"You remembered."
A hint of a smile inches onto Cal's face, and I'm careful not to let mine mirror his.
I decided, after all, to get Cal his stupid pack of bubblegum.
He runs a hand through his mussed hair before setting his sleeve of gum—which in fact contains three packs—on top of his folding chair.
I shrug. "I was out this morning and happened to remember." Leaning back on my palms, I flex my ankles back and forth on the stage floor, pointing my toes. "So now we're even?"
Cal chuckles a little, and he ends up nodding. "Yes, we're even now. So now you have no reason to lash out at me anymore."
I have to press my lips together. As usual, we're sitting on the stage, Cal with his precious folding chair behind him. His notebook, as always, is on his lap, and I catch scribbled bits of dance notation from the angle I sit at. Usually, I'd stop a bit farther from him, plop down, and criss-cross my legs, but today I sit a little closer.
Mostly because I had to toss him his pack of gum, which he caught as effortlessly as I expected him to.
"That's not true. After this contemporary lesson, I'll have more reason than ever to lash out."
Another laugh comes from Cal, but this time, it has a little less humor to it. "See, that's where you're wrong." He gives me a serious look, even as his eyes glitter with delight. "After our incident at the gala, where you so blatantly disrespected me by telling my brother that you thought I was a mediocre teacher, I've decided we need some rules, Mare."
I have yet to decide if the payoff of that comment is worth whatever's coming to me now.
"There will be no more disrespecting Cal," Cal says, smiling about his own proclamation. "You'll listen to me, you'll do what I say, and you won't roll your eyes. If I find out that you trash me behind my back like you did before, you'll be in trouble, and I'll find ways to punish you. I'm thinking pushups, but I haven't decided yet. Maybe I'll drag you along to run 10Ks with me," Cal muses. "You can think whatever you want of me in your head—though eventually, we will get along—but you'll play nice from now on, 'kay?"
'Kay. I contain my glower.
"I'll play civil," I tell him, not quite agreeing. I consider telling Cal that he's impeding upon my freedom of speech.
Cal gives me a warning look and a tilt of his head. "Nice," he repeats.
I can run a 10K with ease, but I'm hardly about to tell Cal that. As for the pushups, I don't let him see my disinterest. I might be in the best shape of my life right now, but I've never paid much attention to my arms compared to the rest of my body. They're strong enough, lean and graceful just like any other ballet dancer, but they're nothing like Cal's, who probably does a couple hundred pushups a day.
On the other hand, I'm too far into Giselle for them to send me back to the Corps now. I'm up for a ten-year contract that I'm just waiting for Cal to corner me about.
Despite being who he is, I don't think that Cal has any actual power to punish me in a way that would matter.
But I suppose he deserves better than that.
"Fine," I tell him, careful not to roll my eyes. I don't even have to look at him to already feel the triumph flowing off Cal in waves. "I'll try my best to be nice to you and respect you," I say, nearly spitting the words. The idea of respecting Cal goes against my very nature, and I'm not off to a good start. "But you should know that sometimes I just can't help myself."
"And those will be the times that you owe me pushups or miles," he finishes. "By the end of this, I'll have taught you a lesson even more valuable than contemporary: how to not run your mouth off constantly."
But it's something that I am so superbly good at.
When Cal decides that my silence is as much acquiescence as he'll get from me, he continues. "I have my question for the day."
I throw out a hand. "Go ahead."
"What do you hate about contemporary so much?"
I'm not surprised that Cal chooses to ask what he does. When it was almost a contemporary ballet, my performance on Monday night probably got him thinking about where my loathing of contemporary stems from. Cal has since concluded that my disgust isn't of ignorance. I don't hate contemporary because I think that it's an inferior genre to ballet, even if I might pretend as much. It's more than the strangely-bent limbs and emotions that don't belong to what I'm good at.
I'll say it again: it's the fact that I don't understand the strangely-bent limbs and emotions.
