever changing postings in the windows, it always housed something.

It was a yoga studio some months that would fill with hip, but bored mothers. They would roll out their mats to someone a little more savvy to the con than others and lead them through their own cloud of farts. Their ponytails would bob as they pretended Carrie hadn’t eaten beans again on purpose, but in reality she was on a high methane diet because that was the fad this week.

At other times, it filled with rows of haunting station bicycles, moved in from unknown edges of stagnant cities. Without real wheels, Kendra wasn’t sure how they were rolled in, but at least thirty of them would be set up with a ghostly white specter of a thirty-first faced the other way amongst the stampede. Horses would then beat hooves in the form of fans that didn’t cool off the space. They were begged to go just so many more non-existence miles in their quest to reach unattainable beauty standards even though they could have actually moved in those cities if they weren’t so terrified of getting hit like the real couriers that they so carelessly ordered from just to get gummy take-out noodles from because their calves burned too much after pedaling nonsense.

She was daydreaming again because the studio currently wasn’t either of those things.

It was The Treachery of Images really because while she knew all of those activities happened behind the glass, she had never actually seen them.

Because of her work hours.

She started too late and left the same.

No one took classes in the middle of the day.

Not in this neighborhood. 

She passed the length of the wood room and its deep set windows that showed her crossing until she neared the real front door and the little desk with the quaint plant.

The postings were there.

The same class was occupying the space as it had for three other weeks.

It was currently a junior ballet class.

Kids in tutus running amuck while their parents paid to have them out of their hair for a bit.

Kendra hit the stairs and again her cognizance for what could be vanished.

It was steps she hated and the smell of all that hung above began to permeate the upper steps.

Floor three was a hodgepodge of exactly that. Listed as 600, despite not being the sixth floor or a suite number, was, first, a chowder place. It was currently closed, but someone was cooking because the celery was being chopped. While she couldn’t see or hear that it was, it hung in the air. There was something about the slight humidity that came off the hundreds of stalks being chopped that created a phantom vegetal air. If they were still working on mise en place that meant the kitchen was a bit behind since the seafood hadn’t been brought in yet. That would reek and there must have been bad luck at the morning market, but Kendra trudged on.

The next 600 location was an artist’s storefront. No one actually came to buy from them directly, but they maintained the store as if anyone would walk in at any time. It was sunk cost when it came to their gaudy décor. They had painted the walls and installed new floors. The design read cake shop even though the art evoked wharf walls at best. Fishermen paid top dollar for these sort of caricatures to liven up salt peeled wood to give them a moment of clarity when they weren’t working the grey water. Kendra had always wondered if the artist who worked here was inspired by chowder as she doubted the man ever got anywhere near the beach itself considering he was currently in and as pasty as ever.

The last 600 and the grand conclusion of the third floor was her place of business. It was  walk-up window of sorts from the outside and her boss was ever hanging from it. He smelled of his honey and turmeric soap his wife made and he clicked his tongue as he saw her. He would tell her she was late again and she would come back with a new quip as she had done every day for the last two and a half years despite him never seeming to notice or care. As far as she could tell, it was his bright idea to have three spaces rent out a single address in this building. Confusing all customers who came, he convinced the two other idiots in his stupid trio that it was free publicity.

Even when there appeared to be no cross promotion between chowder, electronics repair, and woven tote bags with pictures of buff men on them.

“Can you ever show up on time, Byerly?!” Her boss shouted from the window without looking up.

“Check the curtain call. I’m dramatically timed today.” These were the first words she had spoken aloud today.

He said nothing as he opened the half-door from the inside, the only way it could be. He stepped out of the way while his phone ran some betting app. She shoved past him, making sure to bump him as she had hundreds of times before and he only knocked her in the way he always did. She cussed him out under her breath and he did so in return in her native language. She would say mother tongue if she knew it, but she didn’t. Like many first generations, she knew vibes more than words. She responded in English much to everyone’s disdain even though it was all their faults they had robbed her of her culture. Being a first generation citizen disjointed her like some amalgamated doll, doomed to always look aftermarket despite the supposed care poured in it to make her fit in.

She stared down at her work space.

In some ways, she loved it.

