Violetta Craft's Arc

Chapter 31 of 65

The morning after the showcase, Violetta stayed up past three feeding Elowen and watching the check curl on the nightstand. She slept through her alarm. She slept through Jordie leaving for school. When she finally woke, it was almost eleven, and the house was quiet in the way it only was when Jordie had taken the baby to his mother's on the way out. Violetta pulled on jeans and a clean shirt and drove to campus. She wanted to walk into the gym in the middle of fourth period and hand him the ribbon. She wanted him to see it in daylight, not folded on the kitchen counter. The side door of the gym was propped with a wedge. Violetta stepped through and stopped inside the doorway. The runway tape was gone. A few juniors were dragging folding chairs into a stack near the wall. The bleachers were half pulled out. She scanned for Jordie's jacket and found it draped over the bottom bench. Jordie was standing near the free-throw line with Lucy Loo. Lucy had one hand flat on his chest. His hand was on the small of her back. Lucy tipped up on her toes and kissed him, and he did not step away. Violetta did not move. She watched long enough to be sure. Lucy laughed at something and pressed her forehead to his shoulder. Jett was sitting on the bottom bleacher three feet from them, phone in his hand, watching Violetta instead of them. He had seen her come in. His face did the thing faces do when they have been holding a secret and the secret arrives at the door. Jordie turned then and saw her. His hand dropped from Lucy's back. He said her name once, quietly, then louder. Violetta walked across the gym floor. Her shoes squeaked on the varnish. Lucy stepped back and started to say something Violetta did not listen to. Violetta pulled the house key off her ring, the studio key with it, and set both on the bleacher next to Jordie's jacket. She said, "Get your things out by Sunday." Jordie said, "Vi, wait, it's not—" and she said, "I saw you. Don't." She said it flat, the way she read a seam that would not lie right. Then she turned and walked out the same door she came in. In the parking lot she sat in the driver's seat with both hands on the wheel until they stopped shaking. Elowen was at Jordie's mother's house. Her dress was at home on the padded form. The check was in her wallet, and now it was not studio rent for a year or a better machine. It was first month, last month, and deposit on somewhere Jordie did not live. She started the car and drove to pick up her daughter.