"Giselle."
I barely hear her. My eyes half-closed, I go through motion after motion at the barre, in somewhat of a trance. My feet sweep from position to position, my arms come up and down, and I remember all the details I always have. It's a simple warmup, one of Blonos's countless variations and full of tendues and plies and arching and stretching. It grounds me, and I focus on those things. From across the room, Evangeline's rage is steaming off of her.
Blonos always starts us off this way during technique class, though it never lasts. By the end, I'll be turning until I don't know what's in front of me anymore—not that I didn't feel that way a moment ago—and performing combinations that take all of my effort to remember this early in the morning.
Five feet ahead, Cal performs in time with me. Every now and then, I watch his movements through my slit eyelids. The muscles in his back move with his shoulders, and tanned arms flex as he raises them over his head in fifth position. Sweat already stains his shirt at the armpit; even for a ballet dancer, he's in better shape than most if he runs in the mornings and then dances for nine-plus hours. His body says that much.
After my little competition minutes ago, Cal waltzed over to my barre and settled himself at the spot right next to me. He didn't say anything, but the act did. Evangeline just about had smoke coming out of her ears at that.
"Giselle is a story of twisted fairytale love and betrayal," Blonos continues as she passes my barre, hair tightly-bunned and hands crossed behind her back as usual. Her rigid voice filters through the soft ballad the pianist in the corner plays, keeping us together as we go through the warmup sequence. "It was first performed in the eighteen-hundreds by the Paris Opera Ballet and has since become one of classical ballet's greatest hits. Though many of you have performed it before and already know this."
Rounding my barre and heading for the mirrors in the front, Blonos releases one of her signature bland chuckles. "Giselle is a peasant girl of the Middle Ages who loves to dance. She's beautiful, she captures the hearts of all, but she herself has a naive and weak heart."
"Quite literally a weak heart," somebody adds from above, and I have to stop myself from jerking out of my stretch at the sound of Elara Merandus's voice. With a glance upward, I find Elara leaning over the balcony railing, clad in her typical all-black ensemble. She does a once-over of the studio, quite literally looking down on us with the added height. "Giselle's mother wishes she wouldn't dance anymore, for the fear that her heart will give out because of it."
Blonos nods. "So one day, a young nobleman named Duke Albrecht arrives amid the town's grape harvest. He falls in love with Giselle, and hiding his old clothes, sword, and hunting horn, he disguises himself as a peasant so that he may court her. Albrecht—or Loys, his peasant name—whoos Giselle out of her cottage to partake in the harvest festivities with him, and he soon declares his undying love for her. It is enough for Giselle to fall in love with Albrecht."
"Yet," Elara adds, dull eyes still examining us, "Hilarion, the town gamekeeper, is hopelessly in love with Giselle. He doesn't trust the peasant Loys, but Giselle pays no heed to his warning when he tells her as much.
"Soon after, a ring of noblemen come across the village in search of drinks, having completed a hunt. Aware that his betrothed, Bathilde, is with the noblemen, Albrecht flees the village as the rest of the peasants welcome them with refreshments and dancing. Bathilde and Giselle meet, and Giselle tells Bathilde of her courtship, who ironically gifts her a necklace in congratulations. The two depart, utterly oblivious that they're with the same man."
Though the pianist remains striking her ballad, most of the dancers have fallen out of the variation. I find myself pausing in my tendues. My eyes dart back and forth from Elara to Blonos, and I grip the barre to my side firmly.
Blonos speaks next. "Albrecht returns to dance with Giselle, who is named the Harvest Queen. But Hilarion emerges with Albrecht's noble sword, proving that Loys is in fact a nobleman who is promised to another. Hilarion summons the return of the noblemen with the hunting horn he found alongside Albrecht's sword, and faced with no time to hide, Albrecht greets Bathilde as his betrothed.
"Though all are stunned by the revelation, no one is as upset as Giselle, who descends into heartache. Certain that she and Albrecht will never be together, she grows hysterical and begins dancing madly."
"Until her weak heart gives out," Elara adds. "She dies in Duke Albrecht's arms."
I raise my brows and slacken my grip on the barre, half-expecting for Elara to begin a lecture on the futility of love. Yes, the ballet mistress seems like the kind of woman who'd charge love as a weakness, with her cold eyes and condescending voice. Not that I could argue with her when I've never had a boyfriend.
"In the second act, we open to find Hilarion mourning at the site of Giselle's forest grave. But before he can leave, Hilarion meets the ethereal Wilis—the ghostly spirits of young women abandoned and betrayed by their lovers. They all died of broken hearts, and any man who crosses them after midnight is sentenced to death. They force Hilarion to exhaust himself by dancing with them until dawn, when the Wilis drown him in a lake."
Elara walks now, striding closer to my barre from above. She seems to have taken over Blonos's monologue. "Meanwhile, Albrecht, too, comes to mourn for Giselle at her gravestone. Myrtha, Queen of the Wilis, draws Giselle from her sleep to dance with Albrecht, though she pleads with the queen to let her lover go. Naturally, Myrtha and the Wilis refuse, senseless in their hatred of all men."
"But though she and Albrecht dance until sunrise, he does not die. Giselle's love for the count keeps him alive as they dance, defeating the hatred and vengeance that control the Wilis. And after bidding Albrecht a weeping goodbye at dawn when Myrtha's power disappears, Giselle returns to her grave to rest in peace alongside the Wilis, and Albrecht returns to Bathilde."
