Jesse’s eyes were on my back, but I turned more fully away from him and walked alone outside the studio. My feet felt funny, lighter, and were leading me in a different direction from Jesse’s. I carried nothing but my dance bag, and my shoulders felt light. I tried to get the first train I heard screeching into the station. Missed it. Another fifteen minutes pacing the platform. What in the world was I doing taking a train? Well, there I was. Then, for no reason at all, I started smiling to myself and smiling at other waiting passengers. I was learning new steps just pacing there and feeling the vibrations underfoot of the coming train. Truth is, I was practicing for the time I’d dance solo or not dance at all. And I had nothing at all to fear from fire.

For two days I cleaned my apartment myself. And when I returned to the studio, Lord, our names had been posted.

Lonny

Lonny

Three weeks it took to get out of that fucking hospital. Three weeks of laying up looking at the blank pastel-green ceiling and the same four walls. Then another couple of weeks after that before I could take a shit without holding onto a guardrail because of the pain, or stop taking the fucking laxative to soften the shit so it wouldn’t tear the lining of my ass and so the muscles in it could heal. All those weeks of bed and doctors and television. At least I had better food than the other inmates. And I didn’t have to work on some bullshit farm for boys upstate. But they finally had me transferred there when we lost the trial. I guess I was the lucky one: hospital and upstate reform school. The others got sent to different prisons all around the state. The lawyer said the judge was easy on me ’cause I was the youngest and didn’t have a record. And the jury believed me. I was guilty of being an accomplice, they said. But not of murder. So by the time I got to the reform school I had already done time in jail waiting for trial, and time in the hospital waiting for my ass to heal. When I got upstate there wasn’t much to do except read and go to a few classes and do a few chores. I was taking mechanics training for a job when I got out because I knew something about cycles from hanging around the garage in Chelsea.