Moving Speech: Chapter One

“Zephyr, no!”

Cathy turned just in time to see the furry brown comet that collided with her shins, drooling all over her jeans and yapping furiously. She knelt down to look at the puppy as a harried woman ran towards her. She smiled apologetically while attempting to grab the leash that trailed and tangled around Cathy’s legs.

“I’m so sorry! He just saw you and—”

“It’s fine,” Cathy interrupted. She peered into the dog’s wet black eyes and earned an enthusiastic lick. “His name is Zephyr?”

“Yes.” The woman finally snagged the leash. She stood back up, hauling the dog with her. Zephyr immediately darted towards a wheeled suitcase that looked too expensive to be a dog toy. “And your name?”

“Cathy.” She ran her fingers beneath the strap of her carry-on, relieving a little of the pressure on her shoulder. “Cathy Saylor.”

The woman’s eyes widened. “You’re Catherine Saylor?”

“Live and in person.” Cathy cocked her head, propping a fist on her hip. “Do I know you?”

“No. Well, I just, ah…”

Cathy smirked. A tabloid reader, eh? “Don’t believe everything you read, lady.” She began to walk away, making Zephyr start yapping his little head off.

“Wait! Cathy, wait!”

Cathy looked over her shoulder at the woman as she hurried to catch up. “I’m Hannah Morretson,” she panted, straining to keep Zephyr from investigating a potted tree. “Nice to meet you. I’d offer a hand, but—” She jerked her head towards the random furry molecule.

“You’re Hannah Morretson?” Hannah didn’t look like a Saylor when she’d come bounding across the floor. Saylors were always perfectly collected and in control, no matter the situation—a feat that Tracey called “poise” but Cathy suspected was just in the blood, like so much else.

This Hannah, though—she definitely lacked poise. (She was even panting.) Now that Cathy was looking at the woman properly, however, it was possible this was her future teacher. Cathy could see the straps of a leotard beneath the baggy, paint-streaked sweatshirt. Hannah’s mousy-blonde hair swung free, but there were the kinks in otherwise straight strands that betrayed long days tamed into a ponytail. She seemed a little too solid to be a dancer, firmly planting her heel when another might have come forward by her toes, but then, not everyone could make every movement poetry like Aunt Tracey.

“…eat or something before heading home. Does that sound good? Catherine? Cathy?”

Cathy snapped out of her examination. “Sorry, what?”

“Do you want to go get a bite to eat? I don’t know if you’re hungry or if you’d rather just head home or—”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Oh, well then, we’ll just head out of here, shall we?” Hannah moved to take the carry-on from Cathy. She moved back quickly, narrowly avoiding Zephyr, who had snuck behind her during the conversation.

“I have this.” No way Cathy was letting some strange lady carry her pictures of Aunt Tracey. Even if that stranger was family. Cathy left no opportunity for a reply, instead walking to the luggage carousel. Hannah followed in Cathy’s wake, anchoring an excited Zephyr as he tried to jump onto Cathy’s carry-on.

At least she only had the one bag. She’d thought to send her other three duffels ahead in the mail so that she wouldn’t have to jerk with them in the airport, though it looked like not everyone was so smart. Cathy smirked as she watched one man try to talk on his cell and juggle two suitcases and what looked like a shaving kit at the same time. She yanked her own case off the conveyor, the pompom Aunt Tracey had made for the handle bobbling against her hand.

“Seems like you found your luggage okay.” Hannah touched the pompom carefully, delicately, as if expecting Cathy to snap at her again. “Do you want me to get this for you, or do you have it?”

“I got it.” Cathy perched the carry-on on the suitcase, wrapping the strap around the plastic telescope handle.

Hannah made a small sound like a sigh. When she looked at Cathy again, her smile was a bit rueful. “This way, then.” She led the way to a set of rotating doors. As the glass panes flashed by, Cathy could make out cars and asphalt and people, but just past the parking lot, the landscape was dominated by trees. She stifled a groan. Great. A rural back-water tourist trap towns. She’d hoped, after living in one for the past nine years with Aunt Tracey, they’d send her to a city—have something be solid and familiar in the transition. But no. They’d kill her with damn trees before making anything go easy.

The roads were terrible, and the driving wasn’t much better. Hannah swerved around potholes without a care for the faded yellow line or the six-inch shoulder. Cathy clutched the handle, feverishly praying that Aunt Tracey’s car would arrive soon so she wouldn’t have to ride with this she-devil behind the wheel. (How Zephyr could sleep through the constant shifting and swaying, Cathy had no idea—she could only believe that he was just used to the rollercoaster that was Hannah’s driving.) The car itself wasn’t so bad, though. It was a hybrid, of course, and it still had a little of that leathery new car smell, though you had to work to detect it through the dog hair. Maybe Cathy could talk Hannah into letting her drive it for a while.

