by Charis Marsh
Charlize was waiting in the car, and she unlocked the doors so that Kaitlyn and Keiko could get in. “Taylor coming?” she asked.
Keiko nodded. “She’s just getting Julian and Tristan,” she explained. They sat in the car. A minute went by, and then another — Charlize looked at the clock. “Where are they?”
Keiko and Kaitlyn were silent. Kaitlyn could feel the sweat from her body going through her shirt. Gross. She pulled it away from her torso and shifted in the seat. She looked out; oh. “There’s Taylor,” she said as Taylor came around the building. “And Julian and Tristan, and … Alexandra.”
Charlize frowned, looking out. “She’s not coming, is she?” Charlize asked, referring to Alexandra. “I told Taylor only four people!”
They drew close to the car, and Taylor got in the front. She looked upset. “Taylor,” Charlize hissed quietly. “I told you only four people! Alexandra isn’t coming, is she?”
“Tristan invited her!” Taylor said.
“There aren’t even enough seats!” Charlize got out of the car, smiling. “Happy birthday, Jules! Now, who’s coming with me?”
“Everyone?” Tristan said.
“Oh, I see. I was not expecting this many people!” Charlize laughed in an extremely unamused way. “Well, I guess we’ll have to see what we can do …”
“It’s fine,” Alexandra said, following Tristan into the small car. “I’ll just sit on Tristan’s lap.” In a few seconds everyone was in the car except Charlize. Charlize sighed and got in. She started up the car and began to drive away from the academy, unusually slowly. “I really hope we don’t run into a police car,” she said pointedly.
At Taylor’s house, there were still Christmas tree lights up. “I keep meaning to get to it,” Charlize explained as they got out, “but I never remember except when I am driving away or coming home and too tired to do anything about it.
Taylor rolled her eyes. “You always complain about being tired.”
“Well, maybe I am tired, Taylor. A little gratitude would go a long way!” Charlize laughed and shook her head, but no one else laughed with her. It wasn’t really that funny.
Taylor ignored her mother and led them all down to the side door. They cut through the wet lawn and went in. “This is my room,” Taylor said, ushering them into an explosion of colour.
“Wow!” Julian said, impressed. “This bed is huge! And so bright!” He jumped up onto it with a flying leap.
“Agh!” Taylor protested.
“What?” Julian asked, sitting more sedately in a cross-legged position. “Do you never jump on it?”
“No, I don’t,” Taylor lied. “That ruins the springs.”
Julian held his arms out as he sat in the centre of the bed. “Om …” he intoned with his eyes shut. His eyes snapped open again, and he grinned. “This is awesome. It’s like a magic carpet.”
“That’s nice, Julian,” Kaitlyn laughed. “Are you Aladdin or Jasmine right now?”
“Neither,” Julian said, his back stiffening with false dignity. “I am the great Julian Reese. You may have heard of me before now.”
Taylor was bored, and annoyed. This was not how the party was supposed to go; it was supposed to go exactly as she wanted it to. “Is anyone hungry?”
“Yeah.” Julian jumped off the bed.
They went upstairs and congregated in the kitchen. Charlize looked at them. “Hungry?” she guessed.
They nodded.
“All right, take some chips and wait until I’m ready,” Charlize said. She poured two types in two large bowls, and they went downstairs again. Kaitlyn hopped down each stair. She felt strangely excited; it had been so long since she had actually just hung out at someone’s house. It was awesome. Better than awesome; it felt like she was back in elementary school again.
“What do you guys want to do?” Taylor said. Julian was lying on his belly, flipping through her DVDs. “Tangled, Clueless, Mean Girls, Borat, Gossip Girl — oh, cool, K-Ballet!” He sat up, pulling out Swan Lake.
Alexandra came over to look over his shoulder. “K-Ballet?”
“K-Ballet’s in Japan,” Keiko said, taking the case from Julian and looking at the back. “It is Tetsuya Kumakawa’s ballet company. It is so good and so expensive to buy tickets to in Japan. Kageki tells me that Tetsuya dates many girls, but I love him, anyway.”
Julian took the case back from her. “Can we watch this?” he asked, turning to Taylor, excited.
“Yeah,” Taylor said unenthusiastically. “It’s your birthday — or we could play a game or something.”
