“That was a question, ladies. Will someone grace it with an answer?” He considered our faces. “Georgia, tell me, how does that look?”
Roderick stared at me, waiting. I could feel the other girls looking at me too, and my pulse quickened. I shrugged.
“No, no. You’re not helping anyone by keeping quiet. Take a good look at Chantal’s legs. Do they look like the legs of a dancer?”
I had no idea whether I was really supposed to answer him, and all I could feel was my body getting hot. I looked at Chantal and saw that her lips were quivering.
“I’m not asking whether you like Chantal or whether you think she’s a good person.” Roderick laughed. “This is pretty objective stuff here and these are questions you girls will have to be comfortable with if you’re going to succeed. So, Georgia”—he turned to me, dropped his arms to his side—“are Chantal’s legs beautiful? Will they assist her in evoking weightlessness and grace?”
“No,” I whispered.
“No.” He nodded definitively. “They certainly won’t.”
He turned toward Chantal and, tentatively, I did too. Her lips quivered more now and she tucked them into her mouth. Then, in an instant, her eyes welled with tears and she ran out of the studio.
“Oh, Jesus,” Roderick muttered. He turned away from us and walked toward the piano as we started whispering. “Okay, okay. That’s enough. Will someone—” He pointed at Limor, who was sitting near the door. “Go make sure she’s okay.” He sighed deeply. “We better stop there. But that shouldn’t happen.” He pointed at the door, bounced his hand for emphasis. “She’s only slowed things down for the rest of you. Really, ladies, this isn’t personal. You’d better learn how to hear these things now because, trust me, I’m being gentle by the standards of the industry.” He dismissed us and walked across the studio. He stopped. “Georgia?” His eyes jumped over the other girls to find me. “Thank you for your honesty.”
We got up and made our way to the change room. Sixty put her arm around me and Veronica tapped me on the shoulder. “You did the right thing,” she said softly.
Everyone whispered about Chantal as we moved through the lobby. Would Roderick get over it or had she lost his respect for good? When we got to the change room, we found her and Limor sitting on the padded bench. Veronica’s box of Kleenex was between them and several sheets were balled up in Chantal’s lap.
“What happened?” Limor asked.
We all looked at each other. Veronica stepped forward, moved through the group so that she was standing in front of Chantal.
“He was pissed,” she said. “You really pissed him off.”
Chantal lifted her head. Her face was tearstained but she shrugged to say she didn’t care.
“Don’t you remember what he told us?” Veronica continued. “About checking your emotions at the door?”
Chantal wiped her eyes. “I didn’t mean to,” she muttered.
Veronica rolled her eyes toward Sixty and me. “It doesn’t matter whether you meant to or didn’t. The point is that it’s not fair to the rest of us.”
Molly stepped forward. “It makes us all look immature.”
I watched Chantal’s face. A storm was brewing inside her, and I thought she’d either dissolve into the vinyl cushion or start to scream. The other girls had moved to their lockers and I followed Sixty to mine. I hoped that Veronica would leave Chantal alone now, but she kept standing in front of her like she had a right to be there.
“Didn’t you watch Molly and me last week?”
“You guys were so good,” said Anushka.
“You’re gonna have to learn how to do that,” Veronica continued. “How to take it. Roderick should be able to say whatever he wants to you and you shouldn’t even bat an eye.”
“I can do that,” Chantal mumbled.
Veronica and Molly looked at each other and started to laugh.
“I can,” Chantal repeated.
“Yeah, right.”
“I can! You’ll see next time.”
“What happens if you just fuck up again?” Veronica turned to address all of us, her eyes charged with distress. “We can’t risk that.”
“I promise,” Chantal said under her breath.
Veronica shook her head. “We need, like, confirmation.”
She moved to her locker and slipped her arms out of her leotard. Molly changed beside her and it felt like everyone was watching, waiting for Veronica to continue. Chantal just sat there looking helpless and angry. Her expression reminded me of a fever, a clammy whiteness of draining blood, like she was sweating and shivering all at once.
