Face to Face (On Pointe Book 3)

by Penelope Freed

  Instead, I’d called my mom to come pick me up, even though it was after one in the morning. It had taken me years, and I’m pretty sure some intervention from those same brothers, to get them to stop calling me Baby Quinn.

  “Do you not like JJ?” Hunter asked, misreading the change in my mood. “We thought you’d given her the stamp of approval?”

  “No, I like JJ. She’s cool.” The truth of my words hits me square in the gut. I do like JJ, I like hanging out with her, whether or not my brothers are there. Am I so disappointed because I wanted her to want to be my friend more than I wanted her to be interested in my brother?

  I’m so stupid.

  Once again, disappointed by my own expectations. This is why I let Hannah and Lisa be the ones to aim for the stars. I’m happy to be their cheerleader and bask in their success, just like my brothers. Always the cheerleader, the sidekick, the support staff. I’m happy when I stay in my lane, it’s when I forget and imagine for a moment that it’s about me that I’m disappointed.

  I’ll have to thank JJ for the reminder.

  As if she can read my mind, my phone buzzes in my back pocket. One glance tells me it’s a text from the exact person I’m torn up over. Dragging my feet, I follow my family through the athletic complex, paying enough attention not to trip and give my brother’s the satisfaction of karmic payback, but not paying attention to the tour guide at all.

  JJ: Animal, vegetable or mineral?

  Me: Animal

  JJ: 4 legs?

  Me: No

  JJ: 2 legs?

  “Is that Lisa?” Hunter asks over my shoulder. “I thought they were in class right now?” It’s a little after three in the afternoon, I haven’t heard from Hannah or Lisa since their lunch break.

  “Back off Lover-Boy, it’s not Lisa. I have other friends you know.” Do I? “Even if it was, she was my friend first, do your own texting.” I shrug him off and retreat to Cole’s side. Cole may be grumpy, but at least he never steals my friends.

  Me: Yes

  JJ: Male?

  Me: No

  JJ: Famous?

  Me: Only to me

  JJ: Someone I know?

  The brand-new, state-of-the-art gym is reserved for the student athletes, but the world-class sports medicine facilities and half dozen other things the tour guide points out go right over my head. If I was an athlete, I would be impressed.

  Me: Intimately

  JJ: ?????

  Her accompanying gif of a confused cartoon bunny starts pulling me from my funk. I can’t help giggling as I realize how my one-word response must have looked.

  Me: Not like that! Just…if you don’t know this person inside out by now I’ll have to rethink our friendship.

  JJ: You?

  “Katy?” Dad’s voice startles me enough that I walk into Cole’s back. Panicking, I stuff my phone back in my pocket. Am I blushing because my dad is calling me out or from the idea of JJ knowing me…intimately? What did I even mean? Why did I type that? What is wrong with me? JJ must think I’m a world-class idiot.

  “What?”

  “Did you want to see the dance department, Katy?” My mom’s voice snaps me from my moment of self-loathing.

  “Oh, um. I guess? I hadn’t thought about it.” Cole pulls me under his arm and holds me in front of his chest. I’m tempted to kick his shins, but don’t, because Mom will see.

  The tour guide’s eyes light up at the mention of touring the dance department. “I didn’t know you were a dancer! I’m a dance major. Come on, I’ll show you around.” Before I can object, she’s hooked her arm through mine and is leading me down the stairs and out the door. The looming athletic complex dominates the sky behind us as she leads us west towards another bunch of red brick buildings. “So, we don’t have quite as fancy a building as the athletes, but it’s still nice.” I don’t have the heart to tell her that I’m not interested in the school while she drags me down hallways showing off the various studios, talking a mile a minute about the classes and performance opportunities they have.

  “Sound great,” is all I have to say when she asks for my email so they can start inundating me with information about the school. I was going to give her a fake email address, but my mom is standing at my shoulder and gives it for me. Guess I’m gonna be deleting a bunch of emails in the future.

