I guess I should hate Miss Suzume by now.
Everyone else does, and she must be used to it. You don't get to be that harsh without knowing you're not everyone's favorite person.
I'm not a big fan of hers, don't get me wrong. She's mean, and overly criticial, and severe, and nasty, and sometimes cruel. But she's also preparing us for What's Out There when we graduate KPAA and move on.
And in ballet, the horrible reality is that everyone is mean and overly critical and severe and nasty and cruel. She's not a bitch just for the sake of being one. She's trying to toughen us up so we can handle the bitter, scrutinized, dog-eat-dog world we're going to be entering when we're done here. So yeah, I don't particularly like her, but I do appreciate this.
I do appreciate this.
I do.
(If I tell myself the same thing over and over, I start to believe it.)
It's just like dance. Miss a turn, then you do that turn 20 times so you don't fuck it up again. Bend your knee, then do thirty extensions so it hurts and you don't forget. Feel like ballet life just isn't enough? Tell yourself 3000 times that it is, until you believe it yourself.
Practice makes perfect.
"D-Did you hear?" asks sweet, gentle little Hinata at practice that afternoon. She rushes up to me with excitement in her dove-colored eyes, her perfect shiny black ponytail bouncing back and forth in her enthusiasm. She joins me for my stretches in a corner of the practice room and waits for me to press her for details.
"Hear what?" I ask indulgently. I like Hinata. She's pretty, and I love pretty things. I envy her perfect figure, her perfect hair, her breathtakingly beautiful eyes.
"There's g-gonna be r-r-recruiters. At our h-holiday sh-showcase!"
Of course I've heard it. Miss Suzume's only beaten it into me a thousand times since the beginning of competition season; I know why she gave me the heads-up, though, ahead of the other girls. It's because I'm her star, and I'm likeliest to be snatched up by a great school, and her best chance at getting recognized for pumping out amazing talent.
The fact that I'm an anorexic neurotic with a dwindling personality is just something I have to hide.
"That's awesome!" I say instead with a smile, extending my left leg into the air with my hand cupped around my heel. I remember how hard this used to be, before I devoted an unholy amount of time to improving my flexibility. Now, it's the easiest thing in the world; there's no strain in my muscles anymore that tells me it hurts. Practice makes perfect.
"And…M-Miss Suzume's g-g-giving me a f-featured part in o-our r-routine!" she adds, with a fierce, fierce blush that tells me she's so, so pleased with herself that she can't even contain it, but painfully shy and modest at the same time. It's endearing, and it's why I like Hinata so much. In this whole company with all these cutthroat, two-faced, hypocritical opportunists, she's unbelievably genuine.
"Really?!" I exclaim, happy for her in a way I just can't find the energy to be for myself anymore. "Hinata that's amazing, this is your chance to get discovered!"
"W-Will you help m-me on it?"
"Of course!"
Then Hinata blushes again in the middle of her stretch, and says in her quiet little voice, "You're n-nothing like wh-what everyone else s-s-says you are."
I raise my eyebrows at her, more amused than anything. "And what does everyone say I'm like?" Like I don't already know.
She hesitates, then murmurs, "A backstabber. They s-s-say you'll d-do anything to g-get ahead."
I reflect on all the practices I've spent with these girls, warming up alone in a corner somewhere while they congregated like best, best friends, ignoring the twinge of loneliness that always threatened to break my concentration. Ignoring their suspicious, jealous glares and their nasty, spiteful giggles when it's my turn to be taken to task for a mistake in the routine. Ignoring the feelings until they iced over, with enough practice.
"Dance is all about perception," I hear myself say, evasively. I pretend like her words don't sting, but they do. They always do. And just because I know what everybody here thinks of me doesn't make it any easier to deal with. There's still a little girl inside me who just wants to be friends with everybody. Who doesn't want to warm up by herself.
"I don't agree w-with them, S-Sakura," Hinata tells me quietly, like she's confessing a deep dark secret. "I th-think you're a v-very kind, very s-sad, very l-l-lonely girl…and they're on-only jealous of y-you."
I'm struck dumb by Hinata's opinion of me, so different from anything else I've heard before. Different from the other dancers calling me ruthless, a kissass, a stab-your-back-to-get-ahead opportunist even though that's exactly what they are. Different from the kids on campus who want to act like they know me but don't, who tell me I'm popular while I rot inside from solitude because no one understands me, who look up to me like I'm some kind of queen when all I've ever really wanted was to be really good at what I really loved. Different from Miss Suzume, who regards me as her meal ticket and her cash cow and and and…
I don't think anymore for the rest of the rehearsal, about anything except hitting my marks and nailing my turns. And Miss Suzume barely yells at me at all, she's too busy polishing my first place trophy from the competition last weekend to remember that I gained a pound this week.