She had 360 degrees of technology all around her for all her working hours. The one true craft the man who owned this shop knew was how to maximize space. While it was questionable from a 600 stance, in her bubble it was perfected. She sat at a low set desk in the center of the room. The job was simple; broken electronics were passed to her and she would fix them using any of the hundreds of components within reach or the computer in her backpack. When she was done, she passed them back to her boss. From what she had gathered, he had the ability to fix electronics alike, but had grown tired of it. He had gotten really into fantasy something or other which made his own personal device, his phone, the only thing he wanted to sink time into. Before his addiction, he had built a reputation strong enough to sustain sales until he found the right flunky to take over and give at least a portion of the quality of care he used to.

He put out an ad in the paper.

She answered.

He didn’t even ask about her background.

There was no resume to give.

He gave her a phone to repair as a test and she found it was missing its SIM card within five seconds.

A beeper was her next task, which she had never interacted with, but it didn’t stop her from locating a faulty wire in under a minute.

Her final object was a tablet, harshly new in comparison with the last two items and was locked after too many incorrect password attempts. She had only asked if she could use her phone and, with it, she connected and had the thing factory reset in under five minutes.

He hired her there.

She was paid cash.

It all worked out. 

She got a couple of solid employment years. 

She hated it.

She lost at least eight to ten agonizing hours of sunlight. If she ever wanted to leave, she had to make it past her boss who questioned her every move. He both fought and demanded breaks of her on his whimsy. It was always when he wanted to go out and not when she was frazzled from one too many uncooperative electronics. His chainsmoking habitually pulled her out of her space so they could both leave while he lit up. He never said it exactly, but heavily implied that he wouldn’t leave a felon alone with all his superfluous parts. She had used one of her daily slots to cast judgment on him regarding the wealth he apparently held, but, as always, he didn’t hear a word for real. To him, she disappeared from existence while she worked. She was, while on the clock, nothing more than an assembly line. Her arms were the conveyor belt that passed and fixed objects until the day was done and then she was acknowledged only upon her check out release.

She couldn’t even shit unless she bought a sandwich from the shop next door, but it was what it was.

It was money.

Security.

Her field, in a fucked up way.

Enough.

It was enough.

It was Wednesday, she remembered, as she settled in. Today the mother who lost her third son’s maternity photos would be back to get her laptop which had been dropped in a leaky ice chest. There was also that film reel stuck in the Panasonic for that man who cleaned toilets. Some other smaller screen repairs should be done curing for brain dead teens who could no longer swipe through their endless slop videos. Kendra burrowed herself into her hole, checked the repair slips, and worked on priority, as she did, as she had, for years now, through the day.

-

Work was over.

Her boss stepped out of the way so she could exit the single door.

He said he would be staying behind.

She didn’t look back.

Tired.

She was tired.

Component repair was still swirling around her head like cartoon birds. She placed pieces with each step down the stairs. She watched as she descended into a motherboard and soldered the pieces. Once she hit the last step leaving her on floor two, she had clicked the hypothetical DVD player parts back into place. That would be her first fix in the morning and, in her mind, it was already done. She needed to sort dinner now and had forgotten to ask the chowder guy for leftover bread.

With it she could have made roti bakar with that pineapple jam someone’s Ibu had given her.

She closed her eyes.

It was too far away now to go back up and get it.

She could hawk some bread elsewhere or eat the pineapple jam with a spoon.

Utensil it was, as she opened her eyes to take an enlightening step.

A literal one because while the staircase had been dark every single night she had exited this building, tonight it wasn’t.

Tonight, light poured out of the athletic studio.

Kendra checked her phone.

48 percent battery as work leaned toward her laptop today and the time read 9:14pm.

Too late for babies in tutus.

She checked the front desk.

It was empty.

She wondered if someone left the lights on and took a few steps.

Behind a very small partition that barely signified where the supposed reception ended and the main studio was, a shadow moved.

She froze.

For all the stupid passing fantasies she had about the space, she had never truly seen someone here.

She disliked this.

She was about to break her immersion.

The ridiculous hobby that helped make that same exact trek to work nearly every day a little bit bearable.

Putting a face to the space would ruin all her future ideas.

She couldn’t as easily concoct a moron of the day to put down in an attempt to make herself feel superior if there was a particular idiot to contend with.

Her imagery would be annoyingly set.

