Liar.
I avoid Rosella while she changes
and go early to the empty barre room.
I rest my ankle on the top rung
and slide it
until I’m in a split.
I close my eyes,
and the stretch warms the back of my thigh.
“Hi, Clare.”
It’s Elton.
“Hi.” I pull back up.
He stretches on the other side of the barre.
His leg slides clear to the end.
“You ready for auditions?” he asks.
I shrug. “I’m a little nervous.”
“You’ll do great.” He slides back up.
I bend at the waist and hug my head
to my knees to hide my blushing.
“Thanks,” I finally answer,
and straighten.
“I was in City Ballet last year
with Margot,” he says.
“I know.”
“So, believe me.
You’ll make it.”
I smile back at him.
We reach for the barre
and brush hands,
his dark,
mine pale.
I quickly straighten my skirt.
Plié, down and up.
The guys in class
seem nice enough.
Especially to each other.
This must be one place they can make friends.
Kids at their schools must be brutal
when they find out
the guys take ballet lessons.
I’m sure a lot are hassled about being gay.
Plié, down and up.
Tommy’s the only irritating guy here.
He’s actually eyeing Devin again.
Plié, down and up.
Nathan seems really sweet.
He’s driven and focused to get better.
But Elton is by far the best.
In ballet and friendliness.
Overall, the guys are like the girls,
in that we are all here to do the same thing.
To learn to dance.
Maybe because the competition isn’t so intense
for them,
they can be more relaxed.
Could I make friends with one of them
sometime?
Plié, down and up.
“And turn,” says Madame.
The rhythm of the music.
The rhythm of the traffic outside.
The rhythm of our feet
brushing the floor.
It feels good
to be in rhythm.
I wait behind Rosella
at the water fountain.
Her backbone pokes out each notch
like a row of tiny fists.
She wipes her lips and steps away.
“Hi,” I say.
She barely nods,
then joins her group on the floor.
I bend over the fountain
and drink deeply.
The cold contracts my chest
into a knot.
I sputter out the mouthful
and step away.
It’s my group’s turn.
I take the spot Rosella stood in
a second ago.
There’s still a twist
in my chest.
I shoulder my bag
and cross the street
to the coffee shop.
I wait in the noisy line
and order a cup of tea.
The other customers’ chatter
and the latte machine’s hissing
cover me up
while I sit at the little table.
So Rosella ignored me the whole time,
but it feels so good
that Elton believes I’ll make it
into the company.
I squeeze
the honey bear
tight around the waist
and swirl the gold stream
into my cup.
That’s a sweet thought.
“Hi,” she says.
I don’t breathe.
Dia sits down
across from me.
My wood stirrer
slips from my fingers
and sticks to the table.
“Hi,” pops out of me.
She looks so different
in street clothes
with her hair
down loose.
“I was walking
by the conservatory
and saw you come in here.”
“Oh,” I say.
“So, how was class?”
“Normal.”
We sit.
“Not like yesterday,
when Madame actually smiled,” I add.
“No way!” says Dia.
Now we both smile.
It feels great.
“So, how are you?” I finally ask.
She bites her thumbnail.
“You know what she said to me?”
“What?” I lean forward.
Dia looks at the ceiling.
“She said
I don’t have a dancer’s body.
That I should
redirect my efforts.
That I would be welcome
in the adult class.”
I gasp. “How humiliating!”
“Tell me about it.
Most of them are so lame,
they can hardly move across the floor.”
“So, what are you going to do?”
Dia shrugs. “I guess I kind of knew
this was going to happen.
I started imagining it awhile ago.”
“Yeah?”
“Mmm hmm. I had time to get used to the idea.”
She tucks her bra strap back under her shirt.
“Mostly I’m going to hang out,
take it easy the rest of the summer.
Then maybe I’ll try out for lacrosse.”
“That’d be fun,” I make myself say.
“Yeah. ’Cause there’s no way I’d ever
go to that adult class.
What a bunch of losers.”
“Right.” I smooth my napkin.
“But won’t you miss ballet?”
Dia flips her hair behind her shoulder.
“Maybe. But I’m ready to try other stuff.