  It’s almost another hour before she waves goodbye and leaves us to wander back to the car. I completely forgot about the text from JJ I never answered until I see all three of my brothers pull out their phones while we wait for our order at the campus coffee shop.

  Me: Sorry, got pulled into a tour of the dance department. I can’t even remember what I was thinking of anymore so I guess you win.

  JJ’s answer is almost immediate.

  JJ: No worries, Jack kept me updated. Are you considering going there for dance?

  Me: Not really. I don’t know what I want to major in. I haven’t thought about it much.

  That’s a total lie, I have thought about it, but I don’t know if it’s realistic. For the last year, I’ve been thinking about becoming a physical therapist, like Ms. Parker’s husband, but I don’t know if I’m cut out for everything it would take to make that happen. The idea of signing myself up for all that extra schooling on top of getting my bachelor’s is daunting. But between all my brother’s injuries, and the dance injuries me and my friends have had over the years, let alone knowing what Mr. Mike did for Ms. Parker when they first met, it seems like it would be a pretty rewarding job.

  JJ: Well, whatever you decide to do, you’ll be amazing.

  Me: Thanks. But it won’t be here in Colorado. The altitude here is killer. I’m out of breath and all we’ve done is walk. Also, I swear, everyone here is white. How am I going to find decent Mexican food in a place like this? No thank you.

  JJ: Good Mexican food is an absolute must. I’ll have to take you out for tacos when you get back. Altitude is a bitch. But that’s why they train so many great athletes, because when they come down off the mountain, they have better oxygen capacity. Speaking of, did you run this morning with your brothers? Jack never said if you guys did your training…

  This is followed by a gif of a little girl pointing from her eyes to the camera. I grin.

  Me: There was only one treadmill at the hotel, so we let Hunter have it while Jack and Cole lifted weights and I gave myself a ballet barre. We took over the whole exercise room, Quinn style.

  JJ: Cheater

  Me: You say cheater, I say self-sacrificing sister

  JJ: Po-tay-to, po-ta-to

  This time I’m the one responding with a gif, Samwise Gamgee and his beloved potatoes.

  Me: They are my favorite vegetable

  JJ: Have you heard from Lisa or Hannah today? How’s ballet camp?

  I laugh under my breath at JJ’s text. Hannah and Lisa would be mortally offended at it being called ballet camp. I can picture their outraged faces—mouths hanging open like goldfish, Hannah’s pale skin turning beet red and Lisa’s brain working overtime to formulate a response. Man, I miss them.

  Me: Sounds like they’re having fun. They got to start pas de deux today. I think they were both pretty nervous about it. I haven’t heard from them since lunchtime though.

  JJ: Is that dancing with a dude? Hard pass for me.

  Me: You don’t want to dance with a guy? What about at homecoming? Or prom?

  JJ: Nah. I’d rather go with my friends than a date. Besides, girls smell WAY better than guys. I’ll take a girl over a stinky dude any day.

  Me: This is 100% accurate. We had to open the window when Jack took his shoes off in the car. New Quinn family rule: shoes must be worn at all times while in the car.

  JJ: 100% on board with this rule.

  JJ adds a sick face and thumbs up emoji before following it up with an appropriate
retching gif.

  Yeah, JJ is pretty awesome. It doesn’t replace the loneliness of being left behind by Hannah and Lisa, but maybe I have room in my life for another bestie. Even if she isn’t a dancer. Especially since she isn’t a dancer.

  Chapter Eleven

  Hannah

  Noah’s muttered curse is too quiet for anyone else to hear over the general chatter in the room. “I’m so, so sorry. Are you okay?” I don’t want to touch him, I think I’ve already done enough damage. Instead, I hop from foot to foot, peering at his face, well, what I can see of it between his cradled fingers. We’ve been practicing partnered pirouettes, I’m turning while Noah has his hands on my waist, guiding me and keeping me on balance so I can do extra turns.

  Unfortunately, we seem to be having a bit of trouble.

