I guzzle water from the fountain, but still have trouble swallowing the pills down. I think of them dissolving in my stomach, helping me be the best I can be.
In the studio, I find a space tucked away near the back, far from the others—especially Bette. I pull out my ballet slippers. I sprawl along the studio floor and start a long, deep stretch, my legs in a wide V, my arms up and over my head, then extended down to my toes. We warm up for twenty minutes, then Madame Genkin claps her hands, calling us to attention.
We work at the barre, completing exercise after exercise to warm up our legs and feet and core. Madame Genkin smiles at me as she inspects my tendus. “Your line’s perfect, Cassandra. Everything in place.”
I flush with warmth and feel like today might be a great one.
She moves back to the center of the room, and the mirrors on either side make it look like there are a thousand of her. “Time to work in the center. Change into pointe shoes.”
We scramble to our bags, tape our toes, pad them, slip on our pointe shoes, and lace the pale pink ribbons around our ankles. We leap up and down, warming up the shoes. The thumping and thwacking of pointe shoes fill the room. Madame Genkin gives Viktor piano chord instructions.
“Girls, we will do a short combination that ends with four turns. Two times each before the next pair begins from the corner. I need to examine your spotting.”
There are low groans.
“Cassie and Bette first, followed by June and Sei-Jin.”
We both come to center and stare at each other through the mirror. We echo: pale blond hair, ice-blue eyes, and even our builds are similar.
Madame Genkin shows us the combination—a series of piqué turns from the corner to the center, a jump left and a jump right, three pirouettes into a balancé. Bette drops into a deep plié. She flutters her arms out. I mimic her.
The music starts. She’s quick and balanced, her rhythm falling in line with the music effortlessly, like she’s done this a million times. I extend my leg forward into another turn, and I absorb the music. My mind quiets: the worries, the criticisms, the faces in the studio windows, everything drifts away. I catch myself in the mirror as I do each turn—the long, lean lines; the twirl of pink and black and cream, like a prima ballerina. Like the ballerina I was born to be.
The lines get fuzzier with each turn. My limbs feel heavy and thick. I can’t get them to lift as quickly as I want them to. I spin faster, pushing myself to spot. Madame Genkin claps along the beat. I’m too slow. In the mirror I see Bette, the hot-pink bow of her mouth as it purses. A wave of heat trickles over me, and I feel like I’ve lost my strength, floundering as I do another turn.
My eyelids flutter. I fight with their heaviness. The need to sleep overwhelms every part of me.
I drown under the spell of the music. Bette catches me, smiling as she whispers, “It’s okay,” when my body slumps toward her, heavy and cumbersome. Like she was expecting this. Like she knew it would happen all along.
ACT I
Fall Season
1.
Bette
I’M BACK TO THE BASICS: fifth position in front of the mirror. The Russian teacher my mother hired—Yuliya Lobanova—rotates my left hip forward and backward with small wrinkled hands. It pinches and burns, and I relish the heat of the pain. It reminds me that underneath all this pale pink, my muscles are strong and trained for ballet.
Yuli’s gray-streaked hair is swept into a bun, still obeying the elegant, upward pull. Bright green eyes stare back at me in the wall of mirrors in my home studio. “You keep sitting in this hip, lapochka.” She used to be one of the stars of the Maryinsky Theater. I had her picture on my bedroom wall, young and bold and startlingly beautiful. “Turn out, turn out.”
I push harder to please her and myself. To be strong again. To be me again.
“Lift! Higher, higher.”
Practicing five hours a day, seven days a week keeps me from having to think about everything that happened last year. The pranks, the drama, Gigi’s accident, and my suspension are replaced with pirouettes, fouettés, and port de bras.
“Show me you’re ready,” she says, happy with my new and improved ultra deep turnout.
I step toward the mirror and lengthen my spine as long as it can go. I am still the ballerina in the music box. I am still an ABC student. I am still me.
My mother keeps paying my tuition, and she’s on the phone with Mr. K and Mr. Lucas every night battling to get me back into school. “Bette did not push that girl. She’s completely innocent. And you have no substantial proof that my daughter was the only one teasing Miss Stewart.” She’d said the word teasing like I’d called Gigi fat. “Still, we’ve settled with the Stewarts. They’ve been well compensated. So Bette should be back in school as soon as classes start. The school can’t afford any more scandal. The Abney endowment has always been generous to the American Ballet Conservatory and the company. The new company building is proof of that. I mean, it’s called Rose Abney Plaza, for god’s sake!” She never even paused to let whoever was on the other line get a word in.
“Now, turn for Yuli.” My ballet mistress doesn’t care about rumors and truths. She’s focused on practicalities, the here and now.
I take a deep breath and exhale as she starts to clap. The smell of my hair spray—powdery and sweet—fills my nose and the room. For a second, I’m back in Studio A for the very first time, the sun pushing through the glass walls while I swing my leg into a turn.
I’m a new Bette.
A different Bette.
A changed Bette.
Last year is a blur of images that I don’t want to deal with. If I let my brain drift away from focusing on my ballet lessons, the memories squeeze in like a vise: losing two soloist roles, losing Alec, losing the attention of my ballet teachers, being accused of pushing Gigi in front of a car, being suspended from school.
“Faster!” Yuli hollers. Her claps and shouts fold into my movement. “Out of that hip. Don’t lose your center.”
I can’t afford to lose anything else. My mother won’t tell me how much it cost her to settle with Gigi’s family or how much Mr. K’s been charging to keep my slot open. But I know it’s more money than Adele cost in all her years of intensives, private lessons, and special-order dancewear. I’m the expensive one now. But it’s for all the wrong reasons.
“Now, opposite direction.”
I hold my spot in the mirror, whipping my head around and around. Sweat drips down my back. I feel like a tornado. If I had my way, I’d be returning to ABC, ready to take down everyone and everything in my path.
In a week, everyone moves into the dorms. Eleanor will settle into our room. My room. I should be there.
Not here, in a basement studio that might as well be a prison.
Level 8 is the year that matters. This is the year we finally get to do it all—choreograph our own ballets, travel the country (and the world) for audition season, explore other companies. But the main thing, the most important thing, is that American Ballet Company’s new artistic director, Damien Leger, will be visiting ballet classes and figuring out who his new apprentices will be. Only two boys and two girls will make the cut. I need to be there for that.