I don’t have
a choice.”
She pulls her chair closer.
“You know one thing?” she asks.
“What?”
“I still felt beautiful
when I danced.
All the way up to the last class.
Maybe I didn’t look that great,
but I felt like I did.
Way down
deep inside.
You know what I mean?”
“Maybe,” I whisper.
Maybe that’s another name
for being turned inside out.
Beautiful.
“Would you believe this is a
double tall mocha latte
with whole milk and whipped cream?”
“You are kidding.” I laugh. “That’s a sin!”
“It’s delicious!” She takes a big sip.
“Well, I better go.
I’m meeting my mom at the used bookstore.”
“I grew up in a bookstore,” I say.
“What do you mean?”
“My parents own the In Print bookstore
in Tacoma.”
“Cool.” She stands and pushes her chair in.
I wrap my hands around my teacup.
“Dia?”
“Yeah?”
“What did your mom say
after you worked so hard,
and it cost all that money—oh, never mind.
It’s none of my business. Sorry.”
“No, it’s okay.” She flips her hair again.
“We had a super
long cry,
then talked about stuff
I’ve supposedly learned.
That kind of thing.
She really understood.”
“Oh.”
“It helped a little.
I mean,
everything
doesn’t feel completely wasted.”
She stares out the window.
“Most of the time.
Well, I gotta go, Clare.
Good luck on Saturday.”
“Thanks.”
She pushes out the door.
I swallow the rest of my cool tea
and follow her.
I bet her mom
never used to say
dancing
was their dream.
“Bye,” I call
to Dia and her mom
on the opposite street corner.
They wave back.
I turn away
and hurry to Grandpa’s.
He shouldn’t be home yet
from his Bible study.
But just in case,
I don’t want to worry him,
since I didn’t call
and leave a message about staying later.
Oh. Dia’s phone number.
I should get it
and call her sometime.
I sprint back to the corner,
but they’re gone.
I shiver in the warm sun.
Oh, well.
Maybe it would have been weird
to ask for her number.
But it does seem like
if we aren’t in class
we can talk.
Outside the conservatory
we are on the same side.
We could be friends
or something.
I beat Grandpa home.
My stomach is too jumpy for a snack,
so I yank my covers up on the bed
and stretch out
with some magazines.
I flip through the pages of ballet pictures.
Everyone looks the same.
The corps dancers
are a unit.
They are like one dancer,
each holding the exact same pose.
Same hair,
costumes,
height.
Same, same, same.
I flip the page.
A close-up of a soloist.
I cover her nose and mouth with my thumb
and look at her eyes.
There’s too much makeup
to see how she really feels.
Beautiful?
Happy?
Does she love to dance?
She must.
The pain
has to be worth it.
I toss the magazine
and pick up the teen one
I checked out at Grandpa’s little library.
“Cleavage: How to Get It”
“Dramatic Eye Shadow”
“Does He Think You’re Seventeen?”
I flip through to the end.
Total obsession with breast size.
Page after page of fashion.
How weird that most girls
want to look older
every way possible.
Wow. How different can you get?
They want big breasts.
They want cleavage
and want to show it.
Why does it matter so much?
Because that’s what guys notice?
Please.
What a load of garbage.
I have the opposite pressure.
I need to stay flat.
Nothing can interrupt your line in ballet.
Like a C-cup size.
Poor Dia.
She definitely looked different
from everyone else.
But is that so bad?
Why do we all have to look
like we’re eleven?
Most of the time,
we look like little boys
partnered with men.
Why does it have to be like that?
Is the line so important?
Why can’t we be the way we are,
not how a magazine or dance company says?
Am I believing a load of garbage too?
My poster is curling up again.
I reach and press
the corner of Baryshnikov to the wall.
It sticks for a few seconds,
then pops up again.
“Stay.” I push harder.
This time it does.
But for how long?
The sticky stuff isn’t worth much.
Maybe some tape
right across the edge would work.
I’ll get some later.
“Hello?”
“In the kitchen, Grandpa.”
I take the bags of groceries from him.
“I was getting worried about you.”
