Around eight-forty on Monday morning, I walk into Blonos's studio.
My moon boots pad across the floor to my usual barre at the far end of the room, and my bag drops to the ground with a clunk. Rolling out my shoulders a couple of times, I settle into a lunge.
I get murmured "good mornings" from a few others at my barre who currently stretch, and I echo the words, smiling at the people that I barely know. But a moment later, I'm turning my eyes to the floor, where familiar grey vinyl stares back up at me. I know it as well as the rest of this room.
The first week, I'd look around this place every morning and try to hide my wonder while staring at the story-high mirrors, the "overseer balcony"—Maven's words, not mine—and the dozens of other ballerinas and dancers in the room. Everything was so perfect, so . . . imperial. I was in constant awe of where I was and who I was around, and I could hardly get enough of watching all of the other dancers turn and leap and do so much more.
Over the course of six weeks, everything's changed.
I train with some of the best ballet dancers in the world on a daily basis. I do warm-ups with them, I get drilled by Blonos with them, and I sweat with them for hours as we go through the merciless choreography of Elara Merandus. The best part: that choreography isn't a part of anything. It's just for training, just to build up stamina.
So somewhere along the line, I realized that I was just as much of a dancer as anybody else in this room. This place . . . it's become like a home to me, and I don't give anything a second look today.
My body aches every night when I go to bed, and I wake up every morning wanting to do it all over again. I still leave my loft early to practice in Julian's studio most mornings, only to spend another six hours dancing ballet. Any technique or ability I lost when I wasn't in the studio has now fully returned, and my legs have regained all of the muscle I lost in those months, and then some. I'm not far from having full-blown abs, either.
Over the course of six weeks, I've become a professional ballet dancer.
I mean, I wear moon boots before class now, these weird cushioned shoe-things that keep my feet warm. I take baths with Epsom salt, and I get massages from this masseuse that the Academy keeps on hand. My foot care routine has only become more intricate, and I blow through five pairs of pointe shoes a week. Every Sunday, Lucas knocks on my door with a cardboard box full of them, courtesy of the Academy and each pair custom-made from that shop Maven took me to.
Then there are the instructors I dance around every day. Blonos, Elara . . . world-class and the best of their kind. And they're only a small part of the Academy when you look at everything through a wider scope and see the teachers and choreographers they employ, the musicians and directors, the seamstresses and set designers. I've never felt like a part of something so big.
Sliding into a split from my lunge, I brace my hands against the vinyl. Thirty feet away, my reflection stares back at me from the mirrors. I'm wearing my usual sweatshirt and thermal pants over my leotard and tights, and my bun peaks out over my head.
You wouldn't know it, but I'm tired. Really tired. I barely slept after what happened with Will yesterday, and I had to force myself to eat this morning. Though I had no problem downing three cups of coffee. I'll have to wait and see how long the buzz of caffeine lasts today.
But nope. I'm not going there right now. Not after I spent half the night—
Nope.
I focus on stretching. I come out of my split and switch to a lunge on my left side. It's the same old, same old routine, but it's something to focus on. A distraction.
Out of the corner of my eye, three more dancers come trickling into the studio, two women and a man. They talk in murmurs just like everybody else does at the beginning of class, still somewhat asleep on this Monday morning as they look to decide what barre they'll go to. Though I wouldn't bet any money on it, I'm fairly sure I know their names after all these weeks. They're some of the older dancers, either in their early or mid-thirties. One of the women is a soloist, the other's in the Corps, and the man is a Principal.
Yes, between me, Evangeline, Cal, Maven, and a select few others, there are some teenagers who dance for the Manhattan Dance Academy. But most are older, anywhere from twenty to edging on their forties, when most ballet dancers retire. A lot of them didn't start here, but came from other companies across the country, or in a few cases, from a different country altogether. It's nothing like dancing at my old studio, where it was just a bunch of teenaged girls who all lived within twenty blocks of each other.
I don't have to deal with that pettiness here, in this . . . place of refinement, of culture. Though it still scares me sometimes to think about how second to Maven by a month, I'm the youngest one here.
But after everything that's happened, nobody seems to mind me. Nobody's ever brought up my fall, and any time my audition's come up, it's in the form of a compliment from one random dancer or another. It's like this silent respect that I've somehow earned from the rest of the company, in doing what I did. And I like it that way. People are never in my face talking about it, but nobody thinks of me as a freak of nature either.