She could go back.

Get that bread.

Wait this fucker out by the light.

They would have to pack up soon.

Wouldn’t they?

A shape moved.

The shadow warped.

Elongated.

She seized in the triangle of darkness she still inhabited.

A shock of jointed green and orange fawned with a cleaning tool in hand.

It wasn’t quite a broom, but not fully a mop either.

Something with fluffy sheep dog-esque fluff on the end probably made specifically for the lacquered floor.

With a rotation of their humanoid waist, the figure rose and the tool’s handle shifted in a green hand.

A turtle mutant.

Colored orange.

Bootyshaker9000 Othello Von Ryan Donatello’s brother.

One of them, at least.

He twirled.

His arms flung out with the handle of his duster stretched far out.

He rose to the tips of his toes.

He literally pointed out his pointe shoes that matched his skin tone.

He released his grip on the pole.

Bringing his leg up, he coaxed it on the strings of his arms.

Elbow jutting out, his movement undulated spry despite his shell.

His leg extended parallel with his arm before he sent it backward.

His entire equilibrium tilted as his leg went sky high.

She felt her lips part as his foot raised clean over his head to straight up point at the ceiling.

It dropped as he spun nearly on the ground to catch the handle of his duster right before it hit the floor.

He took off.

Spinning across the floor in rotations on a single toe.

His other leg pumped to keep him moving and not once did the duster get in the way.

It moved as an extension of him.

Sweeping up and in.

A way she had learned in prison.

Pushing the dirt in, not around.

Clips of voices echoed long heard.

He hit an emotionally wall and nearly collapsed.

She felt profound sadness.

Something was wrong.

Ennui lingered in his recline.

His limbs lost their elasticity to instead stick to him.

Trap him.

In busy work, this cleaning.

He stretched.

Pushed against the hold.

Fought back against the mundanity.

It imposed right back at him.

He strangled it.

Twisted and bent under the sudden weight of the tool he held.

It was a shackle.

He stepped out from it, but it clung to him.

Trapped him.

He faced it.

Stared it down.

Closed his eyes.

Let go.

He sliced the room as a knife.

Cleaved directly through it and towered in another gesticulation.

He wouldn’t lose.

He would beat this construct.

Finish.

Win.

Except it was still there.

The endless chore.

The cleaning would need to be done again.

She felt it all.

The futility.

His entrapment.

Anger.

Trying to make the best of his situation.

A tear burned her cheek and she ran.

Clean across the light and it burned her heels.

She didn’t look back.

Not to him.

If he saw her.

He had to have been distracted. 

There had to be a song.

He probably wore headphones.

He couldn’t just do that.

It wasn’t possible.

Why had she cried?

She refused to find out.

-

Floor two was clear the next morning.

No hint of that floor duster.

No obtrusive turtle note.

The studio was dark.

It was as it always had been.

It was as if last night hadn’t happened.

It had.

She thought so at least.

Her mind sometimes got away from her, but she knew reality from not.

She knew the difference.

She was sure of it.

“Get a watch, Byerly.” Her boss spoke, as she was suddenly in front of him.

“If I did that, how would I give you your head start?”

It was open sesame and he granted passage.

She was shaken as she sat.

Lost for a moment on what needed to be done.

The tickets were in gibberish.

What was she doing?

Nothing.

Nothing illegal.

Going and coming to work.

A legitimate business, though she doubted it had paperwork.

Donnie had busted her a few times as a teen, but he was a conduit.

A vigilante himself and only passed her to the law until she was on a government watch list.

Targeting Fortune 500 companies and using a giant robot in the streets of New York financed off a world famous video game did that to you.

He and his family weren’t the ones that put her away.

She hadn’t tussled with a turtle in years.

Donnie was little more than some childhood grievance.

Back when you thought things like your greatest foe was a thing to be had.

It wasn’t.

There was no good or bad.

There was living and dying.

There was survival.

There was getting caught or not.

She had a DVD player to fix.

She did so, among other things.

Thursday passed and the second floor was dark.

Friday was the same.

Saturday changed little.

Sunday was her day off.

It was just another moronic Monday.

Tuesday passed in peace.

It was again Wednesday and she had been right about one thing.

She couldn’t picture anyone else in the studio.

Every day, through the darkened windows, she saw him.