  I maaaay have been a little cocky when we tried the first one, I am a pretty natural turner and doing four to five pirouettes on my own isn’t that unusual for me. What I didn’t realize was that with my long legs, if I place my toe at my knee like I normally do, that leaves my knee sticking out at just the wrong spot. Yes, I kneed my partner in the, ahem, on my first try. What an accomplishment, right?

  Once we figured out how far away from me Noah needs to stand, and how I need to adjust the height of my leg, we had a bit more success. Once we’d done several successful turns to the right, we’d switched so that I was standing on my right foot and turning to the left.

  What I hadn’t anticipated was my right ankle giving a sharp reminder that it’s not healed. The shooting pain knocked me off balance, and my flailing response landed us here. Me, gingerly trying to roll my ankle and Noah clutching his face, blood dripping from the end of his nose.

  I gave my partner a bloody nose.

  This is so embarrassing.

  “Are you okay?” I whisper again. “Let me go get you some tissues.” I scurry across the room to the tissue box in the corner, grabbing the whole thing and bringing it back to Noah.

  “Ahhhh, I see we have our first casualty,” Mr. Bethelo’s voice booms across the studio.

  Did I forget to mention that not only did I give my partner a bloody nose, but that our teacher for pas de deux is the director of the whole school? When Marco Bethelo walked in the door behind the guys, the crescendo of excited chatter rose and then crashed into silence as he clapped his hands for attention.

  So yeah.

  Now I’m the girl who punched her partner in the face, and it’s being pointed out by the man who controls whatever shot I have of a future dancing here.

  Great.

  “Please keep practicing with your partners.” Mr. Bethelo instructs the room as he crosses towards Noah and me. “What happened?”

  Since Noah is busy taking care of his bloody nose I speak up. “I fell as I was turning and accidentally hit his nose with my elbow.” Crossing my fingers that he doesn’t pry into why I fell, the last thing I want is to admit my ankle may not be one hundred percent okay, I wait for Mr. Bethelo to yell at me.

  “The perils of partnering!” His laugh booms across the room, the rest of the class freezing at the sound. He waves them away and chuckles to himself. “It happens to the best of us. Noah.” His tone turns a little serious, “You’re okay, right?”

  “Yeth, thir,” Noah lisps, pinching his nose and grinning at me. “I tried to tell her.”

  I shrug, my anxiety still bubbling away in the back of my brain, making it hard to concentrate on anything except the fact that my partner is bleeding and it’s all my fault.

  Mr. Bethelo eyes us for a moment before gesturing me to come closer. “Come, try again. The best way to get over the fear is to get back on the horse.” He waves a hand to the patch of floor in front of him, indicating I should prepare for my pirouette. “Are you a righty or a lefty?”

  “Ummm,” It takes a moment for my brain to process what he’s asking me. “A little better to the right.” Also, that means I’d be standing on my left foot and not worried about my ankle.

  “Well, then, let’s give it a go. And don’t worry about falling, all you need to worry about it holding your body in the position, the falling bit is my job.” I place my feet on the floor, my left foot about twelve inches in front of my right, in fourth position. My right arm extended in front of me, my left reaching to the side. Mr. Bethelo is standing behind me, his fingertips lightly touching my waist. For once, having someone’s hands on my waist doesn’t make me twitchy. Maybe because Marco Bethelo knows exactly what he’s doing. How many times have I heard Ms. Parker say that he was the best partner she’d ever had, and how all the principal ladies used to want to be cast with him. And not just because of his handsome face.

  As I’m about to push off the floor, he steps back. Confused, I look back over my shoulder at him. “Do one pirouette for me on your own, I want to see something.” Turning back to face the mirror, I bend my knees, then snap up into the turn. As I turn, I focus on holding the correct position, right toe stretched and touching my knee, arms rounded and held in front of my chest. Back straight, hips level, right thigh supported and turned out, leave my eyes to the front of the room as long as possible. The list of corrections is long. But, I don’t think all these things individually anymore, I’ve spent so many hours training that my mind and body know what my “pirouette position” feels like without having to think of all those things one at a time. As I go into my third rotation I have to work a little harder to hold the pieces in place. Choosing to end the turn, I whip my head around one more time and finish the turn, shooting my right leg behind me to the floor in a deep lunge, my arms stretching out to arabesque.