She called me 'lonely.'
I'm in Practice Studio E at the moment, running my solo feature in front of the unforgiving mirrors for the hundredth time. Alone, because that's how I prefer to work. No other dancers to distract me, no painfully insightful ballerina with eyes that see too much to analyze me. No one but myself. It's late, almost time for work, but I feel like I need this. Just a chance not only to polish up my routine, but because I need to blow off some steam, and the rehearsal wasn't enough.
I can't tune Hinata's assessment out, though. It's one of the drawbacks to being a part of this industry. Without wanting to, you internalize every remark made about you, every analysis, every criticism, and it gets into your head. Affects the way you do things. Changes who you are, and how you view yourself. And she called me 'lonely,' of all things.
It's amazing how perfectly on the money someone can be, someone who knows you just a little bit better than you know yourself.
My feet hurt, but it's an easy, familiar pain to ignore as I run through the counts, drowning in what Hinata said about me and how I feel about it. Lonely. At first, I want to scoff, laugh it off. I'm not lonely. Ino's been my best friend for years; I'm constantly among people, with the other girls in rehearsal and with the other students in class. People try to hang out with me, try to be near me, know who I am. Even at Ink and Iron, Sasuke's been working on his designs in that tattoo shop while I'm cleaning, so I'm not really alone there, either. There aren't many moments a day like this one, where no one's around.
But can't you be lonely in a sea of people? Isolated from them as they are from you? For everyone who counts me as someone as popular as Ino, as well-liked as Ino, as admired as Ino, I wonder if they even know me as anything more than a name. An ideal. And one I just don't feel like living up to anymore. Because what's at the top?
Nothing. More loneliness.
And do I want a lifetime of this? I ask myself, and to my horror, I feel tears burning in my eyes. What is with me lately? All this crying all the time? I tune out the threatening breakdown, dance harder, start to let go a bit as I really ponder that fucking question. Is this really what I want?
Is this what I want to do forever? To be the best in this field, to know that I'm more talented than the others, that I'm better, that my technique is more polished and my flexibility is second to none and my stamina's improved and I'm best, but for none of that to be enough when I look at myself in the mirror? To spend more long hours in rehearsal with my back to people who hate me for my skill, who mock me to bring me down to their level, who resent me for my gutterbutt upbringing and just because I am who I am? To waste away to nothing, hating every single thing about myself I used to love, until I've become a shell of not only who I once was, but who I'll never be?
It's got to be enough, I think wildly, screwing my eyes shut against the tears and dancing as fast and as hard as I can. For once. My technique is awful at the moment as my heartrate picks up, as I let out gasps of struggle and effort; my carefully-honed restraint not only slips, it fucking disintegrates and I'm moving without any precision at all. Everything I'm known for, it breaks down right along with me and I move like an animal, like there's hell on my heels and the tears come faster and this isn't it, is it? This isn't what I want. This isn't what I thought it would be.
"Fuck it," I snarl, more animal than human. My voice reverberates off the walls and cussing in rehearsal, if anybody else were to hear me, would result in 40 pushups, but I'm alone, so I say it again. "FUCK IT!"
My routine flies out the window. I let myself go, completely. As soon as I think of a move, I do it; I sickle my feet like a motherfucker and bend my knees and flip forwards, backwards, I don't use my hands. With my ragged, jerky, unclean movements, the hairtie confining my thick pink hair in a sleek ponytail that I hate slips off and my hair's loose, flipping around me in my face and my eyes and it feels amazing, like freedom, but not quite. And I'm spinning then, spinning even though it makes me sick and I'm crying and I'm exhausted…
I hear a high, keening scream resounding off the thin walls in the studio, and it's only when I've collapsed onto the hardwood on my hands and knees that I realize the scream belongs to me.
Seconds pass, rolling by like centuries, as I stare at the floor with wide, wide eyes. The only sound in the room is my heaving, labored breathing, like I've just run a marathon. Ragged, pathetic breathing, the opposite of how I was taught, but I don't care. I can't, not when I'm pondering my own personal case of stolen identity. Who the hell was that just now? Because that girl, that dynamo, who danced with her heart and forgot all of her training, that couldn't have been Sakura Haruno. Careful, controlled, poised, elegant Sakura Haruno with the perfect technique. That was somebody else. This is somebody else, this girl with tears that won't stop and a heaving chest and all the exhaustion in the world, just a fucking mess on the expensive hardwood, unable to look up at the mirror.
