"But anyway, I'm super sorry for hitting on you, Mare," Tyton continues.
He has his usual easygoing expression pasted back on. His smile doesn't have anything lurking beneath it, and his eyes have cleared, the storm in them giving way to a wonderful fall afternoon. His voice is casual, but not quite apologetic.
It unnerves me.
"No problem, Tyton," I say a bit breathlessly.
Looking very similar to Cal in his black T-shirt and training pants, Tyton Jesper stands behind me with his hands on my hips. His white hair is held in place by his god-awful sweatband, even as wisps of it stick over the red, white, and blue stripes.
"For future reference, though, you should probably ask somebody if a girl's taken or not before you kiss her hand and ask her to be your girlfriend."
The TikTok dancer stares back at me through the mirror. "Yeah, I'll double-check next time."
For but a moment, when he knows that his face is angled away from our little audience, does Tyton give me a look. I don't have to describe it.
But then my feet are returning to fifth position from my arabesque. Tyton's hands on my waist are steady, and I rise from the floor, extending my other leg out. We move together in surprisingly fluid movements as the pianist plays her somber melody.
Blonos's studio is nearly empty. Tyton and I dance in its center with a pianist at our backs and a peanut gallery to our side. I've traded in my skirt for a pretty pink tutu, which Blonos handed me along with an apology. The glittering tarlatan fabric encircles my waist, poofing out in gauzy layers to make me look like a real princess. If only Tyton had a tiara on hand.
The peanut gallery, of course, includes Maven, Cal, Blonos, and one of Tyton's interns. They occupy four chairs that lie in a neat line. Maven looks on, trying to hide his disdain, while Cal has his arms crossed. Blonos keeps on glaring at Tyton's intern, having already asked what's wrong with the boy's jeans. Their rips are so big that they leave his knee caps hanging out in the open.
Blonos didn't want everyone's day to be wasted. Most of the company is with Arven in another technique class. Somewhere upstairs, Elara is sitting through a pas de deux rehearsal between Ella and another Principal man, and Carmadon is enduring similar torment with Rafe and the Soloist woman he chose.
"Good, Tyton"
I smile, and the sugary grin that I attempt looks more like a cringe in the mirror.
The wooden blocks of my shoes return to the vinyl with grace. It seems that Tyton's been wasting his talent.
He only watched me and Maven dance through the pas de deux in Act Two of Giselle a few times. It's a dance of death, of lost love. I'm supposed to be a ghostly Wili while Albrecht is my prince, doomed to dance to his death. The soft ballad that washes through the studio reeks of this magical darkness, the kind that you'd find all alone in a forest somewhere.
It isn't a particularly difficult dance for the male partner, to be fair. I do the dancing, and Tyton does the lifting. But he has this natural sort of grace that makes his love of TikTok a real tragedy.
Tyton nods, looking me up and down. I can't figure him out. For the camera, he's this out-of-control, charismatic, flirtatious playboy. When we're here, in the quiet of the studio, he's calm and almost disinterested in me. And then, there's that third side of him I see in flashes when nobody is paying attention.
The side that keeps on looking at me like I'm in the biggest trouble of my life.
When we turn together again, I steal a glance at the Calore brothers.
Maven wears a jealous, uneasy face. He doesn't exactly appreciate that Tyton had to choose me for this ridiculous pas de deux. He's also as nervous as I am about Tyton being here at all. Not to mention that Tyton now knows about the relationship status of Mare Barrow and Maven Calore.
Cal wears a critical expression. His brows are knitted, and his lips are pressed into a line. He's watching for my weaknesses in the lifts and steps so that he'll know what we need to work on.
Tyton's grip on my waist hardens as he prepares to lift me again. His hands envelop my hips as I return to fifth position. Maybe I'm rubbing off on him, but Tyton's technique seems to have drastically improved since he was going through floor work.
Or maybe he just wasn't trying then, wanting to paint some fake picture of how great of a ballet dancer he could become in a day.
I sail into the air once more.
Maven's taken to staring at the back wall.
Cal continues watching. I track myself and Tyton in the mirror, looking for imperfections in both me and him. But for an amateur, he isn't bad.