I've had the chance to make friends, but more often than not, I stay to myself. I have Maven, and I talk to Iris, and between that and the occasional small-talk with another dancer, it's enough. At the end of the day, I'm tired anyway and can hardly think about those kinds of things.
And then there's that other little fact that will always eat at me. Not all of the other dancers here are ultra-rich, but I can guarantee that growing up, their families were well-off. Most of these people trained at ballet schools, not studios. I am a freak of nature in that way, and it makes me wonder which people at the Academy I should be talking to and which ones I shouldn't.
I shift my back onto the floor, turning one hip in and pulling my leg over the other. I rolled out my muscles this morning, but God, it still—
"I was stuck up there for a week, Elane. I had to spend most of that time watching my brother and Cal play shirtless football in the courtyard. And halfway through the week, they switched to golf."
Oh, yes. That's one person I avoid at all costs. Evangeline Samos follows her voice into the studio, a red-haired girl from the Corps at her side. Elane Haven, I believe.
"The parties were okay, I suppose," Evangeline continues as she and Elane make for the barre at the front of the room. She doesn't murmur like anybody else who's in the middle of a conversation does. "But the rest of the time was a waste if you ask me."
As I now know that her father and Tiberias Calore are business allies, it makes sense that Evangeline was in the Hamptons with the Calores this week. The Hamptons. I'll keep repeating it.
But she makes the whole affair sound like an ordeal more than a luxury vacation, as I only assume it was. Naturally, she takes it for granted. I'm more surprised, more annoyed than I should be.
Maybe it's the caffeine.
I force myself to keep my eyes down. The few times I've snagged her attention over the weeks have only ended in glares from her and brow-raising from me. I can't do that today.
Just like I've watched Cal and Maven dance, I've watched that girl. Evangeline's as good as her audition made her look, strong in every motion she makes yet graceful as hell. She's confident as hell too, and it's what makes her stand out. Sure, that confidence isn't coming from the right places and is a combined mix of arrogance and conceit, but . . . it makes her a worthy partner for Cal.
In spite of all she is, though, Evangeline doesn't talk to many. She always spends time before class warming up with Elane, and she'll talk to her brother—Ptolemus, Soloist, early-twenties, black-haired and grey-eyed—quite a bit. I've never seen her and Cal talk. After their exchange during her audition, I don't think he likes her, actually.
Chemistry doesn't matter enough in ballet, though. Sure, it helps to not hate your partner, but as long as they trust one another, Cal and Evangeline will have no problem acting it out onstage. They're both great enough dancers and performers that no one in an audience will ever notice how he feels about her, or she about him.
" . . . the weather was nice. It's been so hot, and most of the week, it was only around seventy-five. Tolly and I got out to the beach yesterday. "
Meanwhile, I was in the Academy almost all week, working on ballet technique.
Elane jokes about how Evangeline better have worn her sunscreen. She mutters something back, playfully hitting her on the shoulder. Evangeline nearly transforms into a normal, sensible human being when she's around Elane.
Finished with stretching my other hip, I push off the ground. My hand grips the barre a little too hard as I shift my weight onto one leg and développé.
Too bone-deep tired, I didn't go down to Julian's studio this morning. My warm-up would usually last far longer and involve a lot more, but this'll have to do for the day.
"Wait. Why weren't you up there this week?" She just won't quit talking.
"I was busy." I glance to the studio entrance to find Maven strolling in, curling hair contained by one of the bandanas half of guys insist on wearing here. Otherwise, he's dressed in a plain T-shirt and a pair of those man-tights, as I call them. They don't leave much up to the imagination, and I'll never get used to or comfortable with seeing them on Maven and the other male dancers.
Evangeline makes a face. "With what?"
She makes it sound like this is the first time she's hearing of Maven not being with his family up in the Hamptons. "College, Evangeline," he says, snapping it a little. "I did a study program at Columbia for the week." Since the two of us became friends, Maven's taken the auditions debacle with Evangeline personally. He likes her even less than Cal does.
Evangeline settles onto the floor, going for a lunge herself. Her tone is bored, detached. "Don't know what the point of that is. Seems like a time-waster when you're going to end up following in dear old dad's footsteps."
Why she says it, I don't know. I don't know anything about her family's connection to the Calores. But that's a blow right there if I know one, and Evangeline knows it, as much as she's trying to hide her interest.
I hold my tongue, along with my breath in case my tongue slips. I turn for the other side of the barre so I can't see the mirror. I'm not a part of this.
