The Third Message novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Hardest Thing

The night I got back from Ohio, Miles asked me to meet him on the black box stage at midnight.

He had pulled the work lights.

One bare bulb stood on a pole in the middle of the floor.

The rest of the room was dark.

No barre. No chair. No clipboard.

"I want to see the whole solo," he said. "All of it, with no counts."

"I'm not cleared for the turns."

"Your doctor cleared the phrase. You've been dancing it in pieces for two months because you're scared of the end."

"I'm not scared."

"Number."

"Zero," I said, and he almost smiled.

I stayed at the edge of the light with my arms crossed.

"You carried me out of Studio B," I said. "You hold my hip like it might break."

"And?"

"You bring me coffee I don't want. I know what that is, Miles."

"What is it?"

"Pity. It's the kind that looks like kindness."

He did not move.

"You watched the video of my fall," I said.

"Everyone on the committee did."

"You felt sorry for me before I got off the plane."

"Is that what you think?"

"I think nobody picks the girl with the limp over someone brilliant."

I had said it out loud, in the dark, to the one person I did not want to hear it.

Miles walked into the light.

"Tell me what happened on the mountain," he said, so quietly I almost missed it. "The part you left out."

"I said it to Burke on Saturday. You would be the second."

"Then tell me."

I took a breath and gave him all of it.

Then I told him the part about the pill, and how I had lain there counting until it was supposed to work.

He listened to the end.

"I watched your tape forty times," he said. "You don't know why."

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