Authors: Allison Rushby

Shooting Stars (7 page)

BOOK: Shooting Stars

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“There’s Katrina. Want to meet her?” Ned spots a thin dark- haired girl sitting at a table in the middle of the room and gives her a wave. Katrina waves back.

“Sure. I guess.” I gulp then, realizing this is it. That I’m here to work, Ned’s here to . . . retreat and that there’s no more weaseling my way out of it. I’m in the thick of it. Time to get moving and then get out before my cover’s blown.

“Are you coming?” Ned is already halfway over to Katrina’s table. He turns to beckon me onward.

“Sorry,” I say as I hurry over. “Just thinking about something.”

Ned nods. “That happens a lot here. Hey, Katrina,” he says as we reach her table. “Look who I found . . .” Katrina glances at me, looking slightly puzzled.

“Your roommate,” Ned adds.

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“Really?” Katrina stands up now, which seems to take forever, because there’s no doubt about it: there is quite a lot of Katrina.

“Do you think they made us roomies as some kind of joke?” I shake my head when I fi nally take all of her in. Seriously, she has to be over six feet tall, easily.

“Well . . . ,” Ned starts ner vous ly, giving me a strange look.

“It’s okay, Ned,” Katrina says, and waves a hand. “I’m sure she’s come to grips with the fact that she’s short, just as I’m coming to grips with the fact that I’m . . . a baby giraffe.

Wait, make that a teenage giraffe.”

“Oh . . .” I look from Katrina to Ned and back again. Katrina must be here because of some kind of body issue. “Sorry,” I say, “I didn’t mean to—”

“Please,” she sits back down again. “It’s fi ne. How’s the weather up there? Which basketball team do you play for?

Guess you don’t need to stand on your toes like the other dancers! There you go, it’s all out of the way.” She laughs now. “See? We’re all good.”

“Right,” I say. I think she’s joking.

“Ned, go and get something to eat. You’re making me ner vous standing there and twitching like that.”

“Okay,” Ned tells her, and heads for the salad bar.

Katrina lets out a quick laugh again as Ned scurries away, and I fi nally see that she really was joking. She pulls out the chair beside her and her wide- set blue eyes move to 58

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mine. Her hand shoots out. “Now, I don’t think we’ve properly met. Hi, I’m Katrina and I’m tall. And you’re?”

“Jo,” I say with a ner vous smile. “And I’m short.” I take the seat she’s offering. I think I’m going to like straightforward Katrina, and I hope that’s not going to turn out to be a problem.

★ ★ ★

“This isn’t bad,” I poke my fork at my loaded salad bowl, complete with bacon bits (Ned had served me a scoop, and I’d barely been able to croak out a “thanks”). I’d made my way back to Katrina’s table and had been chatting with her, acutely aware of Ned’s presence following me, when someone else had waved him over to their table and he’d wound up sitting with them instead.

Well, phew. For now, that is. As far as I’m concerned, the less contact I have with him the better.

On a, um, professional level, that is.

Oh, man. Pull yourself together, Jo. I almost want to slap myself into line. Yes, the boy is good- looking. Yes, the boy is charming. But you are here to work. Remember Melissa.

Remember your paycheck. Remember school!

“Sorry?” Katrina leans forward now. “Did you say something?”

Also remember: no more muttering to yourself like a crazy person.

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I shake my head slightly. “I was just sort of wondering why everyone’s here.” I glance around the room. “Am I allowed to ask that?”

Katrina takes a swig from her water bottle. “Of course!

It’ll all come out in group, anyway.”

Oh yes. Group.

“I’m not sure what Brad told you,” she continues, “but we have our individual sessions with our assigned counselors and we also have group.”

“Where, I’m guessing, I get to talk about my problems in front of everyone?”

She takes another swig. “You sure do.”

“Sounds peachy.”

“That’s what I thought at fi rst, too. But you’ll get used to it. Unless your problem is something hideously embarrassing. Compulsive public nudity maybe? Hey, the lawn would be perfect for streaking! You’ve come to the right place!”