“Let’s watch this,” Alexandra said firmly. They all trekked to the living room, and Alison snuck in to watch with them.
“Alison, go away, these are my friends,” Taylor said, annoyed.
“Hey, Ali,” Julian said, grinning at her. “Want to come and watch ballet?” He patted the space on the couch next to him.
“Yes.” Alison hopped up beside him. Taylor pressed Play, and they all managed to fit on the couch.
“Where did you get this DVD, Tay?” Tristan asked curiously.
“Mao,” Taylor answered. She took a chip and popped it in her mouth. Kaitlyn did the same. She wondered what would happen if she just ate exactly what Taylor ate for a couple of months. Would she lose weight, or just puff up like a blowfish from eating so much junk food? Taylor took another chip, and Kaitlyn mirrored her.
Julian was leaning forward, watching. “That person’s not Japanese,” he said, pointing at Prince Seigfreid’s friend, Benno.
Keiko nodded. “He’s from the Royal Ballet. I forget his name. But that is where Tetsuya trained and used to dance.”
“Didn’t they used to call him Teddy there?” Alexandra asked, turning around.
“I don’t know. You know K-Ballet?”
“Of course,” Alexandra said, smiling. “Aiko showed me them last year.”
“Shush,” Julian said. “You guys be quiet. Me and Alison are trying to watch the movie.” They all stopped talking and focused back on the screen.
“I love that ending,” Julian said wistfully as the movie finished. “It’s so perfect … I think more companies should have that ending. I hate how Odette and Seigfried or one of them just die usually. That heaven scene was sweeeet. I liked how they used the gauzy curtain, too.”
Taylor turned on the lamp, and suddenly they could see. It had gotten dark outside while they were watching, and there was no longer any light from the big window. “Tristan, are you crying?” she exclaimed.
“No,” he protested, dabbing his eyes. Alexandra passed him a Kleenex from her pocket and blew her own nose.
“You guys are silly,” Keiko said, shaking her head. “It is just a story. Very tragic, but a story.”
“I know that,” Tristan said indignantly.
“Guys, are you done with the movie?” Charlize asked, coming into the living room. “Oh, good. Come and eat.”
They slowly got up. “I just want cake,” Taylor said. “I don’t want dinner.”
“Me, too,” Julian said, yawning as he stretched.
Alexandra shrugged. “I don’t care — I’d eat cake over dinner.”
“Taylor!” Charlize sighed. “Look what you started, and I just spent all this time making dinner.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Charlize,” Julian said quickly. “Of course we’ll eat dinner. We were just excited for cake.”
“Can we just have cake? Please Mom, nobody even wants dinner.”
Kaitlyn’s stomach rumbled, and she covered it with her hand.
“Okay, what is going to happen is you can all come to the table, and the people that want cake can have cake, and the people that want dinner can have dinner,” Charlize said firmly. “Come on.”
They went into the dining room, and Kaitlyn sat down next to Taylor. Charlize had gotten an ice cream cake, and she brought it out, with seventeen sparklers on it. “Can I light it? Tristan asked.
“Sure.” Charlize handed him the matches.
“You’re old now, Julian,” Taylor giggled.
“Whatever.” Julian stuck out his tongue at her.
They got their pieces of cake, and Kaitlyn started to eat hers slowly. She looked over at Taylor: she was smooshing bits of the cake against her plate so that the cold, hard ice cream softened. Kaitlyn did the same, trying to match the amounts she ate with Taylor. The phone rang, and Charlize went to answer it. “Oh, hi, Cecelia.”
Kaitlyn looked up. What did her mother want now?
“Of course, I’ll hand you over to her right now.” Charlize handed Kaitlyn the phone.
“Hi, Mom, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Cecelia answered, her shaky voice revealing the opposite. “Kaitlyn, I was wondering if you could just come home? I need to talk to you.”
“Mom, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong, I just want to talk to you about something.”
“Well, if nothing’s wrong, I want to stay.” Kaitlyn was suddenly very conscious of the others listening in close to her.
“Kaitlyn, I need you to come home.”
“I’ll come home in the morning, okay?” Kaitlyn hung up.
“Is everything all right?” Charlize asked politely. “Do you need to be driven home?”