  “Good, good,” Mr. Bethelo says. “Did you adjust your knee height with Noah? You’ve got very long thighs…” At my embarrassed nod, Mr. Bethelo smiles. “Go ahead and cross your wrists while you turn as well, instead of holding them out in such a big first position.” Oh. Yeah. I knew I forgot to do something. He did tell us that at the beginning of class. That instead of turning with our arms out like we would do on our own, we should drop our elbows and cross our wrists to bring our arms closer and have less chance of hitting our partner. Oh god. I’m the worst partner ever.

  “Did Leslie ever tell you about the time she gave me a black eye and a bloody shin at the same time?”

  Like a record screech, the whole room falls silent, staring at Mr. Bethelo.

  “Um, no?” I manage to squeak out, aware of everyone in class staring at us, listening.

  He grins, glancing around to make sure the whole room was listening to his story. “It was in the middle of a Nutcracker season, before we were principals, thank goodness. We were cast as Spanish Chocolate together and there was this one quick turn at the end. I don’t know if you have ever seen CBC’s Nutcracker, but in that version the Spanish girls dance with castanets. Anyway, she was doing that last tricky turn, it was a supported pirouette and she had to switch her arms as she was turning, clicking the castanets as she went. We’d done it a hundred times without ever having a problem.”

  “Somehow, during a Sunday matinee show, something went wrong in that turn, we never figured out what. Maybe I was too close to her that day, maybe she was tired from the two shows the day before, but she managed to clock me right in the eye with a wooden castanet and the heel of her shoe caught my shin. Our Spanish wasn’t on pointe, the ladies had heeled character shoes. I’ve never bowed or gotten off stage so fast in my life. My tights had to be trashed since there was a huge hole down the front, not to mention they were covered in blood, and I had a massive shiner by the time the ballet was over.” Mr. Bethelo grins at the memory. “The makeup team did not appreciate having to cover that up for the evening show.”

  “Oh man, dat’s rough.” Noah’s nasal exclamation takes me by surprise, so does the murmur of chatter and giggles around the room. Even more so when I realize that they’re not directed at me. I make eye contact with Lisa across the room, s
he’s partnering with a guy from Eight who I don’t recognize, and she smiles. I guess it’s not the end of the world after all.

  “Come Hannah, try with me while Noah goes to clean himself up.” I get back into my pirouette preparation, and once again Marco freaking Bethelo places his hands on my waist. I press up into the turn, doing three rotations on my own before I feel Marco’s left hand give me a slight push, and then suddenly, one hand is sliding along my waist, keeping me balanced, while his other hand is pushing me into more and more turns. I lose count at ten but keep whipping my head around and trying to hold my body as steady as I can.

  And then he grips my waist tight, stopping me at the end of a turn. I grin at myself in the mirror as I hold the position, triumph surging through me. Mr. Bethelo’s face in the mirror reveals his own smile, before he releases me and steps back.

  “That was so much easier.” The shocked words are out of my mouth before I think about Noah’s feelings. Fortunately, he hasn’t come back from the bathroom yet.

  “Yes, a good partner should make it easier to dance, not harder. That’s true in life as well as ballet,” Mr. Bethelo adds with a smile. “Come, no more life lessons for today. Let’s try again while we wait for Noah.”

  After several more successful turns, thankfully my ankle doesn’t give me any more twinges, Noah is back and Mr. Bethelo steps back to let him try. As soon as I prepare for the turn, all my confidence melts away. I swear everyone is watching, waiting for me to screw up again. I’d forgotten about the target on my back for a few precious moments, but it all comes rushing back the second I catch some girls staring at me in the mirror. Noah’s hands on my waist make it hard to hold myself still, my skin twitchy at his touch, I’m struggling to trust that he’s going to support me like Mr. Bethelo did. It’s as if Mr. Bethelo were a solid wall and Noah is a set piece. It looks like a solid wall, but wouldn’t hold you up if you leaned against it.