I should focus on the ballet, but with all of the mirrors, I can't help but glance at Cal again. Even if I hate to admit it, I want him to think that I'm doing well with the partnering, that our lessons are paying off.
The Adam's Apple in his throat works as Cal swallows nothing but air, and his eyes look a little darker.
As Tyton returns me to the vinyl floor, I wonder what I did wrong.
We perform the pas de deux for the company.
In the two hours they had, Ella and Rafe's partners did their best, but no tutu or amount of coaching could tear the TikTokers from their ways.
Ella had the difficult task of learning how to leap and be lifted with grace. Transformed into a pink tutu, pink tight, pink slipper, leotard-clad ballerina, she would fit the picture if not for her hair. Ella's technique was pretty horrible, full of bent limbs and strange, awkward lifts.
Rafe had the same task as Tyton. But he spent half the time making cringing faces at the camera, and the other half fumbling to lift his ballerina.
Ella and Rafe have since told the camera that ballet's no joke.
Tyton, on the other hand, disagreed, saying to his cameraman that ballet is easy.
The pianist plays the same ballad as before. As it reaches its end, it quiets, dulling into peaceful silence. I bourrée, my pointe shoes shuffling across the floor as though I'm a levitating phantom. The lights are dimmed, some shut off altogether to make for a ghastly, dark scene in Blonos's usually clinical studio. The chairs, still arranged in their oval, are again filled with shadowed ballet dancers that watch me and Tyton dance.
The Gen-Z camera crew didn't fail to brag about their night-vision vlog cameras when Carmadon asked if they didn't need more lighting.
Tyton kneels on one leg, just as Cal did for our Monopoly photo. His hand rests against his heart, and I place my own hand atop his shoulder, fingers grazing his. I arabesque one final time and arch my other arm above my head. He's like my anchor, keeping me balanced in the dark woods of this ballet.
The final note rings faintly. We hold the position for a few counts. I look down at Tyton, injecting longing into my gaze. He stares into the camera positioned ahead of us, looking every bit like a man who just lost the love of his life.
Gingerly, I come out of my arabesque. Tyton follows, jumping up from the ground in a quick, non-balletic movement. He has that aggravating grin back on.
I curtsey. He bows an excessive number of times, making faces at the camera as though he's the greatest ballet dancer in the world. Rafe and Ella let out a few whoops from behind us, and the Academy dancers, apparently impressed, offer us a hearty round of applause.
The scene goes from mournful to jovial in an instant. I feel like I'm the only one who isn't having the time of their life.
"So," he says, raising his palms. "I think that it's pretty clear that I should be Mare Barrow's partner."
One of the interns gets all up in my face with her phone. Any of this garbage could end up on TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube. And somehow, even after getting to know Tyton—note the sarcasm—I have no interest in being TikTok famous.
Another round of laughter rings throughout the room.
I'm sick of my coworkers laughing at every little thing that Tyton says. He isn't funny, even if we were the best pairing. I won't go so far as to say that we have chemistry, but at least Tyton can dance a simple ballet without tripping over himself. Shade's going to be rolling in laughter when he sees this. If he isn't raging at me and beating Maven to a pulp.
The good news is that my face will be forgotten a day after this whole fiasco is posted. It's not like my generation can remember anything that they see online.
I turn away so that the cameras can't see my massive eye-roll.
Still, I look back to the mirrors again.
Whether he's a wild cat or a sly fox, Tyton Jesper is up to something. I feel it in my bones along with that strange, prickling electricity that I've been feeling all day.
He's here for a reason, and it involves me.
The rest of the afternoon passes, and my heartbeat calms to a slow, soft rhythm.
Tyton, Ella, and Rafe left for a while. A bunch of us watched from a studio window as the three emerged on Forty-Second, got recognized instantly in the bustle of Times Square, and made a mad dash to their awaiting black limousine. It didn't matter that they were dressed in ball caps, sunglasses, and long coats. Their hair is far too bright for any of that to matter.
Which makes me wonder how they get around for their Scarlet Street Fighter work.
