I halt my walking along the planks, stopping not far from where Cal stands, twenty-five, maybe thirty feet below. The red-hot anger I feel for Cal, for myself, negates any fear of heights I possessed. I grip a nearby dangling rope for stability, one of the many arranged throughout the rafters as part of the rigging system.
The young man wears nice tap shoes, a black T-shirt, and Adidas training pants rolled at the ankle.
What was he doing, loitering outside of a disgusting East Harlem bar? He wasn't inside of it, preferring to stand at its edge, practically asking for trouble. No, he didn't score a brutal thug to pick a fight with, but rather a foolish, pickpocketing teenage girl. And instead of sending me to the cops, he gave me two-hundred dollars and somebody to rant to.
If luck is real, because it's surely against me, then fate might be as well. Whatever twisted, mutilated, comical fate this is.
Ann, up in the rafters with me, helping the stagehand with the light, revealed the cleaning staff was full, but one of the higher-ups suggested acquiring a new maid or two. I all but invited Cal into my apartment. He knows where I live, and after I bled my soul to him on our walk, he returned to East Harlem, sticking an advertising poster on Will's store window for a maid job at the Manhattan Dance Academy.
Better known as the Calore Dance Academy, dubbed after his billionaire family. I don't know why its name evaded my memory, but sure enough, below on the stage platform and further past the female and Cal, the name is inscribed on the stage, a near black on the dark wood. I was all-too entranced with the dancers to acknowledge it before, but now it's striking: the lettering's bold, almost looking like it was branded or burned onto the stage like a scar.
Albeit a gorgeous scar.
Details about the family I learned years ago come flooding back, and I feel so, so stupid for not putting the pieces together. Cal's a nickname, and his father is the proprietor of one of the most successful dance companies in history to date. Dancers from around the world come to train under his family's leadership, have been since the Roaring Twenties.
Everybody's heard of the Calores. I don't know how I forgot the name. I've known it for a decade, especially fascinated with it as a little kid when it was my dream to dance at a place like this. I suppose it's just another part of my old passion I've forgotten, all those extra details falling away with time. Though I've never forgotten how insanely rich these people are.
I resume my crouch, craning my head for the best angle between the beams' spaces.
"It's fine, Cal," the unseen man in the audience who asked the dancers their names says. "You haven't missed much, and your brother scored in your place."
Cal nods, faintly frowning at the silver-haired woman also on stage. "Best of luck, Evangeline," he says, but doesn't quite mean it, the wish monotone and bland. Not trying to hide his disinterest.
Evangeline. The girl who spoke with her mother in the hall while I hid in a guest room. Her mom painted herself as a nightmare, but with Evangeline in the flesh, her infernal smirking . . . the girl takes after her.
"Thanks, partner," she returns, and my suspicions are confirmed. She and her mom spoke about Cal yesterday, and Evangeline seemed awful confident in her ability to attain him as a partner. Until her mom broke the news—that her father wouldn't be bribing anyone for the honor.
"Not yet," Cal mumbles and walks towards the front of the stage. My view of him cuts off, and his shoes indicate a descent of steps.
Based on the scant interaction I've had with Cal, he isn't the cruel type. For my sanity, I'll assume he put that poster up on Will's storefront for good reason, not as some wicked joke. He would've understood what it would mean to me to see the Academy, salt to a wound that I doubt will ever fully heal. On the other hand, a job, any kind of job, would stop me from terrorizing innocents, give me an income to provide my family with. And it offered me the chance to see what could've been.
Though I don't know Cal, clearly not, I have no hesitation to believe those three ideas were what passed through his mind and caused him to advertise his own studio to me.
They were what went through mine just now.
To see what could have been, even if it hurts? Or never see dance again? To make some money for a family that's in desperate need of it? Or risk myself out on the streets for another year?
But a part, a part at large, despises him. Not for good reason, but for what he is, hundred-dollar bills at the ready in his wallet. Never known the feeling of a hungry stomach or the nervous high gotten from stealing for your family's monthly rent. Cal gave me this job, saved me from getting caught by men much worse than him, but I can't help but hate him for it.
"Evangeline Samos," the dancer below says, bringing me from the bar in East Harlem to the present. She doesn't delay for the man to ask for her name again. Dauntless. Without cue, Evangeline settles into her beginning position.
The hushed voices from the audience that started when Cal arrived lower, then cut off altogether.
I stiffen, sensing a hell of a performance coming. Even Ann and the stagehand pause their work.
Her slender arms stretch outward, and Evangeline rises up in her pointe shoes.
She begins her routine, starting slow and displaying the muscles in her body as she kicks upward and holds a split position, repeating the movement three times. Her face no longer faces me, so I imagine the vulpine smile on her lips.
She leaps and jumps and arcs her body, each action—down to the flourishes of her hands—outlined with power. The other girls, good as some of them are, don't have her perfect grace—Evangeline's the kind of dancer meant to dedicate her life to this art form. Both natural and honed, the way she turns with ease and knows how far to bend her arms and legs.
