Skin and Bones Read online

  Lard sat slouched at his desk reading Great Meals for Couples or Crowds. He’d added two-for-one restaurant coupons to his bulletin board. “How’d it go with Chu Man?” he asked, looking up.

  “I feel like I’ve sucked a dozen raw eggs,” Bones said.

  “Don’t do that, man.” A Lard snort kicked in. “You’ll get salmonella.”

  Bones passed the rest of the afternoon in an invisible cloud.

  The only thing clear was Alice’s absence. Nancy said she was downstairs undergoing tests and took the opportunity to explain the seriousness of electrolyte imbalance. Blah, blah, blah.

  Bones opened his journal and flipped to his last entry. He’d been writing about the day the scales dipped below 107 lbs. I felt like I’d sunk the winning basket in a tie-breaker game because that’s how people treated me. Being skinny made me a winner.

  He closed his journal, barely remembering he’d written that. He and Lard decided to spend the hour before dinner on the roof. Bones was surprised to see Alice there, lounging on a yoga mat.

  “Hey there,” she said, smiling at him.

  Bones shook off his cloud of doom and stepped into a world of sunshine. “Hi.”

  He blinked at the pale skin peeking through her ripped tights, then noticed cotton taped inside her elbow. “Damn vampires,” he said.

  She tucked a strand of strawberry behind her ear. “And I still have to down an eight ounce glass of some sodium crap.”

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Lard said.

  “You have an amazing power for stating the obvious,” she said and shrugged. “I suppose they’ll want a sample of my scales to see if I’m a fish.”

  Bones laughed.

  But Lard said, “You’d better get back before they come looking for you.”

  “You used to be more fun,” she said. “Besides, the lab’s a certified zoo—they won’t miss me for days.” Then she asked Bones to help untie her yoga mat. “The string has a knot.”

  He bent down beside her, blinded by suntan oil glistening on her chest. Apparently she’d cut a hole in the mat’s seam because she slipped her hand easily inside. She made a face in concentration and drew out a silver case, matches, and a foil packet.

  “There you are, you little beauties.” She tossed the packet to Lard. “Turkey jerky,” she said. “Low fat. No MSG, artificial coloring, or flavorings.”

  “And I have something for you,” he said, handing her a tube of hemorrhoid cream.

  “Awesomeness!” Then she explained to Bones, “I rub it on my feet to numb the pain. Pointe shoes can be a real killer.”

  Who knew hemorrhoid cream was multitalented?

  Alice sat on the mat with a cigarette between her delicious lips.

  “Sorry, I have to ration them,” she said, lighting up. Even though everyone knew smoking could kill, she looked amazing doing it. “I don’t know how long I’ll be stuck here this time.”

  “I don’t smoke,” Bones said.

  She tilted her head. The sun peeked over the edge of the roof, turning her arm hairs bronze. Bones wanted to lick them, calories be damned. “Not anything?” she asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Cigarettes curb your appetite, unlike—” She paused watching a white ribbon of smoke curl up.

  As if on cue Lard lit a joint.

  Alice spread her legs into a perfect V. Her muscles were long and taut. She stretched over one leg and then the other. Bones almost passed out when she stretched forward between those same widely spread legs. He wanted to kiss all her stretchiness right then and there and everywhere.

  “I have an audition in a couple of weeks with a new ballet company,” she said, sitting up. “It’s at the opera house downtown. You should see it. Amazing, with crystal chandeliers and velvet seats.”

  Bones remembered the bus ride to and from the theater more than the theater itself. “Our class went there in fourth grade,” he said. “There was a car lot down the street with a Felix the Cat sign.”

  “That cat’s famous, man,” Lard said, dragging a chair over. “Historical.”

  Alice tapped ash into a paper cup. “Did you see the dressing rooms? I practically grew up in them. My parents are actors. Sometimes they direct.”

  “Cool,” Bones said.

  Alice snuffed her cigarette. “Not really.”

  Lard inhaled, coughing. “Will you be able to dance that soon?”

  Bones was wondering the same thing.

  Alice ignored him. “A real friend would help me find a place to practice my leaps.”

  “What about up here?” Bones suggested.