"You know, you're really very good," a smooth female voice says from behind me. I stiffen as her words echo off the high ceilings, the frigid mirror, the shallow walls, and furious that someone's here to see this emotional disaster I'm trying to weave through.
"This is a closed practice," I grind out harshly through clenched teeth, still not looking up. I don't know who's behind me and I don't fucking care. I just want to be alone until I can compose myself into that charming, untouchable creature everybody thinks I am, wants me to be, resents me for.
"You're Sakura Haruno, aren't you," the woman continues like I haven't spoken, and I hear the clacking of high heels on the hardwood, the kind of heels that could ruin an expensive floor like this. She comes closer and closer and I finally snap, when I feel her hand on my shoulder.
I twist away from her like she's the Grim Reaper and I'm on my feet, rounding on her in a mess of pink hair and sweat and tears, and I open my mouth to tell her to fuck off in every single language I know when…
My jaw drops.
"You're…you're…"
It's Tsunade. I can't believe it. The head instructor at Konoha College of the Arts. She's one of the greatest dancers who ever lived and an even better teacher, as beautiful as she is in all the books I've read about her, tall and commanding and forceful. Blonde hair and discerning amber eyes and I feel so messy, so unprepared, so unworthy of this moment.
"You're…oh my God, you're…"
"Well, don't turn into a stuttering mess on me now," she says with a smirk of amusement on perfect painted lips. "It looked like you were about to call me something really colorful."
Tsunade. I was just about to cuss out Tsunade like the trashy girl I used to be (still am). She's a living legend, one of my role models, and I was about to tear her a new three-bedroom, two-bath doublewide asshole for invading my practice.
"I'm so sorry," I hear myself choke out, wiping away my tears with the back of my hand like she's gonna punch me for crying. "I…I didn't know…um, yeah, I'm Sakura Haruno. It's so nice to meet you." I jut out my tear-soaked hand for her to shake, then think better of it and snatch it back. Fiddle with my hair instead. Fix my ponytail.
"Calm down," she says, rolling her eyes. "I'm not going to hit you, I just wanted to see you dance. I've heard a lot about you."
"You have?" I gasp. "From...from Miss Suzume?" I knew Miss Suzume had contacts at KCA – she certainly bragged about them enough – but I didn't realize her influence went all the way up to Tsunade.
"Your instructor? No. I don't accept solitations for students from anyone but my own staff. No, you've made a name for yourself all on your own."
"Oh," I say, shocked. The way Miss Suzume talks, it's as if she owns us and any successes we earn are technically hers. The idea that I might have done something right on my own never really occurred to me. "Well…um, thank you so much for saying that."
"I'm not blowing sunshine up your ass, I said it 'cuz it's true!" she barks at me roughly, with none of the poise or control you might expect from a ballerina of her caliber. I'm stunned, but it reminds me a little bit of myself. The fact that I could have something weird in common with someone like Tsunade? "I've seen videos of you before. Your routines. You've got good technique."
"Thank you so m-"
"It's not a compliment!" she snaps. "You're too wooden. Too rigid. There's no life in your eyes in those tapes I've seen of you. You're like a robot."
Ouch. Hit the nail on the head. My worst fear: that my lack of enthusiasm for dancing would show on my face. And perfect, that the director of the performing arts school I want to attend is the one who points it out.
"Then I come here to see if it's just on TV that you look like an automaton, and I see this. A fragile, emotional wretch of a girl with absolutely no technique to speak of…"
That's right, Tsunade. Drive the knife in a little deeper. KCA has never looked so far away. I'm literally watching all my dreams disintegrate in front of me.
"…dancing like she loves it."
I blink and look up at her.
"I don't know what that dance was just now," she tells me, her eyes boring relentlessly into mine like she's trying to figure me out. "It may have started off as ballet but it turned into something else really quick. You let go of yourself. You danced with your heart, from your heart. I read every emotion on your face and it was captivating, young lady. So you tell me, which is it?"
"Um…ma'am?"
"They told me you were intelligent," Tsunade scoffs. "Geez. I asked which one are you? Are you the prima ballerina I've heard so much about, or are you this much more interesting dancer who hasn't been given enough freedom to shine?"