Following in his father's footsteps, following in Cal's . . . the topic comes up in conversations between me and Maven from time to time. It's usually an accident when it does and certainly something he tries to steer clear of, but once it's there, it's there. After what I told Maven about me and Gee, I think it's easy for him to talk to me about his father and Cal.
It comes in murmurs, jokes that Maven tells to make it come across as light-hearted. But I see the jealousy on his face every time, and he knows that deep-down, I understand it. My version just doesn't involve trust funds or skyscrapers.
When his career as a dancer is over, Cal will inherit a dynasty. Maven will not. Maven's the little brother, the one second-in-line for the ownership of Calore Industries, while Cal's the apple of his father's eye. I saw it that first day at auditions, and I've heard all about it since then.
Somehow, they both find time to apprentice at Calore Industries. But unlike Maven, Cal's been going on business meetings with his father since age sixteen, and unlike Maven, Cal's been flying to Chicago, Miami, and Los Angeles for business ventures since age seventeen. Along with his father's business, Cal's set to inherit most of his father's assets. Houses, buildings, bonds . . . and whatever else rich people pass down to their children. Most of the time, Maven just seems to get left in the dust.
Yet he's still expected to follow. He'll go into business, become a chairman for his father's company. The way Maven talks about it all . . . I don't know what they are, but he has other dreams. That's the one thing he won't tell me.
"At least your partner has the right idea, dropping out of high school for ballet. And look how far she's come."
Out of the blue, Evangeline's voice rings through the whole damn studio.
It takes every piece of my will to not lose it. Grasping the barre, my knuckles turn white. My left leg stays extended up in midair.
She did not just say that.
I swallow because I can't afford to lose it. Then I'll actually look like a ghetto girl who dropped out of high school.
Everybody in this room knows I'm seventeen, so the connection's easy enough to make. I'm not like Maven with his fancy, elite online school and summer college classes, and I highly doubt anybody thought that, me starting out as a maid and all. Evangeline certainly didn't. She just confirmed it for everybody.
Slowly, my leg comes down, moon boot gently returning to earth. My grip on the barre doesn't slacken, though. I half-expect, almost hope, for Maven to say something, but he doesn't. With two steps, I've circled around myself and am staring at the one exception to professional, non-petty ballet.
The room's utterly silent, heads turning back and forth from Evangeline to me. She doesn't look much more threatening than I do in her warm-up clothes, but cruel eyes make up for it. "Lost your tongue, Barrow?"
How I'd love to see Evangeline lose her tongue. I'd like to see it literally chopped off.
I only smile at her, and it's obviously fake "You don't know anything about that." My voice is quieter than it should be.
Her face melts into innocence, something so wholesome it doesn't look real. "It was a compliment, Mare." Evangeline uses my first name, and I hate it. "For elevating yourself so high in society."
What the hell?
The perfect picture of serenity, I put a hand on my hip, my other hand on the barre loosely, and cross one foot over the other. "Again: you don't know anything about my life, Evangeline." I use her name, and a slight twitch of her lip tells me she doesn't like it either. I tilt my head, pinching my lips together to keep my cringe away.
"You're right. But I can imagine what it looked like. Mare." Faux pity soaks every word, and Evangeline does that same thing she did with Maven, where she shifts into a new stretch to pretend she has no interest in the conversation she started.
If I were anywhere else, I'd do something I've never done before and throw myself at that girl. But I'm at the esteemed Manhattan Dance Academy, surrounded by revered, first-rate ballet dancers, and I'm currently being paid to dance with them.
What I say next, I blame on the caffeine.
"Get over it." It snaps right out of me, loud and so unlike anything a ballerina would ever say. "I interrupted your fouettés." By falling from thirty-foot high stage rafters, but it's fairly obvious that part doesn't bother her. "And you still got Cal. So get over it, because nobody cares. Evangeline." And she didn't even have to bribe anyone like she asked her mother to. I'm tempted to say it out loud, but I have no clue what kind of scene it would cause.
Like an entitled princess, she arches a brow. The room remains silent as Evangeline rises to her feet at a snail's pace.
Then she smiles at me.
The caffeine coursing through my blood balks at that grin. Out of the corner of my eye, Maven shifts his weight from foot to foot.
"Fine. I'll get over it," Evangeline purrs. "I'll get over it right now."
Some sort of challenge lurks in her words, and though she never breaks gazes with me, she kicks her bag out from beneath the barre and kneels down.
Against my better judgment, I take the bait. "What do you have in mind?"
