Dancing in Red Shoes Will Kill You

by Dorian Cirrone

  Paterson continued her rant. “What am I supposed to do? Put the women’s body parts back in and remove the penis? Then what will it say? Instead of ‘Tales of Missing Pieces,’ maybe I could call it ‘Tales of a Dickless Administration.’ At least it would be saying something about censorship.”

  I knew from past experiences with Paterson’s outrage that I wasn’t required to say anything at this point.

  “Can you imagine?” she continued. “Kovac says, and I quote, ‘The school district’s policies allow for the removal of anything that causes embarrassment or disrupts the educational process.’” She turned toward me. “Does this cause you embarrassment?”

  I shook my head vigorously.

  Then she glared at Joey. “Does this disrupt your educational process?”

  Joey looked a little nervous, like he hadn’t really been paying attention. “No?”

  Gray walked over and studied the sketches. “Have you thought about protesting?”

  “I thought that’s what she was doing now,” Joey said.

  Gray smiled. “I mean getting a group together to let everyone know that the administration is trying to censor you. Maybe even getting some of the teachers involved.”

  “Do you think anyone would go up against Kovac?” I said. “What about Etch A Sketch, what did he think?”

  Paterson picked up the cloth and threw it over her arm. “At first, he didn’t get it. But when I explained it to him, he thought it was really good. He even helped me with the title.”

  “So then what happened?” I said.

  “He backed down as soon as Kovac came in to approve the preliminary sketches. Suddenly it wasn’t acceptable.”

  “No balls,” Gray said.

  Joey snickered. “Hey, he could be in the picture. Now that would make a statement. Etch A Sketch with no balls.”

  Paterson even had to laugh at that one, but only for a second. “The final project is due in five weeks. I don’t have any ideas as good as this one. I’ve got to figure out a way to use this.”

  Her lament was interrupted by the final bell. Gray picked up his backpack. “I’ve got to go, but if you need any support, I’m here. I’ll help you organize a protest if you want.”

  Paterson put the cloth back over the canvas. “Thanks, I’ll think about it. How about you guys? Think you could get the dance department behind a rally?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Our art doesn’t really make you think. It’s just sort of, you know, pretty.”

  Joey began dancing around the room, singing “I feel pretty. Oh so pretty…”

  Gray, who shook his head and laughed, was already used to Joey’s clowning around and seemed to think he was as funny as Paterson and I did. Yup. Gray Foster was definitely looking like boyfriend material. He turned to me. “I’ll pick you up around seven tomorrow night?”

  Since school had been all about red shoes and rehearsals during the week, I hadn’t really had a chance to get excited about the date. “Sure,” I said, feeling that familiar flutter in my stomach. “Seven’s good.”

  He turned to Paterson. “You’ve got to fight this,” he said. “That’s what creativity is all about.” He shook his head. “This is supposed to be an art school.”

  Chapter 9

  By the time Gray arrived on Saturday night, my parents and Paterson had already left the house for the evening. A lucky break for me. No awkward introductions. No talk about portraits and penises. Just Gray and me on our way to his mother’s poetry reading.

  The university was nearby, so there was no time for embarrassing silences in the car. Plus, there was always enough going on at Farts to talk about.

  Once we were in the auditorium, the lights dimmed immediately and the program started. I’d never been to a poetry reading before, and I was feeling pretty proud of myself for being able to understand the first poet. But when Gray’s mother came out to read her work, it wasn’t as easy to follow. I caught a reference to Icarus—I’d learned about him when we’d studied mythology—but I couldn’t connect the image to the rest of the poem. Then there was one about a set of dishes that I couldn’t grasp at all. When the reading was over, so many students and teachers went up to the stage that Gray gave his mom a wave and told me we didn’t have to wait. Whew. I wasn’t sure if they gave quizzes after those kinds of things.

  As he steered out of the parking lot and pulled into the nearest gas station, Gray turned to me. “My mom said I could use her car if I promised to get it washed. I didn’t have time to do it before the poetry reading. I hope you don’t mind? It will only take a couple of minutes.”

