Dance of Shadows

by Yelana Black

  “I don’t want to hear it,” Hilda said. “There is only one person who controls the dancer’s body,” she said, her eyes trained on Vanessa. “If you can’t get that into your head, you might as well just do us a favor and leave now.”

  Vanessa opened her mouth to respond but then thought better of it.

  “Well?” Hilda asked. She gestured to the door. “Do you want to leave or stay?”

  “Stay,” Vanessa said softly.

  “Then why don’t you two practice on your own instead of wasting our time.”

  Vanessa didn’t look up while the rest of the company filtered out of the practice room, leaving her alone with Justin. When the door finally shut and the last ballerina was out of earshot, Vanessa stood up.

  “What is your problem?” she said to Justin. “Are you purposely trying to make sure I lose this part?”

  “Actually, yes,” Justin said.

  Vanessa shook her head in confusion and anger. “Why? I could have broken my leg. You could have ruined my career!”

  “Don’t be dramatic,” Justin said. “I wouldn’t have let you break a leg. And you’re fine.”

  “I’m not fine. There’s only a month until opening night, and I still haven’t gotten my steps right.”

  “And whose fault is that?” Justin asked.

  “Why are you even here?” Vanessa said. “Where’s Zep? He never would have made those mistakes. When I dance with Zep, everything is perfect.”

  “Is it?” Justin rubbed his chin pensively. “Well, that must be the only perfect thing about Zep. You really should stay away from him. And while you’re at it, ditch this part.”

  “What is it about Zep that gets to you so much?” Vanessa replied. “It isn’t just that he’s a better dancer … it’s something more. He has everything you wish you had.”

  But Justin just laughed. “Zep? God, no.”

  “Then what is it?” she asked, guessing wildly. “You say things are so dangerous here, but I don’t see you leaving. You’re still here, trying to badmouth Zep so you can take his role—” She had more to say, but Justin interrupted.

  “I’m not trying to take his role, I’m trying to help you,” he began, but Vanessa wouldn’t let him finish.

  “You’re lying,” she said. “You think you’re smarter than everyone else. But I know—”

  “For once just listen to me!” Justin shouted, so loudly that his voice reverberated through the studio. “If you don’t want to end up like your sister, you’ll forget about Zeppelin Gray and this school and go home. Take your weird talents and get the hell out of this place before it’s too late.”

  Vanessa heard the slap before she realized what she had done. Stunned, Justin put a hand to his face in disbelief.

  Vanessa trembled with adrenaline. “You don’t know anything about my sister,” she said, trying to steady her voice.

  Justin let his hand slide away from his face. “I know she got in over her head, and I don’t want the same thing to happen to you. Look, you seem like a sweet kid—”

  “Don’t call me a kid,” Vanessa said, backing away from him. Everything about Justin disgusted her, from the sweat stains on his leotard to the overgrown stubble on his cheek, where her red hand mark was now fading away. “And don’t ever speak to me again. Not about Margaret, or about anything else.”

  Justin opened his mouth to speak but caught himself, as if he could read the loathing on her face. For a second, Vanessa sensed that he was waiting for her to come back to him, to trust him. But without looking back, she pulled on a sweater and left him standing on the dance floor.

  She ran up Broadway, trying to convince herself it was the cool autumn air that was making her eyes tear. The sidewalk was bustling with men in suits and ties, women in high heels and panty hose, parents pushing strollers. In the midst of them was a girl with narrow shoulders, her brown hair pulled into a bun.

  Margaret?

  Vanessa darted toward her, only to crash directly into an older man wearing a hat. His briefcase dropped to the ground with a loud thump. A cab honked, just as the girl turned. She was a stranger.

  “I’m so sorry,” Vanessa mumbled, watching the girl cross the street. What was happening to her? She wanted to be alone, to find a quiet place where she could think.

  The rush-hour traffic sped by with the familiar sounds of horns and screeching brakes, the strident melody of cab drivers cursing through the windows. Vanessa wove across the street, not sure where she was headed until she saw the knobby branches of Central Park reaching out above the buildings like hands, beckoning her.

