by Rena Rocford
She inhaled, shifting her weight to her back leg just as the ref said, “Allez.”
Without realizing I’d made the decision to do so, I launched across the strip in a fleche, a risky maneuver, shooting my whole body over the en garde line. Caught off guard, she had no way to retreat with all her weight on her back leg. She swept frantically at my weapon, moving her point from its target. I slipped my weapon under her hand and rammed it into her bicep.
The scoring machine buzzed, and the official called out “Touch left.”
Janet’s voice carried over the clatter of competition. “I see why you wanted her on board.”
y the time I got home, I had a cheesy gold medal and a standing invitation to fence with the City team. I sailed up to my room, and before I took a shower, I whipped out pen and paper and started composing. I wrote for almost two hours before I thought I had enough.
When I got out of the shower, my mother knocked on the door. “Cyra, it’s for you.” She opened the door enough to set the phone on the counter, and even as she did, half the steam ran out of the room. And plenty of the heat with it.
“Mo-om.”
“Duty calls,” she said through the door. “Besides, you could have taken a shower when you first got home at two.”
I tsked and picked up the phone. “Yes?”
“Cyra, good, I’m glad I caught you. I had an idea for that thing,” Christine said. “But I need to practice. Come by my place and we can talk.”
“How will that help, if you need to practice?”
She snorted. “We have a ball room. It’s as good as a studio, complete with mirrors and floor.”
“You have a freaking dance studio at your house?” I asked. “How rich are you?”
“Seriously Cyra, it wouldn’t matter how much money my dad has. If I don’t have the talent, I can’t get into the company. It’s not like you can buy your way into being a soloist.”
“Point. Where is your house?”
She gave me directions, and we hung up.
When I pulled the towel over my hair, my bangs fell into my eyes, just a touch, but I feathered them back up and over my head, training the pixie cut back. I’d have to get it cut again soon.
Jeans, T-shirt, and slip-on tennies completed the outfit. I tucked the poetry into a notebook and stuck it between my teeth. I slid down the banister like a pirate, words instead of swords in my mouth, but I wasn’t allowed to practice in the house. Giant muffins sat on the counter, and I took two, clamping one in the crux of my right elbow and swapping my notebook for a muffin with the other.
“Studying?” my mom asked. I nodded as I slipped out the door for the second time today. In a matter of minutes I was pulling into the driveway next to Christine’s brand new white Passat. It wasn’t the perfect car to woo Rochan, but it sure beat an SUV or some gas-guzzling beast.
The walkway curved up around a manicured lawn edged by rounded hedges. The front walk wound up to a set of stairs. The whole manse was built into the side of a hill, suggesting that there was no way to tell just how deep the house or property was. It was the highest on a cul-de-sac, and the other houses all reeked of money.
I rang the door bell, and a cavernous echo rang through the house. In seconds, a maid opened the door. Just on her heels, Christine ran up to the door, breathless. Radiant in ballet regalia, she huffed. “I’ve got it, Rosa.”
The maid rolled her eyes and went back to her long suffering work. Christine held one of the double doors open with a flourish, her point shoes clacking on the tile steps. “Welcome to Casa Neuve.”
“Why thank you,” I replied with a snobbish bow.
She offered me an arm like a well-bred man from a Jane Austen novel, and I took it.
“You say you have an idea,” I whispered.
“Wait until we’re in the studio.”
I buttoned my lips and admired the scenery. Antiquities sat on little pedestals, and art hung in very expensive frames. I searched for family pictures, but I only found one portrait as we walked past what must have been some sort of sitting room. The portrait of a family with two kids took up the whole wall, but I didn’t recognize Christine in the picture.
Christine took me to a staircase leading down. It swept grandly from one corner with a delicate curve. We descended into a ballroom. A parquet floor covered the ground from side to side. On the farthest corner, a chair with an MP3 player and some speakers waited for Christine to get back to dancing.
“What do you think?” She held her hand out to indicate the view.
Beyond a set of floor to ceiling windows, a manicured lawn covered the ground between the house and an elaborate tiered garden that fell away, revealing a spectacular view of the valley below.
Apparently, her house went all the way through the hill to the opposite side.
I gawped. “I think I’m in love.”
Her laugh bounced off the walls like a child playing on a swing, echoing back and forth.
Ignoring the view of the city beyond the windows, I turned to the wall covered in floor to ceiling mirrors. Glass like that was expensive and hard to come by. I fixed myself in the mirror and did a test lunge.
Damn if Ferrero wasn’t right. My wrist did lag. I gave another lunge for good measure. At least my new weapon had a big bell to cover this flaw. I scowled at myself and nodded, as if my mirror self would remind me to work on my form more diligently the next time I was in the salle.
And to think, she had a readymade dance studio in her basement.
“I guess you throw some pretty big parties here?”
Christine rolled her eyes and sat down. Methodically, she wiped down her point shoes, taking extra care with the points. “We haven’t held a ball other than for fundraising. Host one, and you get to write everything off, even the cost of ‘renting’ the venue as a charitable contribution.”
