How It Feels to Fly Read Online Free PDF Page B

would do if I decided to quit ballet. Luckily, I plan to never find out. “So why did you decide to come back and be a peer adviser here?”
    â€œFall of sophomore year, I took Intro to Psychology as a gen-ed. It made me remember being here, working with Dr. Lancaster, so I thought, why not major in psych? And then this past spring, Dr. Lancaster emailed and mentioned that she was looking for a guy and a girl to work here this summer, so I signed up. I’m actually getting college credit. I have to write a paper about this place.” He turns his head in my direction. “Everything I talk about with y’all is confidential, obviously. My essay is more about Dr. Lancaster’s methods.”
    We keep walking and chatting until we reach the gazebo. Then I get back to describing what he can’t see. The white paint, peeling, with the natural wood showing through. The three stairs leading up to the center platform. The rail around the platform that looks like a picket fence. The high ceiling with abandoned birds’ nests in the eaves.
    He listens, and he walks, running his hand along the side of the structure. Just as I’m describing how there’s a path that goes back into the woods, he reaches up and pulls off the blindfold.
    â€œHey! No cheating.” I say it like a joke, but the truth is, the instant he can see me again, I’m nervous. It was so much easier to talk to him with his eyes covered.
    â€œI’m not cheating. It’s your turn.” He waves the bandanna at me, grinning.
    I grin back, even as my anxiety bubbles up. I take the bandanna from Andrew and lift it to my face. The world goes dark. I have trouble tying the knot at the back of my head. My fingers fumble with the fabric.
    â€œHere. I got it.” Andrew’s hands brush mine as he takes the blindfold. I drop my arms and stand totally still as he ties the ends together. He’s right behind me. It’s a little unnerving, and a little . . . something else. I feel his breath at the back of my neck—or was it the wind?
    I wonder what I look like to him right now. How he’s looking at me when I can’t look back. What he thinks when he sees my body up close.
    Your enormous thighs. That muffin top you think you’re hiding. The way your bra pinches in, giving you back fat. Fat fat fat fat—
    I want to curl inward, to shrink. But I force myself to stand tall.
    â€œOkay!” I say, and again my voice rings out like a sour note. “I’m ready!”
    He’s staring at you. He’s disgusted by you.
    I make fists, digging my nails into my palms.
    â€œTurn around halfway,” Andrew says.
    â€œHalfway? Like, a hundred and eighty degrees?”
    â€œWhat is this—math class? Yeah, a hundred and eighty degrees. Give or take.”
    I rotate my right leg out at the hip until my feet are in a perfect first position: heels together, toes pointed in opposite directions. Planting my right foot, I rotate to face it.
    Andrew lets out a snort of laughter.
    He’s laughing at you he’s laughing at you he’s laughing at you he’s laughing—
    â€œWhy didn’t I think of that?” he says. “Note to self: ballet feet. Nice.” I hear him move away, the crunch of weight on twigs getting softer. “Okay, ten steps toward my voice, straight ahead. We’re going around the other side of the gazebo. It, uh, looks the same as the part you showed me earlier.”
    We move like that, a few feet at a time, his deep voice pulling me toward him. The dirt and twigs of the woods give way to mown lawn. A breeze brushes my face and a blade of grass tickles my ankle. I feel the sunlight on my shoulders.
    Just as I start to think this isn’t so bad, I take a step forward and my foot doesn’t meet the ground—not right away. I land, hard, a few inches down. I feel the jolt in my knee, in my hip, in my teeth.
    At first, I’m stunned.