Not his corporeal form, but a figment.

The imagined him.

The one that danced.

The one that moved her.

Himself.

The one that moved himself.

He had such a command of his own body.

Crime fighting or whatever those turtles did, did that.

She guessed.

Thought.

The class posted was still for junior ballet.

Wednesdays from 6 to 7pm.

It was Wednesday.

Orange would be here today.

She scurried up the stairs.

“You’re late, Byerly.”

“It’s called optimizing for impact, not arrival.”

It was fine.

He would be down below when she wasn’t.

She got out of work later than him. 

That night was a fluke. 

Her hands shook between parts.

What was she scared of?

She had to parse dates.

The ballet class had been running for four weeks.

She only saw him once.

That was a fluke.

Her data said so.

The same numbers told others to get their phone fixed at a place like this where it cost half the price of what a mega conglomerate charged those without the warranty and they never honored the warranty. 

That was logic. 

That or an industrial strength solvent was cooking her brains.

That was good.

Got rid of gunk.

Of glue.

Of the mind.

Reason soothed her.

What did she care?

She didn’t know his name.

He probably didn’t know hers.

She had tried to destroy him as an extension of Donatello.

The Purple Dragons weren’t foes of all the Hamato, just one.

B-tier villains at best.

A children’s game at worst.

She was an adult.

She had seen a man dance.

She didn’t care.

“Byerly!”

A microscopic part popped out of her hand. “Asshole?! Why are you yelling while I’m working!?”

Her boss was nonplussed. “Youssef got extra tuna from market today. He made it into salad which makes no sense. I’m going to take some and prove it to him. I assume you want free lunch?”

She blinked.

Nothing he had said sunk in.

He was about to repeat himself when her brain rebooted. “Yes. Sure, whatever. Can I judge it too?”

“You have a mouth.” Her boss ducked out and opened the door.

They ate at the chowder restaurant while it was empty around 3pm.

A dinner rush was spoken of.

The tuna salad wasn’t half bad.

The artist had capers that gave a salty pop to the fresh fish.

The men were going out for drinks after work.

Their age bracket was so far removed from her own that they didn’t bother to drop her an invite. 

None of the young flunkies were granted that sort of camaraderie.

Kendra locked eyes with a bus boy who knew her plight.

They got handouts and pennies for paychecks.

She went back to work.

She refurbished a Gameboy.

There was some leak from old batteries and she handled the cleaning with care.

She was in an enclosed space, after all.

A small wire brush and some chemicals could kill her.

She needed a consciousness to keep track of the tiny screws.

She was a force. 

A wielder of a magnetic screwdriver.

One agile in her hand. 

She whipped it around. 

Stretched her back. 

Utilized the space. 

Flashes of him danced.

His toil.

He had danced out his frustration.

It was palpable.

It was like he understood what she was going through. 

What sort of job was he enduring?

Had those turtles finally gotten convicted?

It wasn’t as if vigilantism was sanctioned. 

She hadn’t thought to look up Von Ryan in years.

She had moved on.

There was a headline every so often.

Blurry color coded photos in rags at grocery store checkout lines.

What would stick a turtle like that with teaching ballet classes to tiny tutu’ed brats?

Like what?

A turtle like what?

That could dance.

She knew nothing about Orange.

He was round.

Soft.

What else?

The memories she had of him were so distant.

They conjured little.

His dance.

That made her feel something.

Something beyond her thought bubbles.

He was good at that.

Dancing.

Probably good at teaching the kids.

So why had she felt so sad watching him?

-

The light was on.

He was already in motion.

She needed to get by.

She stared at the ground.

At his shadow stretching into the wall.

Tonight’s dance was fast.

She needed to leave.

There was no reason to be a freak and stay.

She wasn’t going to watch through some window like a pervert.

There had to be a law about that.

To break.

To avoid.

She toed the line of the shadow.

The first floor was broken.

The third floor shared three businesses under one address.

This floor had glass walls.

What she saw wasn’t her fault.

It was an exchange if anything.

His fault for dancing at 9:22pm when he should have gone home.

She looked.

He didn’t have the broom tonight.

He cawed.

Brought his body up around claws.

He was a bird of prey.

He swooped.

Struck.

Tiptoed across the floor.