"I…I don't know."
As I say the words, I realize how long I've held them in.
I don't know if ballet is what I want anymore. It's damn sure nowhere near as fun as it used to be, and my passion for it was melting away little by little, sure, but I'd always just choked it back, those feelings. Chalked it up to performance anxiety and convinced myself everything was fine.
But I don't fucking know anymore if this is what I want. That's the truth. Ballet is…it's not what I was ready for. I don't know if it will ever be.
"You're graduating this spring, correct?" Tsunade asks me, smiling a little, like she's expected this horrible internal conflict I've been struggling with for three years now.
"Yes, ma'am," I murmur, staring down at the floor. Ashamed of my admission, to this monster in the dance industry, that I've been living a lie, playing up a passion I'd lost long ago, going through the motions in a field that had given me nothing but strife and heartache and disappointment disguised as shiny gold trophies and crisp golden medals. And I just went and blew any chance I had of getting into KCA in the first place.
"Then I'm going to give you my card," she says flatly, whipping a hand into her notorious bosom (they probably couldn't make a bra tight enough to restrain her famous tits, I realize spitefully, as my own ache to be released from their bindings). She plucks a business card with nothing on it but a phone number. "That's my cell phone number. Be advised I do not randomly distribute that to any girl with half an ounce of talent. I see a lot in you, Sakura, but I need you to see the same in yourself. I have no room in my school for anyone who lacks passion in what they do."
"Then…if you think I've got no passion for dance, then why are you giving me this card?" I demand, my voice losing any respect whatsoever. I'm angry now. Frustrated. She's waving my future in my face like a bone to a dog, only to snatch it away last second?
"Because I don't think you've got no passion for dance," she tells me bluntly. "I think you've got no passion for ballet. Remember that there is a difference, Sakura."
My eyes widen.
"Why are you here in the first place?" she asks me, leaning back against the railing casually, like we're best friends. "I know you come from foster care, that there was no rich asshole in your family pushing you to do this like so many of the other students here. You're here because you worked for it, which means at one point, you must've loved it. Correct?"
I hesitate, then decide fuck it, I'm gonna tell the truth. To her, and to myself. And if I fuck myself right out of the education I always wanted, at least I did it honestly.
"I did," I admit. "I did love it. Ballet…it used to be a challenge. And there was something about it, something about moving, something about…about translating music into motion…there was nothing like it. It's like it just…it builds you up inside until you're so full of something that it has to get out somehow, and it comes out in your legs, in your arms, in your whole body. Right from your heart. There's nothing like it in the world, and…
"And somewhere along the way…it stopped being fun. It stopped being exhilarating." I sit down on the floor as I try and process what I'm saying. Words are flying out of my mouth before I realize what they are, and who's hearing them. I'm such a fucking idiot, but now that I've started, I can't stop. "There was too much pressure. From everyone, everywhere. And mostly from myself. And I was in too deep for too long to try and get out of it now. What am I, without ballet?"
"A dancer," Tsunade says simply. "And a damn good one, Sakura. Giving up ballet to pursue other fields of dance isn't giving up on your dreams, at all. It's redefining them. It's sacrificing one thing in your life to pursue what is clearly and obviously your passion. You were born to dance; who said it had to be in a tutu?"
I can't think of a word to say to that. I'm spent. Literally. All the adrenaline that rushed through me before, while I was dancing, while I was crying, while I was spitting out my life's story to the Tsunade, has been thoroughly purged from my body and I feel like I could sleep for days.
Tsunade studies me before chuckling to herself, like she's seen it all before. She stands up off the railing and dusts herself off.
"Take some time to think on what I've told you," she tells me. "It's not about giving up who you are. It's about finding what lights you up from inside – what gives you that feeling you used to get – and what you love doing. I realize I've probably hit you with a lot just now, so do yourself a favor and think about this. Then, you give me a call. And we'll see about next year, for you."
An opportunity. Not a door closing in my face, but a window opening. Give up ballet. Take up dance. I could do more hiphop, more electronica, more acro…contemporary lyrical, with ballet influences but so many more, interesting, exciting moves I can add in, dancing from my heart like Tsunade said, so much more feeling, so much more everything…
"I'll think about it," I promise faintly. There are tears in my eyes again. "I…"
"Don't thank me yet," Tsunade warns. "Give me a call when you know what you want. And don't give that number to your snot-nosed instructor, either. I rejected her no-talent ass from my school twenty years ago, I don't need her spamming my inbox with solicitations."
