The music drifted across the room, filling up the empty silence with the striking of the keys on the piano, the sweet pitch of the violins, and the deep thrum of the cello. Of course there were also the sounds of the other instruments woven in between those cords, but those three instruments stood out to Jess's ears.
Tombé, pas de bourrée, glissade, grand jeté, Jess thought as she executed the steps perfectly. As Jess landed her grand jeté, she brought her right foot through and piquéd onto her pointe shoe, bringing her left leg up into a beautiful arabesque.
Hold it, hold it, Jess thought as her standing leg trembled slightly. After holding the arabesque for four counts, Jess pliéd her standing leg and brought her left leg down from the arabesque and prepared for her turns.
Jess picked up her turns when the music became fast and the violins began to flit in the background. Two single pirouettes, one double pirouette, three chaînés and then an inverted piqué, Jess thought as the steps flowed together. She landed in a wide fourth with her arms spread in front of her in the presentation stance before finishing the dance with a relevé onto her right pointe shoe forming a lovely attitude arabesque with her arms forming a frame around her head in high fifth.
As her small audience in the dance studio applauded her, Jess dropped gracefully from her stance to B plus and curtseyed on the right and left before running gracefully off the floor.
"Bravo! Brava!" her instructor clapped passionately. "Oh Miss Jess! You will be the loveliest Sugarplum this company has ever seen! And so young and small too!"
Jess curtseyed formally to her instructor with a gratefully smile. "Thank you sir," she said.
The instructor turned his attention to the other girls who were stretching on the barré off to the side. "Alright you five! Run the Arabian number and then you may leave. Jess, I would like you to stay and watch this number for me. I have to get to a class on the other side of town. Just make sure that they don't slack and everything is technically flawless for the upcoming show!"
"Yes sir," Jess said. The six girls curtseyed twice to their instructor as he left.
Jess allowed the girls a minute to finish stretching before setting the music back and pressing play.
She watched them dance the Arabian number, her thoughts drifting as the dance reached the halfway point.
She always loved the winter show that her studio put on. It was either the Nutcracker or some kind of medley of Christmas themed songs and dances. She always loved it when it was the Nutcracker. Jess was only in her second year of the senior preforming troope and she was already in the role of the Sugarplum. It came from endless hours of practice and repetition of moves she had come to know as well as the back of her hand.
Jess was pulled from her thoughts as the Arabian music faded out with the soft clinging of the finger tambourines.
Jess smiled and clapped appreciatively. "That was done beautifully girls. I guess that's it for todays practice."
They all curtseyed to each other and the other five left to the changing room.
Jess stayed in the main room of the studio, packing up all the music and sweeping the excess rosin off the floor. She placed all the CD's in their proper cabinets and pushed the rosin box back in the bottom shelf of the closet.
As Jess stood up to close the door, a cold wind brushed her bare shoulders and sent shivers running down her spine. Jess turned and looked to the windows at the opposite side of the studio. She found that one of them was thrown wide-open, frost lying thin on the sill.
Jess shut the closet door and started towards the window. Funny, she thought. I don't remember there being a window open in here.
As she was making her way over, the door to the changing room creaked open and the other girls came out, chattering and giggling. "Bye Jess!" They all said, waving as they filed out the door. Jess stopped the girl at the back, Jordan, who was several feet taller than she was and was in her third year in the troope. This year, Jordan had been granted the role of the head Arabian along with some other roles as well.
"Hey, Jordan, was that window open before?" Jess asked, gesturing to the frost covered sill. Jordan looked at the window and shrugged with a shake of her head. "I don't really know, Jess. I wasn't paying too close attention to it. But I don't remember feeling a breeze or anything from outside."
Jess hummed and waved goodbye to Jordan who then followed the other girls out the door, leaving Jess in silence.
Jess walked back over to the window and peered outside, stunned to see a light dusting of snow covering the ground two stories below. Shrugging, Jess tugged the window shut.