"Mare," Ann hisses, probably wanting my help with the light. I ignore her, opting to watch Evangeline dance instead.
I walk along the beam, hands crossed behind my back. I walk while she glides across the stage, time straining, her leaps going by so slowly I can see the perfect split formed in midair, her arms in a marvel of their own.
Impossible as it is, I hear music with her motions, dancer to dancer, because there's a track playing in her ears, guiding her steps, rising and lowering, jumping and plunging, forever landing on feet that are strong and callused. I've heard it with others, but not as beautiful; not as precise.
"Mare," Ann calls again, daring more volume this time, though not much. Without the music and the utter silence of the audience, Evangeline and her shoes are the only sound for miles.
Crossing a few beams, forgetting where I am up in the rafters, I trail Evangeline. She waltzes around herself, showing off a diversity of footwork—not of the grand gestures she was going through before, but just as relevant. Many of the previous girls failed in that way, favoring tricks and casting off skill.
I find myself shaking my head at the girl, dismayed at her prowess she continues to exploit. She has to have gone over the ninety seconds.
The girl does a few things that I've never come across before, never been taught. Maybe I'll learn them at home tonight, on the roof. I part my lips, imitating Evangeline's fabricated smile, pretending I'm her. When she runs to the center of the stage, so do I. I'm somewhat more delicate with my footing.
A finale, and she's already gone past her time. Nobody except me cares about the fact, though, the audience growing boisterous as she prepares for her turn in an exaggerated fashion. Her right leg extends to the side, then shifts behind her. Her arms spread wide.
"Finish it!" an onlooker hollers from the audience.
Whether the commentary is from a friend or foe, she takes it as an invitation, rolling her wrists.
"Mare," Ann growls in warning, the rest of the words implied but left unsaid. Get your ass over here, or this might just be your last day. With a look towards her at the end of the beam of lights, she doesn't pay attention to me as she says it, kneeling near the broken light with the stagehand.
But stubbornly mesmerized by Evangeline, executing turns identical to those I did in one of the studios, I walk towards her again, stepping across the row of lights bolted onto a continuous metal beam.
The lights shine brightly on Evangeline and her turns, the crack between two of the lights enabling me to continue watching. I watch and watch, desperately searching for a fault in her composition. Tearing up, I realize there are none, no matter how hard I analyze her.
So after I realize there's no beam on the other side of the lights, my gaze is still fixed on the dancer and her turns, balanced and magnificent.
At least until I open my mouth to scream bloody murder, my other foot snagging on a light as the stage spreads out before my eyes, each wooden plank vivid and merciless. Evangeline jolts, falling out of her revolution, stumbling and barely keeping herself upright. She flings herself out of the way.
I flail my arms, wildly, manically searching for the next beam that has to come after the large space that shouldn't be here, a blindspot with the raised lighting hiding it. If I could just grab on tight . . . cling to it until I lose my momentum, then pull myself upward. Even as I fall, time slowing, my face not past the rafters, not into the view of the audience, I ask myself how I didn't notice the gap I'm falling through. Too distracted, having lost my inhibitions to a dance routine. My arms reaching for that imaginary plank, I shriek louder.
Instead of a beam, I'm awarded a rope. My fingers graze it first, and out of some primal instinct, they reach out, wrap around the rope so hard it hurts. They'll rip open, but at least, at least—
Expecting to stop, to jerk to a rest, I am unpleasantly surprised when I continue to fall, past the beams, the floor an unforgiving sight, and I understand I'm not going to stop. My gut plummets with more hesitation than the rest of me, riding up in my throat, the air not filtering through my lungs quite right.
Is the rope broken? Is it too long and unraveling from somewhere?
I close my eyes, the rope my anchor to a fleeting life.
The consolation is Cal's guilt for my death, cracking my spine on his family's stage. It'll make for a good show, better than Evangeline's performance. The outrage, the horror, will be all over the news, and it will wreak havoc on the Academy's reputation. They'll try to hide it, but too many people are about to see, rich people who adore gossip and tabloids.
Or maybe nobody will give a crap, playing it off as the stupidity of a maid.
The audience makes noises I can only define as upset, hearing the shout and seeing a girl emerge from the stage rafters. A few go so far as to scream like me, as loud and terrified as me.
For me, I block my surroundings out, tucking my legs into my body as much as I can in the limited time—
The rope does indeed jerk to a rest, a second before it snaps in half, taking the bottom half—me with it—to the ground, however many feet away—
I land on my ass, back and head spared from the brunt of it, wood a mallet to my tailbone. I expect stars, my eyes still pinched shut, but I see orange and yellow in fuzzy specks behind my eyelids. Only the lights, shining right on me and putting me on a strange display.
No concussion, no death, which I should be glad for. I can keep on living my sad, impoverished life.
To think all of that—what just happened—happened in a matter of seconds. The crowd is stunned into pure silence, and for the second that none of them, not a single critic, says a word is the worst moment of my existence. My heart beats heavy, not understanding it's still pumping my blood. Which I didn't spill on the stage. Good.
