The room alarm clock beeps three times before the heel of my palm collides with its top.
And after rising from my outrageously comfortable bed, I don't look at the time again.
Dawn still hasn't arrived when I go downstairs to the studio Lucas got me permission to use in the morning, nearly three hours before any ballet classes begin.
Though it won't be for years, I guess you say Elara's speech inspired me.
On gloriously aching legs, I find my way to a smaller barre left out and begin a routine that should be repetitive and boring. I enjoy it far too much, especially as that ache of yesterday courses through every part of my body.
Elara wasted no time after her speech, having us spread out across the floor for another grueling technique class.
In a few weeks, they'll bring in the choreographers and teaching apprentices for the Corps as we near the start of the fall season and they return from their scouting trips in the states and Europe. Maven told me that's when the real fun starts, because of how it's always so quiet the first few weeks without the buzz of production and rehearsal, the constant rushing over to the Met for performances.
Nonetheless, this place seemed loud enough to me. Between Blonos and Elara's classes . . . I haven't been in a place with so much life in a long time.
Then came tap, which was equally exhausting. It was only an hour and a half of combinations, taught by a very quiet woman—though it was apparent from the start that she knew what she was doing—but my feet hurt in a way they hadn't in a while.
I tried to focus on myself as I had during ballet, but every so often my eyes peeled away from my own steps to Cal or Maven's. The latter proved to be one of the best in the class, far more at ease than his brother. While Maven excels in tap shoes, Cal's . . . uncharacteristically mediocre. I wouldn't go so far as to call him bad, but he didn't stand out the way he did in ballet.
As soon as class began, Maven took a place at the front line without asking. Cal went to the second line, a few places to his brother's left.
And I saw Iris, the only girl I remotely know at the Academy, and politely settled in the spot next to her back another row.
Weird, how the Academy stresses its dancers practice more than one genre. But again, it's hardly the first time I've noticed what a weird, strange—however successful—institution it is. From the little I know about professional ballet companies, dancers practice ballet for eight, ten hours a day, year-round. They don't bother with tap or jazz or anything else, yet the Academy does, claiming it's good for their dancers.
But Sara—Sara Skonos, tap extraordinaire who likes to be called by her first name—told us newbies that tap makes us stronger, whether or not it's our "major." Strengthens the legs, loosens up those crunched, painful ankles, makes for a good sense of timing, she explained curtly. If you know how to tap, you should continue with it as long as you can. Though from what I've heard, tap's a dying art. I don't know how the Academy's profiting from it.
Perhaps that's the Academy's secret, aside from Elara's talk of theatrics and gusto. Dancing jazz and tap works parts of our bodies that we otherwise wouldn't, and it offers a change of focus for a few hours a day. My schedule won't stay like this for long anyway: when early September rolls around in five weeks, I'll be back to ballet and nothing else.
The jazz and hip hop class was another story. The people I danced with were good, great, and clearly knew a thing or two about their craft. Including Cal. Any memory I had of his tap dancing was quickly washed away.
Apparently the Academy holds a lot of contracts with different Broadway shows and lends out their dancers on a regular basis. Academy jazz and hip hop majors travel worldwide as backup dancers for bands and singers, and they're sold out as choreographers and teachers at high-level studios. Each and every one of them is highly sought after in New York, and directors on Broadway and managers of singers are eager and willing to pay for the Academy's services.
I got to dance with those people last night. And again tonight, and so on.
Julian Jacos said as much at the start of class. For the next five weeks, the ballet majors get to partake in his class and learn from the best of the best how to point our feet, but not so hard, and I quote. It'll be good for you all. Loosen up for once! Just a little!
Loosen up. Pfft.
Like tap, it was another combination class, but chock-full of leaps, turns, and as it transitioned to hip hop, more angled legs and arms. I silently cringed.
I can't say it didn't loosen me up, though, my shoulders too stiff after holding them back all day. To move my rib cage in and out felt oddly freeing after keeping it tucked inward all day. And wearing nothing but a pair of black socks for shoes had me completely out of my mind and element— not to mention sorry for the fact that Maven had spent money on jazz shoes I'll never wear.
After class, I headed back to my room and fixed myself dinner, the growls prominent in my stomach during jazz.
I took a shower. I went to bed, no later than nine.
I could've gone out, just to say I finally spent an evening alone in the thick of the city. Hell, I could've slumped on the couch in my loft and watched TV. I honestly can't remember the last time I sat down and watched anything other than the news.
Sighing, I return to the present and tendu my foot forward. With the sun hiding below the horizon, I've turned the lights on a low, dull setting, though they're almost useless. The studio Lucas got me happens to be Julian's, a corner studio on the fourth floor with views of enough neon signs outside to blind. If only for my eyes, having to look at the blinding pinks and greens and blues, I thank Tiberias Calore for keeping the signs off his building.
