Done.
Sighing, I tap my keyboard one last time and tack a period onto my sentence.
I recline in my chair, tired eyes peering away from my screen and out through a window. Two-or-so miles north, the Empire State Building glistens in its dusky glory.
My second essay for Julian was on twentieth-century labor movements. I was supposed to look for parallels between different movements, address the connections between civil rights activism and labor rights, and explain the decline of unions in the latter half of the century.
My fingers shake.
Through my faux glasses, I regard the stack of books beside my laptop.
My AirPods rest in my ears, but no music plays. Cal's eighties rock was a bit too much for a five-page research paper. Hushed conversations, the turning of book pages, and the scribbling of pens reverberate around me. Behind me, tall panes of glass decorated with golden decal look out before ten floors of staircases and book stacks.
I regard the coffee that I walked out to buy God knows how long ago. The liquid sits at the bottom of my stomach now. Cal would be mad. I haven't eaten since he fed me.
My fingers shake.
The library room that I'm in is pretty, just how library rooms are supposed to be. The tables are made of deep mahogany wood, and big, elegant bookshelves with book spines of every color grace the edges of my vision. My wooden rolling chair dons a royal blue cushion. Reading lamps wear purple shades.
With nothing left to do or distract me, my fingers shake.
The motion of typing kept me away from the dark, sad parts of my head.
Dad threw me out of our apartment.
I pinch my lips together as I try to swallow back the flavor of lukewarm coffee on my tongue. Another glance at my watch tells me that I've long since missed technique class. Blonos must be livid. Elara and Anabel pulled me out of the Academy yesterday just to take me shopping, and now I'm missing a second day of class for no reason at all.
Nighttime has descended over Manhattan, and I still haven't called my boyfriend.
He called me twice. The first call came ten minutes before class was slated to start at one o'clock. The second call came at two-thirty. I haven't bothered opening the voicemails. A text followed later.
Just let me know you're okay.
I pinch my eyes shut. He's so sweet. So good to me.
But if I text him back, then he'll call me. And then I'll break down on the phone.
Dad threw me out of our apartment.
My skin prickles. My stomach feels hollow. My head feels heavy.
I told Gisa not to call me. She hasn't. Neither has anybody else in my family.
But Dad says they're not my family anymore.
I smile bitterly to myself.
Midtown beckons, pulling me back to the Academy. Back to the Calores.
A wave of sickness washes through me.
Dad said that the Calores don't care about me, that they'll throw me from their glass tower the day I hurt myself. I don't have money or notoriety. Ballet dancing is all I'm good for.
I shouldn't have skipped technique today.
If ballet dancing is all I'm good for, I better be pretty damn good at it. My legs feel heavy again, like all of the muscles in them are tightening up, weakening from taking a day off. I never take a day off. It's all in my head, but it doesn't stop me from imagining.
My money would dry up a matter of weeks after I stopped dancing. I'd have to go back to the streets. The fact that I don't have a high school diploma hasn't changed. There's no other job I could get in this city that wouldn't suck the life out of me. I couldn't go back to my family. I wouldn't be worth anything to the Scarlet Street Fighters either. Staying with Shade would be humiliating.
Evangeline would love to see me like this.
She barely knows me, but she knows how to hit what hurts. I remember how she mocked me all of those weeks ago, just before she ran her car into a block of cement.
Because no matter how many fouettés I can do, Evangeline will always be the one who's spent her days going to high society parties with the Calores. She'll always be the one with Volo Samos as a father, however much she despises him. She'll always be the one who dances with Cal.
My hand graces over the side of my knee, feeling the tendons that hold my leg together. I swallow. Yup. One bad leap or one misplaced step would rip it right apart.
Evangeline would love to see me fall.
Numbly, I close the lid of my laptop and return it to my backpack. I glance around the big room at the college kids sucked into their books and screens. They mind their own business, even as the gears of my world grind to a halt.
I sigh as I push myself out of my chair, heft my backpack over my shoulders, and toss away my coffee cup. I collect the stack of books I've pulled from various floors, readying my weakened legs to make the long trek around the library to return them.
I glance at my watch again.
Cal hasn't texted me. We had pushed back our lesson a day for the Plaza party last night. I was hoping that my contemporary teacher would get the memo and let me off the hook for tonight.
