🌻Keep Me Steady🌻

I stand in the exterior wings of the stage, wishing I had wings myself. It’s so incredibly hot, this little tiny extra space behind the stage, and the outfit, too tight around the ankles and too loose in other places, doesn’t help. I wish I could fly away from all this. It's unbearably hot. I can’t wait -- literally, I feel like jumping away and escaping -- for this tour to be over. I shouldn’t be this nervous. I’ve been here a million times. I’ve worn the too-tight pants and the too-loose shirt and the bright white smile every night for months now. The whole scene of people cheering and waving, every single one of them willing to die to be in my position, the waving camera lights, the loud, energetic music shaking my bones… Yeah, I should be used to it. I feel like I know this stage better than my mother knows her way around a cheeseburger, and, being the third place champion of the Succotash Valley eating contest, she certainly knows her way around a cheeseburger. 

The music starts and my crewmates signal for me to get on the stage. I flip into the middle of the dance, my specialty cartwheel, and the crowd cheers wildly. They aren’t cheering for me, but I pretend they are because it makes me dance better. The holidays are just around the corner and I can physically feel them through my shoes as I continue the remaining moves in the song. The music tells me when and where and how to direct my body, a vessel of power through a neon lit storm. 

But as they say, you need passion to dance well, and my face is stone as I leap and twirl, my smile creaky, my hands like ice. I don't want to be here.

It's not long before I do the predictable; I trip, fall, and go flying. 

The music skids to a stop. I have a second to catch my breath, sprawled on the edge of the stage, before the pain shoots through my ankles. It's red and white and everything flies apart and I'm both crying and laughing -- crying from the pain, laughing in order to pretend nothing's wrong. My teammates are staring at me -- I've ruined everything -- and I just laugh. Maybe if I laugh loud enough I'll convince everyone it's okay and nothing happened and the show can go on. It would be easier to convince them than myself. I know nothing’s okay and that considering this was the last show of the tour, everything happened. 

No one moves to help me. I lie there crumpled as the conductor fixes his toupee and tries to wake up the cello players, who were startled into fainting spells. 

Must be a hard job, cellist, I think, before I black out. 

I wake up as Mark, the lead dancer, (AKA "Hot Civics Class Guy" because I met him at the community college) drags me by the ankles into the wings. 

"Hi," I say, a little breathlessly. He just shakes his head and walks back to the stage. 

"The show must go on," I mumble, irritated, but they can get on without me. I was only filling in for Mariah, Mark's girlfriend (and second cousin), who danced Fifth Fairy in a small scene. 

What's more important is the fact that I'm again in the wings, this time on my back, my ankle and calves throbbing, sweating from the unbelievable heat, my heart pounding dangerously. Though I think the heart thing is because of Mark.

The music starts up again and the dancers wobble back into place. I watch them, though they're upside down, because I'm facing away from them and have to tilt my head up to see them. A few look back, either worried for me or wondering if I'm a psychopath, but Mark isn't one of them. Then and there I drop him like a hot cake, though we were only dating in my head. I ignore his imagined pleas for mercy and cruelly vow to remain single forever -- 

He looks over at me, head turned because of the dance move, and we're married now in my head. I say YES gleefully as the minister, who looks a lot like a snowman, asks if I do take this man to be my every lawful husband. 

The heat brings me back to reality. Seriously, I could be getting a heat stroke at this rate. My hair, blonde and sticky, clings to my cheeks and jaw. I pull at the strands. Gross. No wonder Mark looked at me so offended. How dare I appear so disheveled compared to him… well, he wasn’t that great to begin with. Bad facial hair. The only reason I ever deemed him hot was, I think, the fact that we met in 2020, the Year of the Masks. Take a three, maybe, and drop him back at nine or so. 

I hobble to my knees and pull myself a little closer to the stage. I watch the crowd, mostly, but also Mark out of the corner of my eye. 

"Hey!" I hear a sharp, cold voice. It's Mariah. She’s wearing her plaid leggings and her hair is dyed bright pink, shocked through with purple and blue highlights. If I was Mark, I’d choose her over me too. 

"Hi, M," I say, both cheerful and glum somehow. "I already did your part, you're welcome."

"And ruined it, so I see. No thanks, loser."

"Actually, my name is Anchor…" I feel my heavy feet sink deeper into the soft carpet. 

"It's a loser name. If it were even a name, not just a part of a ship, it would be a boy's name." I wonder if she thinks that’s an original insult. I’ve heard it dozens of times, dozens of different ways. Though it’s been said, many times many ways… merry you-have-a-boy’s-name day to me. 

"Humph," I say instead of shouting her idiocy and fraudulency to the world. Mariah’s boots look like they could kick my head in so fast I wouldn’t even have time to say yikes. No holiday spirit with this one, I see. “You know I’ve heard that before, Mariah.” 

“Does it look like I care? Also Mark told me how  you practically jumped at the opportunity to take my place. Why?” 

I stare at my own shoes. They’re blue. My nails are chipped from chewing and I’m pretty sure my teeth are missing parts because of how hard I chomp the sides of my fingers. Mariah continues to stare at me. I tap the side of my leg. When I look up, she seems about ready to shake me. 

“You know why I missed the show?” 