Came up again.

Attacked.

It was fruitless.

There was no prey.

He swung uselessly.

One way.

Another.

Up into form.

Down to gather sustenance.

He was starved.

Desperation made his moves more wild.

His hair fell wild.

He moved purposefully.

One foot.

The other.

Faster.

Towards her.

Her heart skipped.

He would see her.

In the dark.

Watching.

His eyes were closed.

He moved blindly.

Straight towards her.

Until he stopped and used the momentum.

He turned.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Faster.

Faster.

Faster.

Until she was scared at how quickly he moved.

He blurred.

His form wobbled.

He pushed down like thrown clay.

His limbs extended the motion.

Flung him further.

The g-forces pulled at his sleeves.

The line along his legs clipped so fast it created a steady shape that stilled in the pivoting of his form.

The caricature drew cartoon hopes of taking off and soaring away from here.

There was no freedom.

His foot left the pedal.

The machine spinning him stopped.

Physics caught up.

He wilted like a flower.

All that weight bottomed out.

Warped by speed and lay limp.

She walked by that night.

Watched him every second.

He never rose.

He simply lay there.

Done.

-

It was something he did now.

Every Wednesday.

Another dance.

Every time, she watched.

It was clearly interpretive.

Or that was ballet.

She didn’t actually know the difference.

If the dance was weekly, the lead up to it was the affair.

She never knew what sort of show to expect because there was no program.

No lead up.

Just her imagination and she let it run.

The bag broke and he lost his groceries for the week.

That sewer home of theirs flooded with shit.

One of those brats was in Make a Wish and would never dance again.

She inflicted upon him as many bad acts as she could find, anything to justify his dances.

They ached.

Fermented.

Stank up past the chowder and soap her boss used.

He was hurting.

It hurt her.

Carnivorous as she had thought weeks ago.

It was eating away at her, but she couldn’t stop.

She felt seen in not being so.

How could he relate?

He did so too well.

He couldn’t know her situation.

He depicted it exactly.

She didn’t fucking dance.

She didn’t go to dances.

She didn’t attend her proms.

She had been busy.

No need to put on a skirt and for what?

For that cunt Taylor Martin to talk shit?

It was pointless.

The orange blossom’s dance was too.

The fifth Wednesday she awoke having joined him.

She danced with him in a dream.

She didn’t want that.

She dreamed while awake.

Not asleep.

She didn’t have dreams like that.

It was her fault. 

She was wasting her precious cognitive processes on him. 

She needed to stop wasting neurons on fantasy.

This wasn’t a damn ball. 

There was no Beauty and the Beast.

Her dream hadn’t been like that.

It had been another Wednesday as it was now.

One where he finally opened his eyes and saw her. 

He wasn’t mad.

He was melancholic.

He invited her in.

Without a word.

They danced.

She didn’t know the steps, but he was patient.

She got it soon enough.

She had watched him do it for weeks now.

You go up.

You curl your body.

You use physics.

She knew that well.

Spin.

Repeat.

The results were a duet.

An astonishing mix where they spoke entirely with their bodies.

It ended eye to eye.

Seen.

Shared.

Not alone.

Sweat.

Panting.

Synchronized.

She ran to work.

She would stay late tonight.

Later than ever.

No creeping on those extracurriculars.

She would ensure the second floor’s darkness.

She would leave well alone and status quo would be gifted back to her.

The ballet class would end.

Someone else would rent the studio.

“Is that Byerly!? Look who finally decided to show up!”

“I thought we’d moved into our ‘trust each other’ era.”

She worked.

Time would pass.

Things would stay the same.

Things would change.

“Lunch, Byerly.”

That was how things were.

Devouring themselves like the fried rice she ate cold.

The kernels were dry.

“Smoke break. Walk about, Byerly.”

Time in the yard.

Freedom from eight to ten hours.

A breath of fresh air.

Work.

“Byerly.”

Work.

“Byerly!”

Work.

“Byerly!!!”

“I need to finish this. I’m behind.” She looked straight at her boss.

“Who cares? I have a game to watch. Leave it. I can tell the customer the part got held up.”

“No, I’m almost done. Flow state. That’s a thing.”

“Byerly…”

“Just once. It’s been years, Sutrisno. You think I can close up, just once?”