He wouldn't be angry with me for asking to move back our lesson another day.
My fingertips pause at the top of my stack. The phantom feeling of Cal's hands on my hips still lingers. The delirium-induced and aching attraction I felt for Cal last night is gone, at least.
But some other feeling lingers along with his phantom touch.
I push the feeling down, down, down.
I'm still tired. I'm still imagining things.
I push it down until it's buried, until it has no chance of resurfacing during my lesson with my contemporary teacher.
Gingerly, I push open the backstage door, letting it click softly behind me.
I put on a pair of joggers and a pale rosy-colored tank back in my apartment. I stretched a little. I forced myself to eat a banana and two fried eggs. The pit in my stomach recoiled at the food.
My shadow dances with those of the hulking curtains as I tread along the stage wing. It'll be fine. I'll just tell Cal that my dad gave me a good yelling at and has no intention of ever liking Maven Calore. I'll tell him that Dad doesn't want to meet Maven. I'll tell Cal that anything else that happened is none of his business, and then we'll get on with our lesson.
I turn at the second curtain, trailing the fingers of my right hand along the thick, velvety fabric.
The bun at the nape of my neck only adds to my menace of a headache. It's ballerina-tight, hairs stretching between the bun and my scalp. I usually just wear a ponytail to my lessons with Cal, but the stiff bun makes it easy to pretend like it's my hair that's causing all of my problems.
Cal's folding chair isn't in the same place as it usually is.
He usually has it positioned near the front corner of the stage, opposite where I always come in. He doesn't typically sit on it when I get here. Cal just always has his back propped up against it, not that it could be terribly comfortable. I always have to walk across the diagonal of the stage to sit down beside him.
Not knowing what to do, I pause between the curtains.
My contemporary teacher sits on his chair downstage. He faces our imaginary audience, his notebook balanced on his crossed leg. Cal wears his usual black T-shirt, but plain black sweatpants and a red-and-black hooded flannel throw me off. He has his Mets cap on backward.
An AirPod sticks out of Cal's left ear. I can't see his right. He nods his head up and down, writing choreography notes with a plain No. 2 pencil.
Cal looks displeased. His brows are closer together, and he wears a frown. He looks like he's trying to choreograph himself out of whatever he feels.
In a sleek movement, he gets up from his chair, tosses his notebook to his feet. Time seems to slow as I watch my contemporary teacher start his way one, two steps upstage, solemnly nodding his head.
Cal does a double-take when he sees me standing mutely in the wing.
Feeling like I interrupted something, I flinch.
Cal sees the little spasm.
He fully turns to face me. I couldn't be more than a minute late, but he's surprised that I'm here. The displeasure doesn't leave his face like I expect it to, and the crease between his eyebrows deepens.
"Hey."
Somehow, I've already ruined it. My single clipped syllable sounds fine, but my wide eyes and everything else give me away.
Cal sees it. He sees me.
"Hey," he returns. My toes curl in my black socks. "How are you?"
Cal puts his hands on his hips. Maybe he doesn't know what else to do with them as he takes a couple of slow, prowling steps towards me. If I didn't know that he was such a gentleman, I'd say that he looks like a predator.
He stops three or four feet from me, bracing his palm against the stage rafter that stretches up into the air. "Mare?"
I blink, realizing that I forgot to answer his question.
"Oh. I'm fine. You?"
Cal returns my blinks. He ignores my question.
"How did seeing your dad go?"
My eyes flit to the horizon of Cal's left shoulder, where flannel vanishes into stage shadows. It's not fair. I asked him a question. If I didn't think it would make me sound defensive, I would tell him that much.
"Fine," I say. I forget all of the practiced lines that I rehearsed on my way here. I'm going to need the same ones for Maven and Blonos.
Half-truths. I'm supposed to tell Cal half-truths.
"Yeah?"
Lying to Cal feels like drinking acid. And drinking acid is really, really hard.
I force a faint smile to my lips.
"I mean, it was as bad as I thought it would be." I swallow, the acid burning and scarring my throat. "He was mad. He—he doesn't want to meet Maven. I didn't think he would want to. We went back and forth for a while, but you know, we're both—both stubborn like that."
I pause, letting my words churn in my stomach.