  The smell of rotting leaves and roasting chestnuts filled the air as Vanessa neared the park entrance. Just the sight of its long, winding paths and pastoral bridges calmed her down. She was about to step inside when she heard footsteps. They followed her toward the trees, far too close for comfort. She slowed, listening to the gritty sound on the path, as a hand closed around her wrist.

  Vanessa gasped as cold fingers pressed into her skin. She was about to scream when she noticed how delicate they were: pale and slender, with long, chipped nails that looked as if they had once been manicured. Above them, she saw a bony arm, clothed in a tattered pink sweater that needed to be washed, a pale neck wrapped in scarves. Her captor was the principal ballerina, the one who had danced the lead role in the performance they’d seen back in September. The one who’d been “punished” by the male lead, Dmitri, in the darkened theater after the performance.

  “Helen?” Vanessa said.

  In the dreary afternoon light, Helen’s face was dull and sunken, as if all the color had drained out of her. Traces of old makeup were smudged beneath her eyes, and her hair hung about her shoulders, stringy and limp, as if it hadn’t been washed in days.

  “Are you all right?” Vanessa asked, glancing down at Helen’s hand, still clutching her wrist.

  Helen searched Vanessa’s face, her eyes wide and desperate.

  “What—what do you want?” Vanessa surveyed the sidewalk for passersby, in case she needed help.

  “Tell no one you’ve seen me,” Helen finally said. She pulled Vanessa closer to the benches that lined the sidewalk outside the park, scattering the pigeons. “I know you’re a dancer like me.” Her voice was hoarse, strained. “J-Josef boasted about your talent eclipsing mine.”

  “Look,” Vanessa said. “I don’t want to replace you. I’m just trying to dance and do my best.” She tried to wiggle out of Helen’s grasp, but the ballerina’s grip was surprisingly tight.

  “No,” Helen said, her gaze so steady it was unnerving. “It’s not just dancing, what you and I can do. When we dance, the world doesn’t just seem to disappear, it really does. The right steps with the right dancer can wreak havoc.”

  Vanessa stopped trying to escape. “What are you talking about?” she said slowly, even though she knew exactly what Helen was referring to.

  “He tried to use me,” Helen said. “He tried to put me in, but I escaped. And now he’s watching. He’s looking for me.”

  “Put you in where?” Vanessa asked. “Who’s looking for you?”

  “The walls.” Helen gazed around her as if the street and trees were walls themselves.

  “You mean someone is trying to lock you up?” Vanessa said, trying to make sense of her, but Helen didn’t answer.

  “You must leave,” Helen said. “Get out while you still can.”

  “What?” Vanessa asked, narrowing her eyes. She knew that Helen had graduated from NYBA just two years ago, which meant she might have known Margaret and some of the seniors. Anna. Zep. And Justin. “Did he put you up to this?”

  “Who?”

  “Justin.”

  Helen’s eyes went blank. “Who is Justin?”

  Vanessa didn’t know how to answer. Just as Helen opened her mouth again, a cab pulled up to the curb in front of them. She went rigid, watching the man inside pay the driver.

  “Helen?” Vanessa said, trying to get her attention.


  “Did you bring someone?” Helen said, her voice fearful. “Did you have someone follow me?”

  “What?” Vanessa said. “You were the one who followed me.”

  “Josef?” Helen said, and watched in horror as the cab door opened and a man stepped out. He was roughly the same build as Josef, with dark wavy hair and a tight black shirt.

  “That isn’t Josef,” Vanessa said, but the remaining color drained from Helen’s cheeks, and her hands began to tremble.

  “No,” she whispered. “No.”

  “Why are you so scared of Josef?”

  The wind blew through the thin fabric of Helen’s scarf. Beneath it, Vanessa could barely see the traces of a collection of small yellow bruises on Helen’s collarbone, their small oval shapes pressed into her like fingerprints. Before Vanessa could say anything, Helen turned.

  “Find the Lyric Elite,” Helen said. “Trust no one else!” She ran across the street and away from the park, dodging cars and disappearing into the crowd.