I shrug once more, drawing my knees towards my chest. "I could tell you that I hate it because it's a disgrace to the art of dance. Ballet is an art form that's been sculpted over centuries. In the grand scheme of dance, contemporary's this newfangled thing. It doesn't follow any rules. It's based on emotion and improvisation, not technique. I'm not into that."
"You could tell me that," Cal finishes, reading me like the back of his hand. "But that's not why."
"I thought we were only supposed to ask questions that we don't know the answers to, Cal."
"Let's make an exception for the night," Cal returns.
A hefty sigh leaves my throat.
He's not about to let go of this, and at this point, I have no reason to be keeping secrets from Cal if they're going to hinder things.
If they're going to drag out this process of teaching me how to dance with a partner, a process that currently has no end date in sight.
I remind myself that underneath all of the annoying things he says in return to my own sarcasms, Cal wants to help me. He always has.
Admitting to him why I hate what we're about to do will help him understand how to teach me, and it'll make the process less painful for the both of us.
"I don't get it," I say simply, gazing off towards the stage wing. "I never have." I'm careful not to say that I never will. "I took one look at that dance you choreographed for the gala and it didn't make any sense to me. I don't get how they move."
Just to make a point, I lift myself from the stage floor. Cal's eyes trail mine as I do a simple arabesque in front of him along with a chassé and a tour jeté. It's part of a long string of choreography for Giselle. "This makes sense," I say, continuing the combination. "There's an exact place that every part of my body should be at any given second. I like that. I like the rules. I need the rules."
The last part slips out like a subconscious afterthought. Even if it's true.
Cal can easily imagine what that means. He's seen where I'm from. He knows that I need stability and sense in my life. And ballet has always been that tether.
It's more than just a passion.
If I didn't say the last part, Cal would probably tell me that I take all of the fun out of dancing.
Uncertain of what to say but certain that the usual arrogant, snarky mood in the theatre has changed, Cal hefts himself up. The motion is graceful, as always.
"If I thought that there was a better way to teach you how to dance with a partner, we'd be doing that instead," he explains. "Even if I do enjoy returning the favor and getting under your skin. But," he continues, stopping before me and folding his hands behind his back, "I'm a great teacher. Probably a ten-out-of-ten, actually."
I just about need toothpicks to refrain from my eye roll. Becoming a ten-out-of-ten seems to be a recurring theme with Cal.
"I'll show you that contemporary actually makes sense. It's just a separate language, just a translation." He shrugs, trying to play off what he says as unimportant. "And nothing we do leaves here. You don't have to feel self-conscious around me. I'm the teacher, you're the student. It's simple."
What Cal says has a strange effect.
I feel oddly calm and oddly quiet.
"It's going to be bad. Like, worse than you think," I tell him.
In an hour, it's going to be like this civil conversation never happened.
"We'll see," Cal says. "But let's do it anyway."
Two days later, I take a trip to a new floor of the Academy.
The eighth floor, barren of studios and simply a place of winding office doors for all of the administrators that work here, opens up to a sizable room at the corner of the Academy where Broadway meets Forty-Second. The windows stretch along both walls to reveal a panoramic picture of Times Square at the brink of dusk, and otherwise, the large room is cast in harsh lighting.
Today is the day that I get to see my dresses for Giselle. Half of the Principal women are already here, scattered throughout the marble-floored room, atop pedestals and surrounded by whatever seamstresses the Academy has hired. Bolts of fabric, sewing machines, needles, and threads litter long tables, and mannequins that are either naked or dressed in village girl or Willis dresses wait here and there. All sorts of people run back and forth, disappearing down the hallway that I come from with orders in their heads. Some shuffle from one table to the next, and others bark out commands to the men and women seamstresses at the pedestals.
The Corps girls got to take a look at their dresses earlier, though they won't be seeing them again until rehearsals start at the Met. Still, the costumes make everything the slightest bit more real, and a glance at one of the dresses and veils of the Wilis has chills racing down my spine.