  “Too rough on my shoes.” She stood up and made her way across the roof, clutching her tube of cream.

  Bones watched her go.

  Lard took another hit. “I hate to say it, but she’ll never change.”

  “Who wants her to?”

  “I mean, change, as in, get better. She’s in and out of here so often they could name a revolving door after her.”

  Lard might have known her longer, but that didn’t mean he knew her better. “I can help her,” Bones said.

  “Isn’t that like the blind leading the blind?”

  “Says he who resorts to Biblical idioms.”

  Lard chuckled and smoke seeped through his nose. “She’s my friend and I’m fiercely loyal, you know that. But you have to admit it, man, she doesn’t even have boobs.”

  “Sure, she does. They’re just not as big as yours.”

  Lard snort-laughed. “Well played.”

  Bones woke up sometime after midnight stressing out all over again about his weigh-in. No way he could have dropped to ninety-nine pounds. Not with all the calories they were forcing down him. It didn’t make sense.

  He stared at the ceiling, picturing Lard and Teresa hunched over their plates, shoveling in endless calories. Yet they said they were losing weight too. He wondered how much the scales were off? One pound? Three? Ten? Unibrow must have switched scales before Bones came in yesterday.

  A loud clang in the corridor, then one word made it into the room. “Shit!”

  Bones wondered if it was a patient sneaking around in the hospital, then decided it was probably an exasperated nurse going out for a smoke. He worried himself back to sleep; he’d had a lot of practice at that.

  Alice wasn’t at breakfast, which gave him more to worry about. He sat with Lard and Teresa and tried to figure out how to get rid of his corn flakes. (1 cup, 100 calories. Half cup low-fat milk, 60 calories. One bruised banana, 100 calories.)

  “There’s something going on with the scales,” Bones said.

  Lard sopped up two runny egg yolks (110 calories) with what was left of his whole-wheat toast (128 calories). He stuffed the entire disgusting wad in his mouth. “Let me guess. You lost weight so Chu Man raised your calories?”

  “That’s what I thought when I lost a pant size,” Teresa said. “But it isn’t the scales.”

  “Waistbands don’t lie,” Lard added.

  Bones had stopped listening. He was keeping an eye on Nancy, who was standing watch over the room. She winced, apparently from a pantyhose wound—nail polish patched the run.

  Today Mary-Jane’s clip-on braid was blue. “Can I have a warm-up on my tea?”

  Bones shoved his banana into his pocket when Nancy picked up the pot of hot water. When she filled Mary-Jane’s cup, he untied his tennis shoe and sat it on his lap. Two seconds. That’s all he needed to get rid of the rest of his milk and cereal.

  Then, as if things weren’t bad enough, Dr. Chu walked in and looked around like he was about to interrupt himself. “Sexuality Group will be at ten o’clock instead of eleven.” He straightened his smiley face tie and left.

  “No need for Bones to attend the sex meeting,” Mary-Jane said.

  Elsie smirked. “Anyways, there can’t be much meat on it.”

  Lard stood up so fast his chair slammed over backward. “What’d you say?”

  Once Elsie and Mary-Jane stopped laug
hing and high-fiving each other, Elsie said, “You heard me.”

  Lard looked like he was about to release a cage of flying monkeys. “And you’re nothing but a ruminant, polluting the atmosphere with your methane gas, who doesn’t know that anyways isn’t a real word!”

  Spoken like the son of a teacher, Bones thought, scooting his cereal bowl slowly to the edge of his tray. His shoe waited in place. His socked foot tapped the floor while he waited to make his move. Then a cell phone went off in someone’s pocket. All heads in the room swiveled as Elsie retrieved her phone, unsure if she should answer it or just hand it over.

  Suddenly an orange peel flew past Bones’s line of vision, then an empty milk carton. Elsie hollered, “Food fight!”

  That gave Bones another idea. Maybe even better than the first one.

  No, he told himself. Stay focused.

  In the ensuing chaos, he dumped the soggy corn flakes into his shoe.

