| Out of Step |

Out of Step: Chapter 20

By Ariella Schiller | January 29, 2020

“Bella, I’m sorry you got hurt, but that doesn’t give you the right to hurt other people”

haven’t spoken to Atara in two weeks. Yes, the girl who has a pair of pajamas and a toothbrush in the second drawer in my dresser, just in case we have an impromptu sleepover. Yes, same girl who’s been my BFF for nine years, who I speak to around 13 times a day.

Two weeks. Not since surgery day. Not since Pori sent me that text message.

She’s tried to reach out, but I can’t, I honestly can’t, deal with the whole dance soloist thing right now. She stopped trying around four days ago. I don’t blame her, I really don’t.

I just wonder if she misses me as much as I miss her. Life is a lot less fun when your best friend is a 12-year-old boy who’s obsessed with chess, war, and backgammon.

“C’mon,” I groan, when Chemia whips the chess board out in front of me and wiggles his eyebrows. I’d just settled onto a recliner with a hot drink topped with whipped cream and cinnamon flakes. The latest magazine is open on a little side table to a page about room decorating, and I’m more than ready to see how far a $200 budget can take me in Ikea.

“You know you waaaant to,” he croons.

I roll my eyes, because he’s right, a part of me just really wants to interact with other people. But the lazy, tired, achy, grumpy part of me — as in, the majority — really just wants him to go away so I can drink and mope and read in peace.

“Okay, how ’bout this?” Chemia proposes. “You read while I go make myself one of those delicious-looking drinks. And when I get back, it’s check and mate, sister dear.”

I can’t help laughing while we shake on it. This is why I’m closest to Chemia. He’s easygoing and lighthearted; nothing like me and nothing like Naftoli.

In fact, he reminds me a lot of…

“Atara,” I gasp, sitting upright and sloshing half my hot chocolate onto the magazine. Oh, well, the Ikea budget will forever remain a mystery now.

“I can lend you that article,” Atara says, pointing to the smudge of colors and cocoa. “It was great.”

Okay, or not.

“What… are you doing here?” I ask quietly, gesturing to the nearby couch.

Chemia clutches the chess board to his chest and backs out slowly. I glare at him, but he’s already gone.

Traitor.

“What do you think I’m doing here?” Atara asks, shaking off her coat — an adorable faux fur bomber that I must have and for sure cannot afford — and flicking her thick hair over one shoulder in a business-like attitude. I inwardly roll my eyes. Please be such a type, uch.

“Hmm, I don’t know,” I say in the same condescending tone.

Her nostrils flare and her almond-shaped eyes thin into a squint.

“Oh, my gosh, Bella, why are you being like this? I’m sorry you got hurt, but that doesn’t give you the right to hurt other people.”

I’m so shocked, she might as well have told me she’s moving to South Africa.

“I am hurting people?” I sputter. “ME? Am I the one who swooped into her best friend’s dance slot on the DAY SHE WAS HAVING SURGERY?”

Atara blinks. “Is that what you think, Bella Rena? Really? After nine years, you think I’m the type of person to wait until my friend is incapacitated and then steal her thunder?”

I shrink back in my seat, because she’s totally right. She’s an amazing person, Atara; far, far better than I am, and I’d never really deserved her friendship or loyalty in the first place, but I took it anyway.

“So then what did happen, Tar?” I ask, suddenly exhausted. “How is it that you spent Shabbos in my house without saying a word, and then Sunday morning I’m getting texts from the crew about how you’re the newest soloist?”

Atara takes a deep breath, and suddenly she’s standing, which honestly, is totally unfair, because, well, I can’t. I run my fingers through my straight-as-rain ponytail and wait for her to speak.

Oh, boy, does she speak.

“Bella, you’re my best friend, and I love you, really. But you know and I know and well, everyone, really, knows that you’re a bit self-involved. And I’ve always been fine with that… up until now.”

“Now?”

“This year,” she clarifies. “Ninth grade. High school.”

And suddenly she’s sitting again, but her position no longer concerns me. What does concern me is the utterly defeated tone with which she’d uttered the words “high school.”

“Um, okay,” I say intelligently.

I watch her; she’s like a caged animal, her eyes keep flicking around the room and her breathing has become labored.

“Bella, school has become… torture for me.”

I sit back, stunned. Not from the dramatic sentence, but from the weightiness with which she said it. Because if she really is that serious, then how in the world did I not realize that my best friend was miserable? I did notice a few odd things, but nothing that screamed “torture”!

“Atara,” I say softly. “Why didn’t you tell me? And also… torture in what way?”

She shrugs, tears sliding down her face in full force and I just want to hug her and make it all better, but I still don’t understand what school has to do with the dance solo or why Atara is so affected by it.

“Tar?”

She looks at me through those large cat eyes.

“Can you start at the beginning?”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha Jr., Issue 796)

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