I choke out a shocked laugh – I didn't know that about Miss Suzume – and take Tsunade's offered hand as she pulls me up to my feet.
"It…it was so good to meet you," I say, since she won't accept a thank you, and I'm a little bit too afraid of her to push her on it.
She smirks. "Don't I know it. See you later, kid."
And when she leaves the studio, heels clicking on the expensive floor, and I'm all alone again, I can't breathe around my excitement. In a rush of movement, I snatch my cell phone out of my duffel bag jammed in the corner, and scroll down to my newest saved contact. I've never called him before so I don't know if he'll pick up, but while I'm riding this high, I dial it anyway.
He answers on the third ring, tone as annoyed over the phone as it is in person. "What do you want."
"I…I'm a little too tired to come into work tonight," I tell him. "D'you want to…I don't know. Hang out, or something?"
A pause. "And do what."
"I don't know, it doesn't matter. Just…tell Kakashi I'm sorry, I need a little break. I'm gonna head back to my dorm and get pizza or something."
"You want pizza?"
I'm too intoxicated on this conversation with my childhood idol to let Sasuke's shock irritate me.
"Yeah."
"You sound…different. Weird."
"Well if it's such a PROBLEM talking to me, then…"
"Shut up," he snaps. "Don't leave for your dorm yet. Where are you?"
"Where I always am, dummy. Don't pull this late-night-hero-walking-home-the-damsel-in-distress card with me, it's tired." But I'm a little bit giddy that he wants to, honestly. For reasons I refuse to examine in any significant detail. One major life-changing revelation at a time.
"I know where you are, smartass, I just meant which studio."
"Studio E," I tell him. "And hurry up. I haven't had pizza in two years. I don't think I can wait ten more minutes."
I hang up before he can call me 'annoying,' and I untie my ponytail. Shake my hair out over my shoulders, let it fall in a messy, tangled pile down my back; there's no more headache, no more pressure in my skull, and I'm breathless in anticipation of all these new possibilities. I've made no decisions, still have plenty to think about, but now knowing that this isn't the end-all, be-all for me, that there could be life after ballet if I really wanted it, loosens the pressure locked around my heart little by little. It's easier to breathe already.
First and foremost, though, is a night of pizza and movies with my newest friend.
Because maybe I don't know exactly what I want to be when I grow up right now, but I know I don't ever want to be lonely, again.
note.. hi, beautifuls! couple things. first off: i love you. that goes without saying. second: this story is about dance; specifically, ballet. i've been doing this shit since the age of three. that's nearly twenty years. and my experience is not necessarily typical, so don't go judging dancers or dance teachers based on what i personally have been through. not every really good ballerina is an anorexic headcase. and there are many, many, many wonderful, compassionate, understanding, patient teachers out there, but there are also ones like miss suzume. she's not an evil character, she just knows what's waiting out there in the big wide world of dance. it's one of the hardest industries in the world, and you have to have a real backbone to be any good at it. and oftentimes the most talented ones have it the worst, like sakura here. but yeah, i realize that someone might read this and think that i'm demonizing the dance world, and that's definitely not my intention. i love dance. but i do want to point out that it isn't as lovely as everyone thinks it is. there's a real dark, gutterbutt underbelly in there, too.
and thirdly, thank you all for respecting my no-concrit policy. i realize i'm in the minority on this site with not wanting to improve by anybody's standards but my own, but i really appreciate 99.99% of you understanding and not hating me for it. by no means do i think i'm the best writer in the world, i could list 100 things wrong with my writing right off the top of my head, but if i feel like i'm getting better by my own standards, then i'm happy. i just ask that if you don't like what i'm writing, to kindly move on, not try and fix it up yourself; devote your time to analyzing the other writers on this site who are looking for criticism to improve, there are millions of wonderful writers here.
also: i know there wasn't much sasuke/sakura interaction, but please don't hound me for it. i have to develop their friendship first, then their relationship. as tempting as it is to write down a hot hook-up scene in the studio, i have to restrain myself. FOR THE SAKE OF LITERATURE.
god i love you guys. i didn't think i'd be as into this whole fanfiction thing as i am now, but i'm addicted to all of you. (and it passes my night shifts at the bar pretty well, too.)
sorry to ramble. y'alls know i get talkative when i'm drunk. ;) let me know if you liked it!
xoxoxo Drunky :)
