Juliana & Her Big Surgery 🩰

ii. my mistake

♚♚♚

• September, 2014 •

Stepping into Lana Meredith's was like plunging into an espresso. Dark chocolate pillars held the creamy beige walls together. Painted across the curved ceiling were jazz murals and dreamy, plump babies wrapped in tutus. We jumped our feet over the sun-dappled tiles, dashing to reach the check-in kiosk.

Our shoes slide across the floor as we stopped at the security point, nearly bruising each other like bumped fruit in a truck. As the police lady checks our bags with her wooden stick, I wipe the sweat off my forehead. Next, we swipe our ID cards to unlock the waist-high turnstiles. Each card stating the names: "juliana deangelas", "lucia clemence", and "liliana clemence". Then, more running.

"C'mon, y'all. We're runnin' late!" Lucy pleads as she huffs for air.

"Are we really?" I panic, attempting to check the time on my phone with shaky vision. "Mommy is gonna grill me if I have 'late' written on my attendance record."

Lili somehow has the breath to snort laugh. "Your mom can grill?"

"You know what I mean!" I yell.

"You'll be alright. You're the star of the vlogs. She'll probably turn it into some kind of life lesson," Lili pants, the wind finally running away from her.

"Oh ha-ha," I reply. But seriously, I'm doomed. It's one thing to be late for a normal ballet class, it's another to be late during recital season.

Lili bends to her knees abruptly, clenching her hip. The bottom of our sneakers screech above the vanilla marble as we forced ourselves to stop again.

Lucy fills her belly with air to yell, "What are you doin'? We're gonna be late!"

"Relax," Lili grumbles. "We're gonna tell Calvet that the bus ran late. I'm having cramps."

I squash the part of me that wants to be mad at her, because recently I've been able to understand her pain. Completely.

While we wait, Lucy slicks her already tight bun, making sure any stray, black strands are back in its place. After letting out a grunt, Lili turns super-human again. She casually wraps her curly, auburn hair into a messy bun, as if she weren't in any pain at all.

The window light warms her brown skin, twinkling her ivory white-teeth smile.

"Okay! I'm good," she declares. This time we glide our legs instead of pushing them so we can catch our breath. "I'm so excited for tonight!"

"What's tonight?" I ask.

"I'm gonna go see The Stars Aligned with Diamond. I was gonna make Lucy come with us, but she wants to be alone so she can do the same choreography that we've been drillin' into our brains for weeks."

Lucy scoffs. "Well—excuse me if I wanna get this perfect so Mom and Dad could be proud."

"Mom said you could go with me, you know. She's not uptight like Julie's mom— oh, sorry. No offense, girl."

I can tell Lucy's voice grows more tired when she says, "Yeah, but how long will that last?" Like she's had this conversation with her a million times before today.

"There's only a couple of weeks until we're on stage for rehearsals. I don't want to push our parents' limits by seeing some dumb romance movie on a Thursday, and make them think that our scholarship money is goin' down the toilet," Lucy rants.

Lili just giggles. Not a mocking, 'You're being a total nutcase' giggle, but a giggle that grounds us to the Earth again. At least, it grounds me.