Pirouette

by Robyn Bavati

  “Wow, you’re … ” Hannah began, and then she was lost for words.

  “Simone,” said the girl. “I’m Simone.”

  “I’m Hannah.”

  At first Simone was silent as the two girls continued to stare at each other.

  “You were at the airport yesterday,” she said at last.

  Hannah looked surprised.

  “It was you, wasn’t it?” Simone persisted.

  Hannah nodded.

  “I thought … that I might have imagined it.”

  Hannah smiled. “It is pretty amazing, isn’t it?” Her voice sounded just like a recording of Simone’s.

  “Yeah. They say that everyone has a double, but … wow! We even sound alike.”

  “We do,” said Hannah. “And we have the same build. But you’re a much better dancer.”

  Simone shrugged. “I dance full-time.”

  “Lucky you!”

  The corridor had emptied out and Simone glanced through the studio window. Her class was winding up, the dancers taking their bows and curtsies.

  “We need to talk about … this,” she said, waving her hand between herself and Hannah. “Before the others come out.”

  “Somewhere private,” Hannah added.

  Simone nodded. “We can talk in my room.”

  Hannah hesitated. “I’m supposed to go and register. I was on my way to the office when I saw you dancing. I’ve just arrived.”

  “But I’ve only got an hour before my next class. You can register later. The office will be open till seven o’clock.”

  “But—”

  “Pleeease?” begged Simone.

  “I don’t want to miss the afternoon classes,” Hannah began.

  Simone sighed. “Sorry to be the one to break it to you, but you won’t be able to dance today. You missed warm-up class this morning, and they’re really strict about it. No warm-up, no dancing.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t look so disappointed,” said Simone. “I’m dying to find out more about you.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “Great! Can you give me a second?” Simone dashed into the girls’ changing room and slipped her feet into a pair of scuffs. She wound a wrap-around skirt around her waist and hurried back out, shoving her pointe shoes into a bag. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Outside, groups of students having lunch together dotted the lawn. They were too engrossed in conversation to pay much attention to the identical girls, and too far away to see the resemblance between them.

  “It’s lucky no one’s close enough to notice,” said Simone. “I don’t think I’m ready to answer any awkward questions.”

  “No,” said Hannah. “Neither am I.”

  Simone led the way across the grass, toward the dorm, while Hannah followed, wheeling her suitcase behind her.

  six

  Hannah put her suitcase down and looked around. The room was clean but fairly basic. There were two beds—one made up, the other bare—and a large window overlooking the extensive grounds. There was a large built-in wardrobe, and a door just inside the entrance that opened onto a small bathroom.

  “I’m supposed to have a roommate,” Simone said as Hannah eyed the unoccupied bed,” but she hasn’t turned up yet.”

  Hannah threw her a questioning look.

  “Everyone else arrived yesterday,” Simone explained, “except the girl who was meant to room with me.”

  “I was meant to arrive yesterday,” Hannah said, grinning.

  The two girls giggled, and for an awkward moment, neither one knew what to say.

  Hannah was the first to break the silence. “It couldn’t just be a coincidence, could it, that you look like me?”

  Simone didn’t answer right away. She was busy studying Hannah’s features.

  “Let’s go look in the mirror,” she said at last, “and see just how alike we really are.” Hannah followed her into the bathroom and they stood side by side, gazing at themselves and each other in the mirror.

  Despite their different hairstyles, their similarity was un-deniable. Simone took the pins out of her bun, removed the hair net, and allowed her hair to fall. She brushed it out, then handed the brush to Hannah, who gave her own hair a few deft strokes. Simone’s hair was about six centimeters longer than Hannah’s. And while Hannah’s ears had never been pierced, Simone had tiny holes in hers. Other than that, the two girls really did look identical.

  “Try this,” said Simone. She ran her fingers through her hair, swept it up off her face, and drew it back into a ponytail. Hannah did the same. The girls had exactly the same hairline, but Simone had a slightly more prominent vein in her left temple, and Hannah’s eyebrows were just a little more rounded.

  They continued to study each other in silence. On closer inspection, Hannah thought she looked a little healthier than Simone. Her own face was fresh and glowing, but Simone had dark rings beneath tired eyes. And although both girls were thin, at certain angles Simone’s thinness verged on boniness.

  “I don’t think anyone could tell us apart,” said Hannah at last, “unless they’d memorized the differences.”

  “And unless we were standing side by side.”

  “So … what’s your story?” Hannah began. “Who are your parents?”

  Simone shrugged as she looked at their joint reflections in the mirror. “I don’t know that much about my biological family,” she admitted. “I was adopted.”

  “Me too.”

  The two girls slowly turned to face each other. “Well … I don’t know about you,” Simone continued, “but I was born on—”

  “Wait, let me guess,” Hannah interrupted. “The fifteenth of June, 1997.”

  Simone just nodded.

  “You were six weeks old,” Hannah continued, “and you were living in an orphanage in—”

  “Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil,” Simone cut in.

  Now it was Hannah’s turn to nod. “Me too.”