“So then you basically have everything you could ever want.”
Her eyebrows jerked up. “Everything except a contract at a dance company and a date.”
That caught me up. “Oh, so it’s just one date you want?” I mocked enlightenment. “Because I really thought you were soul mates, or some such. At least that’s what you intimated when you were, ah, asking for help—in a very reserved and adult way.”
Ignoring me, she stood and used the back of the chair as a balance beam, kicking her leg up behind her, coaxing it into a perfect curl.
Humans didn’t normally bend like that.
“I’ll only need one date to know for sure.” Her eyes sparkled.
“You mentioned an idea?” I held up the sheets of poetry.
She took them from me, all pretense at warming up gone. “I did,” she said, her voice already distracted by the words on the page. Her legs folded under her, and she sat on the ballroom floor. She reread one of the papers.
“This one.” She held it up at me. “The others are good, but not right.”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded, standing. The tip of her shoe went to the ground and she took to the floor, twirling away from me. “Hit play, would you.”
I fumbled with the player for a second before some music came on, dramatic, and filling the room. She fell into form, and her whole body transformed. In the real world, Christine was a normal person with a couple affectations. Her movements were odd—out of place—like a spirit tied to the physical world. But when the music came on, that odd, ephemeral grace transformed her into a bird. She flew through the air, danced in the sky, and slipped through her forms. Her arms dipped and her whole body followed as if the weight of the world pulled at her body, and she fought it to fly again.
By the end, I realized I’d crumpled the paper in my hand, forgotten as I tried to keep my heart in my chest.
The music fell to its end, and she transformed back into a human being with merely unnatural grace. I took a breath before I said something to make myself sound like an idiot. I’d never seen anything like it in person. And more, she’d leapt throu
gh the air, and not once did I hear her shoes hit the ground.
“Sweet Shakespeare, why did you stop?”
She laughed with pure joy, and a part of me wanted that music for the rest of my life. If one person could live in pure joy, I could somehow be more for taking part in it.
“Cyra, you’re supposed to give a critique.”
“How could I judge? You just danced with the universe. What more do you want?”
She fished a phone out of the detritus on the chair and thrust it at me. “It’s supposed to look like this.” A video came on, and I watched a woman dance the same dance. There were places where they were perfectly similar, and there were places where I liked Christine’s version better.
“So, are you supposed to be a robot? Do you have to dance it exactly like this?”
She frowned at the phone like it held secrets from her. “Not exactly,” she said, hesitation thick in her voice.
“I can see where you dance it differently, but I feel like there’s more life in your version. When you do this part here”—I backed up the video—“I think you sell it better.”
She wavered. “Yeah, but I don’t point enough here and here.” She pointed at the tiny screen as if I knew what she was talking about.
“What are you working on?” I turned the phone back at her. “Are you trying to mimic her form but with your own flair? Or are you trying to be a perfect copy of this?”
“Cyra, that’s Alexia Stranikova. No one is a perfect replica of her.” She watched the video for a few phrases of music, then paused it. “That, did I make that shape with my body?” For emphasis, she threw her head back and tipped her foot up. Then for a more formal attempt, she went to point and repeated a few bars before the tableau.
It was perfect.
“Should I record it for you? Would that help?”
“You’re no help at all.” She dropped to the floor with a thump, the first ungraceful act for the last few minutes.
“Maybe you should dance for him. He’d love it, I’m sure.”
“Cyra, you can’t mean it. Most people think ballet is a boring ancient form of dance only scene by old, rich people.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but she had a point. There weren’t that many opportunities for people our age to see a ballet that wasn’t absolutely over the moon expensive. Not to mention, most people who had a passion for something hid it. There were people I’d had the same classes with for the last three years, and I’d never once told them about fencing. When I first got to Petaluma, Allison Rorabaugh had a horse. She told everyone about her horse. He was a show jumper, and Allison told everyone about the show. She did okay, but when she didn’t win the roses, everyone she’d bragged to tore her to pieces.
She had eaten her lunch on the benches next to the science classrooms for three months before she even tried to eat in the cafeteria again. In the early days, I’d buy her lunch because she couldn’t be in groups that large without worrying about what they’d do to her.
“You might have a point,” I conceded.
Christine sent a dismissive wave my way.
I held up my hand, pressing the rumpled poem to my chest. “I still think there might be something to you dancing for him.”
“You’re just trying to butter me up.”
“Actually, no. If Sara is anything like I know her to be, she’ll have lorded it over him how great of a dancer she is. She’ll have used something very flashy to show him so—”
“Firebird.” She sighed as if she wished she’d thought of it first.
“—which is why you’ll dance something else for him. Something that isn’t all smoke and mirrors. You’ll dance something real.” I locked eyes with her. “You’ll grab his soul and yank it out with your dance.”
“And your letters?” she asked like a deer trapped in the headlights.
“Yes, and my letters.”
“So, throughout the day, we’ll arrange to have your letters delivered, but in some way that grabs his attention.”
