Hey, Hazel had said. Are you sure this is what you want?
Don’t be stupid, Jenny had answered. She cupped a condescending hand to Hazel’s cheek, that purple ring glinting from her finger. I know what I’m doing.
At the reception, Ansel was perfectly charming. He complimented her aunt’s jewelry, joked with her dad as they cut the cake. But Hazel caught him so many times that night, looking dead-eyed over Jenny’s shoulder. His smile melted instantaneously off his face the second he did not need it—he held Jenny with a rigid back and a shallow happiness, impermanent as wet paint. After the ceremony, Hazel escaped to the bathroom, where she stared herself down in the mirror. She remembered that night on her twin bed, the question she had posed to Jenny. If he doesn’t feel anything at all, then how do you know he loves you? In her ugly silk bridesmaid dress, Hazel pressed a finger to the mole beneath her eye. With a jolt of surprise, she felt thankful for it. One day, she would wear a white dress, too. She would stand across from a very different man, a good man who felt everything in vivid color—and she would know exactly how he loved her. For the first time, Hazel felt bigger than her sister. The feeling was so sick, so addictive, she knew she could never let it go.
*
Hazel parked behind the studio, in the spot reserved by the dumpsters. Luis had come home early to take the kids—he’d been working the Arts and Entertainment desk the last few weeks, and the news was slower, his schedule easier. Hazel had left a box of mac and cheese on the counter, which Luis would let them eat with ketchup squirted over it.
Through the sheer studio curtains, the Level 4s marked a jump sequence across the floor, a wave of forest green leotards. Hazel kept her head down as she pushed through the horde of parents in the lobby, chattering and sewing ribbons as they waited. At the reception desk, Sara bent over a pile of paperwork. When the students didn’t pass their quarterly assessments, when the costume fees came in and the cast lists were posted, Sara took the shiny-haired complaints, the weightless threats. I swear we will pull her from this studio, a glossy mother would say, and Sara would serve her easy, blameless smile. As if to say: Go right ahead.
“I need a favor,” Hazel said. “It’s an emergency.”
“Your sister?” Sara squinted up. “Did she finally leave the psychopath?”
A wince, at the word. It felt suddenly like something private. Jenny’s darkest heart, not a thing to be gossiped about.
“She got the nursing job in Texas. She has a flight on Wednesday,” Hazel said. “Can you hold down the fort until then? Log your overtime, of course.”
Always, the studio was busy. But at a certain point—once classes were scheduled, tuition bills paid, directors hired for the seasonal showcases—the studio moved like choreography. Hazel’s anxiety was something more. She’d miss her Tuesday night. Tuesdays, Luis did baths and bedtime. Tuesdays, Hazel sent Sara home early and locked the front door. Alone, she queued up her favorite Bach CD, reveling in the high studio ceilings as she led herself through a barre warm-up. She let her body say the rest. She stretched, she leapt. She hurled herself against the floor. For that hour every Tuesday, Hazel did not have children, or medical bills, or debt from the business degree she probably didn’t need, no tummy-aches or broccoli on the floor or screaming for dessert. She only had her joints, rapt and unbetraying. Her muscles, exalted.
When Hazel first purchased the studio, using a loan from her parents and the majority of Luis’s inheritance, the building was decrepit. She and Luis had done most of the work themselves—hung the drywall, covered the concrete with soft marley, bulldozed and paved a parking lot. Hazel was not yet pregnant with Alma, and she spent her evenings with Luis on the unfinished floor, drinking beer with their tools scattered around.
Rarely, during this time, did Hazel think of Jenny. She remembered that period tenderly—a stretch of months during which she did not feel Jenny and Jenny did not feel her, when they spoke intermittently on the phone, grazing only the surface details.
They were the best months of Hazel’s life.
When can we see it? Hazel’s mother had pestered. Soon, Hazel had promised. Just wait until it’s ready. When her parents finally came over in the minivan they’d driven since Hazel was in high school, she paced the wide, empty space, satisfied. Her parents stood at the entrance to the gleaming studio, looking small and frumpy in the spacious wall of mirrors. They examined the mahogany reception desk and the hanging light fixtures, the shiny stereo and the ample dressing room. Her mother’s face was awed, ecstatic. Unraveled proud. It was exactly the way she used to look at Jenny.