  “Then we must be … ”

  “Identical twins,” said Hannah slowly. “But … I’m sure my parents would have told me if I’d had a sister … ”

  “If they knew … ”

  Hannah twisted a lock of hair around her finger. “I’ve always wanted a sister, but it never occurred to me that I actually had one.”

  “Didn’t it? Sometimes I wondered … I had a sense that something was missing. But it never occurred to me that I had a twin.”

  Once again the girls were silent. “Where are you from?” Hannah asked after a while.

  “Melbourne,” said Simone.

  “Of course! Me too. That’s why you saw me at the airport yesterday. What part of Melbourne?”

  “North Fitzroy,” said Simone. “You?”

  “Armadale.” Hannah’s face broke into a grin. “So we live, like, a twenty-minute drive away from each other?”

  “It looks like it. Stranger things have happened,” said Simone.

  “It’s like that movie, The Parent Trap,” Hannah said.

  “Except that their parents were still alive, and they split the twins up deliberately.”

  The girls left the bathroom and sat cross-legged, opposite each other, on Simone’s bed.

  “We could have gone the rest of our lives without even knowing of each other’s existence,” Hannah said.

  Simone shook her head. “No, I don’t think we could have. I believe in Fate, don’t you?” Without waiting for an answer, she continued. “You know, I really didn’t want to come to this summer school, but now I’m so glad I did.”

  “You didn’t want to come?” Hannah was stunned.

  “I’m so sick of dancing,” said Simone.

  “Then why did you come?”

  Simone sighed. “No choice,” she said finally. “I’ve been coming every sum
mer for the last four years. I can’t remember the last time my mum asked me what I wanted. She just books me in.”

  “Have you told her how you feel?”

  “I’ve tried,” said Simone. “But she … she’s not a great listener, my mum.”

  “And your dad?”

  Simone shook her head. “It’s just me and my mum.” Her gaze drifted toward the window and for a moment she seemed someplace far away. “Anyway,” she said, snapping back to the present, “it’s complicated because my biological mother—or should I say our biological mother?—was a dancer.”

  “Was she?” Hannah’s heart beat a little faster. “How do you know?”

  “My mum told me,” said Simone. “It’s the one thing she does know about my natural mother.”

  “But how does she know? I mean, my family weren’t given any information about my biological parents.”

  “Well, all I can tell you is that they died in a car accident on the way to the hospital. They were almost there when the car crashed, which is how I survived.”

  “How we survived,” Hannah corrected.

  “My father … our father … was driving. He was killed almost instantly, but they managed to get my mother to the hospital, and I was born by C-section just before she—”

  “We were born by C-section,” Hannah interrupted.

  “Yeah, I guess … before she died.”

  “I still don’t see how you know all this. The orphanage didn’t tell my parents anything. They said it was against the rules … ”

  “My mum dragged it out of one of the nurses,” Simone explained. “That’s why I dance. She sent me to ballet lessons as a way of … honoring my mother’s memory, I suppose. And once she discovered I was good at it, she decided that I must have inherited my mother’s talent.”

  “Well, she was right about that. Where do you take classes?”

  “The VSD,” said Simone.

  “The VSD?” Hannah almost squealed with excitement. “The school that every dancer wants to go to?”

  “Not every dancer,” said Simone.

  “Don’t you like it there?”

  Simone shook her head. “I did at first. The thing is, I don’t really want to dance anymore. Not as a career. I hate performing. I hate the feeling that I’m being judged. And it’s just so tiring. Sometimes,” she confided, “I cry from exhaustion.”

  Hannah just stared at her, wondering how Simone could hate the very thing that she herself craved. She would have given anything to be one of the lucky dancers at the VSD. How wonderful to have the chance to train professionally! But how terrible to be pushed into it. She tried to imagine what it must be like, day after day, to be forced to do one strenuous class after another if it wasn’t really what you wanted to do.

  “That must be awful,” she said.

  “You have no idea.” Simone gave herself a little shake, then glanced at the small alarm clock by the bed. “I’ve got a jazz class now.”

  “Already? Has it been an hour?”

  “Yeah. Look, I’d better go.”

  “But … you must be starving,” said Hannah. “You haven’t had lunch yet, have you?”

  “I’ll grab an apple from the Caff on my way to class. How about you? Are you hungry?”

  “Nope,” said Hannah. “I ate on the plane.”

  Simone gazed at Hannah as though trying to memorize her features. “I still can’t believe you’re here and you’re my roommate. Why don’t you unpack while I’m gone?” She paused in the doorway. “I wish I didn’t have to leave now, but they do a roll call.”

  Hannah regarded her twin with sympathy. “You really don’t want to go?”

  Simone sighed, her face a mixture of exhaustion and sheer lack of enthusiasm. “I really don’t,” she said.

  “Well, you know, I haven’t registered yet … ” The twinkle in Hannah’s eye was unmistakable.

  “You mean … ?”

  “Yeah,” said Hannah. “I could go in your place.”

  “Would you?”

  “Why not? I can’t wait to start dancing.” Hannah had already flung open her suitcase and was tossing her dancewear onto the bed. “Where’s the class?”

  “The same studio I was in before.”

  Hannah pulled on jazz shorts and a matching top.