I nodded. “And at the end of the day, you’ll dance for him.” My eyes narrowed to calculating slits. “Yes, I think I have the gist of the plan now. But there’s one little problem: Sara.”
Christine’s eyes pointed to daggers. “Sara.” In her mouth, the word became a curse. “How do we get rid of her?”
Taking a breath, I rubbed my chin like a wise old man. “The only one who can get rid of her is Rochan.”
She narrowed her eyes. “This calls for classical tactics.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sabotage.” She took to point and turned around in a quick whirl of skirts.
“You do that?”
“Well, I don’t, but I’ve known a couple of nasty creatures who kept powdered glass for special cases.”
My frown deepened. Christine widened her eyes at me. “You know, for the girl who dances so great there’s no hope of beating her.”
My jaw dropped. “That’s real?”
“Well it isn’t common, but you hear stories.” She did a leg lift and watched herself in the mirror. A scowl creased her face as she examined some minor flaw indecipherable to normal humans. “And the fact of the matter is simple. People will do anything for a spot in a dance company. Anything. As in, I might call in a tutoring session so I can have you guard my costumes and shoes. It’s a big, big deal.” She twirled a stray piece of hair into submission around her bun. “Besides, training and persistence can only get you so far. Even after you’ve danced your whole life to shreds, you could suddenly hit a growth spurt or develop a cranky knee. It’s about more than hard work. You have to be lucky and genetically perfect, because honestly? There are thousands of other girls dying to take your place. One of them has that thing you don’t. I’ve seen some very dirty play.”
“Why aren’t you homeschooled?”
“We tried that, but my mother thinks I’m more manageable when I’m ‘socialized.’” She scowled at her reflection again. “My mother likes to run things. She’s currently organizing a fundraiser for some orphans in Africa or something. She hasn’t been to a recital since I was eight.”
Holding my breath, I tried not to break her thoughts. She had that cavalier I’m-going-to-say-something-shocking-and-see-how-you-take-it look. I’d seen it from her before.
Christine went on. “Never mind that all I want is to dance. Never mind that the only thing she ever wanted to do was dance. It’s like she didn’t get her dream—my fault, I’m sure—and so she isn’t interested in me having mine. She went to a full time dance school when she turned fifteen. I’m already too old at sixteen, and I’m supposed to be happy about turning seventeen?” Christine shook her head. “She just doesn’t understand.”
“What happened with your mother? She danced?”
Christine nodded, caught in some memory like a ghost. “She had me.” Then as if she was startled to find herself standing in front of me, she changed the subject. “Hit the music.”
Without hesitation, I turned on the music, releasing us from the pain of the truth.
Her dance had picked up a haunted feel, as if before she was dancing in joy. Now her dance shot the world with the pain of knowing she had ruined someone else’s dream.
he key to any good art is reaction.” Mr. Connor paced the room. We sat on stools arranged against one of the few classrooms that had enough natural light to actually work by. All the other windows were mirror tinted. In the art studio, you sat exposed in a glass cage. “If you are trying to save the whales, you can’t do it without first getting someone’s attention. Attention and awareness are powerful. Yes, art taps into a truth of the universe, something only you can see, but it also does no good if no one sees it. Good art is art that is seen, talked about, and reveals some truth of the world.” He paused for dramatic effect. “It is surprisingly difficult. Now that we’ve hit October, I trust everyone has their ‘I’ve been on summer break’ jitters out of your systems. It’s time to get to work.”
He stalked up to the front of the classroom. The chalkboard. “Your assignment for this year—your big project—is to create something that grabs my attention and reveals some truth.”
I groaned. All I had to do was grab some attention.
“Mr. Connor?” Rochan’s hand shot into the air. “Do we have any medium restrictions?”
“No statues of pot—in fact, I’m going to invoke the no drug related art rule! Also, no waves and no eyes. Everyone’s already done it, and you are trying to break free. You know, make something original, unique. Take my breath away.” His head fell to his chest, and he stuck his hand into the air. “But don’t take my breath away for the wrong reasons.”
For the whole rest of the period, I scoured all my old ideas and came up completely empty. Rochan came over to my table where I was working. He slouched into the chair, and I doodled with more purpose.
“How’s it going?”
Pulling out his sketch book, he slumped over. “You know Sara, right?”
“For some definitions of the word ‘know.’ Why, what’s up?”
He sighed. “It’s just that I feel like she isn’t happy, and I don’t know why.”
A snort escaped my nose. “Is it that she only wants what other people have regardless of what she already has?”
“Exactly! I just thought she’d be… different.”
I nodded sagely. “Sara’s not the person you’d hoped?”
“Does that make me a bad person?” His eyes begged to be told he was a good person, that he couldn’t bear the torture of bringing pain into the world.
The pencil swept across the page, the curve of a hand revealing itself in my doodling. “Well, it depends. Are you just not giving her your all? Or is the issue that you know your feelings aren’t what you’d hoped they’d be? Worse, is it fair to Sara if you know you aren’t attracted to her? Is it fair to keep going in a relationship you know is going to end?”
He paled. “I didn’t say that. I just—well, you don’t know what she’s like.”