“No, nobody would tell me. I did ask, though.” Even if Mariah was scary and I was intimidated by her and her boots on a daily basis, I still was concerned earlier when she didn’t show up. Mostly because I knew I would get a reaction just like this one. The accusations. The jabs about my name. Next she’d probably comment on my sticky hair and the constant nervous blinking of my left eye. But she was also a former friend who I still kind of considered my friend. “Why? Where were you?” 

I think of how at the beginning of the summer, we both auditioned for Mark’s show because he was my friend and her second cousin and we all got along like champs. I was cast as the first alternate for her, and she was cast as Fifth Fairy. It didn’t matter because we still got to travel and go to rehearsals and the places we visited were amazing. For the first few weeks, it was all so golden. 

And then Mariah started dating Mark and everything flipped messy, confusing, and as complicated as the spins and twirls I could never manage to land just right. I felt isolated and cold and she, who was supposed to be my roommate in the trailer, never was home. 

“I was trying to figure out a way to tell Mark I want to break up, but I didn’t know how to do it before the holidays. It felt so mean.”

I’ve never heard Mariah scared of someone thinking she’s mean before. It’s not that she’s nice, she usually just couldn’t care less what they think of her. 

“Wait, wait, why do you want to break up, though?” I wonder if I’m doing the thing where I jump at the chance to take someone’s boyfriend again, but I can’t worry about it now. Right now I’m here as Mariah’s friend and confidant, not an eager beaver with a bad superiority complex. “Is it because you’re second cousins?” 

“No, we’re actually only related by marriage. It doesn’t bother me. The reason I want to break up with Mark is because, well,” she pauses, takes a step back, “I think he was going to propose.” 

“What? What do you mean you think he was going to propose?” My mind reels and my stomach churns and I catch a glimpse of myself in the window behind us. I look rabid. Of course I’m rabid! I’ve been thinking of stealing Mark from under Mariah’s nose and the whole time, oh my gosh, the whole time, he wanted to marry her? Not me, like in my favorite daydream? And also, I happened to have sprained and/or broken both ankles and the pain has begun to make me delirious.

“I mean, I found a ring in his dresser drawer. And he was always on the phone with a lady, so I looked her up and it turns out she’s a wedding planner. A wedding planner, Anchor! He must think there’s no way I’d say no to marrying him. But there is. I’m only nineteen.” Mariah’s dark eyes meet mine. “I don’t want to get married at nineteen.” 

“But does that mean you don’t still want to date? I’m sure Mark would be okay with waiting to get marrie --” 

“Okay,” Mariah takes a deep breath, “Let me rephrase that. I don’t want to marry Mark. Not at nineteen, not at twenty five, not ever in a million star dusted years.” How poetic. 

“You don’t want to marry him.” I’m trying to understand. 

“No.” 

“Never?” I ask, just to clarify. 

“Right, never.” 

I take a deep breath, “Well, then you’d better let him down softly. Don’t kick him with your boots or anything.” 

Mariah looks at me strangely. “Why would I kick him? That’s weird. Anyway, um, I may need some moral support so I would appreciate it a lot of you came with me? You’ll still be my friend, right?”

“Are you kidding?” I sling my arm, elbow still bruised from my tremendous fall, around her shoulders as we walk out of the backstage dressing rroom. Well, she walks. I lean and slope and generally let her half-carry me. “Of course you’re still my friend. If I didn’t have you, who could scare me with their lazer eyed mascara and tell me to cry myself a river, build a bridge, and get over it when I’m sad? Let’s go get mochi.” 

“Do you like him?” Mariah says as we head towards the mochi shop down Central Street. The town lights are green and red, but in a city this big, you know Christmas isn’t the only thing people will be celebrating. That’s one of the things I’ll miss the most when I’m back home in my cozy little nook of the world city. All the different people. Mariah pokes me in the side with her perfectly unchipped nail. It’s velvety red. “I asked if you still like him. Mark, I mean.” 

I think of how I dumped him like a hot potato in my mind seconds before making up my millionth wedding scenario. Then I shake my head. 

“No, I think we both liked the idea of him, though, because he was our only friend who was gonna make it on the big stage. Of course we were going to follow him. Of course we were going to compete for the best part on the stage. Under the glow of all that limelight, who wouldn’t?” We step into the mochi store and the bell on the door rings cheerfully. An angel must have gotten its wings. 

My arm stings from where it slid on the hard wooden stage. My ankles throb. “It would have all come crashing down at one point or another. You know when we were younger and we’d always dream of having a summer romance with the hottest new guy in town?” Mariah nods as she orders our favorite mochi platter. “Well, this was a tour fling kind of thing, until Mark took it too far, and I think it’s really lucky you realized that before, heaven forbid, you actually did marry the guy.” 

“Right?” Mariah laughs but her fingers tighten nervously around my wrist. “That would have been crazy.” 

“Totally.” We get our purchased mochi box and start back towards the theater. Our trailers are parked behind it, at a motel. “So, how are you going to tell him?” 

“What?” Mariah looks startled. “I thought that, ah, maybe you could tell him for me.” 

“Oh, okay.”

“Really?” 

I let go of her arm, “No, not really! That’s not what you said at first. You said ‘moral support,’ not ‘break up with my boyfriend for me!’” 

She cracks her knuckles against the side of her plaid leggings.

 “Okay, but, Anchor, keep me steady.”