"Sixteen fouettés isn't actually that many for us, is it? She unzips her bag, pulls out two pointe shoes. "So why don't we see who can do more?"
She wants to finish the fouettés I so rudely interrupted. "And what does the winner get?" I ask.
"The satisfaction." She puts it simply.
And the loser gets the embarrassment.
The caffeine speaks again. "Okay, Evangeline."
Stripped down to creamy pink pointe shoes, similarly-colored tights, and a plain black leotard, I watch my reflection in the mirror. Out of ways to warm up, I have my hands on my hips and rise up on pointe over and over again, feeling the floor underneath my toes, the fabric on my feet.
A matter of yards away, Evangeline's down to a leotard and tights too. But as much of a mouth she has, she's not stupid—Evangeline's spent the past ten minutes warming up, as have I. Currently, she's running through pirouettes. As always, they're perfect.
But so are mine.
A couple of the dancers already in the studio were nice enough to move the barres to the edges of the room, clearing a space more than large enough for two ballerinas to turn.
I told Evangeline that she could pick the song we turned to, and I'm already regretting it. This awful, bassy rap song plays over the Bluetooth speaker she conveniently keeps in her bag, and even without turning, it just about makes me dizzy.
Maven loiters by the door. With the two of us in the studio's center, he'd have to walk right past Evangeline to get to me and give the pep talk I know he's dying to. Part of me's glad for it, given our conversation from yesterday I haven't forgotten.
But nope. I'm not going there right now. Not after I spent half the night—
Nope.
"One, two, three, four . . ." Evangeline trails off, tapping the wood of her point shoe against the floor too fast for my liking.
I put my hands against my hips. Evangeline has horrible taste in music, but I have the counts. "Got it," I mutter.
In the mirror, she smirks. "Don't feel bad when you lose. You're just Corps, after all."
The Corps de Ballet is a vital part of any performance, but I don't bother telling her that.
"Then the pressure's on for the prima ballerina, isn't it?" I ask.
Her smirk almost falters. "Restart the track when I say so," she orders Elane, who holds Evangeline's phone near Maven. "I'll count us in."
Class starts in five minutes, and most of the ballet company is here by now, spread across the room by the barres. They're to my left, right, and behind me, and they might as well be up on the overseer balcony too. Every time another dancer enters through the doors, Maven murmurs to them what's going on, and I've seen a fair number of eye rolls. They usually come after it was Evangeline's idea.
The quiet conversations are gone and replaced with silent stares. These are the people who were in the audience during my audition. Though it would probably kill some of them to admit it, everybody in this room wants to know what's about to happen.
My heart pounds, but not for the right reasons. I should be scared of Evangeline for all that she is, of falling out of my fouettés in front of everyone. But I've never been afraid of those things, and I'm not now either. If anything, my heart pounds because I'm excited to see how this turns out.
I settle into a fifth position and take my hands off my hips. Evangeline does the same.
"Play it," she says.
The speaker at the front of the room blasts the first notes of Evangeline's truly-horrible rap song.
My heart may pound, but my mind's surprisingly clear.
"One, two," Evangeline begins, her voice melodic and calm. "Three, four . . ."
On five, I'm drowning her out and going into a prep. My shoes hit the ground as I shift my weight from foot to foot.
In perfect time, I turn with Evangeline Samos.
The counts become something that I whisper, numbers coming off my lips so it looks like I'm rapping along to Evangeline's song.
I concentrate on the one, two, three four, five, six, seven, eight as I turn, my right leg going through that familiar in-and-out motion. My foot finds a solid, unfailing ground beneath me, though gravity's not happy with me. With every time I go en pointe, I feel heavier. With each spot of my head, I find the blur of Evangeline in the mirror, still in that perfect time.
Two minutes, at the very least, have passed. Even my arms are tired of being held up.
But while those things are true, I also feel strength. I feel control. And I flat-out ignore that rap song.
My mind drifts to an older song. The song I danced to at my audition, though the music was only in my head as I danced for the shadows. It reminded me of everything I had lost, and at the time, I had no idea how much I stood to gain.
Since then, I've regained dance. I'm on my way to regaining a brother if what I did last night means anything. Maybe I'll see Kilorn soon as well.
I've lost a family, though. I thought I had lost Dad the day he stopped walking, but now he's lost me. I lost a part of myself last night when I couldn't climb three flights of stairs and knock on my apartment door, and now I won't let myself go back.
