He leans forward and looks up at me.
I feel my face get hot. I’m afraid my makeup will run. He doesn’t say anything, just stares.
“Hi,” I say, not sure why I’m even talking to him. In the ninth grade, I lost all my friends when Sei-Jin turned on me. Everyone disappeared. Even him. Especially him.
“Hi,” he mumbles back, rubbing his sleepy eyes.
“What are you doing here?” I say, taking another sip of tea to fill in the space between his delayed responses. I wonder if he’s skipping school. I wonder if he’s changed.
“Sei-Jin,” he says. “Supposed to watch now, I guess.”
I try to make more small talk and realize that this is the first time I’ve actually spoken to a boy from outside the conservatory in a long time.
“Are you going to finally join ballet class with us? Remember when you used to try to do pirouettes in your basement?” I laugh, surprised at myself. For a second, I feel like I’m back in my old life. The one with friends and people who wanted to be around me. The one where I had inside jokes and memories and traditions. The one where I made room alongside ballet for hanging out, marathon chats, and adventures outside of school.
He kind of smiles. His cheeks are fuller, and there’s a touch of stubble that wasn’t there before. It makes my breath catch, with regret or maybe something else.
A throat clears behind me. Jayhe squirms and looks away from me, like I’m not there anymore, like he wasn’t talking to me at all. The tiny connection is lost. The feeling of my old life disappears in an instant like a popped bubble.
“Not so pretty this morning, are we, June?” Sei-Jin says, pursing her perfect pink lips.
She startles me. She sounds the way a snake might, if it could speak. The other girls twitter behind her, too scared to say anything themselves, but happy to look me over, laugh in my face, whisper in fast Korean, and point at my body like it’s a dartboard for their own insecurities. The new Chinese girl is on the edge of the pack, arms crossed, lost in translation, but still finding a way to nonverbally participate.
“Oh, you don’t look that bad,” I say in response, proud for a half second that I came up with a comeback. Sei-Jin steps closer. I can smell her breakfast and make out the scent of that same soft pink lipstick she’s worn since middle school. Trying to be like Bette.
When we first moved to the high school dorm floor, Sei-Jin and I were inseparable, jeol chin. Best friends. She was the sister I never had. But at the start of tenth grade it all changed. That was when she started a rumor about me, forced the RAs to move me out of our shared room, and never spoke to me again. It was really early on a morning like this one, a cold fall day, and we’d been sitting at the twin vanities her mom had bought for our room—just like the ones in the American Ballet Company dressing room. Sei-Jin’s mom was nice enough to get me one even though my mom couldn’t afford it. The bulbs cast a warm glow on our faces.
Sei-Jin opened her makeup case. “You should start wearing more makeup,” she’d said, removing a blush, lipstick, and powder. “Especially to ballet class.”
“I’ll just sweat it all off,” I said. I was so clueless then.
“Real ballerinas dance with it on, without a drop of sweat on their faces.” Leaning in close, she took my chin and pulled me into the light, like she was one of the makeup artists that made us up before our tiny girl parts in the company ballets. “You ever notice that?”
I didn’t answer.
“Close your eyes,” she said. I obeyed. I always obeyed.
She brushed the powder across my face, the strokes like butterfly wings fluttering against my skin. Then she used her soft fingertips to add blush to my cheeks, and rubbed a waxy stick of lipstick on my mouth. “These colors will hide your yellowy undertones. My mother always says you don’t want your skin to be the color of a dead chicken wing.” Her voice was full of wisdom. “This type of palette is best for us.” And I was in awe of the way she used words like undertones and palette, words I’d never heard before.
She wiped a smaller brush across my eyelids. “This will create a shadow. Like you have a crease along your lid. It’ll make your eyes appear less slanted. The Russians don’t like our eyes.” She set the brush down.
“I don’t care if they don’t like it,” I said, hating that so many Asian girls go through surgeries to change their eyelids’ shapes. That Sei-Jin wanted to be one of them.
“Oh, yes you do. Everyone cares what they think. Even though it’s disgusting. Too hard not to care. You won’t get the things you want if you don’t,” she said, rubbing her fingertip near the corners of my eyes. “Look,” she instructed.
I opened my eyes, unsure about what I was going to see. A different, softer girl gazed back at me. Sei-Jin leaned her face close to mine, her eyes big and doelike.
“See? You look different,” she said.
I felt different. Special. I felt like a soloist or principal in the company. Not like myself, who couldn’t seem to do anything effortlessly. I tried to say thank you, but I couldn’t find the words.
She lifted my chin again.
“You look very pretty,” she said, her voice just a whisper. She stared at me, and a weird energy stretched between us. She leaned in close. I saw the two tiny freckles on her nose and felt her breath on my face. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t pull back. Then she kissed me. Her pink lips pressed into mine. Soft, warm, and strange. I’d never been kissed before.
Her eyes closed. I kept mine open. Not sure what to do. I watched her eyebrows lift.
She tried to part my lips with her tongue.
I pulled away. “What are you doing?” I said. My heart lodged in my throat. The noise of it thumped in my ears.
Her nose crinkled, and a deep blush climbed from her chest up her neck and to her face. “Uh, sorry.”
She turned her head to her mirror and took a lipstick from her bag. Her shaky hand applied more to her lips. I wiped the gooey paste from my mouth on a tissue, some of it mine and some of it hers. I watched sweat appear on the back of her neck. I wanted to say something. That it was okay. That she was my best friend. That I didn’t know why she kissed me, but I would be here to help her figure it out. I looked at the clock. It was almost time for class. I got up to leave. Sei-Jin didn’t move to follow me. She sat, transfixed by her own image in the mirror. I didn’t know what to say.
I tried to wait for her to come. She didn’t. I rushed to the door.
“E-Jun,” she called out.
I turned around. She just looked at me.
“Tell them I’m sick, okay?” she said, her eyes brimming with tears.