  “No,” I said, “it’s fine.” I figured it might give me enough time to make up something semi-intelligent to say about his mother’s poems.

  He fed a five-dollar bill into the machine. The green light flashed, “FORWARD, FORWARD,” then suddenly turned red and flashed, “SLOWLY, SLOWLY, SLOWLY,” then “STOP.” The car jolted.

  I was about to tell Gray that I’d really enjoyed the readings when I suddenly felt a strange sensation—as if we were going forward, but I knew we weren’t.

  “Are you okay?” Gray asked.

  “It seemed like we were moving.”

  Gray smiled. “Yeah, when the machine starts to come toward you, that happens.”

  I looked up. The windshield went white, covered in soapy crystals. Then a giant brush headed toward us. I ducked involuntarily.

  Gray smiled again. “You don’t go through car washes much, huh?”

  I laughed self-consciously. “When I was three my mother took me through, and I screamed the whole time. After that, she left me home. Now I know why. It’s a little bit scary—if you’re three, I mean.”

  Gray’s blue eyes sparkled. The side brushes gently rocked the car. “Paterson and I wash her car by hand,” I added. I wasn’t sure if I was babbling but I was suddenly even more nervous when I realized how close we were sitting in the darkened car.

  “So what did you think of the poetry reading?”

  “It was great,” I said. “Your mom was good and so was that other poet, the one who read the Barbie poems. I liked how she made fun of all the dolls like Ken and Midge.”

  “She teaches with my mom,” Gray said.

  “I thought she should have had one called Bulimic Barbie, but I guess it’s hard to find something that rhymes with vomit.”

  Gray thought for a minute. “There’s comet,” he said, laughing. “Anyway, she’s published a whole book of those poems. We’ll have to look for it.”

  The sign in front of us started blinking, “HOT WAX, HOT WAX.” My stomach was doing changements. He said we. He thinks we’re a we!

  As streams of liquid zigzagged down the windshield in random patterns, I tried to think of something to say about his mother’s poems, but the truth was that I didn’t really understand any of them. “Your mother’s poems were good,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound like too much of a liar.

  Gray laughed. “It’s okay. I don’t understand most of them either. I keep telling her she’s got to write for real people because not everyone understands all the allusions she’s making. But I see where she’s coming from. Sort of like Paterson.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Gray raised his voice over the whooshing sound of the hot-air vents. “You’ve got to do your own art, make your own statement, not let anyone else tell you what to do.”

  I stared at the droplets on the windshield. They looked like tiny ballerinas dashing from side to side in formations, blind to the force compelling them to run. Then suddenly some of them dispersed and began dancing upward, defying gravity. The light turned green and we drove forward.

  “That was fun,” I said.

  “I promise our next date will be more conventional.”

  Our next date. I liked the sound of the words in my head.

  Gray looked at his watch. “Want to go to the Oasis? It’s still early.”

  The Oasis was the place everyone from Farts went
to on weekend nights. There was a huge movie theater, a zillion restaurants, and a great ice-cream place. The only problem was the security guards, who made everyone keep moving all the time. It was like if two people stopped to talk, a riot was going to break out. My mom had said it was for our safety too, but sometimes it didn’t feel like it. So when we ran into Paterson and some of her friends from the art department, we immediately moved into the ice-cream place and sat down before the guard could tell us to “walk along.”

  I wasn’t all that thrilled about my date turning into a group meeting, but I had to admit the nervousness factor definitely went down a notch with my sister and her friends there. After Paterson introduced us to the people we didn’t know, someone brought up the subject of her art project.

  “Have you thought about that protest?” Gray asked.

  Paterson’s friends perked up when they heard the word. A guy named Ryan, with platinum hair spiked about six inches high, announced, “We think it’s a great idea. I could get my dad to cover it.”

  I knew Ryan’s dad was a reporter for Channel Seven, but I didn’t think Paterson’s art project would be that newsworthy.

