One Dream Only

by Elodie Nowodazkij

  One Dream Only

  Broken Dreams: Natalya' story

  Elodie Nowodazkij

  Published by Elodie Nowodazkij, 2014.

  Also by Elodie Nowodazkij

  Broken Dreams: Em & Nick

  A Summer Like No Other

  Always Second Best

  Broken Dreams: Natalya' story

  One, Two, Three

  One Dream Only

  Gavert City

  Fear Me, Fear Me Not

  See Me, See Me Not

  Geplatzte Träume

  Alles für einen Traum

  L'Histoire de Natalya

  Un Seul Rêve

  Un, Deux, Trois

  Nick & Em

  Un été pas comme les autres

  Une Seconde Chance

  Standalone

  Alles für einen Traum / Only One Dream (Zweisprachige Ausgabe: Englisch-Deutsch)

  Eins Zwei Drei

  Broken Dreams Box Set

  Un été pas comme les autres - A Summer Like No Other: Livre Bilingue - Bilingual Book (French English)

  Un amour en si mineur

  La peur dans le sang

  Love in B Minor

  Un Seul Rêve / One Dream Only

  La peur dans les yeux

  Watch for more at Elodie Nowodazkij’s site.

  Thank you so much for picking up this book!

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  Elodie Nowodazkij

  ONE DREAM ONLY Copyright © 2015 by Elodie Nowodazkij

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For information, contact elodie@elodienowodazkij.com or visit: www.elodienowodazkij.com

  Book and Cover design by Derek Murphy

  First Edition: October 2014

  Contents

  Three days after the audition

  Fifteen hours before the audition

  Four Days After The Audition

  One hour before the audition

  One day after the audition

  Audition time

  One day after the audition

  Six hours after the audition

  Two days after the audition

  Eight hours after the audition

  Three days after the audition

  Five days after the audition

  Five months after the audition

  Thank you!

  SNEAK PEEK

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Three days after the audition

  March 21st, 6 p.m.

  BLOOD.

  The blood is everywhere. On the snow. On my hands. Dripping down my left eyebrow. In my mouth. The metallic taste is on my tongue, overwhelming and overpowering. Stabbing pain shoots through my neck right to my head, and my body is numb from the cold. I shiver without being able to control it. Snow flurries fall steadily on my face, wetting my lips. My throat burns as if I spent hours screaming or crying. The shadows of the trees close in on me.

  My breathing accelerates.

  How did I wind up here? I close my eyes but I get dizzy, as if I turned in a fast pirouette without having a steady point to anchor me. I open my eyes again, my brain searching for answers, but the memory takes too long to come to me.

  Oh.

  Papa and I were on the way to the airport.

  That’s right. I hadn’t wanted to leave the house while Papa looked so sad, so lost. I hadn’t wanted to go back to school in New York. So what if the School of Performing Arts where I have been a student for the past two years has a very strict attendance policy?

  But despite my protests, he’d simply looked at me with a frown I’d never seen on him before and insisted I get my suitcase. He’d said that my staying in Maine with him and Mama wouldn’t help them sort out their issues.

  Snow and ice covered most of the little road we took to the interstate. Papa tuned in to NPR, probably hoping this would quiet me. The car slid once, but Papa straightened it without much of a problem. Then it slid a second time, only slightly, and he muttered under his breath in Russian. I waited a few seconds and then pressed him, asking more questions he didn’t want to answer. I changed the radio station, knowing full well that it would get a rise out of him. His favorite show was about to come on and Papa’s rules were clear: never touch the radio if his favorite show was on or if he was listening to Chopin.

  The memories get blurry. There was a truck and then loud honking, tires screeching and Papa yelling for me to hold on tight.

  Papa.

  My breath catches in my throat. Why hasn’t Papa said anything yet? I turn my head, wincing at the pain, but I have to see. I have to make sure he’s okay.

  “Papa?” I call out, fighting against the dizziness taking over me. My heart skips a beat. I can’t move anything. I can’t move my legs.

  I need to move my legs.

  My arm’s stuck, and pain radiates all over my body. I breathe in shuddering gasps, and my eyes dance frantically over the wreckage, trying to see where Papa is. There’s only broken glass, the debris of our gray Honda, snow, and blood.

  He probably went to get help. I can almost hear him with a laugh in his voice, telling me, Everything will be fine, Natoushka. You worry too much. But why would he leave me alone like this? He’d never leave me alone. My heart pounds fast and loud.

  “Papoushka?” I call again, but my voice is thin.

  Nothing.

  Dread grips me, and I slowly turn my head to the other side and gasp. Papa.

  His body’s contorted; his leg is sprawled at an unnatural angle and his arm is curled over his head. He’s knocked out, but his bright-blue eyes—so similar to mine—are wide open.

  “Papoushka,” I whisper, but he doesn’t move. “Papoushka!” My voice cracks. Someone will come and help us. Someone will find us. Someone will make sure we’re okay.

  I clench my teeth, and inch by painful inch, I slide my body closer to him. My hand touches his and I interlink our fingers.

  His skin is warm. He’s fine. He has to be.

