Girl Through Glass by Sari Wilson

basket on the counter, a hodgepodge of well-used curiosities. Estate sale specials. I pick an old knife from the basket and run my palm along the edge of the blade. It surprises me when my hand comes away with a long cut. I watch the blood wind its way into the little wrinkles in my palm. I rip off a sheet ofpaper towel and wad it into my hand. Staunch the inevitable—but for how long? There is a universe of deception behind one secret. Not all secrets see the light of day. My life is a testament to that.
    Why am I drawn to the illicit, the secretive? It’s like a curse I can’t shake, no matter how far I’ve come. What have these secrets cost me? A normal life, and intimacy of a typical kind. There is no doubt something still wrong with me, deep down, something that this letter has unearthed. Here I am, one secret at my heels, another blossoming before me. It’s absurd. I am absurd.
    Holding my hand, I head to the bathroom to look for gauze.
    I have to go to New York. There may still be people there—people from long ago, another era—who can help me put the pieces back together. There’s someone in particular I have to see—if he’s still there. I hesitate, then go to Facebook and, with my throbbing, bandaged hand, poke around. I am looking for Felicia, one of the few girls I used to dance with whom I’ve kept in touch with (at least sort of). I find her page: there are some posed photos of her in exotic locales, sunglasses and smiles, her black hair pulled back. But no new posts for six months, the last one a “like” for a salon. Still, I message her and say I am coming to town. “Any interest,” I ask, hoping I sound good-humored, wry in my own way, “in putting up an old friend?” (Was the word friend the right one?)

CHAPTER 14
NOVEMBER 1977
    The performance will take place the weekend before Christmas: Saturday, December 17. There’s only a month left of rehearsal time, and one weekend is lost because of Thanksgiving weekend. They’ve just finished another rehearsal, but there is still so much to do—especially on the lifts.
    Christopher and Mira gather their things silently. Out of the corner of her eye, Mira watches him fold his leg warmers and pack them in his bag. His T-shirt is wet with sweat and his face pale with effort. He pulls on a blue sweatshirt and takes a comb out of his bag and runs it through his damp hair. Then he uncaps a stick of something and walks up to the mirror. He pulls his high bangs back again and gazes at his forehead, rubs his fingers lightly over the skin. Then, carefully, with quick, sure strokes, he draws a dark line beneath one eye.
    â€œNice job,” Christopher says, without looking at her.
    He has switched to the other eye.
    â€œThanks,” she says, unable to look away. Again, those words: there is something wrong with him.
    â€œBut we still need to work on the lift,” he says. “You’re still holding back. You have to trust me, trust that I’ll be there.”
    She pulls her leg warmers off, tosses them in her bag. The cooler air slides over her shins. She knows what he means. She hasn’t been able to recapture that feeling of abandon that she had the first day they rehearsed the lift—to close her eyes and just jump as if she were launching herself from the diving board into the deep end of the pool. Trust . Yes, that is the operative word. But she’s not sure that it is her fault. When Ms. Clement is not watching, he is cavalier, he is sloppy. He doesn’t plié enough, so that when she runs and leaps into him, it feels for a moment like a collision rather than a lift. She can feel his effort but it comes with a hitch, too late. Once he almost dropped her, she knows it, though he pretended it was just his jockstrap that had come loose. But can she say this to him, to a boy, a prince from ABT?
    The truth is that she is disappointed in the difficult work of