  “Wait!” said Simone. “Won’t it look strange if I’ve changed my clothes?”

  Hannah shrugged. “Not necessarily. Lots of people change between classical and jazz. They’re such different styles.”

  “I guess … ”

  Hannah tied the laces on her jazz shoes. “How long is the class?”

  “An hour and a half, but—”

  “See you in an hour and a half, then.” And before Simone could finish the sentence, Hannah had gone.

  seven

  After Hannah had left, Simone’s mind was in a whirl. Had she really discovered an identical sister? Instinct told her she had, for a jolt of recognition had shot through her when she’d first glimpsed Hannah at the airport, and then again today.

  But she had no memory at all of a sister, and a barrage of emotions overwhelmed her. On the one hand, discovering she had a twin was the most wonderful thing that could happen to her. But the reunion with Hannah had been so unexpected, so … surreal, it was hard to believe it had happened at all. And now that Hannah had gone off to class, it seemed like she might have been a kind of mirage—a trick of the mind.

  Simone undressed and stood under the shower, silently rejoicing in the fact that she’d finished her classes for the rest of the day. How lucky that Hannah had offered to go in her place. Simone would never have had the temerity to suggest it herself, even if she’d thought of the idea. It took someone courageous to break the rules.

  Maybe some of Hannah’s courage would rub off on her if they spent enough time together … which made Simone wonder, why hadn’t they? Why had she and Hannah been separated?

  Could Harriet have known that Simone had a twin? Simone doubted it. Harriet had her faults, but she wasn’t devious or secretive. Still, might she know more than she’d ever let on?

  As she toweled herself dry, Simone realized she wouldn’t get the rest she craved. Her head was too full of questions. With the towel wrapped firmly around her, she padded barefoot into the room where Hannah’s open suitcase revealed a jumble of clothes.

  Simone reached for her handbag, which lay at the back of the wardrobe, and rummaged about for her mobile phone. She was about to key in her mother’s number when she changed her mind.

  Harriet would want to know why Simone was asking—why now, after all these years?—and Simone didn’t want to tell her. The discovery that she had an identical twin was still so new that she wanted to keep it to herself for a little while longer. She needed time to digest the relationship, and although—or perhaps because—they’d only just met, she felt possessive of Hannah and didn’t want to share her. Oh, she’d tell her mother eventually—but not just yet.

  She replaced the phone, then put on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and went outside, reveling in the unfamiliar feeling of independence and anonymity. And as she strolled along the tree-lined streets, all she could think of was Hannah.

  Hannah sprinted across the lawn, and by the time she slipped into the studio, she was a little breathless. Most of Simone’s class was already there, sitting on the floor in groups of two or three or lounging at the barre.

  “Hey, Simone.” A tall girl with dark hair and a friendly smile was approaching her. She had smooth skin the color of honey and the kind of natural poise that Hannah envied. “Where were you?” she asked. “I was hoping we could have lunch together, but you disappeared.”

  “Oh, I’m … uh … ” Not Simone, she’d been about to say, before remembering to keep that information to herself. “I’m sorry,” she said instead. “I had to call m
y mum. She kept me on the phone forever.”

  Just then an older woman—mid-thirties, perhaps—entered the room. “Hello. I’m Stacy Greene, and I’ll be your jazz teacher.”

  The clusters of dancers dispersed as each student found a place in the center of the studio.

  Stacy Greene held a folder and a pen. “I’ll just tick off your names before we begin. It won’t take long.”

  The teacher clearly knew some of the dancers from previous years, for instead of pronouncing their names as an inquiry, she murmured things like, “Ah, there you are, Liam,” or “Sam, great to see you again.” Now she gave Hannah a warm smile of recognition. “Ah, the lovely Simone.”

  Hannah took a deep breath and smiled back.

  Thanks to her training at Armadale Dance and her natural talent, Hannah held her own in class. She’d been learning jazz since she was eight years old, and it was a style that came easily to her. It didn’t require the restraint or strict discipline of classical ballet, and Hannah threw herself into it, confident that in this one style, at least, she was every bit as advanced as the others.

  After the warm-up exercises, performed to an old Michael Jackson number, the dancers learned the steps that would form part of the routine for the Candance concert. Hannah picked up the choreography quickly and easily.

  As she was leaving the studio, still buzzing from the fast routines, a boy with dark hair and an impish smile bumped into her. “Ah, the lovely Simone.”

  Hannah laughed at his impersonation of the teacher. “And you are?”

  “Tom. Two roll calls and you still don’t know my name? I’m gutted.”

  “He really is,” said the boy behind him. “You’re all he’s talked about the entire day.”

  “Thanks, Liam,” said Tom, elbowing the taller boy in the ribs. “So,” he said, turning to Hannah, “where are you from?”

  eight

  Simone returned to the dorm room happier and more relaxed. Hannah, now showered and dressed in a tank top and shorts, was pulling a wide-toothed comb through her long wet hair.

  Simone flashed her a complicit smile. “I still can’t believe you’re really here. After you left for class, I kept thinking that maybe I’d imagined you. But then I’d see your suitcase, and your clothes, and—”