The unfortunate thing about Times Square is that its traffic doesn't move fast, so I watched as crazed teenage girls launched themselves at the car, pulled out their phones, and attempted to take selfies through tinted black windows.
At seven o'clock, I'm forced into Julian's studio, where a revamped nineties hip-hop song pounds through the air. It ricochets off the brick-wallpapered walls, ripping across the floor with a heavy dose of bass. The lights in the contemporary teacher's studio are dim, but the jarring, neon lights of Forty-Second and Broadway shine through the walls of glass to make for a truly electric scene.
Julian's studio is like a limbo between the night air of Manhattan and the hallways of the Academy. Electric colors creep in at the edges of the studio, like shadows if they were neon. In the dulled, warm, and colorful light, the mirrors at the sprawling room's front are made quicksilver. The gorgeous white and yellow lights of Midtown's skyscrapers reflect in building windows down to Hell's Kitchen. Glass and artificial light complement one another to make for a kaleidoscope of a city.
With my hair tied back in a knot, I pad across the floor in a pair of black contemporary crew socks.
Ew.
My hair's pulled back into a knot, and I've exchanged my ballet clothes for a pair of dark purple running shorts, a black racerback tank, and a sports bra. My signature black baseball cap ties the ensemble together.
Tyton, Ella, and Rafe are providing us with an evening of TikTok dancing.
It's hardly my choice. But whether I like it or not, the deal is that the ballet dancers learn something too from this God-awful day. So in exchange for a day of ballet, we'll spend the evening learning whatever it is that Tyton, Ella, and Rafe enjoy doing on TikTok.
Ew.
I've seen their videos. They're ridiculous. At least they don't stand in place, make weird gestures with their arms and sway their hips, and call that dancing. Because anything goes on TikTok. But they're total and utter hip-hop dancers. They jump hard on their feet, pop and lock, and make strange, angular movements with their arms and necks. Their bodies are free, free as uncaged birds or wild lightning.
Tyton, Ella, and Rafe are just three regular hip-hop dancers, even if they're treated like gods on the street. But that's only because they film their videos in the backdrops of Manhattan, on the shadows of fire escapes in Brooklyn, and in the flash mobs of the Bronx.
Then there's the matter of Tyton's charming personality that everybody loves so much and Rafe's love of pranking people in grocery stores. Don't ask.
Ella's the sassy one. She's constantly picking good-humored fights with her boys, saying mean things to them and the such. I suppose she's like me in that sense.
The electric lights of Times Square do strange things to their hair. Right where a particularly vivid red light bleeds through the windows, Ella's hair turns purple. Rafe, on the other hand, is sporting more of a golden-brown look beneath the dulled ceiling lights. And then there's Tyton, whose silver locks turn a spectral shade of blue.
Situated in the studio's center with their teenage interns and vloggers, the three are dressed in far too many colors. Rafe has on a rainbow-camo sweatshirt with lime-green shorts, Ella's wearing cobalt leggings and a black baggy T-shirt, and Tyton has on a white tank top that seems to catch Midtown's lights along with a plain pair of black, regular length athletic shorts.
Maven's lucky. He had the good excuse of his physics homework to leave the Academy two hours ago. We never got to talk about what happened today, though. We have a rule that we never utter the words "Scarlet Street Fighters" in the halls, rooms, or shadows of the Calore Dance Academy. Instead, I only gave him a light kiss on the mouth and a reassuring look in the lobby as we said goodbye for the evening.
If something's happening tonight, I'd prefer to go through it alone. I don't want Maven caught up in more of this than he has to be.
I weave through Julian's studio. Ninety-percent of the company is already here, sprawled out along the margins of the studios in T-shirts and shorts, minus the chairs. Some of the ballerinas still wear their pink tights beneath their shorts.
Like a scene from some raging club, the lights glisten and the music pulses through the floorboards. Ballerinas and dancers are cast into a different kind of shadow, where electricity fights and melds with dark. Iris, who's seated next to a string of her fellow Corps girls against the window, waves me over.
Loosen up. Relax. Ground yourself.
I recall all of the little things that Cal tells me. I let my shoulders shrug forward, but it doesn't do anything for my stomach. In the presence of Tyton Jesper, it's acting up again.