“You should come to Coffee Time with us after school and talk to the guys there,” Veronica said.
Chantal shifted nervously on the cushion. Fear tightened her mouth and her voice sounded choked. “What do the guys at Coffee Time have to do with anything?”
Veronica glanced over at Molly like this was the stupidest question on earth. “You can practice on them.”
“Practice what?”
“Taking it,” said Veronica. Then she and Molly started to laugh again.
* * *
We met on the front steps at five o’clock. Sixty had brushed her hair a thousand times and parted it so deeply on the side that it swooped down to cover her left eye. Her lips were the color of barbecue sauce.
“You look nice,” she told me.
I had taken my hair out of my bun because I knew it would make Sixty happy, but I knew that I didn’t look nice. My hair was as limp as dental floss. We started to walk eastward as a group. Molly and Veronica were in front of us and they both had their hair loose too, Veronica’s swinging halfway down her windbreaker and Molly’s a heavy mass of curls around her head. Molly was wearing a leather biker jacket covered in zippers that Sixty had told me was really authentic. Anushka talked to someone on her cell phone behind us and Chantal dawdled beside her, her hands stuffed inside the sleeves of her raincoat. I tried to meet her eye to make her feel better, but she kept her focus on the sidewalk.
The Coffee Time was just around the corner on Jarvis Street. Yellow letters floated in a red bubble over a window that made up the whole wall. There was writing in the glass, frosty letters that said We Serve Breakfast Fresh. I expected it to smell like coffee inside, but instead it smelled more like sugar, as though the rings of doughnut icing made a vapor in the air. Veronica took stock of the situation. She glanced to the left, where a group of guys, maybe five or six of them, sat at two tables, then led us in the other direction. We sat down at a table against the window. Then she and Molly collected money to buy everyone coffee. I had tried coffee only once and its bitterness had pinched my jaw muscles and made it difficult to swallow. I wouldn’t have minded a juice, but I worried that would look stupid so I passed Veronica five bucks.
“Do you want a coffee?” Veronica asked Chantal.
“Yeah.” Chantal dug into the pocket of her raincoat and dropped a bunch of coins into Veronica’s hand.
I rested my elbow on the table and looked over at the guys. They were pretty much how Veronica had described them, had messy hair and dirty jeans, hooded sweatshirts that folded over their jacket collars. One guy got up and walked to the counter. He was wearing a giant pinstriped blazer over a T-shirt that said Hello, I’m Lost. His arms looked heavy as he walked, and he moved his head rhythmically like he could hear imaginary music. He got in line behind Veronica and, even though I couldn’t see her face, I could tell that she was conscious of him behind her. She dropped all her weight onto her left hip and propped her fist there too, like she’d been waiting in line for a century. After a second, they started talking. Sixty nudged me and motioned toward them. “Look,” she whispered.
Molly ordered the coffees while Veronica and the guy talked. She seemed to know just what to say to him, and even when she paused it looked intentional, like her silence was a graceful moment in a film. Finally Molly handed Veronica two coffees to carry and they came back to our table.
“They’re in grade eleven. They want to get drunk at Allan Gardens tonight,” said Veronica.
“Where’s that?” asked Sixty.
“In Crack Central. It’s one of the most dangerous areas in Toronto,” said Chantal.
“It’s just around the corner,” said Veronica.
Everyone laughed. Veronica sipped her coffee and pushed her hair over her shoulder. She sat back and looked at Chantal, who was fiddling with her sleeve.
“Maybe you should go talk to them.”
Chantal lifted her head. I saw panic in her eyes. “Why?”
“Isn’t that why you came? To show us that you can handle stuff?”
“Yeah.”
“So?”
Chantal looked down at her coffee and pulled on her sleeves. “What do you want me to say to them?”
