In the end, Michelle came in third. The girl in the glow-in-the-dark bikini, Julie Han (“Annie May” in the exotic dancing world), was first, and another girl by the stage name of “Soleil” was second. All three were offered jobs at the Caribou, but only Michelle and Julie accepted. As they were going over protocol and signing contracts, Michelle found herself watching the other girl, whose face lay impassive and uninterested, maybe even holding a slight scowl.

“So, you’re a professional dancer?” asked Michelle.

Yeah,” said Julie Han eyes focused down and to the side, away from Michelle. “So are you, now.”

“Yeah. I heard… someone said that you had a job somewhere else.”

The woman looked obliquely, barely at the ballerina. “We had creative differences. I’m here now.”

“Things don’t always turn out the way we think they will,” Michelle said, not meaning to speak, not entirely. The stripper rolled her eyes and Michelle cringed.

Sam waited to congratulate the novice after the contest, and the two walked home together. It was almost three in the morning by the time they reached their apartment building. They walked up the stairs to their floor in silence. Michelle stopped in front of her door and Sam continued down the hall to her own.

“Would you like to come in for some tea before bed?” the pale woman asked looking back as she unlocked her door.

Michelle’s mouth began to say yes, but halted. “Um, no thanks. I’m pretty tired,” she said, unlocking her own door.

Sam shrugged. “Of course. No problem. You get to bed now. You had a busy day today.” Her smile calmed Michelle, who collapsed on her bed within five minutes of entering her apartment and didn’t regain consciousness for ten and a half hours.

She slept nearly into the afternoon on Saturday and stayed around the apartment in her pajamas for most of the day, every nuance of her performance replaying in her mind again and again, each time bringing with it fresh torture. Her back was so crushingly sore from her impact with the beer-dribbler that she could barely turn at the waist. A pale bruise ran perpendicularly across the small of her back. I can’t dance like this, she thought, not considering the measureless number of girls who danced every day in conditions much worse in nearly every way imaginable.

On the phone with her mother that night, she encountered inquiries regarding the status of Michelle’s nonexistent ballet career and expressions of glee at the news that Jake and Rachel had set a date (July seventh). Neither of these subjects filled Michelle with anything but quiet, seething hatred and a sense of utterly failing everyone and anything she had ever loved.

“And the bridesmaid dresses are lovely – foam green, with an empire waist and a classy little brooch at the hip.” Images of the wedding ran through Michelle’s head. Rachel O’Whoever and all her horrible girlfriends in sea-foam green lined up behind, giggling and crying insipidly. “Oh,” continued Mrs. Browne, “and of course you’re going to be a bridesmaid. How could I forget that?”

“What?” Michelle said. “They didn’t say anything to me about that.”

“They didn’t? Really? Your brother just keeps surprising me. You two were always so close. Well, I suppose they both thought you might think it was odd, what with you not really knowing Rachel at all, but it’s very important to them for you to be involved. They keep telling me they want you as a bridesmaid.”

Michelle bit her lip. Assholes. After completely excluding me from all plans? Assholes. After not even telling me? After assholes treating me like an absolute child, they think assholes they can just expect me to be a bridesmaid? Assholes!

“Your brother said he wouldn’t feel right getting married without his baby sister there next to him.”

Her face relaxed, the bitten lip falling free beneath the other. She wet them with her tongue. “Foam green would bring out my eyes,” she said.

After another fifteen minutes, Michelle made up an excuse and managed to get off the phone. She tried to read a book, tried to turn the words into pictures and ideas in her head, but her mind’s eye kept drifting away and back to when she and Jake were children, holding others’ hands as they walked to school. Training wheels on a bike. Ice cream cone melting down a pink fist. Summer afternoons with sprinklers and speckled light. These were clichés. Were these just images of Jake and herself transposed into scenes from numberless movies, television shows, novels? Regardless, the memories ached in her throat. Ten minutes passed and she had not turned a page.

She had to do something. If she couldn’t ignore these thoughts, she decided she may as well delve into them. That’s what Freud would do, she thought, though she had never read Freud.

She put on a Smashing Pumpkins album she listened to as a teenager. The music brought back waves of emotion that reminiscence alone couldn’t match. Yes, it was their parents’ car where she heard the music for the first time. Jake had just gotten his license. It was her first ride with him. They listened to music and the wind from the opened windows whipped her hair all around her face.

Taking out the photo album she kept underneath her bed, she cuddled up in her covers and began to turn the pages. Before she and her brother reached adolescence, every picture containing one of them contained the other. She remembered late nights of conversation, her nestled in the crook of his arm, the smell of sweat and aftershave she later came to associate with some essentiality of all things male, his innocent childhood timbre deepening over the years to that gruff, soothing baritone.

The pages turned. New faces started to stare back at her from the album. Before Richard, she had dated four boys: Jimmy, Justin, John, and Jan. There was no photo of Jimmy. Their relationship lasted approximately one week sophomore year in high school, and ended one night when he tried to slide his hand down her back to her ass while kissing her goodnight. Junior year, Justin (who smiled next to her in an oversized suit posed by the doorway of her parents’ house before their first real date) lasted relatively longer at two months, but was similarly doomed when she realized her body inadvertently squirmed and twisted each time he touched her. She and John only went on about four or five dates before graduation. Their first attempt at making out was so passionless and uncomfortable that it ended with both sitting in silence with the TV on, staring disgustedly at one another and waiting for a pizza to be delivered. The only evidence of his material existence she retained was an unfocused snapshot of him leaning out of his car window, mouth half opened in speech.

Jan (pronounced Yahn) was the closest thing, (if she didn’t count Richard [and she didn’t]), to a real boyfriend Michelle ever had. Several pages of the album were dedicated to their time together. He had come from Switzerland to study ballet at her university. He had golden blonde hair, pale blue eyes, and an accent that made Michelle laugh.

But she never gave him her flower, her cherry, her maidenhood, her virtue, her honor, or any other euphemisms for virginity. He was handsome, talented, and generous, but she could never shake the feeling in the back of her mind that Jan just didn’t stack up. She’d joked about it as a teenager, but as she grew older she realized that her standard of male perfection had been set long ago, and no man she’d ever met could compare.

She initiated the breakup. Maybe Jan held a candle for her for a while and he may have cried a bit, but she never felt guilty. Not even for a minute. Not ever at all.

Filed under: Marriage, Michelle, Michelle's family, Samantha, dancing, sex, wedding by Jade