His cat-like gaze burns into my cheek, but I don't dare turn my head towards him. As far as anybody else can tell, he's listening intently to his cameraman about something vlog-related or other.
On another note: how long is this vlog going to be?
A few more steps, and I make it across the room. I twirl around on my heel, depositing myself on the floor next to Iris.
Julian, I happen to notice, is sitting on a lone chair in front of the paneled door to his little office.
He has on a violet NYU sweatshirt and jeans with a stack of manila folders on his lap. A red pen in hand and a pair of reading glasses balanced upon his nose, the professor only glances at me before returning his focus to his students' papers.
Due to this ridiculous, impromptu TikTok class that I just had to attend, Julian and I canceled the lesson we had planned at the library for this evening.
I let my back press against the cool glass. To no avail can I zone out the deafening sounds of the studio and make out the honking horns outside. Watching the avenues and streets of Manhattan becomes like watching a silent, albeit colorful film.
Damn the mirrors, because with a glance into them, I find Ella peering at me. Her eyes are slitted, and her arms are crossed. She's angled away from me, now listening to Rafe as he mutters a few things to the cameraman, but the mirrors do miraculous things.
Ella's piercing eyes blink at me through the mirror.
All of that swagger melts from her. Her hair looks less bright, and she suddenly looks less like a TikTok dancer and more like a Scarlet Street Fighter.
She raises a judgmental, warning brow. Her lip curls up. She'd shake her head if she could.
"Hey."
Cal's tall figure appears in my periphery before he drops to the ground in a sleek motion. He ends up with his legs crossed together, which looks unnatural on a man as big as him.
I forget that a bunch of the boys are on the other side of me, Ptolemus included.
Tearing my eyes away from Ella's steely gaze, I regard Cal. He's also wearing a pair of black running shorts that cut off just above his knees, and shocker, a maroon T-shirt.
I have to double-check that he isn't addressing Ptolemus, but his bronze eyes are already regarding mine back. He wears a wisp of a smirk on his face.
"Cal," I return. Feeling the need to do something with myself, I cross one of my legs over the other. These last few weeks, they've lost some of their tan as summer has thoroughly left the city and given into the chilly breezes of fall. Still, they're more muscled than they ever were before.
I expect him to say something condescending about my epic TikTok skills or love of modern dance. He doesn't, only balancing his forearms on his knees and leaning into the window.
"So, Mare," Ptolemus, of all people, starts. He leans forward so that he can see around Cal.
Ptolemus and I have an oddly simple relationship. He helped me overthrow the Monopoly King, and otherwise, he treats me like any other ballerina. Certainly not like his sister's mortal enemy.
"Hmm?" I respond.
He grins, exposing white teeth.
"Are you sure that you're not gonna leave Maven for Tyton? He's really into you, you know."
To my side, Iris chuckles over the music.
All afternoon, I've wondered whether Tyton really likes me or if he's just messing with me. One moment, he's looking at me with a sweet smile as he holds my hand, and the next, he's regarding me with cold and calculating eyes. It's probably all a game to him.
"Number one," I start, sighing in discontent, "I don't think so. I'm not really . . . into Tyton or his lifestyle. Number two. Seriously? He really likes me? I couldn't tell if he was pranking me or not."
I don't like Tyton's hair. Or his smile. Or his personality. I don't like how he dances. I don't like how he's TikTok famous and rich from it, living on the Upper East Side like a business mogul. I don't like how I can never tell what he's thinking.
"Obviously," Iris mutters into my ear. "He's been—"
"Looking at you all day," Cal finishes, grumbling on the other side of me.
I can't help but look at Cal, surprised that he would notice. He sounds displeased, not looking at me, Iris, or Ptolemus as he says it. He stares to the side, eyes focused on the glassy building across Forty-Second.
Cal doesn't look happy. And here I was, thinking that Cal wanted me to find a different boyfriend. I guess he has some standards for me, at least.
My contemporary teacher continues, crossing his arms. "He shouldn't have partnered with you after what happened this morning, but he did anyway. And he's been looking at you ever since, even though he knows you have a boyfriend. He doesn't have any boundaries, and I don't like that."