“God!” Molly exclaimed. “Just go over and make normal conversation.”
“That’s not good enough.” Veronica flicked Molly’s arm. “Chantal’s here to show that she can control herself around Roderick.”
“What do you mean?” asked Molly.
Veronica fiddled with the plastic tab of her lid, wiggled it up and down until it came off. “The whole point of this is for Chantal to practice being strong enough for ballet class. So she needs to experience something even worse than Roderick’s insults.”
Her voice was quiet but full of purpose. Something about it frightened me.
“Like what?” Sixty asked.
Veronica moved in closer. “It should have something to do with sex.”
The word stung me. We all sat motionless.
Veronica kept going. “She should go over to the guys and ask them if she can do anything for them.”
“Oh my god!” Molly covered her face with her hands. “That sounds so slutty.”
Veronica slapped her hand against the table. “I’m being serious! Do you know how bad what Chantal did is? The grade-eleven girls told me that when Roderick gets mad at a student, he can take it out on everyone.”
We went quiet again. I wondered if this was true. Roderick had been annoyed in class today, but he hadn’t gone totally crazy. Chantal was staring down at the table, so I couldn’t see what she was thinking.
“But, like, what would she do?” asked Anushka.
“Whatever they tell her to.”
Molly made a face. “What if they tell her to do something gross? Like … suck their dicks.”
Anushka gagged on her laughter.
“This isn’t funny,” Veronica said. She turned to look at the boys’ table. “She’ll do exactly what they tell her to. That’s the whole point.”
I couldn’t believe what she was saying. I was sure Sixty thought it was as horrible as I did, but her expression was blank. The other girls didn’t say anything either.
“I won’t do it.” Chantal didn’t raise her head and her speech was choppy, like every word hurt her throat.
“I thought you really wanted to be a dancer,” Veronica said.
“Yeah. But this is stupid.”
Veronica made a show of sitting back in her seat and flipping all her hair onto the other shoulder. “Do you know what Roderick said when you ran out of class?”
Chantal shrugged.
“He said that you have two big problems. Do you know what they are?”
Chantal shrugged again.
“Well, Georgia should probably remind you of the first one.”
“What?” I sat up, startled. “What are you talking about?”
“Tell her what you told Roderick in class today. He was so pleased with you, remember?”
I looked away. I’d hated saying it the first time and it was too mean to repeat. I tried to laugh. “What’s the point when we’ve already heard it?”
“The point is that Chantal doesn’t get it. You were so honest in front of Roderick so you should be able to say it here.”
“Come on, Veronica,” I mumbled. “Can’t we just hang out like normal people and finish our coffees?”
She looked at me meanly now, caught the smiles of Molly and Anushka, and they all started to laugh.
“Maybe you want to go talk to those guys instead,” she said.
My heart beat harder. “What’s the point of that?”
“I don’t know. It sounds like maybe it’d be good for you.”
“Yeah,” said Anushka, “Georgia should go first and warm them up.”
It was unthinkable. I wished Sixty would help me but she was focused on her coffee cup. Was it really a big deal to repeat something that’d already been said? It couldn’t hurt Chantal any more the second time.
“Roderick said your legs were big,” I said with my eyes on the table. “He basically said your legs were too big for classical ballet.”
Veronica clapped her hands once, twice, with exaggerated slowness. I waited for Chantal to lift her head and face me, but she didn’t move, just kept staring into her coffee.
“Your other problem is much easier to fix, Chantal,” Veronica continued. “Just go over there and do what those guys tell you and you’ll prove that you can take it at school.” She looked around at all of us. “Who thinks she should?”
The others said they did. When I hesitated, Veronica glared at me.
“What do you think, Georgia?”
“Yeah,” I mumbled. “She should.”
Chantal slouched down in her seat and pulled her hands farther inside her sleeves. “Okay.” Her voice was barely audible.