“No, it’s fine,” Kaitlyn said, quickly. “My mom just wanted to make sure that I had done my homework.”
“Are you sure?” Charlize was insistent. “I don’t want to get in trouble with your mother if she wants you home.”
Kaitlyn looked over at the table, where the others were watching. Nobody seemed disappointed at the idea that she might leave. At her seat, Kaitlyn could see her cake forming a chocolate puddle on the plate as her smooshed ice cream started to melt. “No, it’s fine, actually,” she said quickly. She sat down and began to eat her cake, spooning up the melted pool first.
“Do you remember when we put that chocolate ice cream under your bed in the dorm at NBS?” Alexandra asked suddenly, turning to Tristan.
Tristan started to giggle. “That was hilarious. That summer was so much fun.” He turned to Julian, explaining the story. “We went on this field trip, and we really, really wanted chocolate ice cream, I don’t know why — we were like, eleven years old.”
“It was that time we both went to the National Ballet School for summer school,” Alexandra interjected, noticing that Julian looked a bit confused.
“We got this big tub of it,” Tristan explained, “because there wasn’t anything else — and then we stuck it under our bed because we were called away. We thought we’d only be gone a few minutes, but it was at least two hours, and when we came back there was this gross chocolate lake under the bed. There must have been a hole in the tub.”
“And then you left it!” Alexandra said indignantly, still horrified even after almost six years. “It was so disgusting. I don’t even remember who cleaned it up, but it wasn’t you.”
“You should have cleaned it up, it was your fault.”
“Nuh-uh.”
Kaitlyn looked at Taylor as Alexandra and Tristan continued to reminiscence for Julian’s entertainment. She looked very unimpressed, and kept opening her mouth to say something, but she didn’t do it forcefully enough to interrupt Alexandra and Tristan’s flow. Kaitlyn felt happy knowing that the birthday party that Taylor had been bragging about for weeks was not going as she wanted it.
The phone rang again, and Kaitlyn could hear Charlize answer it in the kitchen. “Oh, hi again!” she heard her say. “Oh yes, they’re all just eating cake right now — do you want to talk to her?” There was a pause as Charlize listened. “I could just drive her home if you want Cecelia,” Charlize said. Alexandra and Tristan had stopped talking to eavesdrop.
“What’s wrong with your mother?” Alexandra looked down the table at Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn shrugged, feeling her face heat up with a blush.
“Let’s all go downstairs,” Taylor said quickly, taking advantage of the silence. She hopped up, leaving the plates behind her.
Julian started to stack the plates, and Alexandra and Tristan quickly joined in to help.
“Guys, you can just leave that. My mother won’t care,” Taylor said impatiently.
“Shush,” Tristan said, annoyed. In the kitchen they could hear Charlize still talking on the phone to Kaitlyn’s mother. “Oh, God, yes!” Charlize exclaimed, laughing. “I had exactly the same conversation with her last week.” Apparently they had moved on from discussing Kaitlyn to gossiping. Kaitlyn hoped that was the end of it, and that her mother had gotten over whatever had been bothering her. They started to bring the plates into the kitchen, and Kaitlyn swiped a decorative chocolate swirl off of the cake and into her mouth before she followed them.
“Kaitlyn,” Charlize said as she walked into the room, “would you talk to your mother for a moment?”
Kaitlyn reluctantly took the phone from her as everyone else slowly headed downstairs, listening in. “Hey.”
“Kaitlyn, I need you to come home,” Cecelia said on the other end. Kaitlyn could tell that her mother was putting a lot of effort into forcing her voice to remain calm.
“Why?” Kaitlyn was trying to sound polite for the benefit of the curious ears listening in.
Cecelia lost her calm. “Kaitlyn, I understand this is important to you at the moment, but I need to talk to you.”
“What about?” Kaitlyn hoped that nobody could hear her mother’s voice through the phone.
“I don’t think that you should go to competition.”
“What?” Kaitlyn stared blankly out at Charlize’s kitchen. It was very white, and the energy-saving fluorescent lights made the appliances and furniture gleam in such a way that it was hard for her to focus. “What do you mean?”
“Kaitlyn, I’ve been talking to Mr. Moretti, and looking at old competition videos — I just don’t think that you are ready. I think you need to wait. There’s no point in going if you aren’t going to win, and I don’t think that you are going to win.”