  13

  Bones had stopped breathing, afraid of getting busted or afraid of spilling his shoe, he wasn’t sure which. He tried a neutral expression while lacing it back up. He felt Teresa watching him, as if adding up how many starving kids in China the contents of his shoe could feed.

  She started to say something, then hesitated, and shook her head. Bones heard her mutter something after he’d gotten up to leave.

  “I got T-A-L-L-C-H-I-E-F on a triple-word score,” Alice said from the couch in the dayroom. The Scrabble board sat next to her on a cushion. Tiles were spread out in the empty box, all facing up. “You probably never heard of Maria Tallchief. She was the first Native American to be a prima ballerina.”

  “Cool.” Bones shivered, mostly because his sock was wet. He limped over to check out the board. F-I-R-E-B-I-R-D. C-R-A-C-K-E-R. Alice chose three tiles from the box. “Have you ever been to a ballet?” she asked, adding N-U-T to C-R-A-C-K-E-R.

  “I’d like to someday.”

  “The classics are the best,” she said. “I’ve been collecting old videos for years.”

  Then she smiled triumphantly. “Salt tablets.”

  At first he thought she was talking about her next play on the Scrabble board. “I quadrupled the dose to retain water,” she explained.

  Then Bones got it. “That’ll give you five pounds of water weight.”

  “Just for weigh-in, then I’ll pee it away,” she said. “Chu Man may be smart, but I’m smarter. But don’t try to hide soluble tablets in the tank behind the toilet. Even waterproof bags leak.”

  Bones nodded. There was so much she could teach him.

  Alice twisted her hair into a Cinnabon on top of her head. “What is it about different body types shrinks don’t understand? It’s as if they want us all to look the same, like we should be pressed from the same mold. Seems a little Third Reich, if you ask me.”

  Bones knew what she meant. “Yeah.”

  “Have you ever seen a ballerina with an ounce of body fat?”

  “You’re the first real dancer I’ve met.”

  “A virgin.” She smiled again, teasing him.

  When she smiled at him like that it looked like a master had painted her. “The lighter we are—the higher we sail,” she said. “How else can our partners lift us?”

  She picked through the tiles and set G-I-S-E-L-L-E on the board. “This is the role that defines all classical ballerinas.”

  Nicole walked by sucking an orange wedge.

  “Completely lacking self-control,” Alice muttered.

  “No willpower,” Bones agreed.

  “At least we have clear goals.”

  He nodded. “No one can call us quitters.”

  Nicole pretended like she hadn’t heard them. “Bones,” she said, ripping pulp with her teeth. “Your shoe is leaking.”

  Bones shrugged, trying to act nonchalant.

  Nicole sauntered off.

  “I was wondering,” Alice said, “can you meet me in my room? Say in an hour?”

  He was ready, willing, and able—for whatever she wanted.

  Bones showered and changed into clean sweats. He sprayed Lard’s aftershave on his shirt, then changed his mind. He was in the middle of swapping shirts when Lard came in.

  “Thanks for sticking up for me,” Bones said. “But Elsie isn’t worth it.”

  “You can put up with some of the people some of the time”—Lard parked his lunchbox on his desk—“but not a domesticated ungulate.”

  Bones laughed. He’d called her a hoofed animal yet again. He went to the windowsill to check his shoe. Still wet.

  Nancy appeared in the doorway, a bottle of Ensure in one hand, and a plastic cup in the other. Bones tried mild surprise. “What’s up?”

  She shook the bottle and her head in unison before unscrewing the cap. “This is to make up for the milk and cereal you dumped at breakfast.”

  Busted!

  “How’d you know?”

  Nancy poured, measuring carefully. “Do you mean besides the trail you left?”

  Bones stepped backward, panic gnawing at him. “The milk I have for breakfast is nonfat,” he said urgently. “And fifty calories from Ensure is from fat.”

  “Sorry, Bones. You made the kind of choice that didn’t leave us with one.” Nancy handed him the cup. “Dr. Chu ordered four ounces.”

  “BUT THE SCALES ARE SCREWED UP!”

  It was handy having Alice’s room so close. Classical music filtered through the door, which was only open a few inches. Bones rapped softly, eased the door open, and knocked again.

  “I’ve been waiting,” Alice said.