We decided she needed to be fixed up a bit so that the guys would take her seriously. Veronica and Molly grabbed their shoulder bags and pulled Chantal into the washroom at the back of the shop.
“Do you really think she should do it?” I whispered to Sixty.
Sixty looked worried. I thought she was going to say no, but then she nodded. “We can’t run the risk of her crying again.”
I sat back in my chair, watched the guys as they elbowed one another and talked. The thought of approaching them left a dead weight on my heart. When Chantal came back from the bathroom, she looked like a kid dressed up as a punk for Halloween. They’d put her hair in a side ponytail and tied the bottom of her shirt into a knot. Her lips had the same outer-space sparkle as Veronica’s.
“All right,” Veronica said. “Good luck.”
Chantal stood there, not moving. Her gaze was more faraway than ever and all the blood had left her face. She glanced over at our table, as though searching for someone to intervene. I looked at the floor. When I lifted my head, she was already walking toward the guys’ table. I couldn’t believe she was doing it. When she was halfway across the room, the guy with the pinstriped blazer noticed her. He nudged his friend and they watched her approach. Chantal stopped a couple of feet in front of them. I became aware of the radio playing in the background, a woman’s voice warning about a collision on the 401, and the clutter of other people talking. I watched the boys’ faces. They were vacant, angled up toward Chantal, and then in an instant they were laughing. Their mouths contorted in horrible shapes and they slapped one another’s arms, laughed harder. Something in the sound was too nasty and I wanted to cover my ears. The next thing I knew, Chantal was running out the door.
NINE
Sixty was standing on the front steps of the academy when I got to school on Monday morning. There were leaves on the ground now, clusters of them ringed around the sewers. She should’ve been wearing a jacket, but had a big sweater thrown over her ballet clothes instead. I could even see the pinch of her blue leotard, the skin of her chest exposed above it. When she saw me, she flapped her hand in the air.
“It’s starting,” she whispered when I reached her.
“What?” I asked.
She took my hand, weaved her fingers between my fingers. I knew her skin was cold because it was the same temperature as mine. I wondered how long she’d been waiting outside. She led me through the side door and down the steps to the first-floor hallway. I inhaled a smell I was getting use
d to, something sweet to do with the heating system, like cafeteria cookies had been crumbled inside the vents. We got to the main lobby and she pulled me around to the bulletin board. There was a piece of paper thumbtacked to its center. Sixty let go of my hand and wrapped her arm around my middle, her hand pressing into the zipper of my parka. She pulled me so that I was standing right beneath the sheet.
Four names were printed down the margin.
VERONICA ORR
ANUSHKA SAINI
MOLLY DAVIES
CHANTAL ARCHER
Beside each name was a time, and at the bottom of the page it said: “Please report to Mr. Allen’s office at the indicated hour.”
“This is it.” Sixty had brought her lips close to my ear. “The Rodomization.”
I turned around and met her eye. I nodded slowly.
The day passed strangely. I walked by faces in the hall and it seemed as if everyone knew about the list but was trying to look like they didn’t. I felt like I had a headache without actually having one. I had already spent the whole weekend feeling bad about what had happened at Coffee Time. The rest of us had sat at our table for a while, expecting Chantal to come back to get her raincoat. When she hadn’t, I’d stuffed it in my knapsack and left it in my locker over the weekend.
My bad feeling got worse in math class. I looked at the parabolas Ms. McGuinness had drawn on the blackboard and felt my stomach loop up and down with their curves. Veronica sat two seats in front of me. Her posture was very straight and she kept tossing her head back in small waves, the way someone would in a shampoo commercial. Chantal sat down the row from me, three girls away. Everything about her body rolled inward, her shoulders tucked toward her chest. I brought my fingers to the bridge of my nose and pinched the tiny pads of cartilage on either side. Sixty was beside me and she gave me a strange look. I could see the opened page of her notebook on her desk, and instead of parabolas she’d drawn seven or eight palm trees.
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