"We just agreed that I'll see my family at home and Maven in Midtown. For now. Then I spent the rest of the day with Shade. I just, um, couldn't be here today. And I'm so tired."
Everything sounds so scripted.
But I can't manage anything more when Dad's words are still echoing in my eardrums, drowning out every lucid thought. Acid stings in my eyes, dances on my eyelashes.
I can't go home.
Mom and Dad hate everything that I am. Everything that I've become.
My feet and my pointe shoes are holding my life together.
I watch as Cal's shoulders rise and fall. He just stands there, letting me lie to him. Waiting for me to say more.
My body isn't listening to me. It doesn't understand that I can't act like this around Cal. I can't be weak. But it's fine. We're in the shadows. Tears are just stinging in my eyes. I'm not crying.
"You know," I start slowly, carefully. If I go faster, my voice will crack. "Maybe you should give me a raincheck. I can do tomorrow. Or we could have a longer lesson this weekend. I'll do as many push-ups as you—"
Want.
But I forget to breathe, and my lying voice dies off with a snap.
Cal lets silence envelop us for a moment.
"I'll give you a rain check, Mare." Cal's voice is gentle but low. "If you can say all of that again and look me in the eyes."
It's such a Cal thing to say. At the same moment, as I'm trying to catch my breath, get myself under control, the acid breaks loose of my lashes. I realize that I've been staring at his shoulder, not letting myself blink.
One blink sends it all racing down my face.
I manage to wrestle control of my body, turning around myself, back towards the wing, back to the door. It's not like he can actually punish me.
"I'm taking the rain check, Cal."
My voice sounds tight and muddled.
I get back to the other side of the curtains, cut a sharp left for the door.
"You're crying."
Cal's voice echoes through the theatre, the words ricocheting against my bones. His footsteps, gently but quickly padding across the wood, follow his voice.
"What?" I push open the heavy stage door, throwing my hip into it. "No. I'm just tired, Cal."
"Well, then you won't have a problem coming back here for a minute, Mare."
I don't listen to my contemporary teacher.
I slip through the door, heading straight for the stairs.
A flight below me, Cal's steps follow me up the stairs.
I don't know where this ends. I could make it all the way up to my apartment, lock my door, and Cal would still be pounding on it. He doesn't chase me. He just follows me, never trying to gain on me.
"Blonos was pretty pissed today," Cal tells me, calling up. "She asked my brother where you were. He just had to say that you had a family emergency. I'm guessing you haven't talked to him. But if you come back here, I'll talk to Blonos with you. Mare."
What an incessant imp.
Cal's offer is tempting, but it's not worth him seeing my tears.
I usually go up to the third floor before taking a hallway to catch the main elevator. But my numbed mind just keeps turning me around the stairwell. I don't need Cal to follow me down a stretch of empty hallway.
My heart pounds in time with my panicked breaths.
Flying down and around my apartment stairwell this morning was so much easier than whatever this is. The weight of reality has since had time to sink into my skull.
She doesn't need to come home.
Ballet dancing is all that she's good for.
My legs are heavy and my head is light. I breathe hard, though I'm not sure if it's the stairs or my messed-up head that makes me pant. It was just yesterday that Cal caught me in the Plaza's penthouse, where I fell on my back against a flight of stairs before running up them and throwing a door closed behind me.
I don't know what's wrong with my body. It's tired, and my mind can't fight it.
"Talk to me, Mare."
He keeps saying my name. I hate how safe it makes me feel.
They'll throw her out of their glass tower the day she tears something in her knee or breaks her ankle.
My body breaks, forcing the words from my mouth.
"Stop," I shriek, pleading. The single syllable contains all sorts of whimpering pitches.
The plains of my cheeks are drenched with saltwater. My lips quiver, hardly holding in the sounds of my sobs. I can't breathe and hold myself together at the same time.
"Stop," I hiss a second time.
I heave myself to the top of the landing. The old brick walls are painted over with cream-colored lacquer, and the stairs are made of bare cement. The guts of the Academy aren't pretty like the halls or the studios.
"You don't need to hear about it, Cal, because you can't fix it," I cry, sealing my mouth with a hand the moment the words tumble from my lips. My body trembles as I stumble to the wall furthest from the stairs that I came from.