Jess walked over to her bag and tugged on her yoga pants and blue hoodie. She bent down to sit and take off her pointe shoes and stopped, seeing her sketchbook lying in her bag. Jess smiled to herself and pulled it out. She plopped onto the floor and flipped through the pages while she undid the ribbons of her shoes.
Aside from being the top dancer at her studio, Jess was also one of the major art students at her school. She hadn't seen this sketchbook in a long time and now she knew why. She hardly ever dug deep into her bag since all she ever really needed were her pointe shoes. But flipping through her book, she saw pictures of various figures that she was often embarrassed to show others that she drew. Among them were Santa, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, the Sandman, the Boogeyman, whom she had named Pitch Black, and her favorite, Jack Frost. Most people who saw these drawings asked why a 15 year old was still a believer in such childish fairytales. But Jess knew they were real. She just knew it. Jess sat there, staring at the face of the Jack Frost she had brought to life on the paper with a few strokes of her paintbrush, her pointe shoes in her hands. The watercolor she had used really brought his eyes and other features to life with bright blues and silvers blended together. Sighing, she shut the book and packed up her shoes and tugged on her boots.
Jess scooped up her book and started to head out of the studio.
"So, you're never too old to believe in us are you?"
Jess clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle a scream and whipped around. She searched for the owner of the voice but found no one. Jess looked in the mirror and saw herself with her pale skin, wide, frightened blue eyes and light brown hair. But no one else. "H-hello?" she stuttered out with a shaky breath.
Jess waited for one second. Two. Three. Nothing.
Chest heaving and heart pumping adrenaline, Jess backed up to the doorway and turned to flee. She hit the light switch as she passed it and burst out the door. Jess flew down the two flights of stairs to the street below and walked briskly down the sidewalk.
What the heck had just happened? It had definitely been a male by the voice. Not too old though, by the sound of it. Maybe 17? 18? Other than that, Jess had nothing to prove that there really had been someone there and she wasn't insane.
Shaking her head, Jess made her way to her car. She climbed into her car and pulled her keys out of a side pocket in her bag. She turned the ignition and instead of turning up the heat to warm her car against the biting winter air, she left the air conditioning on low to blow a soft cool air throughout her car. Jess headed out of town and towards the outskirts.
Jess lived in the outskirts of Miles City, Montana. Also know as, the middle of nowhere. When people say the outskirts of Miles City, it means about 100 plus miles away near the large body of water called Lake Fort Peck. But it was quaint and open and she loved it. Jess's house was set by the Spring Creek Bay behind a forest, nestled on the shore of the large lake. Jess lived alone in the large house, her father having passed away and her mother constantly travelling in foreign countries. Jess sighed as she turned onto a shortcut back road that cut about 20 minutes off her commute. That and she could get there in about 45 minutes since the road she took was unpatrolled and she could go up to 80 mph.
As Jess pressed down on the accelerator, urging her car to move faster, her mind wandered back to the boy's voice she had heard. There hadn't been anyone there except for her. But maybe…he had climbed in through the window that had magically opened itself. But that was two stories up! There was no way someone could have scaled the wall of the building without anyone noticing.
Jess broke her thoughts to glance around for a landmark to judge how much time she had spent thinking about this. She saw a large oak tree standing on the side of the road across from a small pond and realized she was about halfway home.
Suddenly, something flitted in her peripheral vision. Jess's head snapped towards it. The brown coat of a deer took form in front of Jess, darting onto the road a mere four feet from the hood of her car. Jess's breath caught in her throat as she slammed on the brakes and felt the car swerve beneath her.
Jess must have blacked out because the next thing she knew, she was blinking open her eyes and found her car sitting in a ditch in front of the oak tree. Jess scanned herself and wiggled her fingers and toes. She shook her arms and moved her legs. Nothing seemed to broken or bleeding but when she turned her head to look around, spots started to dance across her vision and pain shot through her head and spread to her temples.