“I’m sorry. I needed to do some shopping.”
He rummages through the medicine cupboard
and pulls down his pills.
I pack the freezer with our dinners.
He swallows his medicine
with some water.
“And I stopped at the clinic.”
I shut the freezer. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes.” He sets his empty glass in the sink.
“They wanted to check my blood pressure.”
“Oh.”
“And how is your blood pressure, love,
considering auditions are a day away?”
“All right. I haven’t been very hungry though.”
“Nerves.”
“Yeah.” I cram the grocery bags
into the recycle bin.
“Nerves.”
I dump our microwave dinner dishes.
“Want to go for a walk, Grandpa?”
“I’m not really up for it, Clare.”
“Okay. I guess I’ll go to bed early then.”
“Good night.”
“Night.”
I take a quick shower,
crack my windows for some fresh air,
and climb into bed.
The fir trees shush outside.
My mind is stuffed with
Rosella saying those awful things,
Elton saying such a sweet thing,
Dia saying she’s ready to move on,
and my mom saying it’s our dream.
Why hasn’t that bothered me before?
Why now?
Have Dad and Grandpa
ever really used those words?
Nope.
Dad’s always saying I won’t fail if I try hard,
and Grandpa says I’m already a dancer.
Even though that bothers me,
it’s not like what Mom says:
our dream.
It makes the pressure twice as much.
Ugh.
I cover my head with my pillow
and try to suffocate my mind.
Grandpa’s note says he’s off to the library.
SEE YOU LATER,
I write across the bottom.
I clean up the kitchen
and toss a load of whites in the washer.
I shove up my covers
so the bed looks mostly made.
Where’s my bag?
There, under the dresser.
I grab it and hurry out the front door.
“Hey, Mija.”
Her black fur warms my fingertips.
She stretches and purrs,
then curls back into a ball on the stair.
Mmm. I’d love to curl up in the sun.
My bag slips from my shoulder.
Class!
I hurry out of the garden
and race down the sidewalk.
Tension zings around
the dressing room.
Bobby pins are shoved into buns.
Elastic is snapped at the waist.
Ba
gs are kicked under chairs.
If the tension
is this bad today,
what will it be like
tomorrow?
I tug my tights up.
Rosella tries to slip past,
thin as a garden snake.
“Rosella—”
“Hey, forget it.”
“But—”
“We’re fine,
if you stay off my back
about my weight.
Come on.” She drags me
by the wrist to the barre room.
It wasn’t about your weight, Rosella.
It was about puking
and how rude you were about Dia.
And I wasn’t apologizing.
But if you want to think so,
I don’t care.
I have enough to worry about.
“Can you believe auditions
are tomorrow?” she asks.
I shake my head.
Everyone is waiting for Madame.
Rosella and I
end up on opposite sides of the barre.
“Again.”
“Higher.”
“Faster.”
“Control.”
“Taller.”
“Stretch.”
“Lean.”
“Reach.”
“Bend.”
Translation:
Be
better
than
you
are
or
you
will
be
nothing.
We grasp the barre
while we balance
on one foot.
One leg is bent and lifted
to the front.
I love holding the attitude pose.
Everyone is solid.
“And release the barre,” says Madame.
We do
and stay balanced.
Rosella
and Tommy
drop out of form.
They mutter under their breath.
Then everyone else collapses.
Margot, Elton, and I
are left balancing.
Madame walks slowly around us
looking down her nose.
“Other side,” she snaps.
We come down and turn.
Margot glances at me.
I risk a smile.
She doesn’t return it.
But Elton winks.
The adult class
laughs and chats
as they head
to the dressing room.
Everyone
wears something different.
They’re like a circus troupe.
We pass them
silently
and go into the floor room.
I’m last in line.
“Good luck tomorrow,”
someone says.
I turn and see
the red-headed lady
looking right at me.
“Thanks,” I answer
by accident.
I spin away
fast.
We piqué turn across the floor.
Snapping our heads,
we spot
one speck
on the wall
we are moving toward.
The room blurs,
but the spot
is in focus.
Everyone moves
across the floor
toward their spot.
Waiting for my turn,