I abandon my fork and wipe my hands. “Nothing like that. No streaking here. Anyway, it’s too cold at night in Boston. I’m a California girl. Where are you from?”

“Chicago. New York. I’m not sure anymore.”

“You’re not sure?” I don’t understand Katrina’s meaning.

As she gives me a long look, I shove another forkful of gourmet salad into my mouth. Mmm. I could get used to this.

Way classier than our school cafeteria, where the sloppy joe still reigned supreme.

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“You look half- starved,” Katrina shakes her head, going off on a tangent. “Don’t they feed you at home?” I almost choke. “Not like this. Anyway, you were saying?”

“Oh, right. The thing is, my parents live in Chicago, but I was at school, ballet school, in New York. But now . . . well, I’m not sure where I live.”

“You don’t like ballet anymore?”

Katrina waves a hand elegantly in a long move that spans from her head to her toes. “I think the real problem is that ballet doesn’t like me anymore.”

★ ★ ★

When we’ve both fi nished lunch, Katrina checks her watch.

“One o’clock. We’ve got another half hour or so. Have you had a look around yet?”

I shake my head.

“Come on.” She twists her water bottle closed and scrapes her chair back, standing up. “We’ve just got time for a quick tour before the afternoon session.”

I push my chair back as well, half wanting to know what the afternoon session is all about and half not wanting to know. Is that group? Or something else? In the end, I decide not to ask. It’s going to happen either way.

We ditch our trays when we leave, and I follow Katrina as she breezes through the wide glass doors, then across an expanse of wooden fl oor. She pauses at a bulletin board, where she runs her fi nger down a timetable, nods, then continues 61

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on her way, exiting through some even larger sliding glass doors. Soon enough, we’re outside. I’m relieved. I’m not used to being cooped up indoors for too long.

I take a deep breath of the clean, smog- free air and look around me. Trees, more trees, grass, more grass, and a whole lot of blue sky now that the clouds seem to be passing. It’s nice. And I’m sure if I had a whole lot of problems, this would be a great place to work them all out. Not that I’m problem-free, I think as I take a quick look around for Ned, who’s nowhere in sight.

Crunch, crunch, crunch. I wake up from my daydream to hear the sound of gravel. “Coming?” Katrina waves from where she’s started out ahead of me. I nod, take a deep breath of the pine- fi lled air, and jog to catch up.

We walk alongside the long glass front of the building and I try to peer inside. There seem to be a number of very similar rooms one after the other without a whole lot in them other than beanbags, chairs, and whiteboards.

“Okay, so these are all the group rooms. You’ll have a session in there once every day, as well as your individual session with your counselor.”

I nod. Brad had told me this on the way here from the airport. I still have no idea what my big issue is going to be, but I fi gure I’ll just make it up as I go along.

“These are the counselors’ offi ces,” Katrina continues as we walk past some smaller rooms. “And just down there is the pool.”

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I take a few more steps and go over to peer in through one of the large windows. “Wow! It’s huge.”

“A couple people swim laps every day. Do you like swimming?”

I nod. “I love to swim laps.” That was the one thing I actually liked about school— the pool. You can’t think about anything much while you’re swimming laps. And you can’t take photos of anyone, either.

“Ned swims every day,” Katrina says. “You should let him know you’re interested.”

I glance at her quickly. “Um, yeah. Okay. Maybe I will.” I lean into the window again and pretend to be veeeeery interested in the pool. Water! Black lines! Concrete! Seriously, it’s as if I’ve never seen a pool before. But there’s only so long you can pretend to be interested in a pool, and when I fi nally step back again, Katrina is giving me a look.

“You’re not starstruck, are you?”

Breathe, breathe, breathe. In and out, in and out. “Starstruck?” I squeak, and then cough. “What do you mean?” I manage to say in a more normal voice.

“What do I mean? With Ned, of course.”