Jess rubbed her eyes and when her head stopped throbbing, she looked up and jumped slightly, causing her head to throb again. There was a boy perched on one of the lower branches of the oak. His hair was shock white and he was wearing a blue hoodie much like her own and brown pants. He wasn't wearing shoes and he held what looked like a long slim piece of wood in his hand.
Jess thought maybe she was hallucinating from the bump on her head so she rubbed her eyes again. Looking up after she rubbed her eyes, the boy was gone. She hadn't seen his face, just everything else about him.
Jess unbuckled her seatbelt and climbed out of her car and scanned the hood and the sides. Nothing was dented to badly but there was a chunk of paint that had been scratched off the front bumper. Sighing, Jess reached over and shifted her car to neutral. She got in front of her car and shoved it as hard as she could. Lucky for her, the ditch wasn't too deep and she was only about 20 feet from the road.
Jess only got her car out of the ditch before she had to switch the gear to park and lean against the car, trembling. Jess was a dancer and wasn't very strong. And on top of that, she was struggling with a possible concussion.
Leaning against her car, Jess felt the oddest sensation that she wasn't used to feeling. She felt like she was being…watched. Jess straightened and looked around. She didn't see anyone. Shaking from fatigue, Jess stumbled back into her car and shifted it into reverse. She pulled back out onto the road and then shifted back into drive. She glanced one last time at the oak, scanning the branches for the boy. Jess knew that it was ridiculous, no one had really been there, but she couldn't help feeling that he was real. Jess focused on the road again and coaxed her car back up to the normal speed as she continued home.
As Jess drove, she fought the dizziness that threatened her driving; thanking her lucky stars that no one else was out on the road. As she gratefully pulled onto the road that would lead her to her house, snowflakes started to fall. They were light at first but with every passing moment, they became heavier and heavier. Jess stopped at the mailbox at the end of her drive and flipped open the door, causing the snow that had already piled up on top of the box to slip off. She pulled out the meager pile of envelopes and magazines and flipped the door shut. She pulled up the drive and parked her car in the garage. Jess climbed out of her car and stood at the edge of her garage, staring up into the grey sky with a smile on her face. If only she hadn't hit her head, she would run outside and play in the snow that she loved so much.
With a resigned sigh, Jess turned and walked inside, shutting the garage door as she did. Jess dropped her keys on the table in the hall and proceeded up to her room. She changed out of her dance clothes and into a pair of fuzzy PJ bottoms and a blue camisole. Jess then went down stairs and packed some ice into a bag and laid down on the bag as she lay on the couch, flipping on the radio.
Jess soon fell asleep to the sound of Christmas music floating throughout the large empty house.
Jess dreamt of flying through a grey sky as snow drifted down towards the ground. She looked down at the freshly snow blanketed ground and grinned into the brisk wind that brushed her face. Suddenly, a boy's laugh rang out from beside her.
Jess whipped her head around to lock eyes with him. It was the boy she thought she had seen earlier. But again, she couldn't see his face, his head being turned away from her.
"Who are you?" she called over the wind.
"I think you know," was all he said.
Jess bolted upright and immediately regretted it. She rubbed her temples and groaned. She scooped up the bag of ice that was now a bag of water and poured the contents down the drain in the kitchen. She tossed the bag into the trash bin and looked out the kitchen window.
Jess did a double take.
There was a boy out there. And it was that boy again. With his shock white hair, blue hoodie, brown pants, and bare feet. But now he was looking right at her. She locked her hazel eyes with his ice blue ones. His eyes widened in what she could only interpret as shock. Then he smiled coyly and waved his hand. It wasn't a wave to say hello, it was more like how someone would wave his or her hand to cast a spell in a movie or something.
Suddenly, her window fogged up and a message was written in the frost crystals. You can see me?
Yes. Jess wrote back in the frost. She waited a few seconds so he could read it and then wiped away at the frost. The boy had disappeared into the falling snow.
It only then struck Jess that he had been about 100 feet from her window and had someone written on it without moving. That and it had fogged over seemingly at his command.
Who are you? Jess cried out in head.