  Chapter Twenty

  Over the next week, Vanessa kept reliving her encounter with Helen. At first, Vanessa thought she was crazy. None of her friends had ever heard of anything called the Lyric Elite, and she couldn’t find any information online.

  But Vanessa kept coming back to the same details: the steadiness of Helen’s voice when she said to find the Lyric Elite and trust no one else. And the blankness in her face when Vanessa had asked her if Justin had put her up to it. “Who is Justin?” she had replied, so sanely, so sincerely, that it had given Vanessa the chills.

  Something about the way Helen spoke to her, in clear, deliberate words, made Vanessa wonder if she wasn’t insane at all, but so frightened that it consumed her entirely.

  As exhausted as she was from rehearsal, Vanessa couldn’t sleep. She tossed between the sheets, slipping out of her dreams and into the eerie darkness of her room, until she wasn’t sure what was real. She saw Helen running wildly through traffic, her dingy pink sweater flapping around her frail body. But when Helen turned to look at her, Vanessa realized it was Margaret. “Leave while you still can,” she said, before disappearing into the crowd.

  Suddenly there was a knock on her door, and she was back in her dormitory, comforted by the sight of TJ sleeping soundly on the opposite side of the room. Vanessa couldn’t remember rolling out of bed, only that the door was open, and Justin was standing before her, his sweat-stained shirt clinging to his chest.

  “Ask me to come in,” he said, stepping closer. He smelled of wet leaves and cold autumn nights, his eyes clear blue like the sky, as he pushed his hair back and blinked, his gaze roaming over Vanessa’s body, as if he couldn’t help himself.

  Behind Vanessa, TJ snored softly. “I’m not alone,” Vanessa whispered.

  “Then we’ll have to be quiet.”

  “What do you mean?” Vanessa asked, even though somehow she knew. She had always known.

  Justin inched toward her, pushing her back into the darkness. TJ turned onto her side, still sleeping, her hair spilling over the pillow.

  “Why are you here?”

  Justin didn’t answer; he only stepped closer, pressing Vanessa against her bed. His collared shirt was unbuttoned at the neck, revealing smooth skin punctuated by a lone freckle. Vanessa stared at it, inhaling the trace of his cologne.

  “You know why I’m here,” he said.

  “What do you want?” Vanessa whispered, gripping the side of her bed.

  Justin inched closer, his legs tangling with hers. His eyes wandered from her neck to her collarbone to the thin straps of her camisole. “You know what I want.”

  Gently, he ran his hand up her thigh. It was bare, cold in the night breeze. She trembled beneath his touch. She wanted to pull away, but for some reason she couldn’t. Justin pressed his body against hers.

  “You have to leave,” he said, his lips against her neck, kissing her. “You have to leave.” She felt his hands tangling in her camisole, pushing the strap off her shoulder, pressing into her skin until she couldn’t help herself. Her body went limp in his arms, and she buried her hands in his hair and pulled him toward her, surprised by the intensity of her response.

  Justin groaned. “You have to leave,” he murmured. “You have to leave to be safe. But I don’t want you to leave.”

  Vanessa breathed in his words, letting them course through her. She arched her neck as if dancing the part of the Firebird, but just as he bent her back, kissing her shoulders, her collarbone, her neck, she spotted a shadow in the doorway.

  She gasped and sat up. Though he was shrouded in darkness, she knew who it was. “Zep,” she whispered.

  The light from the hallway illuminated slivers of his face as he gazed between her and Justin. His expression hardened. Vanessa wanted to call out to him, to apologize and say she never meant it. That she loved him, not Justin. But for some reason, the words didn’t come out.

  Zep strode inside, his eyes burning. Justin stepped in front of Vanessa, challenging him. “Don’t go,” she wanted to say to him, but when she opened her mouth, no words came out.

  There was a loud knock on the door. Vanessa sat up and opened her eyes. She was in bed, the sheets damp and tangled around her. Neither Justin nor Zep was anywhere to be seen. Confused, she glanced across the room at TJ, who was curled up with a pillow, snoring. Otherwise, the room was dark and quiet. Had she been dreaming? She could almost smell the sweat and wet leaves on Justin’s shirt. But he wasn’t there.