"Miss Barrow," Elara acknowledges, coming up towards me from an edge of the room. She and Blonos are overseeing things for the day. "Right over there," she says, pointing towards the pedestal near where one glass wall meets the other.
I nod, happy to drop my bag near one of the tables. It's a peculiar sight to look at the other Principals standing proudly in their bras, underwear, and tights in front of ten-foot-tall windows, but I remind myself that they're tinted as I head towards the pedestal, hand already on one leotard strap.
But Elara's cold hand touches my shoulder, and I look over it and into her cool eyes.
"Yes?"
"I didn't know that your sister was a seamstress, Miss Barrow."
I scrunch my brows at the remark. "Why would—"
And then my head's flying the other way, back towards the pedestal.
My lips part at the sight of achingly familiar vivid red hair. Then comes a full, tan face that has never looked much like my own and bright eyes all too similar to mine.
On this fine Friday evening, Gisa Barrow stands next to my own pedestal, dress in one hand, thread in the other. She wears a pair of black-and-white checkered pants that I know she made herself, along with a lilac blouse that makes her look older than fourteen. Her dress boots—still without heels, because Mom thinks that both of her daughters are too young for that—are black and sleek.
"Hi, Mare," she calls across the room in her usual sweet tone, as though she's greeting me at home.
I blink over and over again as I try so desperately to take in my sister.
It's been a little over two months, and somehow, she looks older. It might just be the clothes, but I couldn't be certain. Dumbly, I note as Elara's hand withdraws from my shoulder, Gee's wrist must be all better.
My next steps are tentative, but they speed up a little with the small smile my sister gives me.
If she's here, then that means that she knows, at least to some extent, what I've been doing all this time.
Before I know it, I've crossed the distance between us until no more than three feet separate us. The rest of the room continues on with its business even as I feel frozen.
If she had any idea of what to say before, Gee's words have since left her.
Meanwhile, I try and fail to decide what to say.
My sister looks at me helplessly. "I missed you," she finally says, forcing her eyes to lock with mine.
"I missed you too." The words fall from my mouth.
She raises her brows. "Get on the pedestal. You have some explaining to do."
Too busy listening to Gisa and explaining myself, I hardly have time to notice the details of my dresses.
The first one, for Act One, cuts off to just below my knees. It has a tan-colored skirt and a rosy bodice with short puffy white sleeves. It's the dress of a peasant girl. The second one, for Act Two, is the dress of a dead girl.
The whitish-silvery dress of a Wili is made up of layers of near-transparent fabric that extend to my mid-calf, the hem cut into jagged little triangles. The bodice is white with glittery threads etched through it. The neckline cuts low to reveal my collarbones, stopping just before my breasts, and invisible plastic straps hold the ensemble up. Ghostlike frilly cuffs grace my upper arms, and at any moment, I expect my sister to throw a veil over my head.
Along with my cream-pink tights and pointe shoes, I look the pristine picture of a phantom ballerina.
My sister herself didn't sew my dress. One of the older women at her company did, but today, she's in charge of making any needed modifications to it.
I'm not sure if the one time that her sewing needle went into my side was an accident.
The shock of her being here is something that continues to arrest me in place, even as I feel a giddiness in seeing my sister. I watch her reflection through the window, taking in the minor details of her face as she works on my dress. My shoulders have since relaxed from their tense state upon seeing her, and my uneasy stomach has since settled. I still don't know what to feel.
"We thought you'd come back sooner," she says, coming down from a long back-and-forth that has involved too many explanations, stories, and apologies. Gisa's crouched on the floor to examine my hem once more. "I mean, we appreciate the money, obviously—we need the money—but we thought you'd come back."
It turns out that my family has known all along exactly where I've been. After I sent that first envelope of crisp hundred dollar bills, they realized that my note hadn't been a joke, and they ended up doing some research. It didn't take long to find the news that I've been stirring up these past weeks.