Her expression was undignified.

Pathetic.

Those weren’t the low blows she preferred.

Not weakness.

She was no sniveling femme.

It affected him.

A man his age.

A girl hers.

He scratched the back of his head. “Guess…”

She waited.

“This finally makes up for you always being late.” He pulled out keys and evaluated them.

“Thank you.” Somehow, she meant it.

Closing ended up being an ordeal.

She never thought about it, but whenever her boss kicked her out, she guessed he had never come down after her.

He had never chanced upon Orange’s dance.

She never once saw him leave.

She left.

There were all these lights.

Security to review.

The till to count.

This that and systems.

He took care of the whole floor.

Made sure the chowder shop and art place were secure.

Had security for them too.

He was a softy and Kendra never once knew.

He gave all the instructions to her and left with a meaningful look.

Pride or something similar.

It felt odd, but sat in her stomach.

Different than the gnaw of Orange’s dance.

More pleased.

Warm.

Like getting day old chowder.

The broth was best on a cold day.

Youssef had asked her once about Indonesian chowder.

She had told him off.

That wasn’t a thing.

Maybe she would try to bring it up again.

She bet he could make soto betawi.

He might really try to.

She thought about offal as she worked through three more tickets.

Until her hands shook as she had staved off a meal for seven hours now.

She couldn’t remember her last sip of water.

She checked her phone.

12:01am.

He couldn’t be there.

She went through the closing motions.

She remembered everything her boss said.

Did it to the letter.

Descended the stairs one quakey step at a time.

She saw the darkness from the landing.

The hallway was as it should have been.

As it was most days.

The normalcy haunted her.

She stood two steps from the end.

She did it.

The spell was broken.

It was over.

No more dance.

No more feelings that it conjured.

That first tear that was never shed again.

A chill went up her spine and she shook it out.

It was wrong.

Why?

She shouldn’t care.

She didn’t.

She did.

She wouldn’t see him again.

It hurt.

It didn’t.

It did.

She took a step.

What did she know?

Nothing.

A lot.

She hit the floor proper.

She wanted half a chance to dance with him.

She didn’t.

She did.

The studio was empty.

A husk.

Lifeless.

It was.

Done.

She closed her eyes as she took a step.

Once.

Twice.

Clunky in her boots.

Whimsy curled up her toes.

Sadness held her heels.

She rose.

The leather protested and bent.

She would buff them out later.

Get the creases.

Her feet ached.

This was not a natural position for her.

Her arms came in.

Toward her backpack.

Then out in a pump.

It turned her.

One spin.

Two.

She used her knees.

She saw him.

It was so easy in the light.

In the dark, in the hall, with her eyes closed, it was scary.

She pushed forward.

Faith.

He never hit anything.

She wouldn’t.

It was a straight line.

She had walked it a thousand times.

Again.

She spun.

Again.

Her boots creased on the worn carpet.

Again.

Feel.

Feel.

Let it out.

Finally.

She released it all.

She threw her head back.

Her spine arched.

Her hands came up.

One above the other.

The rotation pulled up her knee.

She fell.

Forward.

Purposeful.

To a squat and spread her wings.

There was silence.

Quiet.

Stillness.

She could hear her breath.

Her heart beat in her ears.

She did it.

It felt.

Good.

Incredible.

Freeing.

For just a moment.

All of it was gone.

It was only her and hers.

She opened her eyes.

Crouched down and clearly holding the ballet shoe he had just taken off was Orange.

His jaw was hanging open.

His eyes blown wide.

He had presumably been leaving when she came down.

Maybe fixing his shoe.

Forgotten to take it off when he left.

Then there she was.

A fool who danced straight over to him.

He blinked.

She would die.

There and then.

From humiliating herself.

Prostrating and for what?

A dancer’s high?

Something patently not real.

All of her being sucked up into her person and he animated.

“Wait!”

She could jump off the roof because that was the only exit back the way she came and was now going.

“Please!”

She nearly reached the stairs.

“Before you leave, at least tell me your name! You have to after that! I need something to call the person who's going to be on my mind from now on!!”

A quip.

She had told 649 of them so far.

Just not one that had ever admitted fault.

“I would… but I’m already late.” She, somehow, offered him a smile just before she ran for the safety of the third floor.

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