While I'm not certain that Tyton's been looking at me for the reasons that Cal thinks, I find myself staring at Cal as his jaw works.
Cal's a good guy. He walks girls home when they're out alone at night, and he lets them through the door first. It shouldn't surprise me that he doesn't like Tyton, who hasn't been quite as chivalrous.
Still, there's something about what Cal says that makes my heart beat a little faster.
The pulsing track that raps about partying and thug life grinds to a halt. The silence in the studio feels sudden and wrong as I change my weight on my feet, do another thing with my butt, and drop to the ground in a squat.
"Yo OJ," Rafe calls, flinging out a hand towards Julian. "What do you think of our dancing?"
OJ is the name that Rafe has taken to calling Julian. He started by calling the professor J-Dawg, then switched to calling him Julius Caesar, and then finally settled on Orange Julius.
Wearing an amused smile, Julian leans forward in his chair. Rafe, holding his iPhone that he's using to live-stream on Instagram, aims it at the professor.
I'm surprised that he isn't worried about his colleagues at NYU seeing this mess.
Julian takes the easy way out.
"I think that I can see why you guys have thirty-three-million followers on TikTok."
Rafe lets out an outrageous whoop as I, like a wounded animal, carry myself back to the margins of the room. At least it's over now.
All of Tyton, Ella, and Rafe's interns and cameramen have either their phones or vlog cameras out. They're positioned at various angles across the floor, intent on recording every second of this nonsense. As Cal, Ptolemus, Iris, one of the Soloists, and I leave the floor, another group of dancers gets up from their spots, heading out to humiliate themselves.
We spent half an hour learning the TikTok Trio's choreography.
They've since forced us into small groups to perform it.
I'm still tense from the performance. I tried, but I can't forget fourteen years worth of technique. I couldn't forget the honed muscles in my body as my hips swayed and my knees bent.
Swipe, swipe. Shift, shift. Jump. Do the thing with your butt.
Few of the ballet dancers are any better at the dancing than I am. We can learn the choreography and perform it with a TikTok-worthy smile, but it's another matter of putting our bodies into it. We aren't trained to move like Tyton, Ella, and Rafe do. Our hips, knees, and elbows have rules to follow.
Control.
I tried to forget the word like Cal wants me to, but I couldn't. It's too precious. It keeps my world on its axis. The struggle that I faced just now is different from what Tyton, Ella, and Rafe experienced when they learned ballet. They couldn't do ballet at all. They didn't have the strength, the technique, or the control. I can do their moves, but my body just revolts against them the way that your stomach revolts against bad food.
I'm just one tense ballerina out of many, who tried and failed to throw my body into the choreography. Cal might be the only ballet dancer in this entire room who can make Tyton's choreography look good. He has that rare ability to balance ballet with the freedom of his body.
Back at the wall now, I sink down against the glass until I'm seated on the floor.
The brief reprieve from the track ends as it starts again. The floor vibrates. Ella goes out in front of the mirror to dance with the next group.
"That was not good," I state matter-of-factly to Cal, who settles back down at my side.
Tyton joins Ella, guiding the next group of dancers through his free, easy, and technique-less choreography. He moves his body with ease, isolating one part of himself from another, ebbing and flowing with the music.
Cal wears a smile again. Not his normal, 'You're going to listen to me and if you don't, I'll make you do push-ups' smile, but a faintly amused smile.
He looks at me with his fiery eyes.
"You weren't any worse than the other tense ballerinas. And it's not like you want to be TikTok famous anyway."
I just stare at my teacher. I have to contain my smile at what I say.
"But you could be TikTok famous, Cal. I think that you should drop ballet and contemporary and go for TikTok. Just look at what you could become."
I point at Tyton, who's sticking his tongue out at his cameraman as he bobs his head, white hair whipping against his headband. There's an odd sensuality to the way that Tyton dances. He moves his hips in circles, shrugs his shoulders, and makes sure to give the ladies plenty of winks through the camera.
Cal just chuckles, drawing one of his long legs up to his chest.
I smirk in return. It's safe to say that neither Cal nor I am jealous of Tyton's TikTok fame.
