chapter 2
dancing in my head (May)
music: Maurice Ravel
So the weeks creep by, and now it’s my birthday—May the fourth be with you. Or something like that. Anyway, Mom invited a few friends over this evening to try and cheer me up—as if that’s possible. Looking down at my birthday cake, I feel my heart melting away, like wax dripping from my fourteen birthday candles onto my carrot cake’s buttercream frosting. All the love and excitement I should be enjoying has poured out of me like water, leaving me feeling empty and abandoned.
One of Mom’s friends says she would love to hear me play something for my birthday. Obediently I go to the piano, sit down and take a deep breath. I choose Ravel’s Waltz and start playing, feeling the rhythms carry me away, pulsing through my whole body. And in my mind I’m dancing in an enchanted ballroom of sparkling, shimmering music.
Mom and her friends walk up to the piano and listen. They smile and sway with the music, totally appreciating what I’m playing. I feel my spirit flowing with the melodies as I look up at everyone’s masked smiling eyes. I smile back, but half way through I feel Ravel’s colorful harmonies turning grey as my smile stiffens and I just want to get through the piece and be done. The problem isn’t Ravel, obviously. It’s Alice, a teenage girl living her own lie, pretending to be happy on her supposedly “happy birthday.”
Finally the party ends, and everyone wishes me the best. The “experts” say we can’t hug our friends, so I elbow bump them goodbye and they blow me air kisses on their way out the door. They’re all so kind and thoughtful, yet smiling through the entire evening made me a bit queasy. Now that it’s over, I kiss Mom goodnight and go outside to stretch out face down on the cool grass next to my oak tree. Lifting my shirt to expose my stomach, I press up against the cold earth as my nausea slowly flows out out of me. I turn over to watch the moon rise and the stars wink into existence. Surrounded by the soft whirr of pulsing crickets, I gaze at the pale yellow moon, which lights up my backyard and the peaks of the distant Flatirons. I try to drink it all in, but there’s no pleasure in it.
If I could just crawl under the covers and be bedridden and hidden forever, it’d be better for everyone. They’d all be rid of the lying, creepy Alice I’ve become. And honestly, I wish she would disappear too.