  Bones stepped inside.

  Alice was sitting on the floor cutting strips of adhesive tape off a roll. Her hair was still in a shiny bun but now ribbons were woven in. It was the first time he’d seen her in pink tights. They were as sexy as her ripped pair.

  “This might seem like a crummy little hospital room,” she said with a warm smile. “And, of course, it is. But it’s also my studio while I’m stuck here, so I treat it like a temple. You know?”

  “Sure.”

  “Lard told me about Elsie,” she said. “I try to leave that kind of negative garbage outside.”

  He nodded again.

  Bones didn’t know why he was there or what to do with his hands. He shoved them in his pockets, playing with his gloves. Being alone with her like this was the closest he’d ever come to sex, even if they were both fully dressed.

  Alice slipped a pad over her toes. “Gel pads,” she explained. “I can’t afford to lose any more toenails. After a while they don’t grow back.” She put on a pointe shoe, winding the ribbon around her ankle. Then she tied a knot and tucked in the loose ends. “At least I don’t have bunions.”

  If she did, he’d kiss them away.

  “With auditions coming up it’s more important than ever that my technique is solid,” she said, standing up. Her skirt moved restlessly around her thighs while she showed him how to use her video camera.

  “Does Dr. Chu know you have this?”

  “Yeah, a small concession.” She shrugged. “Now try to keep it steady. Vertical, on my whole body.”

  “No problem,” he said.

  “You ready?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Bones hit record and watched through the viewfinder in wonderment and admiration as she defied the laws of physics. Her spine was straight as a shish kabob skewer, but when she bent her knees, she appeared to grow taller.

  “Pliés,” she explained the exercise. “Think of ballet as a play, but instead of learning lines, I memorize steps. I still have to act though, only as a dancer I use my whole body.”

  Bones thought about her actor parents. “Has your mom or dad been in any movies I’d know?” he asked, still filming.

  “They’re not famous, if that’s what you mean. Except for being temperamental. Yelling and screaming to get their way or perfecting the cold shoulder. More of a cliché than a stereotype.”

  Alice balanced easily on one foot. �
��In ballet the audience sees one thing—the dancer. But they hear something else—the music.” Her free foot made quick little flicks. “Dégagés,” she said.

  Bones squinted through the lens. “Sounds like a foreign language.”

  “It means to disengage. Like this, see? My foot releases from the floor. The terms are French, like the kiss.”

  Bones was grateful to be behind the camera. He wasn’t used to this kind of attention. And it was definitely getting his attention below the waist.

  “The audience brings its own energy, and that creates a whole new message,” she said breathlessly, rising on her toes and turning gracefully. “I’m not just training to be a ballerina—I’m training my body to do whatever’s asked of it.”

  Bones was lost in the sweat on her exquisitely sweating body. He was jealous of her sweat. He wanted to be her sweat. Even through the viewfinder he could see her ribcage pressing against her leotard like a musical instrument. He wanted to play her long into the night.

  “What’s going on in here?”

  Bones nearly dropped the camera, turning to see Unibrow’s massive head plugging the doorway.

  Alice faced the brute, hands on defiant hips. “Did you even knock?”

  “No exercising until—”

  “I’m not exercising.” She cut him off with a glare that could take down a gladiator. “I’m rehearsing.”

  “Not without permission from Dr. Chu.” Unibrow glared right back. He was nothing but a no-neck jerk who thought he was better than them because he went home at night and slept on his own grimy sheets. “You know the rules better than anyone.”

  With that he left.

  “I’d be so out of here if I had someplace to go.” Alice worked pins from her bun, shaking out a tumble of strawberry blond. “The upcoming audition—that’s my ticket.” She poked his shoulder. “Come on, let’s look at the video.”

  They sat side by side on the bed, her head tilted close to his. Escaped strands of hair brushed against him. It was amazing, more amazing than anything he’d ever felt. He watched her eighty-something pound presence on the screen. It was everywhere at once. “Amazing.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me I was looking down?” She scolded him in such a way he had to sit on his hands to keep from shoving her backward on the bed and kissing her face. “That totally messes up my alignment. And look at that lousy extension.”