A hand balanced at my hip, I work through my tendues, stretching my leg forward, to the side, back, and again. On this fine morning, I wear a pair of baggy workout pants, a sweatshirt, and pointe shoes, already out of my flats.
A few people wander around outside, either with nowhere to go or else up excruciatingly early for work. They're specks from here, tiny black ants half-hidden in the shadows of buildings. No clue I'm watching them as the Academy's dancers once could've watched me.
Finished with the exercises on one side, I swivel around myself, so my right side is closest to the barre and I'm facing the mirror, and—
"Oh," we say in concert, blinking.
As if we're in the elevator again, I stare at Cal in the mirror. He returns my gaze, stuffing a hand in his pocket.
I glanced past him as I turned from the window to the mirror, dismissing him as a shadow, though the lights chase any darkness to the room's margins.
I'd blame him for being at a loss for words, but so am I. In my well-worn sweatshirt and my hair in a knot with strands all over the place . . . I have nothing to say to him, even as we both turn from our respective spots towards the mirror to each other, live and in the flesh.
Cal's on his way for a run—or in the midst of a run, from his slightly-flushed expression—in a T-shirt, shorts, and shoes. He either hasn't combed his hair today or ran his hands through it repeatedly, because it sticks up in crude directions around his head. His bronze eyes, questioning, lock with mine—
"Lucas told me I could have the room—"
"I just had to get my—"
"For an hour and a half—"
"Keys."
One, two blinks.
"Oh," we both say.
The tension so heavy you could weigh it, born out of virtually nothing, suffocates the room's air supply.
When he says no more, I return my attention to the barre and start on my left side. I'll fidget otherwise. I brace my free hand on my hip as I draw out my foot and point it. Again and again and again.
In the mirror, Cal loiters for a heartbeat before he backtracks to a second door in the room, opens it, and vanishes inside.
I let go of a sigh. Oblivious to my social-clumsiness, my feet carry on in their rhythm until I'm finished with my feet warm-ups.
It's early in the morning. More or less, I look like shit. Those are the best reasons I can come up with for whatever's happened before my eyes.
"You realize it's not even six and you're in pointe shoes, right?" Cal remarks from the separate room that must be Julian's office, though Blonos and Elara's studios have no such thing. Shifting sounds from a bag come through the half-ajar door, and then a metallic jingle.
Pinching my lips to avoid grinning like an idiot drunk on ballet, I bow my head in agreement as Cal reappears. Yes, I have a vague sense it's about six o'clock, but the more I think about it, the more depressing it seems. "I went to bed early. What else am I supposed to do at this hour?" I drawl, resting my elbows on the barre and flaring out my fingertips as if to say, I don't have anything better to do, Cal.
He scoffs, an easy movement that has me rolling my eyes. A portion of his grey shirt at the neckline is a darker shade than the rest of the material, another testimony to his workout. Along with his face, though the flush evaporates off it as we speak. Oh, please. You've been up longer than me.
Cal reads my disbelief and tilts his head. "It gets too hot if I go running any later," he argues lightly, throwing up an arm to gesture outside. "It's already eighty degrees outside, and the sun isn't even out."
"The heat's disgusting," I say, shaking my head. Yet as gross as it was, I made a habit of running three or four times a week this summer too, down the expanse of trails in Central Park or in the less-busy sects of the city. I'd usually go early, but not to the extremes of Cal; I'd at least wait until the sun had been out for a half an hour. "But as far as I know, it's not letting up anytime soon."
Wretched small talk, no better than the heatwave. Even as Cal and I talk, I rise up on pointe and come down, another set of repetitions.
A ring of keys in his hand, his other hand shoved in his pocket, Cal says, "I don't think I mind it as much as everybody else in New York. Then again, I've spent most of my summer either at my dad's business or here. I only get out at night and in the morning."
I first met Cal under the cover of a dank old East Harlem bar, nearly five miles north of the Academy and all of Central Park between the former and the latter. He was just standing there, in a pair of baggy jeans and a black hoodie obscuring his dancer's body. Almost as if he was waiting for someone, maybe a girlfriend his parents don't approve of or a group of edgy friends.
"Yet when you get out, you go far, don't you?"
Raising my eyebrows, I silently ask him the question I never got around to: What business does a rich guy like you have in East Harlem? What were you doing at the GrAveyard that night?
He's not old enough to drink legally, though that's never stopped anyone. But Cal doesn't strike me as somebody who goes drinking by himself.
He offers a crooked smile, showing his teeth. I settle my feet into fifth position. My stance tells him everything he needs to know: I'll wait.
"It's not what you think," he states in a low tone. Simply. The neon lights outside pirouette in his eyes along with the golden lights overhead.
I can't help but chuckle. "No, Cal. I haven't been able to figure out why you might enjoy loitering outside of dumpy bars."
While my words are humorous, Cal's face melts into anything but. His jaw works and his eyes flick to the floor in search of a response.
"As much as I love Manhattan, being in the heart of it every day of my life becomes sickening after a while."