Hannah, correctly guessing that her teenage passenger wouldn’t want to talk, had turned on the radio to some trendy station. A pop song whined through the speakers, turning her stomach. The rhythm was alright, easy to get the tempo and tap along to—perfect for a car ride when movement was limited to the hands—but the words! The words kept distracting her from the song as the clichéd phrases poured from the speakers to fill her personal bubble of space. She shook her head, trying to clear the air, but the words wove themselves into her bangs and clung there like a wad of bubblegum, flying in front of her with every toss and turn, forcing themselves past her lids and into her mind until all she could visualize was a disgustingly sappy scene reminiscent of a middle-school production of “Romeo and Juliet.”

Um, no.

Diving into her carry-on, Cathy emerged clutching a set of earbuds like a lifeline. “Do you mind?” she asked, but the question was more perfunctory than anything else: the buds were in her ears and drowning out Jesse McCartney’s pathetic croons before Hannah could answer. The rest of the trip was peaceful, blissful, wordless movie scores until they hit town.

Or what passed for “town” in this neck of the woods, anyway. Cathy felt relieved when she saw buildings suddenly appearing between gaps of blurred brown and green; buildings meant people, people meant civilization, and civilization meant halfway-decent roads. At least Hannah had stopped swerving into oncoming traffic.

“Huntington’s a college town,” Hannah said as they passed a beer distributor. “Quiet, usually, as long as you’re not downtown and it’s not a game day. Lots of parties and tailgates then.” She paused, wrinkling her brow as she stopped for a red light. “You don’t…?”

“No,” Cathy said. “Aunt Tracey—” Her throat was suddenly dry. Cathy coughed to clear it. “—Aunt Tracey kept me busy. I never had time to party.” (Not that she’d been invited to anything, but that was her choice, so it wasn’t worth mentioning.) “Or guys, or drinking, or sexing. Just in case you were wondering,” she added with a smirk.

Hannah’s shoulders relaxed. She took her eyes off the road long enough to offer her niece a small smile. “Good, well, speaking of being busy, what have you covered so far?”

“Dunno.” Cathy shrugged as best she could beneath the seatbelt. “A lot.”

“Like…?”

Cathy sighed. “Ballet, of course.” She watched the houses crowd along the sidewalk to avoid looking at Hannah. “I don’t like it much, though—too strict. I like more freestyle forms.”

Out of the corner of her vision, Cathy saw Hannah’s mouth quirk. “Like niece, like aunt.”

Dammit. She should’ve known Hannah’d compare her to the late, great Tracey “Mixer” Saylor. “I dance like myself, Ms. Moretson.” Her tone could’ve frozen a keg. “My favorite’s swing, actually. East Coast. Can we not talk anymore, please?”

Silence. The wrinkle had reappeared on Hannah’s brow. Cathy’s soundtrack flowed into the opening lines of a new download. Then— “It doesn’t have to be strict, you know. There can be a lot of freedom found in that kind of discipline, and—”

Cathy ripped the buds out of her ears in mid-phrase and glared at her new guardian. “Can we please not talk about it, Hannah? For just a little bit? Please? I’m really not feeling like chit-chat at the moment. Thank you.”

Hannah didn’t reply, though her hands tightened around the wheel. Cathy took it as assent and settled back into her seat with her buds back in, listening to a man wish he could go back to a place much simpler than this.



The quiet lasted all the way to Hannah’s place. She lived in a small apartment tucked above the dance studio where Hannah taught the local kids enough to stand up straight and attempt something more complicated than the vulgar bump’n’grind of their fellow masses. A discreet door in the office led to a back stair and up to the apartment. Even though the landing was indoors—at least there was no black ice to dodge here, like there had been in the drive—Hannah had placed a doormat by the entrance and a small ceramic frog in the corner. It looked woefully out of place next to the woven pineapples and generic commercial carpeting of the hall, and Cathy couldn’t help but chuckle as she hauled her case up the last step.

Hannah, alternately jiggling the key and wrestling with Zephyr’s pet carrier, looked up. She grinned when she saw what Cathy was looking at. “A gift from a student,” she said. “Apparently her mother paints ceramic figurines—ah! Here we go, come in—and this one needed a home.”

Hannah’s apartment was small but incredibly neat. Cathy almost felt guilty stepping on the pristine wooden floors. She lingered in the doorway, fingering the pompom on her suitcase while Hannah putzed around the entryway, hanging up the coats and fussing with her keys and going through all the tiny rituals which marked the space as hers.

Zephyr, recharged from his nap in the car, held no similar compunctions. As soon as Hannah unclipped the carrier door, he was up and out and down the stairs before a word could be said. Hannah started after him, but Cathy waved her off.