He needs to leave me alone.
He needs to go back down the stairs.
"But I want to hear about it," he returns softly. The edge is gone from his voice, and his footsteps have stopped. Cal's on the landing below me. "How bad was it?"
I press my forehead to the cool cement. My skull pulses, pounding with my heartbeat.
It was horrifying. I don't even know if my dad loves me anymore. My dad threw me out of our apartment. My family hates everything that I am.
"Let me come up? Please?"
He makes my knees weak.
I won't accomplish anything if Cal comes up. I'll just embarrass myself. Cal will see how much of a trainwreck I am. He's just my contemporary teacher, just my boyfriend's brother. We don't even know each other that well.
"You don't need to come up," I argue feebly. "I just—just need to sleep."
I just need to call Maven, tell him a toned-down version of everything that happened today. He doesn't need to know about how Dad threw me out, how he said that the Calores will throw me away the day I break something in me. I squeeze my eyes shut, pressing each of my palms into the cement.
"I know," Cal says. "I'm tired too. But I want to know that you're okay first."
"I'm okay," I stammer, hardly selling what Cal wants to hear. "I'll be great—great once I go to bed."
My hand goes to cover my mouth again.
"Mare—"
"You can't see me like this," I clamor. I sound crazed. Like I've lost it. I don't understand why he so desperately cares, why he can't just back off. He's just my contemporary teacher, just my boyfriend's brother.
I watch the wall, tracing where old paint bumps up or peels away between bricks. When Cal doesn't say anything, I peel my eyes away from the wall, turn my head over my shoulder, and look down the stairwell. I don't see Cal's shadow. The old wooden staircase railings shimmer a little too much, and no cobwebs gather in the corners of the walls. The air that I've cleaved between us smells oddly fresh, like a field of wildflowers in the summer. Not that I've ever been in a field of wildflowers.
The maids even clean the guts of the Academy on a regular basis.
Cal still doesn't say anything.
My chest shakes with pent-up cries that fight to get out of my lungs and into the hollow stairwell. If I had worn mascara today, my cheeks would be an inky black watercolor painting. Goosebumps pop up across my bare arms. I miss the hot white light of the stage.
More or less seizing, I just stand at the far end of the platform, perhaps on the sixth or seventh floor of the Academy. I lost track of how many flights I climbed. Just one more will take me to another corridor where I can catch the elevator. I should take advantage of the silence, hop up the stairs while I can.
But before I can move one shaking limb, the dull yellow lights above me cut out, shriveling into darkness.
My tear-laden lashes blink, adjusting to the shadows that the—
The lights in the stairwells above and below me cut out a moment later, leaving only the electric red of an EXIT sign glittering in the stair landing below me.
Cal's footfalls, quicker than before, echo below. I feel him pause where he stopped before.
"Can I come up now? Please?"
There's something about that last word that attacks the tendons in my knees, makes them wobble.
I still blink furiously. "What?"
I hate how weak my voice is.
"You said that I can't see you. So I turned off the lights. Can I come up now?"
Totally enveloped in darkness, I let myself nod. Over and over again. I wish it was enough to let him know what I want, but he can't see me. My throat starts to close up, but I don't let myself gasp for air.
Helpless, I listen to Cal's even steps up the last stairs.
"It's just me," he says quietly. "You're not supposed to hide from me like that, Mare."
I feel him get closer, up the final step. I'm not sure whether I imagine his tall figure at the top of the steps or if I can really see the faint outline of him.
Whether or not he can see me doesn't matter. Cal can hear my breathing well enough.
"You can come up," I murmur quickly between sobs. It might be belated, but it gives Cal the permission he needs.
The closer Cal gets, the more I start to lose it.
The more he breaks me without even trying.
I might really be imagining things, but I swear I feel the warmth of Cal's body. I swear he puts an arm out on either side of me, effectively pinning me against the wall.
"If I could fix it, I would," he says. "And I would spend a lot of time trying to fix it, too."
His hands don't fumble as they land on my hips, shifting up towards my back. Cal gets closer, resting his chin on my head, his flannel ticking my arms.
Cal hugs me, wrapping his big arms around my waist. My cheek finds a home against his chest, the rest of my body pressed up against his.
My body wins, and I completely lose it.