My body goes numb, and I'm only glad for it because it stops me from shaking. The pain in my tailbone—a bruise, not a break—dulls away. I'm not sure why.
Forcing myself to crack an eye open, Ann is thirty feet above, peeking out from the space I fell through. Her gaping mouth is enough to make me want to vomit.
"Hey," Evangeline snaps, waving her hand in my line of sight. My gaze moves from Ann to her, towering and angry. The sharp planes of her face are made into something wicked as she glowers. Her eyes appear to be black. "Were you planning on auditioning? Or was that an accident?"
My stomach twists further as I hold her gaze and find nothing sympathetic in it. Yet it's better than acknowledging the other people in the room.
"She's fine," Evangeline says in a horrible tone when a stagehand attempts to come forward. She holds her other hand out to the few stagehands in the wings. Preventing them from coming to me, helping me. She's absolutely terrifying.
Oh, she's a bitch alright. Not sure how to react, I bark out a dark laugh. To my delight, I don't cough up blood in the process. "I tripped," I simply say. A dozen audience members have the gall to laugh at the explanation.
"I noticed," she purrs.
How I'd love to dissolve into the floor. I sit up, survey the auditorium to my left. It's not packed, but three-hundred fill in the red-velvet seats, out of the eight-hundred or-so spots. Enough for at least one of them to remember my face in a crowd.
It's a single-level theatre, but it travels far, cut up into three sections divided by grey carpeting. The ceiling is taller than needed. The doors I saw on the way in are at the back, dancers filtering in to investigate who the screaming was from. And the lights . . . they carry on in their scheming, disarming me of every pretense I've built up.
I'm going to quit. Right after I run off this stage.
"You can leave, now," Evangeline says, concluding I won't be speaking to her again.
"So can you," a voice from the front of the audience retorts. "We all know you can do the turns, so your audition is complete."
I whirl my neck towards the source. Cal stands up, bracing his palms on the chair back in front of him. He sits beside a raven-haired boy who looks like a younger brother and man who must be his father, the one and only owner of the Manhattan Dance Academy. A woman with ashy blonde hair sits to the owner's left, and two men and another woman sit to her left. Seven of them in total, residing in the center section, five rows up and straight down the middle. Nobody sits ahead of them or behind them for a few rows, giving Cal, his family, and who I assume to be ballet masters distance for judging.
If I was numb before, seeing him turns me the opposite. I remember the pain in my tailbone, my stomach stops twisting in on itself and begins rolling, and I clench my fists to stop them from shaking.
Needing to get out of here, in dire need, I stand up. I wobble, from the fall or from the tension in my chest for whatever else Cal is about to say. I make to walk off to the wing of the set, towards the gathered stagehands awaiting me.
And I make it all of three paces before he says, "Wait."
Knowing full-well I don't have to listen to him, that he doesn't control me, I plant my shoes, curling my toes in. I plan on quitting. They can't fire me, but I follow his order anyway.
I face him with a tall back, his bronze irises with a hint of sadness. "Are you alright?"
Nobody in this theatre, in all of Manhattan, for that matter, knows we've met before. It makes his asking painful, and I do my best to treat him as I would any other of his kind: "Fine," I state plainly. Coldly, and I hope he hears that second tone deep down.
In the background, Evangeline stalks offstage, arms crossed.
Cal's family and the others glance at him oddly, wondering how long it'll take for him to kick me off, hand me over to the stagehands waiting to check for injuries. Hand me over to whoever'll figure out how to avoid this little situation going viral.
The ache the fall brought becomes a thing of the past once again.
"Well?" he asks.
"What?"
"Evangeline asked if you were planning on auditioning. Are you?"
One thing becomes apparent: he was the shadow in my vision when I finished my turns in the studio. On our walk to my apartment, I told him about my dance, my beloved dance. He would never believe a poor girl like me is worthy of auditioning for the Calore Dance Academy unless I proved myself to him. So I did. Unwittingly. The turns I did were not easy. Cal would know.
Prior to letting my mouth fly, cuss and make my final stand, I glare at him. He offers a crooked smile and a tilt of the head, implying a dare. Daring me to perform for these rich bastards, make every last one of them regret snickering at the maid.
Even if I did it, successfully auditioned despite not truly dancing in six months, I don't have the money to pay for tuition. Not a fraction of it. Besides, I can't coexist with these people, and they would never tolerate me.
Cal nods over and over, almost begging me to accept his offer.
I press down on my lips, making my intentions clear.
He snaps his fingers, like some kind of entitled prince, and speaks again. "Somebody find her a leotard, tights, and a pair of broken-in pointe shoes." He holds eye-contact with me the whole time, as though he's worried about me running away. I consider it. But Cal's not giving me a choice in this.
He must think I'm good if he's pushing the issue this hard. Afraid of losing a talented dancer to an ordinary life.
"We have a break coming up in an hour." Cal's father is about ready to burst a vessel, by the way he holds his armrests and leers at his son. The boy next to Cal pales, surveying me. "So you have an hour—I don't believe I caught your name."
Cal deserves a slap, and if I have the chance . . .
"You can call me Mare."