I wave a hand. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m from LA, remember? There are stars on every corner there.” I neglect to mention that I hunt them down to every one of those corners.

Katrina gives me a shrewd look, her long arms crossed.

“Well, good. Because there are already plenty of people who 63

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are weird about Ned being

here. It would be weird if you

went . . . weird about it, too.”

I nod slowly. “That sounds like a whole lot of weird.”

“It is. And Ned’s a good guy. I don’t think he needs any more weird right now. He has enough as it is.”

“Right.” Guilt, guilt, guilt. Because I’m not here to cause him any trouble, oh no, not me.

“I guess we should head back,” Katrina says, and turns on her heel. “You’re in my group— B. Same as Ned.” I’m in Ned’s group, huh? I think of Melissa for a second.

How . . . not very weird at all.

★ ★ ★

Katrina takes a few steps before she stops. “Just down there is the lake.” She points. “There’re a few kayaks and canoes and things. Some benches. It’s a nice place to sit and think.

I . . . go there sometimes.” She glances down at me slightly ner vous ly when she says this.

I pause for a second, not wanting to pry (me! who knew?), but something tells me she wouldn’t have said anything at all about “thinking” if she wasn’t open to being asked. “So you can’t . . . do ballet . . . be a ballerina . . . anymore? Sorry, I don’t know the right terms.”

Katrina bites her lip and glances toward the lake again.

“No one’s actually said that. It’s more a combination of me knowing my body isn’t ideal, my body and brain not 64

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communicating anymore, and generally losing interest. It used to be so easy. And now it’s so hard . . . I just think I might not want it enough to fi ght the battles I’d have to fi ght.” She turns back to me. “Does that make any sense?” I nod. “Sure.”

“And that’s why I’m here, I guess. To come to grips with that. To realize my life isn’t going to turn out exactly as I’d planned it. To think about what comes next.”

“You sound like you’re taking it all pretty well.” Katrina laughs. “Don’t worry, I’m not. It’s just that I’ve been here a week. I’ve already had my share of tears, tantrums, and why- me’s. And it’s not like I’m alone. There are plenty of failed ballerinas out there. Ballet is cruel like that.” Huh. I didn’t know that. But there you go. To me, it looks like nothing more than a whole lot of painful prancing around on your toes. “So what do these ex- ballerinas tend to do?”

“All kinds of things,” she says, shrugging slightly. “Some of them stop completely, some do things like run ballet schools.

I know one who was injured and now teaches yoga.”

“Is that what you want to do? Something like teaching yoga?”

Katrina shakes her head. “I don’t know. There is one thing I’ve been considering . . .”

“What’s that?”

“Well, I’ve always really loved Pilates. I’m thinking maybe something with Pilates might be a good option for me.” 65

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“That’s where they use that rack, right?” I’d taken a few shots of a star once at a glass- fronted Pilates studio. It all looked pretty painful to me.

Katrina throws her head back toward the blue sky and laughs. “You make it sound like torture.” Hey, if the shoe fi ts, I think, remembering that device stretching out the poor star till it looked like her thin limbs might just snap.

“I think I’d like that. Learning more about Pilates. Maybe even becoming an instructor, or opening my own studio,” Katrina says. “It’s something to consider, anyway.” There’s a pause then, in which I start to worry that she’s going to ask me about my own (non ex is tent) problems, but she doesn’t. Instead, she checks her watch again. “Oh, we’d really better go. I think Brad hinted that we might be going out somewhere this afternoon.”

“Out?” I frown and Katrina laughs.

“Yes, out. Sometimes they let us out from behind the bars, you know. I think we’re off to some kind of workshop or something. Anyway, better head back to the foyer and fi nd out. That’s where we meet in the afternoons, after lunch. In the foyer.”

I actively decide not to think about how exhausted my body is feeling. After all, I’m used to exhaustion— it’s my everyday operating system.

“Come on,” Katrina says with a wave and, with that, we’re off.

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BOOK: Shooting Stars

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