Because I'm part of a gang. Going back, letting anyone know that I have a life outside of this building . . . it would be a bad idea. I can't show that kind of attachment if it runs the risk of my family getting hurt. Staying away is what Shade did, and what I'll do too. As much as it kills me.
Focus.
I spot myself in the mirror for what's well over the hundredth time, finding what's the picture of grace and power in my reflection. My mouth keeps whispering the counts, but the rest of my face is cold. My eyes see nothing but my turns, and otherwise, they come across as bored and dulled.
Just like Evangeline, the ballerinas and dancers surrounding me are only hazy images. Silent, hazy images that are nothing more than outlines and colors.
Focus.
The rap song goes into its chorus again, when the music becomes more music than rap. It's still awful, though.
The toes on my left foot are thoroughly numb, and my head's close to spinning.
Despicably, my mind starts wandering again.
Mom's probably been agonizing over me for the last two months. I'm not my sister, the girl who's going to make it one day and get our family out of East Harlem, but I'm still my mom's daughter. I'm still seventeen, and I've still been away for weeks. I left them with a damn note, and I can't even be bothered to put a return address on the money I send.
All she'd have to do is Google search me, and she'd find my name and my photograph under the Corps de Ballet page on the Manhattan Dance Academy's website. She'd see that my partner is the younger Calore brother and that I joined the company in July of this year. I have no doubt that she'd be down to Midtown in a half-hour, scaring Lucas half-to-death at the door with all sorts of threats.
The inside of one thigh burns and my other calf hurts like hell, but it's nothing compared to the fear I have of Mom getting her hands on a computer.
Focus.
Sweat gathers at the back of my neck. My lungs ache just as bad as they did last night when I sprinted back to Will's store. My eyes probably look glossed over.
But to look is to be, and my turns are on time, just as fast, just as strong as they were when we began.
The rap song, pounding from the speaker too loud, reaches this strange high note, and the rapper proves he can actually sing.
Evangeline goes crashing to the floor when we come around for another spot.
I only register the sound of her body falling for the floor, and with another fouetté, I see that her silhouette no longer moves along with me. I almost lose my spot because of it.
Another turn and I see her kneeling.
Something in my emotionless face breaks. My eyes go a little wide, and I stop counting. The other dancers of the room are still blurring into the walls and barres, still speechless and breathless when Evangeline's song grinds to a sudden halt.
For a moment, everything's quiet. I have the sense to pull in for pirouettes.
She's not supposed to lose, Cal's partner and all. I am, Corps de Ballet and all, Maven's partner and all. But Evangeline Samos is half-crouching to my right and I'm turning, turning, turning.
My momentum lets up, and I land, almost stumbling back on shaking legs.
The applause of the dancers that surround me drowns out the song that comes up next on autoplay. No one person claps first, and their applause isn't tentative or forced. It's that respect again, an approval that comes easily from these people who have been dancing professionally for years.
In the mirror, I see that Cal's here now. He must've slipped in during our turns, as he stands next to his brother at the door, clapping along with the rest of the room. I can tell that he's trying to contain his smile for Evangeline's sake, but he does a terrible job at it. His teeth even show.
Even my opponent's brother, who has also stepped in, claps. Though his face is solemn.
I look right, to where Evangeline has lifted herself up off the ground. She seems fine, just as she told me when I fell, ordering me offstage. Her glare is something else, lip curling up to reveal sharp white teeth.
More than anything, it tells me she's fine.
She's fine.
Her foot must've gone right out from under her, but she didn't fall on anything too important.
I school my features, my eyes going dull again and my lips shaking off their slight smile.
She knew the risk in challenging me, though I doubt she thought anything of it. But she's thinking now, with everybody in this room clapping and muffling her playlist.
"We good now?" I ask her while they're still clapping.
Evangeline disliked me before.
She only shakes her head, absolutely livid, near-paralyzed with anger.
And now she despises me.
The claps die out, and Elane hits pause on the speaker.
"Miss Samos. You were doing perfectly fine until you made the mistake of taking a look at your opponent. You lost your spot, and you did not regain it. Your partner, who is supposedly your equal in ballet, would not have made the same error."
Ballet mistress Blonos descends the stairs from the balcony, clad in her usual black dress.
"It's nearly nine o'clock. Put the barres back, then we'll get started for the day.."
All around, the dancers push themselves up and begin returning barres to their original positions. Evangeline walks off to her barre.
On her way to the front of the studio, Blonos pauses by me. She saw at least part of our little contest from the balcony.
"A lovely job, as always, Miss Barrow," she murmurs in my ear.