  Sara, a friend of Paterson’s who shared her affinity for iridescent hair coloring, chimed in. “I saw a kid on TV who dyed his hair green and got suspended and this organization called the AC-something got him back in school somehow.”

  “It’s the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union,” Gray said. “My dad’s a lawyer. He did some work for them back in New York.”

  “But I’m not suspended.” Paterson licked whipped cream off her lips. “What are they going to do for me?”

  Ryan twirled his silver skull earring. “Maybe they could force the school to accept your project.”

  “Maybe,” Sara said. “The kid on TV still had green hair.” She ran her fingers through her own lilac locks. “They decided it was his constitutional right to have whatever hair color he wanted.”

  The rest of the conversation centered on planning the protest and listing names of people they thought would get involved. I had a weird feeling about the whole thing, like maybe they didn’t know what they were getting into, but I kept quiet. I had my own issues to deal with: red shoes, breast reductions, not to mention my date with Gray and how it was going to end.

  Turned out the date thing wasn’t worth worrying about. By the time the ice-cream was eaten and the protest was planned, it was so late I offered to get a ride home with Paterson. Gray’s mom had mentioned his curfew, and I’d already figured out if he took me home he wouldn’t make it. He tried to tell me he didn’t care, but I knew he did. He might have been an advocate for free speech, but I could tell he wouldn’t want to get in trouble with his mother. Besides, he was the first guy I’d ever dated who looked at my eyes the whole night. I wanted to make sure he was allowed to go on a second date with me.

  I was a little disappointed with the friendly hug at the end of the evening. I’d been hoping for something more. But I was willing to wait.

  Joey had been busy the whole weekend again so when we met after school on Monday, Paterson and I had to fill him in on the protest thing.

  We were standing in front of the cafeteria, taking a break before rehearsal. “I’m not sure I want to be a part of this,” Joey said.

  Paterson sipped a raspberry ice tea. “You’re already a part of it—a big part of it.”

  “Thanks,” Joey said with a grin, “but I’m not sure I want my big part displayed in front of the whole school.”

  “Don’t be crazy,” Paterson said. “I changed your face. No one knows it’s you. Ryan and Sara didn’t even recognize any of the people in the sketches.”

  That was a relief. Even though I was fully clothed in the picture, I didn’t want any more people focusing on my anatomy. I hadn’t told anyone yet, but I’d seriously been considering seeing the doctor Miss Alicia had recommended—just to see what he’d say. I didn’t need a resurgence of the Knock off the Knockers vs. Keep the Cantaloupes campaign.

  I looked at my watch. “We’d better get to rehearsal,” I said. “We don’t want to keep Timm or any of his ems waiting.” I was finding it hard to get over my bitterness toward him.

  Joey laughed. “He’s not such a bad guy.”

  “Sure,” I said, as we approached the backstage area. “You’ve got a principal role in his ballet. Try hanging out with Devin and Karen—with Officer Ballanchine breathing down your neck.”

  “Devin alone would be enough for me to lose it,” Joey said. He dropped his dance bag behind the curtain and raced to the stage.

  It turned out Timm wouldn’t be rehearsing my part right away, so I found a place in the audience and took out my calculus book.

  After a few minutes, I heard a familiar voice from behind me. “Hey, I thought I’d find you here.”

  Gray dropped a book into my lap. The cover featured a zaftig Barbie eating what looked like a piece of strawberry shortcake. I laughed. “Where’d you get this?”

  “My mom had a copy. She said you could borrow it,” Gray said. “I checked, though. No ‘Bulimic Barbie.’ Maybe you should write your own poem.”

  “I don’t think I’m much of a poet,” I said. “I’m more spatial than verbal, and I’ve got the test scores to prove it.”

  Gray pulled the seat cushion down and sat next to me. “There’s a lot of poetry in dance,” he said. “Maybe you could do Bulimic Barbie: The Ballet.”