  Vanessa swallowed, her mouth parched. She was about to take a sip of water when someone knocked again. A thin line of light shone out from beneath the door, interrupted by the shadow of two feet. Zep? She pulled on a sweatshirt and tiptoed over.

  “Vanessa?” a boy said from the hallway. She jumped back, startled to hear Justin’s voice. “I know you told me never to speak to you again, but please open the door. Just this once.”

  Vanessa hesitated, trying to understand why she was suddenly so nervous.

  “Please,” he repeated. “I promise, I’m not here to threaten or insult you.”

  She turned the knob and opened it just wide enough to see his face, damp with sweat and speckled with golden stubble. Now that he was standing before her, it was all too clear that she had been dreaming. But why would she have been dreaming of Justin and not Zep?

  Afraid he would be able to read her thoughts, she averted her eyes. “What do you want?” she said, staring at his hands.

  She half expected him to answer the way he had in her dream, but instead, he said, “I just wanted to apologize. I shouldn’t have messed up your rehearsal. You could have been hurt, which is the opposite of what I want.”

  Vanessa frowned. The opposite?

  “Anyway, I don’t want to keep you up, and I don’t expect you to say anything. I just wanted you to know that I’m sorry.”

  She wanted to ask him what he meant. About Helen and what he thought had happened to her. But as he stood there, his lips dangerously close to hers, she felt an unbearable urge to pull him inside and kiss him, long and hard until they were breathless and tangled beneath her sheets.

  “Do you still think I should leave?” she asked.

  Justin seemed surprised by her question. “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s the part I haven’t figured out how to explain yet. All I can say is that there’s a reason for what I did in rehearsal. I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”

  Vanessa let out a nervous laugh. “What exactly were you trying to do, then?”

  Justin’s steady gaze seemed almost kind. “To save you.” And before Vanessa could say anything more, he turned and stole down the hallway.

  “Wait,” she called out to him. “What do you mean?”

  Justin paused, glancing back over his shoulder. “Good night, Vanessa,” he said. And he was gone.

  “What if he’s right?” Vanessa said over lunch the next day.

  “What if something strange is going on here, and Helen
knows about it too?”

  “Or what if Helen’s just crazy and scared of Josef because he roughed her up in practice, and Justin is a jealous prick?” Blaine said. “That sounds more likely to me.”

  “Blaine has a point,” TJ said, spooning sugar into her tea.

  Vanessa put down her fork. “I know, but it’s weird, isn’t it? That they both gave me the same advice, separately?”

  “But neither of them told you why,” Steffie said. “Isn’t that a little suspicious?”

  Vanessa sighed. “Justin said there was a reason he tried to sabotage my dancing. That he wanted to save me.”

  Steffie stopped eating. “Are you actually considering dropping out of school because Justin and a crazy ballerina told you to?”

  “No,” Vanessa said firmly. “But you should have seen the way she looked. She hadn’t showered or washed her hair in weeks. Her clothes were disgusting. And her eyes. They were desperate.”

  “All the more reason not to listen to her,” Blaine concluded. “Also? She sounds kinda like my mom.”

  “I wonder what happened to her,” TJ murmured. She cocked her head at Blaine. “Helen. Not your mom.”

  “She probably just cracked under the pressure,” Steffie said. “Remember when we saw her after the performance? She was practically in outer space.”

  “What about the punishment Dmitri mentioned?” Vanessa said.

  Steffie shrugged. “Maybe she was going to have to do pliés or extra barre workouts. Josef and Hilda make us do that all the time when we mess up.”

  “Yeah, but I know what Vanessa is saying. Punishment?” TJ said, smoothing back her hair with her fingers. “It’s a weird choice of words.”

  “Dmitri’s from Russia,” said Steffie. “His English isn’t perfect. Plus, he’s arrogant and brutish.”

  “And sexy,” Blaine said.

  “She found me by the park,” Vanessa said, shoving him. “Maybe we can find her again. Even if she does turn out to be crazy, it can’t hurt to ask her what happened. Right?”