Giselle. Though I had no idea what it was about, I remember seeing the whimsical dancers of the New York City Ballet in wraithlike white dresses on YouTube and begging Mom to take me to the Met. I was all of ten years old, but I told her I'd pay for the tickets—I would've been ecstatic to sit in the back row of the highest deck—and do dishes for a month. But like hell was I about to convince Mom to go to the Metropolitan Opera House with me. It was as single-sided of an argument as the one we had when my parents pulled me from my studio.
"Interpret the story as you like," Elara murmurs. "But for all the times I've danced and taught this ballet, I still wonder if Albrecht really loved Giselle, or if he was just looking for a good time."
Though I try to avoid him, Maven catches up to me after Blonos's class.
"Well?" he asks in a whisper, angling his mouth toward my ear. "What did you find out?"
He already offered me his congratulations, mouthing it from the next barre over during warm-up and then poking me in the side and telling me about how my fouettés were the best damn fouettés he had ever seen.
I give him a weak smile. "It went exactly how I thought it would. Will's a locked box, not to mention the old man sounds like he's losing it." The lie comes easy enough after all the hours I rehearsed it in my head. I force truth into my eyes as I stare down Maven Calore in the thankfully-empty hallway he's caught me in.
What have I done. The hour-and-a-half of grueling technique class I just went through was the first time I've been able to stop thinking about it. My second walk back from Will's store last night was agony, every moment spent wondering if I should return and call him off. The ride to Midtown was no better, endured silently in a near-empty subway car, still wondering. It was far past eleven by the time I returned to the Academy, though I didn't fall asleep until two, and even then it was a restless fit of tossing and turning amid strange, unsettling dreams.
Unable to bear it anymore, I got up at six-thirty and spent the better part of my time before technique pacing and rehearsing.
Not ballet. But my lines for what will no doubt become an elaborate mess of a lie.
"Yeah," I mutter, turning my eyes on the fork in the hallway ahead, all marble and cream walls. "I spent a half-hour in that stupid little store, arguing with an insane old man. It was a thorough waste of time."
A half-truth. I'll stick to those as long as I can.
I want in. I want in.
The desperate words ring clearly in my mind along with the memory of my panic-stricken heartbeat and white-knuckled fists. Will had pumped up his radio again, but my words were loud enough for him to hear over the din of whatever rock band played. And though he didn't say anything at first, his bastard's smile was victorious. Will had known it was only a matter of minutes before I came rushing through his door again.
In that case, they'll be in touch. Soon.
And then he went back to counting his money.
How soon?
Soon. Go along now, I'm closing soon.
I could think of nothing else to say. And more than that, I knew deep-down that Will Whistle was a man who picked and chose his words and had no intention of sharing any new ones with me.
So as I numbly walked from the store, I wondered what I had done.
"That's too bad," my partner says quietly. I don't have to look at Maven to understand he's disappointed, and more than that, scared. Yet it's too great of a risk to tell him anything.
He might not be the favorite son, but blood runs deep in any family. If I were to reveal to him what I've done, what cause I've promised myself to, no way would he stay quiet. I can imagine the scene clear enough in my mind: one phone call to that corrupt police commissioner and in five minutes I'd be in handcuffs getting hauled down to 1 Police Plaza. Will wouldn't be far behind me, and God knows what he actually knows.
"I don't know what to do," I whisper, more to myself. It kills me to lie to Maven about this after everything he's done. He's legitimately the only real friend I've made in this place—though in the other girls' defenses, I haven't tried as hard as I said I would to make friends—and our afternoon outings are my favorite thing. He's been kind, more accepting than I ever would've thought. And a far better friend than I've ever had. If he goes down with his family, or worse, if I take his mother and father away from him . . . he deserves better.
No. Created for the Calores. This is bigger than him, and it's too late now anyway, however sick I feel with myself.
Soon. Whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. I guess I'll have to go against my very nature and sit on my ass. For all I know, tomorrow morning I'll wake up to Farley standing at the foot of my bed with my first assignment. Or bump into Shade on my walk to the post office. Both thoughts send violent fits of chills through my spine.
Terrorist. That's what I am.
Maven doesn't respond for a while, and we hit the fork in the hallway. Usually he'd go right and I'd go left, but today Maven turns left with me toward Elara's studio. I don't dare look at him. "I just . . ." He sighs, shaking his head in my periphery. "If they really are targeting my family because of some corruption . . . I don't know if I'd be angrier with my father or them."
I swallow at his muttered, near-silent words. Anybody down the hall sees us as nothing more than chatting partners, two stupid teenagers talking about nothing especially important. Mare and Maven wear their silly ballet shoes and outfits and swing their dance bags back and forth, blissfully aloof to the world around them. If only that were the case.
"Family is family, Maven. You don't betray them, not for anything." My words are thick with contradiction when both Shade and I left home without a goodbye, yet they come out anyway. I have to test him, see where his heart lies.
"Maybe for Cal," he says, stopping. I have no choice but to halt and face him. His eyes are somber and too weary for his age. Though he holds himself high, he reminds me that we're only teenagers. What do I look like? Is there guilt written along every line of my face? "But I don't know if I could say the same if Dad turned out to be a criminal."
We've come to a crossroads in the hallways, sunlight filtering in from a stretch of windows down the way. A constant reminder of where I am, the familiar letters of CDA are inscribed into the sunset marble in gold lettering, while massive landscape paintings of magical dancing scenes hang at each corner. One of them contains the Wilis of Giselle.
I keep my gaze steady on Maven as I imagine a world where he's on my side and I can trust him.
He returns my look with an equal coolness in spite of his sad eyes.
"We should go out this weekend," Maven says, shaking his head as if it'll erase our conversation. "I want to hear about how it went with your family."
Unable to tell him I couldn't bring myself to see them, I smile and nod.
"Have fun at choreography, Mare."
"You too, Maven."