  “You’re okay, Papoushka. You’re okay,” I say as if in a trance. “You’re okay,” I repeat until everything blurs around me.

  Until the pain’s so strong that it engulfs me.

  And I close my eyes

  Fifteen hours before the audition

  March 18th, 7 p.m.

  THERE’S a buzz in the canteen at dinner. Almost everyone’s talking about the audition, and the few students who are not talking about the audition either laugh too loudly or look way too pale. Emilia’s doing her best to ignore our friend Nick. He runs his hand through his dark cropped hair, his strong arms flexing as he does so. I don’t have time for boys, and I know he’s got a crush on Emilia, but I can’t deny he’s hot. When he asks if she wants to go over the choreography with him again, Emilia can’t say no.

  She turns to me. “You’re coming, too?”

  “I want to call my parents tonight and you know my rules.”

  “You want to visualize all the movements the evening before and do one last rehearsa
l in the morning.”

  “Yep. You and Nick should go. I’ll see you in our room later.”

  Nick smiles my way as if I just named him the best dancer in the world, but I shrug. Even though I want those two to figure a way to be happy together, I really cannot derail from my routine. I’m a tad OCD when it comes to the evening before a big audition: I always call my parents, listen to the music, visualize myself dancing all the movements perfectly, and put a picture of Mama at the height of her career under my pillow.

  She doesn’t know that.

  No one knows that.

  I’m not sure if I think she’ll transfer her talent to me that way, but it reassures me.

  I finish my cup of water, put up my tray in the right corner as always and head back to my room to start with my ritual.

  “Hi, Papa,” I smile.

  “Hi, Natoushka. You ready for tomorrow?” he asks, but there’s something in his voice. It’s not his usual happy one. He hasn’t sounded happy for a few weeks now.

  “Yep, definitely ready.” I try to sound as cheerful as possible. “If I get it, I think it’s really going to start my career. And I feel like I am Aurora. I feel like I own the part.”

  “That’s good, sweetie.”

  “I think I feel the same as when you were onstage playing Chopin. You told me once how you got so lost in the music, you didn’t know where it began and where you ended. It’s like that for me.”

  “It is a wonderful feeling. A scary one, too,” my father replies. “But you always need to find yourself again,” he adds after a short pause.

  “I know, Papa. But when I dance . . .”

  “When you dance, you feel whole and complete. But remember what I always say . . .”

  “There’s more to me than dancing,” I say. He sounds a bit more normal now. He never fails to remind me that, to him, I’m more than a ballerina and that I should be more than that to me, too. Maybe one day.

  “Are you sure you want to come this weekend? The weather isn’t supposed to be that great.”

  “Of course, I’m sure. We’ve been planning it for months!”

  “I don’t want you to get stranded in Maine while you’re supposed to be back at school on Monday. That’s all. I have to go. I love you, Natoushka. Think about what I said.” He pauses, and before I can reply, my mother’s voice comes through the phone.

  “Natoushka,” she says, and the little nickname she only uses rarely tugs at my heart. Maybe this weekend, we’ll reconnect. I haven’t seen my parents in two months and our phone calls are more sporadic than even before. I spend too much time rehearsing, too much time in the zone. They spend too much time pretending everything’s okay “I danced Aurora, too, you know,” she continues. “It’s a difficult part, much more difficult that what it seems at first. I was her.” She pauses. “And now, now I’m nothing.”

  “You’re not nothing, Mama. Everyone remembers you as Aurora and as Maleficent. If I only dance half as good at you, I’ll be amazing.”

  “Only reach for the best. You need to be even better than me, Natalya. Otherwise, why work so hard? Why break everything? Why lose everything?” She sounds sad. Way too sad.

  “I know, Mama. I’ll reach for the stars. I’ll see you this weekend. Are you okay?” I hear her sniffle.

  “I’m fine. It’s just a cold,” she says.

  “You’re still picking me up tomorrow at the airport with Papa?” I ask. She promised last time she would be there.

  “Sure,” she replies.

  I want to believe her.

  Four Days After The Audition

  March 22nd, 4 p.m.

  “SHE SHOULD be awake soon,” a muffled voice says. It’s close to me but oh so far away. My mouth feels like cotton, and everything hurts—my head, my arms, and my legs.

  My legs. There was an accident. The truck. Our car against the tree.

  Papa.

  Papoushka.

  My breathing stops. I was holding his hand in the snow. He wasn’t answering, but he must be fine. He’s probably talking to the doctors outside. My eyes flutter open. Everything’s out of focus, and it takes me a few seconds to distinguish anything. The room seems to be entirely white, and there’s an overwhelming smell of Clorox, as if someone dropped an entire bottle and forgot to air out the room. A few people stand around: Mama, my uncle Yuri, and doctors and nurses clothed in scrubs and white coats.

  But I don’t see Papa.

  “There she is,” my uncle says as he carefully caresses my forehead. “Natalya.” He sounds sad. Too sad. Tears well in his blue eyes, so similar to my father’s that for a second I almost see Papa looking at me.