“I can get him. I wanted to do some work downstairs anyway. If that’s alright,” she tacked on, not really expecting her to say no but feeling like she should ask anyway.

But Hannah eyed her, weighing her response. She was still crouched on the floor next to the carrier. The light from a small sidetable lamp glided across her arched nose and shadowed her cheek, gilding the few silver streaks that had fallen across her mouth. For a second between heartbeats, between answer and reply, Cathy could see her old aunt in this new one. It was in the patience of that pause, in the testing of unfamiliar waters while knowing she’d just forge on anyway and to hang with the consequences.

It was only for a moment, and then Hannah shifted and the moment was lost and buried beneath air that smelled like furniture polish instead of burnt popcorn. “Alright. Not too long, though—you have to unpack yet. Do you know the way?”

Cathy smirked. “I think it’s down the stairs, right?”

Hannah laughed. “Yep. I’ll take this to your room, then,” she said, reaching for the suitcase. This time, Cathy let her take it; the carryon was slung across Cathy’s shoulders once again, so it was alright. “See you in a bit.”

Zephyr was already in the studio by the time Cathy found him. He’d tucked himself into a little ball on an old quilt piled by a clunky boombox. He watched her approach with bright black eyes, tail wagging slightly as she reached down to flick the power switch. A spit of static, a quick twist of the dial, and Cathy managed to find a station that wasn’t country and wasn’t on a commercial break. She quickly removed her shoes and stretched through most of the first song—it was too slow and she’d tuned in halfway through, anyway—before lining herself up in front of the mirror, eyeing her reflection until she didn’t see an awkward teenager with limbs too long for her body like a puppy growing into his paws: she looked until she saw a dancer, relaxed with her head held high and her emotions firmly in check.

But then a new song began, and at the opening chords, Cathy smiled because she knew this song—she knew it like she knew a heartbeat or the rainfall or the thunder in a hurricane back home—and she knew, too, that this was the song that she could dance to and bring to life her grief because it had been contained for too long and now it could come out.

Her hair came unbound with the first spin, but Cathy didn’t notice and didn’t care—the music had her then, it gripped her and it changed the way she moved so that she was forced to follow the rippling piano and the throbbing beats across the floorboards in a twisting series of jumps and twirls that might’ve been jetés and pirouettes if she’d felt the need to label anything (which she didn’t). It was a combination so intricate and so intense that it swept her up, too, swept her up so that while her feet could land, she was still flying high on the back of the music and the lyrics and the promise that no matter how far she’d gone, how long she’d have to wait, somehow, someway, she’d find her way home again. And for one brief moment, as her back arched and she surrendered her body to the embrace of the air and the warm, even light of the stage, she let herself believe that it could happen.

And then—oh, it had to be then!—she heard a syncopated thump. It broke through the rhythm and the spell of the music and, with a yelp, Cathy lost her focus. She and the magic she had begun to weave collapsed like reality, all knotted and tangled and impossible to rework into anything remotely salvageable. She could feel it spark and fizzle like severed powerlines. With a growl, she yanked the cords back to her—like hell she'd leave a mess her first day!—and flipped to her feet, staring in the direction of the untimely interruption.

The whole side wall of the studio was an enormous glass window, framing in the mirrors and the bars and the dancers who would use them. From the studio floor, Cathy could see a young man splayed on his back on the front walk which Cathy and her aunt had used just minutes before. She relaxed marginally—it was just a passing idiot who happened to fall outside the window. Nothing too serious. She flipped him the bird and moved to shut off the boombox. When she turned, she saw him still lying in the gravel, apparently unmoved. She bit back a groan. Great.

Grabbing a clean towel from a rack by the door, Cathy draped it across her shoulders and jogged to the front door. Bells tinkled as she yanked it open and stuck her head outside. “You okay?”

Silence. Was his chest even rising? She tried to peer past the massive white-boy ‘fro to check for breathing, but she couldn’t tell. She was going to kill him a second time if he made her walk on rocks in bare feet.

“Seriously. Dude. Are you okay?”

Her aggravation must’ve done something, because his body finally began to jerk in something like controlled movement.

He wasn’t dead, then. That was good. “You’ll be alright, then. Watch out for the ice next time.” She shut the door on the now-groaning boy on the sidewalk and trotted up the stairs, catching Hannah setting the table for dinner. She looked up as Cathy shut the door behind her.

“Everything alright?” she asked. “I heard the door open downstairs. Was it a student?”

Cathy snorted. “I hope not. This guy's a real clumsy one. Idiot fell on the ice.”

“Is he okay?”

“I guess so.”

Hannah huffed. “Was he moving alright?”

“Dunno.” Cathy shrugged. “He hadn’t gotten up yet when I left him.”

Hannah stared at her niece, mouth slack with horror.

Cathy raised one eyebrow. “What?”