His hand covers his mouth. “But—”
“I want to get back at her.” A cold tingle shoots up my spine.
“Why would you just believe Cassie like that?”
“Why wouldn’t I? What does she gain from lying to me?”
His eyes get all big. “She’s just—”
“What? The same stuff happened to the both of us. She’s looking out for me.”
“The Cassie I knew, she was just—different. So I wouldn’t—”
“Well, so am I this year. I’ve changed, too. Are you going to help me or what?”
“But I love the old Gigi.”
“The old Gigi was weak, and too nice.” I jostle his arm and try to get him to laugh. “Come up to the café with me. I need to see if Sei-Jin’s there. And I need vinegar.” I drag him into the elevator and up to the third floor. The room bursts with laughter and chatter and moving bodies.
“She’s over there.” Will nods his head to the right while he pretends to look over the makeshift fruit stand they’ve set up for us.
I look and see Sei-Jin and the rest of the Asian girls at a table.
I put a hand on Will’s shoulder. “Perfect. I’ll be right back. Watch her.” I walk to the doors that lead to the café’s kitchen. I ask one of the workers for vinegar to add to a foot soak. He gives me a small bottle. I thank him, tuck it under my ballet warm-ups, and rejoin Will. “Do you think she’ll be in here a while?”
“She just got her food.”
I smile. We go to Studio B, where our ballet class will start at two p.m. The studio is empty aside from Viktor warming up on the piano. He doesn’t look up. I scan the bags, looking for Sei-Jin’s. They’re all official conservatory bags embroidered with the school’s logo and our names. Except for hers. It’s bubblegum pink and covered in K-pop stickers and buttons. I drape the bag over my shoulder like it’s my own. We slip out of the studio and into the unisex staff bathroom near the elevator banks. Will locks the door behind us.
“What are you going to do?” He drums his navy-blue-painted fingernails on the sink.
I smile at him and unzip Sei-Jin’s bag. It’s a jumble of pointe shoes, seaweed packs, makeup, leotards, and tights. I fish out three pairs of pointe shoes—one brand-new and the other two worn in. “Pull the stopper up to close the sink drain.”
Will does it. His smile fills up the small bathroom. I place Sei-Jin’s shoes in the sink. I uncap the bottle of vinegar and pour the sour-smelling liquid all over them. The pale pink darkens as the vinegar seeps in, like a withering rose. The pungent scent mingles with the sweaty, stale odor of the older pointe shoes and erases the clean, promise-filled smell of the brand-new pair.
Will covers his nose and I try not to vomit. I toss the empty bottle in the trash bin, covering it with paper towels and bits of toilet paper.
“She’s going to be so mad.” Will examines the shoes. “Those were perfectly broken in. She’ll have nothing for class.”
“I hope she’s pissed. This isn’t nearly as bad as what she did to me.”
“And she’ll never see it coming!”
I smile to myself, ignoring the tiny pinch of guilt that rushes through me. A tiny voice inside me whispers: You’re not a mean girl.
“Yes, I am,” I say.
“Yes, what?” Will asks.
“Oh, nothing.”
“I should do something like this, too,” Will says as we wait for the vinegar to completely soak into the satin so it doesn’t drip.
“To who?”
He flushes pink. “Remember, I told you, last year that I had a sort of boyfriend?”
“What’s a sort of boyfriend?” I want to ask who, but can sense that would be the wrong question right now.
“I dunno.” He shrugs. “I thought I was with someone, and then it all disappeared. He won’t return my texts. Won’t talk to me here at school.”
“Well, did you all have the talk?”
“The talk?”
“Yeah, where you decide if you’re together or not.”
“It didn’t really work that way. It was more casual than that.” He fusses with his hair, avoiding eye contact.
“Then what was it like?” I lift one pointe shoe up and shake it a little.
“We’d hang out. He’d flirt with me hard-core. Find ways to touch me playfully. We’d stretch together.”
I don’t want to tell him that this doesn’t sound like a relationship.
He continues: “We did stuff for each other. A lot of stuff. Like I’d write his English papers for him ’cause he was bad at it. And I—I’m so mad he just dropped me.”
I put the vinegar-soaked pointe shoes back into Sei-Jin’s bag, and I can already see the wetness seeping into everything else. “Well, I’ll help you think of something. Let’s go. Almost time for class.”
Will eases out of the bathroom first. I count to twenty and follow. No one notices as I zip through the lobby and back to the studio. I drop Sei-Jin’s bag right where it was before. As I watch the others shuffle in—Sei-Jin among them—I fill with satisfaction.
Of course Alec’s house has a cherry-red door. I stand marveling at it and running my fingers over the smooth surface. The Lucas home looks like something out of a movie, with little candles in each window and wrought-iron bars arched into beautiful shapes. We’re here for his kid sister Sophie’s birthday, and I’m nervous. It’s my first time visiting, even though Alec and I have been together almost a year now.
“C’mon,” he says, pulling me inside.
It’s probably the most expensive home I’ve ever been in. The entire block feels so different from the one I live on in San Francisco. Mama used to tell me that our house was made of blue-frosted gingerbread, with its pale yellow panes and sky-colored trim and little red staircase.
“Welcome to our home, Gigi.” Mr. Lucas greets us in the foyer. A sparkling chandelier casts shadows on the hardwood floors and there’s a huge flower arrangement on a table. Tasteful black-and-white family portraits line the wallpapered hall, and shelves hold trinkets and knickknacks that remind me of a museum. I cross my arms over my chest so I don’t accidentally knock anything over.
Alec unwraps my arms and slips his hand in mine. He gives me a quick tour of the main floor—the living room, den, his father’s home office, and the kitchen. Mama would say just breathing would track dirt into this house. She’d hate it.
His room is on the third floor. It’s clean and lavender scented, with white sheets and white walls and even a white wood desk. It doesn’t feel like Alec—at least not like the Alec I know. I feel completely out of place here.
“I have something for you.” He presses me into the wall and kisses me. His dad could walk in the room at any second. But I kiss him even longer, just to feel the tiny beat of excitement. He pulls away, reaching for a wrapped box on his desk. “A little welcome-back gift I’ve been saving.”
“Origami?”
“Look and see.”
I unwrap it slowly, instead of tearing into it like I want to. The wrapping paper is the expensive kind, glossy and thick with cutting lines and instructions on its underside. Mama doesn’t believe in spending money on such things, so she always wrapped everything in newspaper, then painted her own patterns over stories about wars and broken traffic lights. I always saved the wrapping, decorating the inside of my closet with her newspaper Picassos.