I joined the Corps of a professional ballet company, and it was apparent enough that I had an apartment of my own in Midtown. I was safe, so they let me be. When I became a Principal, and the news was announced on the Academy's website and social media pages, then Mom and Dad started to feel really guilty, at last understanding that they had unwittingly raised a prodigy. They still decided to give me my space, knowing that six weeks wasn't much compared to the years they silently shook their heads at my dreams.
Mom and Dad figured that I'd come around eventually and return home when I was ready to forgive the things they said.
At Gisa's feet rests a big gift bag with polka dots on it. Mom's neat, concise handwriting spells out my name on its outside, and tissue paper explodes from the inside. Though Gee hasn't offered it to me yet, I can only imagine the things that are inside. My best guess would include some homemade cookies, whatever I forgot back at home, old photos, and a letter that's going to be too long.
It's some kind of care package begging for me to come home.
The news about the gala sent them into panicked fits. The only reason that Mom didn't march down to Wall Street that night was because she didn't hear about the news until the next morning, when it was announced that none of the Academy's dancers, save for Ptolemus, had been injured in any way. Gisa was the one who convinced her that if I needed to come home, I would.
"I guess I get it, though. It must be easy to forget about East Harlem when you have all of this."
She's talking about the view, the things that I get to do every day, the people I'm around, the place where I live. She's talking about everything.
"That's not true, Gee," I mutter. Both of us are careful to keep our voices down so that none of my coworkers hear our drama, but it hardly matters. Orders are being fired off a thousand shots per minute, and a New York radio station plays from a speaker somewhere.
"Well, it's either that or you still haven't forgiven them."
I sigh, knowing that really, she's not wrong about either.
It's easy to be here.
Here, I have the Academy instructors and Maven and Cal to nurture me for what I am. Here, I'm respected for what I am. Here, they give me the occasional applause.
Mom and Dad only ever tried to turn me away from ballet. I wish it didn't, but it hurts to know that all it took was a six-figure paycheck to convince them otherwise.
So yes. I've fallen into a lifestyle of dancing in Midtown and spending my evenings in the peaceful quiet of my apartment. I don't have to face the slums of East Harlem, nor do I have to face the two people that have spent my entire life subtly telling me that I should move on from ballet.
"Imagine if they had told you that sewing was a waste of time right after you had gotten your apprenticeship," I reason with her, crossing my arms. "That's what it felt like. It hurt."
Gisa pauses, her fingers at the hem. I haven't even had the chance to ask about her wrist, though I have to think that she's had her cast off for a couple of weeks.
She's known I've been here for two months, but the fact that the Calores hired her rising company to commission new costumes for Giselle was only serendipity. I have yet to hear the full story of how all of this came about, but Gee pounced at the chance to come here when she was first asked two weeks ago. This plot to see me has been in the works ever since. The final step came half an hour ago when she walked up to Elara, and telling her that she was Mare Barrow's sister, asked if she could be assigned to me.
"I know," she mutters, even though she doesn't. Gisa has never known our parents' disapproval. She has only ever known their love and support. Nothing else.
"Look," Gisa says. "Mom just wants to talk to you."
Guilt hits me hard. I feel selfish for falling in love with having a bathroom all to myself and being away from the mess that is the other half of my life. After how Shade left, I should never have pulled something like what I did, not even deigning to smack a return address on my money-filled envelopes.
Becoming a Scarlet Street Fighter was a weak excuse for staying away.
I should have never left the way that I did. I'd be mad if I were Mom and Dad.
I still find myself to be incredibly mad some days.
I've barely absorbed the confusion of seeing my sister in the flesh, rather than in some sleeping-pill-induced nightmare that also involved Cal and Farley in my bedroom.
Mom just wants to talk to me.
Just Mom wants to talk to me.
Gisa's words imply enough. Dad's not ready to talk to me, knowing that he shoulders more blame than Mom. My chest begins to ache when I remember what he said and what I said in return. He hasn't seen me dance in five years.
"Let's go out after this. I'll take you out to eat wherever you want, and then we can do whatever else you want," I say, sighing. "We'll call Mom."
We have a lot to catch up on.