Warm, dry clothes and stomach full of a well-balanced cafeteria buffet did help stabilize me a bit as I sank down into my dorm-standard desk chair and tried to psych myself up to make the call.

The simple powerplay of her making me call her—to have me schedule my own lecture—was not lost on me. She knew that I knew what we needed to talk about. The email. We both saw it. One of the conditions for letting me leave for another city across the state to go to school was that she would have full access to my university email address. She would need to be able to see every notice I received, and know what was going on on campus. It had seemed like a very small price to pay back then, but it was surprisingly intrusive in practice.

Okay. Just do it.

Hailey would be in class for another hour. If I wanted privacy, it had to be right now. No more putting it off.

I opened my contacts and scrolled down to Mom. Her posed smile, not intended for anyone specific, grinned back at me. A cold, professional smile. A carefully crafted exterior. I pushed the call button and held my breath, my fingers clenching the edge of my desk.

“Hello?” she answered, as though she was unaware as to who was calling her—or, if she didn’t know it was her daughter, why she was being called. As though I would be calling over anything else.

“Hey mom. I got your message to call about the email from school. I know it sounds bad, but I can work on it. It’s just a warning, not like a final notice, they didn’t kick me out of the program, I just have to work harder.” I was rambling, trying desperately to take control of the narrative, explain myself before she could eek out an ‘I told you so’.

“Yes, the email.” She let the words drift out slowly, like cigarette smoke from barely parted lips. It was as if she hadn’t heard anything I said.

“It’s really not as bad as they made it sound, it’s just a warning. It’s automated. I bet a lot of people got them because the mid-term grades just came in.”

“It doesn’t sound very good. It sounds like you’re failing, or near failing most of your courses. How hard could Contemporary Literature be? Really, Radley, it’s just reading the kinds of books all the kids have these days, right? Twilight? The other one? All those books with films. What could possibly be going wrong with that?”

“It’s not Twilight…”

“That’s not the point.”

“And it’s more than just reading books. We’re doing Jose Saramago right now, Blindness. It’s pretty difficult, you know, draining, emotionally. And you have to analyse them, think about historical context, allegories, implications, it’s not just reading.”

I hadn’t even realized how much respect I had for that course until I had to defend it. I really should have been trying harder. I should have let myself feel that passionate about it the whole time. Why was I hiding? Why was I half-assing everything? Why was I afraid to care?

“Blindness… that one has a movie, right. With… oh what’s his name? Ruffalo?”

“The movie is different. It doesn’t have any of the narrative extras or the moral questions,” I could feel her rolling her eyes. It was no use. “They know if you just watch the movie, mom. Then you fail.”

“Is that what you did? Is that why you’re failing?”

“No.”

There was a long pause where neither of us seemed to know how to proceed.

“Are you planning on coming home, then?” she asked, as if it were a new conversation entirely.

“Maybe for Thanksgiving.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“I know. No, I’m planning on staying here and doing what I was chosen to do. Dance.”

“There’s no point in paying all that money for school if the only thing you’re getting out of it is dancing around. You can dance without a degree, and you can get a degree in something that will get a job that pays actual money.”

“I have a job.”

“A real job, not that coffee place. And I’m talking about your future. You know dad and I won’t be around forever. You need to get yourself set up to take care of yourself. I just want you to be stable, to have a good life, and worry about having fun when that’s taken care of.”

I froze. I couldn’t catch my breath even though I was sitting still. I knew she came from a good place. I knew she wanted what was best for me. I felt guilty every time I thought about how much this place costs and every time I got that feeling that I wasn’t good enough to be here, I thought about how that money must be being wasted on me. I focused all of my energy on not crying during this damned phone call.

When she realized I wasn’t going to respond, she continued, “I know dance is important to you. I really want to support you, but it just doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen honey. Not many people get to follow their dreams. I…” she hesitated. I thought I heard a sniffle. “I wanted to give you the best chance to be one of those people, but if it isn’t going to happen, it just isn’t going to happen. Your father and I were talking and I think you should come home.”

Come home.

Images of the small town came to mind: isolated from all sense of hope and progress, filled to the brim with churches and farmland, and a dying elderly population that just didn’t ever assimilate to the real world. The place didn’t even have a grocery store, they celebrated for years that they finally got a tiny little convenience store on the corner. Now they wouldn’t have to drive twenty minutes to get a bag of potato chips or a can of soup. That was their idea of progress.

I couldn’t go back.

If I ever hoped to make a career out of dancing at all, I could not do it from there.

“Can you give me until the end of the semester? The email said that I had until then to pull up my grades and stay in the program. Dancers from our program go on to work on great projects. It’s a respected program, it could open a lot of doors for me.”

“I’ll see you at Thanksgiving.”

“Okay.”

I bit my lip. I was shaking all over.

“Goodbye, I love you.”

“Love you.”

----------------------------------------

Grabbing my notebook and flipping it to a random empty page, I started scrawling stream-of-consciousness to reign myself in. A list.

Lists were one of my vices, a way to drown myself in everything I need to do, want to do, what order to do them, how to do them, and really just a way to put things off. This time, I needed something to channel all of this nervous energy into or I was going to explode. It was stacking up as more of a pros and cons list of what was about to happen than a to-do list.

I no longer make my parents proud.

It was the first thing I wrote. I didn’t even think it before it came out of me. I didn’t let the shock of seeing it spelled out like that slow me down, though. I knew I was looking like one hell of a failure right now. I had seemed like I was on the way to being a broadway star or something, selected out of hundreds of auditions to join the ranks in this dance program, and now… I was about to be kicked out like none of it ever mattered.

I don’t have any friends.

Yikes, yes.

I had Colt, but my relationships with everyone else on campus were superficial at best. I had people I say hello to, sure. People I liked. But I didn’t have anyone to sit and watch a movie with, talk about the nonsense that pops into heads without concern over how it’ll be interpreted. I didn’t have someone to be free with. If there was a positive to going home, I guess it would be that I wouldn’t be losing a network of friends by leaving the city.

Dancing hurts.

I crossed it out as soon as it was on the paper. Yes, dancing hurt, it was excruciating to repeat the same motions over and over, pushing my body to its limits to reach the perfect shapes, perfect timing, perfect extensions.

But it was a different kind of hurt, an expression of hurt. It was how I got through the other pains in my life. Dancing stays. Whether I was at school or at home, I’d find a way to dance. It didn’t go in either column. Or it wouldn’t if I was actually letting myself slow down long enough to organize this into an actual pros and cons list instead of a slew of word vomit across the page.

No matter what I wrote on this list, it didn’t matter. I just plain couldn’t visualize any scenario where I could go back home. I had to find a way, somehow to stay here. To keep dancing. To prove to myself and to everyone back home that there is room for me to do what I love, that you don’t have to just grow up to be a nurse, teacher, or farmer to make a living.