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Audrey

I got out of my ride and grabbed my bags. For a moment, I just stood there in the driveway, staring up at the family home there in Aberdeen. Oh Lord.

Place hadn’t changed since I had left. Not one bit.

I looked around, up and down the street. A couple of younger kids were out playing in the cul-de-sac, just like we used to when we were kids. The Leroy house was painted blue now instead of gray, but even that blue paint looked faded and worn now.

I looked back at our house. What the hell was I doing here again? For the first time, I started to think about where I would even fit into this life. This was a tiny, two-bedroom house. Back when Annabelle and I were kids, sharing a room had been fine, but what about now? The whole unit wasn’t very big. There would be no getting away from Mom or her boyfriend. We’d constantly be bumping into one another.

Not for the last time, I was sure, I found myself feeling homesick for the Academy’s dorms. It was just housing for us dancers, but I’d had my own room in a three-bedroom unit. The shared living room had been spacious, with lofted ceilings and incredible views out over the Seine. The metro was just a couple blocks away, and in under an hour, I could be wherever I wanted to be in the city, from art museums and galleries to tourist sites to nightlife and anything else.

Here, I was a couple of blocks away from what passed as main street in town. A few shops, a tawdry bar that I wouldn’t be caught dead in, and who knew what else that had been put in since I had last been here. It wouldn’t be much.

I already couldn’t wait to get out of there, and I hadn’t even been inside yet.

I took a few steps toward the door. As much as I was worried about how the cramped space would feel once I was back in it, there was no denying that I’d had some good memories here in this house. Baking in the sunny, yellow kitchen with Mom and Annabelle. Twirling around in the living room as I watched hours and hours of ballet on repeat and tried to copy their moves.

I might have always wanted to get out of this town, but it hadn’t all been bad.

I knocked on the front door. It felt weird just to let myself in. I might be family, but I hadn’t lived here for years now. And I wasn’t the same person that I had been when I left. I was sure of that.

A young woman answered the door, and it took me a moment to recognize her as Annabelle. She had dyed her light brown hair dark, and it was styled in a sleek bob with a cute fringe just brushing her eyebrows. Her blue eyes were a dead giveaway, though, as was the squeal that she let out when she saw me. She flung her arms around me.

“You’re here!” she exclaimed. “Mom said you were coming home, but I thought she was joking. I didn’t think you were ever going to come back here. What’s up? You’re not engaged, are you?” She peered past me, like she expected some mystery beau to suddenly spring up behind me.

I shook my head. “No, not engaged.”

I sighed, trying to think of a way to explain. I had been vague with Mom, just telling her that I unexpectedly had some time off and thought that it would be nice to come home. Of course, she didn’t buy that for a second, but she had thoughtfully refrained from asking any prying questions, at least until I came home.

I had also been vague on my exact arrival details. The last thing I needed was her making a scene at the airport. I just couldn’t deal with that right now.  

“You must be tired,” Annabelle said, grabbing my bag and dragging it inside. “Come on. I cleaned up the room just in case Mom wasn’t joking. You can have my bed for now. We’ll figure out something else soon. Sorry, I upsized to a queen, and there just wasn’t room for another twin bed in there after that.”

She looked so apologetic that I had to laugh as I shook my head. “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I didn’t expect everything to be the same. It’s been a while.” I paused. “Is Mom here?”

Annabelle shook her head. “She and Clayton just went out to get food,” she said. Suddenly, her face lit up. “Oh, now I know why she was so adamant that we weren’t just having boring meatloaf leftovers tonight.” She giggled. “Anyway, they should be back soon, and then we can have dinner, and you can go straight to bed. Grandma.”

I rolled my eyes and gave her a light push. I had missed her laugh, and hearing it now was like a balm to my soul.

I headed down the hall to our old bedroom. It definitely looked like Annabelle’s place now, but there were certain hints of the fact that it had once belonged to both of us when we were kids. The glow-in-the-dark stars were still peeling off the ceiling above where our twin beds had been, and a couple of my pictures still hung on the walls. Nostalgia punched me in the gut, but I pushed it away.

I didn’t want to live in Aberdeen. Not before, and not now. Not ever. I was just here to pick up the pieces of my life, rest up, and train hard. I would be back in Paris within six months. Sooner if I had my way. No time to get attached to things here.

“Oh my god, you must be loving France, right?” Annabelle asked, flopping down on the bed next to where I had gingerly sat down, more to give my ankle a rest than out of any real desire to lay down there. I couldn’t help feeling out of place. I should offer to stay out on the sofa, I knew, but I also knew that a few months of sleeping on an old sofa was not what the director wanted when he told me to take six months to heal up.

“Paris is great,” I said, shrugging. I didn’t know what else to say. Annabelle had never been the kind of person to travel. She still lived here with Mom and Clayton, while theoretically saving for college. But she’d been saving for college for years now. I knew that school was expensive, but I was sure that if she really meant to leave, she would have by now.

She had never once come to visit me abroad, not even when Mom came to visit me. I knew she was too scared to travel. She’d probably live here in Aberdeen for the rest of her life. She wouldn’t be the first person to do that.

It was still crazy to me that we had once been so close, and yet we couldn’t have turned out more differently.

“So are you, like, getting transferred to an academy in New York or something?” Annabelle asked. “Is that why you’re back here? You know, Mom would love it if you were a little closer.”