“But …” Kaitlyn didn’t know what to say. “But, Mom …” Kaitlyn couldn’t say anything over the phone that she wanted to say, not with everyone listening in. I’m doing much better, and I’m already signed up, and I really want to go. I have to go!
“No, you don’t have to go, Kaitlyn, we can say something. You should think about it. I think you shouldn’t go. I want you to wait until we’re sure that you are going to win.”
Kaitlyn bit her lip. She’s already decided. But I can’t not go! Everyone’s expecting me to. I’ve been rehearsing for weeks ... “Okay,” she said to get off the phone. “I’ll … talk to you later? In the morning?”
Cecelia sighed on the other end. “Fine.”
Kaitlyn passed the phone back to Charlize and turned to the stairs where the others were hanging at the bottom, listening in. Taylor had had enough. “Everybody, let’s go upstairs now,” she said, making an attempt to sound firm, but only succeeding in sounding annoyed.
“What was that about?” Tristan ignored Taylor, focusing on Kaitlyn.
“Um …” Kaitlyn thought for a moment before the lie came to her, quite simply. “My mom thought that I hadn’t done my science homework yet. She’s a teacher, so she freaks out about that stuff.”
“Oh.”
“Come on, let’s go to my room,” Taylor said impatiently. They all started to walk upstairs, Kaitlyn last. That was easy, she thought. They believed me.
Chapter Eleven
Julian Reese
Can’t. Get. La Bayadere music out of my head.
“Yes, that’s it!” Theresa exclaimed. “So much better, Julian. Taylor, your arms are still extremely stiff. Your back doesn’t move when you reach. Reach with your arms, feel your back stretch away in two directions — and port de bras down. Lengthen. Yes! You need to use every bit of your back. All right, now let’s work on your solo Julian.”
Julian nodded, panting, still not ready to speak. He stood up and moved to the centre of the
room and began preparing. Just as Theresa was about to push Play, the door opened slightly. “Hey,” Charlize said in her brightest voice.
“Hey,” Theresa said right back at her, smiling also. It was painfully obvious that she was imitating her, but Charlize ignored it.
“I was wondering if I could just watch for a bit? See how it’s coming along.”
Theresa frowned. She did not want parents watching, but Charlize was already walking in and heading to the chairs. “I really feel that they can concentrate better if you are not in the room …”
“They won’t even notice I’m here,” Charlize winked at Taylor and Julian. “Right, guys?”
“Fine,” Theresa snapped, unimpressed. “Julian, you ready?”
Julian nodded.
“Okay, then.” Theresa pushed Play, and Julian started to go through his variation. He was still doing the solo from La Bayadere. He felt a bit better about it than he had at festival. His jumps felt higher, his turns cleaner, his knowledge of what moments to find in the music were better. But he also felt more nervous. Before festival, he had this feeling that it didn’t really count, that it wasn’t the important competition, and that he would do fine automatically. Because festival had come first, he hadn’t had to think about YAGP. Now he did; now it was coming closer and closer. He felt like every time he did this solo he found another thing that he was doing wrong.
He finished with a flourish, and grinned. “Sorry, messed up the landing again,” he apologized to Theresa.
“Don’t apologize,” she told him. “Fix it, but never apologize. It is your work, your art, not mine.”
Julian nodded.
“Let’s try it again. What I want you to do is focus on your feet; you are letting them fly about. If you stretch your feet, your legs will follow. You really need to concentrate on this, for everything.”
Julian nodded.
“Have your teachers told you to work on this? It’s your biggest problem right now.”
“No,” Julian said. “I don’t think so.”
Charlize coughed, bored.
Theresa ignored her. “Do it one more time,” she told Julian. He nodded and ran to the side of the room, preparing with his hands inward toward his heart, hiding behind imaginary stage wings with his back to the audience. Theresa waited a moment. “Take your time with it, Julian,” she said. “I know it feels like you don’t have enough time, but you do, you have to just make the time. Breathe.” She pushed Play, and Julian started walking on, leaping as the first few motes of the music started. He really, truly, loved this variation. It was just so dramatic and joyful at the same time. It didn’t have any technical tricks that he was too terrified of doing, and it was short, and he loved the music.