  I laughed. “Maybe.” I studied the cover of the book. Even though Barbie’s breasts, hips, and thighs were huge, her waist was tiny. “This reminds me of something I saw on TV.”

  “It does?”

  “Something about evolution. Researchers found that the best measurements for childbearing had to do with dividing your hip size into your waist measurement and getting zero point seven or something like that. They said all the great sex symbols like Marilyn Monroe were zero point seven and that’s why men loved them, because the male brain was hardwired to want women who would be good reproducers.”

  “But Marilyn Monroe didn’t have any children.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Go figure. Anyway, Paterson said it was a load of crap and just another way for men to explain why they’re attracted to empty-headed women with tiny waists. She said she’d bet that all the researchers were men.”

  “Or women with zero point seven whatever,” Gray said. “Men aren’t the only villains.”

  “I should know,” I said, laughing. “I’m an ugly stepsister. I’m oppressing Cinderella.”

  “And you’re being oppressed too,” Gray said.

  “You mean by the prince?”

  “No,” Gray said. “In real life—by getting that part.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “My good friend, Timm.”

  “You know you have alternatives,” Gray said.

  I didn’t answer him. I wasn’t sure if he was referring to the surgery. It was bad enough that day at Steak ’n’ Shake when Paterson brought it up. Now it was just the two of us.

  “There are other…you know, types of…dance companies,” Gray said.

  I let out the breath I was subconsciously holding.

  “It’s pretty obvious your talents are being wasted as a stepsister.”

  I looked down at my pointe shoes. “Yeah, well, maybe next time.”

  “I’m serious,” he said. “You know, there have been a lot of dancers who didn’t have the right…umm…look for ballet. I mean, look at Judith Jamison.”

  I’d seen Judith Jamison dance in a special on TV before she was head of the Alvin Ailey company. It was true; she didn’t look like a typical dancer. For one thing, she was African American, and for another she was extremely tall. She was a beautiful dancer, though. One of the best. “But she was Judith Jamison,” I said.

  “Well, you’re Kayla Callaway.”

  “Which means?”

  “You’re good. There are plenty of dance companies that would be happy to have you and that don’t require stick-figure
dancers. I’ve seen some of them perform in New York.”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Judith Jamison found a place for herself,” he said, “and so could you.”

  I folded my arms in front of me. “Maybe.”

  “You could even be a choreographer and run your own company of unconventional-looking dancers. Then you wouldn’t be oppressing anyone.”

  “What’s this about someone being obsessed?”

  Gray and I looked a few rows behind us. Officer B. was sitting by himself in an end seat. I wondered how long he’d been there and how much he’d heard.

  I tried not to laugh. “Umm…we said oppressed.”

  “Oh, well, that’s okay then,” he said, with his low, scary cop voice. He stood, glared at Gray, then walked toward the stage.

  Gray’s eyes opened wide. “What was that all about?”

  “He thinks Devin or Karen or I might have something to do with the red shoes thing.”

  “What?” Gray said. “That you might have put them up?”

  I shook my head. “No, that we might be targets because we’re wearing red shoes in the ballet.”

  Gray’s face turned serious. “You don’t think you’re in any danger, do you?”

  “I don’t know. I thought it was just someone making trouble, but now I’m starting to wonder.”

  Gray leaned toward me. “But you’re not scared, are you? I mean, it’s not affecting your dancing or anything, is it?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

  Gray started to say something, but then Timm called the step trio to the stage. I got up and adjusted my leotard. “Thanks for the book,” I said.

  “No problem. Keep it as long as you want. But remember—Bulimic Barbie.” He swept his hand in the air as if the words were already on a marquee. “The Ballet.”

  I pretended to put my finger down my throat and bourréed toward the stage steps.

  That night I decided to bring up the subject of plastic surgery with my mother. Paterson had already gone to bed, and my mom and I were alone in the kitchen when my dad walked in. I thought he might leave when he figured out what we were talking about. He usually let my mom do the “girl talk.” But, surprisingly, he stayed.