Still, I watch Tyton. He looks so free as he dances, neon lights running across his body with his movements to the beat.
I might be able to fly as a ballerina.
But am I a caged bird too?
The comparison in my head leaves me a little breathless as I watch the mirror. I've grown to despise it in the past hour as I've watched myself make Tytons' choreography awful, robotic, and awkward. My body can't move like his. It doesn't know how to let go of everything that I know.
Iris and Ptolemus have turned their attention towards their other sides, where they talk to Corps girls and Corps boys, respectively. That leaves me and Cal with some extent of privacy.
I scoot just an inch closer to him, angling my mouth towards his ear.
"We do our lessons on the stage because there aren't any mirrors on the stage, and you don't want me to see myself when I dance."
I draw away, blinking as I wait for him to respond.
But I'm right. I know I am.
Cal chose to have our lessons on the stage for a reason. It wasn't just to have a big, open, shadowed space where our voices echo and where I might find enough emotion to dance contemporary.
Looking a little pleased with himself, Cal shifts his body so that he can look at me easily. He leans in a little too, drooping his back.
"You'd get too frustrated with yourself if there were mirrors. You'd constantly be watching yourself and trying to fix things. We wouldn't get anywhere."
An embarrassed smile pulls at my lips.
"On the stage, I'm the only one that gets to watch you dance. I tell you to fix what I see wrong, and you trust me with it. It works."
He doesn't want me to get frustrated with myself as I try to dance what I'm worst at.
He wants me to trust that he's a good teacher.
The worst part is that I already do.
I scoff in his face.
The words that come out are entirely different from that scoff.
"Good call, then," I return. Out of instinct, as I feel Cal's gaze chipping away at me, I cross my arms over my stomach.
"Mmm-hmm."
I turn away from him, focusing on the dancers.
His gaze burns, stripping me away of every stage face that I've ever worn.
Come down at midnight and meet me at the grand stairs, Princess.
Everyone that doesn't live here is long-gone from the Academy. The dancers who live on the upper floors are fast-asleep, having spent a longer-than-usual day dancing. The halls of the Academy are dark, their marble thrown into shadows. Times Square glows faintly through the windows that I pass, but even the electric billboards seem lackluster now. Even the lobby lights are off.
I sneak a glance at the text from the unknown number on my phone again before rounding the corner to the hallway that intersects with the stairs.
I didn't take the elevator, instead choosing the most obscure staircases and shadowed corridors to sneak down. I've been silent. It's a skill that I've honed over the years in both the light footedness of ballet and the stealth of pickpocketing.
I've put my hair back into its ballet bun, hairnet and all. Otherwise, I have on a pair of my contemporary socks, plain grey sweatpants, and the same black hooded sweatshirt that I walked into class this morning with.
The dark lobby looms to my right, down the red-carpeted stairs. Straight ahead loom more red carpet and sets of modern white French doors. The hallway walls bear decadent artwork of old scenes out of regal Europe, paintings captured in gilded frames. End tables and claw-footed chairs hem in the walls. Not that I can see any of that.
My socks press into the carpet. I walk, my memory of the Academy guiding me. A stillness lurks in the air, silence pressing in on me like the far-off lights shimmering outside. It's quiet enough for me to hear my own heart beat.
I pass the stairs, feeling like I'm about to lose my balance if only because I can see absolutely nothing. I blink over and over again, trying to adjust my eyes to see something, anything.
There are three people in the hall.
It's a strange sensation, but I can feel them. That electricity returns.
Ella's smaller figure lounges in one of the waiting chairs outside of Tiberias Calore's office. Rafe is somewhere nearby at the end of the hallway.
I take a few more uncertain, wobbling steps before a man's hand clamps around my wrist.
Inches from my face, Tyton's fox-like eyes peer back into my own. His hair is covered by a black beanie, and his colorful clothes are replaced by black jeans and a sweatshirt.
His expression has calmed from its wild personality. Only his calculating eyes and frowning lips remain. He towers over me. His hand on my wrist feels oddly comforting in the dark.
"So." He nods towards Mister Calore's office. "Are you picking the lock, or am I?"