  I try to sit up but wince at the pain. Yuri makes a tutting sound that I think is meant to comfort me. He turns to Mama, who’s leaning against the wall, not looking my way—not looking at anything. She crumbles to the floor, her long blond hair hiding her face, but it can’t conceal the shakes that rack her body.

  “Mama,” I call to her, but she buries her head in her knees.

  “We killed him,” she whispers, and I stare at her, not understanding, not wanting to understand.

  “Papoushka?” I ask, and I close my eyes.

  This is a nightmare and I want it to end.

  One hour before the audition

  March 19th, 10 a.m.

  THE SCHOOL OF PERFORMING ARTS in New York City is the best foot in the door to Juilliard, to the American Ballet Company, to ballet companies around the world. And the end-of-the-year showcase is a way to get spotted, recruited, to make an imprint on the dancing world. If I manage to get the main role as a junior, I’ll be making history. Only seniors get it, but everyone’s allowed to try out.

  And everyone does try out.

  I’m the first one on the long list of hopefuls waiting to prove to the school I have what it takes to make it to the top. In one hour, I need to present myself to the stage, side A. And all I can think about is how Mama sounded yesterday on the phone. How Papa told me I shouldn’t come home this weekend.

  Maybe, if I called them now. Maybe I could ask Mama how she always managed to own the room as soon as she stepped onto a stage, how she made the character’s emotions so clear in her movements. Maybe she’ll finally tell me that she’s proud of me.

  Papa says it all the time. He says that as long I try my best, he’s proud of me, that it doesn’t matter if I’m a prima assoluta or if I decide to quit dancing: As long as you try your best, as long as you don’t give up just because you think it’s too hard, as long as you do what makes you happy, I’m proud of you, Natoushka.

  I have no idea what Mama thinks about my career. Sure, she smiles when she sees me on stage. Sure, she pushes me. She always reminds me to do my stretching exercises. She always reminds me to stand straight, not because it is proper but because, It’s not ballerina-like to slouch. It’s also not “ballerina-like” to cry because your feet bleed or because you’ve twisted your knee more times than you can count.

  It’s not like I’ve heard any of her advice in the recent months anyway.

  I grind my teeth, stand up, and extend my hands to the floor. I should be stretching, getting ready, definitely not worrying about my parents. There’s only one way for me to forget about them, about the drama waiting for me at home: dancing.

  I turn up the music and continue stretching, but I can’t clear my head. In one of the latest issues of Dance Magazine, several dancers explained what it was like to dance Aurora. Jenifer Ringer—New York City Ballet principal dancer—told Dance Magazine that “the magic of the fairy tale” was the most important thing, that the show should transport people to another place. I need to go to that magical place myself. I need to believe it so it’s easier for others to believe me. Irina Kolpakova from Kirov Ballet said to listen to the music, that it says everything.

  I bow my head to my knee, extend my arm over my head, inhale, exhale deeply, close my eyes, and listen to the rhythm, to the story. I try to forget about the pain in my right knee; I
’ve twisted it a few times and it’s always a bit painful. But nothing can stop me.

  The music envelops me, resonates within me. Aurora goes through so many stages of her life in the ballet. I can be as excited as she is, discovering love, discovering what she wants to live for. And then, there is the sadness, the sorrow of being bound without even knowing it before she becomes free again. The audition comprises a few minutes of the Rose Adagio, when Aurora meets her suitors for the first time, followed by a few minutes of Aurora dancing more slowly, more languidly as she falls under the sleeping spell cast upon by Maleficent.

  I do one last stretch, my arms above my head, leaning as far as I can to the right and then to the left, and I take a deep breath. It’s time to go through the choreography.

  I stand up, and my legs take over. Forgotten are the hours spent rehearsing, the arguments with Mama, the fleeting thought that my knee could give up on me, leaving me without hope and dreams, and I become Aurora. It’s as if I have been her all along and these steps are mine.

  The music is joyous and happy images flash in my mind: the day my parents gave me the necklace I’d been eying for weeks, the one with the cute ballet-shoe pendant; the day Becca taught me how to swim and how free I felt in the water; the time my babushka sat me down and told me a bunch of fairy tales, including one about a little girl who would grow up to be loved, happy, and the best ballerina ever, but most importantly, that she would always be cherished by her grandmother.

  My grin spreads, and my movements become light as air.

  At the end of the music, I stay in the arabesque penché, keeping the energy building inside me. And then I start again, focusing only on a few movements, the ones I know the judges will dissect. My reflection shows me that my figure is okay, that my thighs aren’t too big. I can’t stop myself from enjoying a few treats, but my usual meals include salad, fish, and sometimes a bit of chicken. I only let go when I’m out in a nice restaurant with my uncle Yuri. One of the girls had to leave the school because she’d gained too much weight. Another had to leave because she barely could dance anymore, too weak from an eating disorder. No one said anything to her. Not one single teacher asked her what was wrong, despite being known as the “single apple eater,” despite the fact that everyone still talks about Heidi Noelle Guenther, the twenty-two-year-old member of the corps de ballet, who collapsed and died on a family trip to Disneyland a few years back.