I hold my tongue in spite of how many things I could say. He's not wrong; there's not a place in Midtown where silence can be found, and I've rarely crossed Times Square without bumping into a sightseer's shoulder—accidentally or on purpose. But my part of town comes with its own array of problems, including a high theft rate, poverty, violence . . . I don't understand why he'd find peace in East Harlem, of all places.
How ironic. I've waited my entire life to get out, and Cal willingly went there one night.
"I had the evening off, so I took a ride." Cal shakes his keys for emphasis. "Down through Midtown, all the way to the tip of the Financial District. You can imagine how slow it was. I came back up through Chinatown and Little Italy, got onto FDR Drive . . . and rode right past the turnoff for my apartment in Hell's Kitchen."
He takes a deep breath, through his nose and out his mouth, remembering. I consider his story thoughtfully, more than a little curious of what forces drove him to the bar the night we met.
"It wasn't one of my brightest ideas, but I parked my motorcycle on an avenue in your neighborhood. I left it for five minutes. And when I came back . . ."
Another laugh. I've never laughed so much so early.
As I said: high theft rates. I almost keel over and fall to the ground laughing.
Somewhere in the background, Cal's snipping at me: It's not funny.
It's kind of funny.
"Did you at least park it on a street with decent lighting? Maybe next to an open shop?"
The words come when my laughter's died down and faded to a manic grin. Everybody's made their own mistakes in East Harlem, from walking in the wrong shadows to forgetting to lock their car doors at night. But Cal's motorcycle . . . it's undoubtedly worth a fortune, and any crook, regardless of whether or not there were people around watching, would try their hand at hotwiring the thing.
"Both, yes."
His admission only increases the hilarity of the situation. I choke down the rest of my laughter. "You never leave nice things out on the streets. Never."
"Would you like me to finish my story, Mare?"
"I would like that very much, Cal."
Having successfully gotten under his skin, as he's done to me, I mentally pat myself on the back. Playful irritation graces his features, but nothing serious; I assume that his family was able to track down his cycle, or else he bought a new one. His keys unlock something, after all.
He takes a few steps closer to me, leaving a decent fifteen feet between us. It felt closer than that until I notice. With sunrise fast approaching, the sky's turned from a rich, dark blue to a lighter shade, ice, while the room's buttery lights fade.
"You'll roll your eyes at this—"
I roll my eyes.
Cal continues.
"But I went for a walk. I left my motorcycle on a street corner like some fool, and I went for a walk." Because you wanted to see how the other half lives. Get out of the chaos of Midtown only to be met with under kind of madness. "When I came back it was gone. I called my dad, and he sent Lucas to come and give me a ride home. By that point, I wasn't interested in walking around anymore, so I waited outside of the bar. I probably wouldn't have noticed you slip right past me if my guard hadn't already been up."
How I wound up here . . . turns out to be the cause of another thief. Ironic.
"Did you get it back?"
"Yeah. The NYPD was all over it. They found it in a storage locker in Queens. I got it back the morning before you auditioned."
"That's good." Though the effort put into the search for Cal's motorcycle . . . I really don't need to think about it. If I put in a note to the police concerning a stolen vehicle, I could save enough money to buy a new one before the pigs would find it. Cal's family probably has ties to the police like the Cygnets do.
Yellow breaks down the street, meaning dawn has come. Sensing this conversation between us has come to an end, I grip the barre tightly. "I'm sorry. I've probably messed up your run."
Cal notices the sun too, an impending doom now that it's out. The buildings will keep streets shady for a while, but I imagine the temperature rising as we speak nonetheless.
"Hardly. Talking to you more than likely burns calories, Mare Barrow." He uses my full name, and I can't help but cringe.
Don't call me that.
I almost say it out loud. Barrow. The last name I share with my family, the people I abandoned. Again, I push that thought away.
"You have no idea. How similarly I feel." Cal's set me off more than once, from the time I fell from the rafters and he rose from his seat, in essence ordering me to audition, to the time he—well, I suppose he's only really pissed me off once, and that was for my own benefit. "But for what it's worth, have a good run. Or whatever's left of it."
He smirks and nods, and our conversation laps into awkward silence again. Limply, I stand at the barre, not wanting to begin anything new until Cal's gone.
Almost reluctantly, I'd call it if we knew one another better, Cal turns on his heel. I watch every movement, from the way his shoulders are drawn up too high to his slow, deliberate steps. Offering me plenty of breaths to drag this conversation on.
Cal makes it all of five steps towards the door before stopping.
Without a look at me, he states a fact, not a question: "They're wasting their time having you dance in the Corps."
I don't say anything. With Cal's back to me, I allow myself a long, steadying blink. Years and years.
"We'll see," I say so he doesn't start down this road.
Hearing the reluctance in my voice, Cal glances at me quickly. My steely expression and poised back reveal nothing.
"Have a good day, Mare."
"You too, Cal," I say when he's no longer in the room.