“Dara,” Charlie said, straightening himself. “You’re just in time. Can you remind your sister of Isadora’s fate?” He made a jerking motion across his neck.
Dara winced. A hangman’s fracture. There were so many ways to injure yourself. Like poor Isadora, one of her famous long scarves caught in the wheels of a car.
“I’m not afraid,” Marie said, smiling faintly, moving away from Charlie, smoothing her scarf, untangling its fringe. “Of that, at least.”
“Your back must be feeling better,” Dara said to Charlie, reaching for his mug and dumping his tea bag into the trash, cold tea splashing.
“Stop!” Marie let out a gasp and Dara looked over in time to see Charlie yanking Marie’s hideous scarf free. （“Free Marie! Liberate the neck!”）
Charlie, teasing Marie like he used to years ago in dance class, calling her Snap-Crackle because of the way her hips used to pop-pop-pop.
Abruptly, Charlie froze, Marie’s scarf still in his hand, drooping and forlorn.
Dara turned and saw too. Marie, the marks on Marie. On her neck this time, and fresh. They were violet and obscene. Dara couldn’t stop looking at them. Fleshy dabs from Derek’s fleshy thumbs. Like little Jack Horner, his finger in the pie.
“Jesus,” Charlie said, voice low. “Did Tessa Shen kick-spin you again?”
“No,” Marie said, running her hand across her throat, stroking it.
The gesture undid something in Dara, who could feel her chest burning. This whole business, the scarf—another way of drawing all the attention. Marie and her body, like a golden hummingbird. Marie and her mysterious sex organs, the part she had that no other woman had. Marie, Dara thought, the freak. Marie and her freakshow.
“Stop showing off,” Dara said, fingers to her temples. “Nobody cares.”
Charlie turned and looked at Dara.
“What is this?” he asked, gesturing to the bruises. “Did you know about this?”
Both of them looked at Dara, as if she were the problem.
“Didn’t you?” Dara said. Then, “Marie likes it rough.”
Charlie’s gaze wobbled to Marie, a look on his face like a lost child’s.
“What are you talking about?”
“Ask her,” Dara said, her eyes fixed on the violet, imagining the contractor’s meaty fingers pressing. She thought she might choke from the thought, from the picture in her head.
“Someone better tell me,” Charlie said.
Marie looked at him, both her hands wrung around her neck.
“My sister’s screwing the help,” Dara said.
* * *
*
His hands,” Marie whispered, both of them lying on their backs in the empty studio in between classes, holding on to their ankles, feeling like they might crack, “remind me of that belt Dad used to have, remember? The leather splintered, but he wouldn’t stop wearing it. He said it was made from gators. Maybe it was.”
“I don’t want to hear about it.” Dara didn’t want to hear about hands like belts, like their father.
“If I had to hurt him,” Marie said, eyes shining. “I’d hurt his hands. I’d break his fingers, one by one.”
“Smash them with a hammer,” Dara said dryly. “Like your poor pointe shoes.”
But Marie only nodded, breathless. “Because of all the things they do to me—I never want him to do those things to anyone else.”
And she smiled and smiled.
Jesus, Dara thought.
“You’re like a teenage girl,” Dara said. “After her first fuck.”
* * *
*
Charlie hadn’t wanted to talk about it, about Marie. They’d talk about it later. But, really, what is there to talk about, he’d said, reaching for his jacket. She’s a grown woman.
Leaving Dara the car, he took a Shamrock cab to Helga for a last-minute PT session. Helga always understood the pressures of Nutcracker season, even once sending Charlie home with a paper plate of peppermint cookies tied with yarn ribbon. （She’s very thoughtful, Charlie said. Or she has a crush, Dara teased.）
But with Charlie gone, the students had chosen that day to be little monsters, all except Bailey Bloom, who snuck in the powder room before and after classes, not wanting to change in front of the other girls, their snipes.
At day’s end, Dara and Marie retired to the fire escape, tarry and quivering, the sun burning through the skyline.
They’d been drinking. Mr. Higham had left them a champagne split four-pack as a thank-you for his little Jamie’s entry into the City Academy of Dance. The splits were chilled and he warned Dara they’d “skunk” if they didn’t drink them right away. And Dara didn’t want to go home anyway, feeling strange about the day, about the marks on her sister and about Charlie and about everything changing, slowly and all at once.