Tiny Pretty Things (13 page)

She smiles back, but I know she doesn’t quite buy it. She needs to focus on girls like Liz. She’s the one who’s severely underweight. I kind of want to say that, but I know it’ll only make me look guilty. She rests her hands on the tape measures. I hear my heartbeat echo in my ears.
They’re coming down.

“Well,” she says, “I’d like to see you back up to a hundred and four in two weeks, with a goal to get as close to a hundred and ten as possible. And I want to see you at the cafeteria each evening. I will look for you myself, and the resident advisers will be informed, too, and make sure you’re eating a proper, balanced meal.” Suddenly her voice is ice. “Because, E-Jun, you know this is very serious. You’re sixteen now. And you know the rules. From now on it’s one strike and you’re out. There are no more second chances.”

I do my best to maintain that sweet smile, but I can feel it slipping. My heart threatens to leap from my chest. She’s not on my side. Not any of ours. She’ll report us, and start the paperwork to send us home. She’ll get the guidance counselor involved and then Mr. K. She doesn’t care what it means to be a dancer. What sacrifices it takes. And she knows that Mr. K will easily let me go. That I’m nothing. I can be replaced. Girls are a dime a dozen in ballet—not like the boys who are treated like princes. Another girl will be plucked from some audition somewhere.

“Sure.” I move to grab my bag. “I know. One hundred and three. Next week.”

“One hundred and four,” she reminds me sternly. “And if you can’t, we’ll have to just schedule a bone density scan.”

“I don’t need one of those,” I say, the smile disappearing from my face.

“It’ll tell us exactly what you need, actually. And find all the things my scales miss.”

I chew the inside of my mouth and don’t know what to do. Say something else. Turn around and walk out. Lunge at her. Cry. Last year, one of the Level 6 girls got a bone scan, and it showed all her little secrets: how little food she ate, how she didn’t get her period anymore, how many stress fractures she’d danced through just to keep her roles. They sent her back home after that. To Texas.

“I’ll ask my mother if I need one,” I manage to get out.

“No need. I have her medical waiver. That’s enough for us to order one if we need to. I am here to take care of all the dancers, to do what’s best for them, so they can be strong and healthy onstage.”

I try not to breath too hard. I want to call her a liar.

“Oh, and Gigi’s your roommate, right?” she asks, like she hasn’t just said something that could potentially ruin my entire life.

“Yes,” I say, a little harsher than I meant to. I don’t want to be
Gigi’s
roommate. I was here before her. She should be
June’s
roommate.
June,
the girl who’s been at the school for ten years.

“You headed up to your room now?” she says.

“Yes,” I say, cautious, unsure of what she wants.

“Tell Gigi to come down and see me please. If she’s up there. I have something for her.” She taps
the top of a messy pile of sealed envelopes. One has Gigi’s name printed on it.

“Okay,” I say. She goes into the interior office without saying good-bye. I know she’s done with me. I pluck the envelope from the stack. There are so many envelopes here, she won’t miss this one. She’ll think she’s misplaced it, and print out another copy of whatever it is. I thumb it between my fingers wondering what’s inside. Even if it’s nothing, it’s still good to know everything. Or maybe it’s something that’ll keep her from dancing. After all, injuries are the reasons for understudies. I rearrange the rest of the envelopes and slip out the door, my prize in hand.

I leave the office, hiding a smile, excited to return to my room for some light reading. I’ll just take a peek. No one will ever know.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

“
WE NEED TO PRACTICE OUR
grand
pas
,” Alec says after rehearsal is officially over tonight. “I need to get our lifts just right.”

He takes my hand and leads me out of the rehearsal space to studio F across the hall. I feel Bette’s gaze on my back, but ignore it. I’m not doing anything wrong. We do have to practice. He closes the door behind us. Not that it could hide us in here behind all this glass. Right away he goes to the barre and takes hold of it. I stand behind him, admiring the muscles in his legs and how broad his shoulders are. I’ve never wondered about what a boy might look like undressed I’ve never considered what little details I might be missing, given all I already see of their bodies.

“Let’s warm up again,” he says. “Then practice the lift. You up for it?”

I nod, and drop my bag against the wall, ignoring the mess that spills out of it. I don’t bother putting on pointe shoes, instead just slide off the squishy mukluk slippers Mama sent me from her trip to New Mexico, and walk barefoot to him. We stretch our legs onto the barre. My limbs feel twitchy being so close to him. When my parents and aunt moved me into the dorms, Alec was the first one to introduce himself. Marched right up with a smile and welcomed me to the conservatory. And every day after that he’d check on me, asking me how my day was and how I was adjusting,
always ready to give me little tips here and there. He’s the one who told me that June’s frowning isn’t about her not liking me, that it’s just the way her face is. I chuckle at the memory. Alec gives me a what’s-so-funny look.

“Nothing,” I say, pushing deeper into the stretch.

“Did you always dance?” he asks.

“Yeah, pretty much,” I say, leaning to the right, feeling the stretch up my side. “You?”

He follows my pattern. “My whole life. My dad danced here. The great Dominic Lucas,” he mimics Mr. K’s thick Russian accent.

“Oh, right,” I say, feeling a little stupid for not remembering that. “I always forget Mr. Lucas is your dad. That must be . . . amazing.”

“My sister and I like to forget,” he says with a sad smile. “He doesn’t act like much of a dad. Or much of a husband for that matter.”

I don’t know what to say, so I just let my hand find his back, and stroke the spine in a few long, careful brushes.

“I’m sorry,” I say at last. “I didn’t know.”

He smiles back at me, and then guides my body to switch sides with his. I gaze around the room. We’re alone, but it makes me feel strange. Seasick. I try to snap out of it. This is what I wanted, right? And I’m getting it.

“Can you help me stretch my leg?” I ask, not really needing him to, but wanting him to touch me.

“Yeah.” He moves closer. I place my leg on the barre, then he lifts it gently off until it’s above my head. I look up at my foot. My hip loosens and I feel a satisfying pull.

“That feel okay?” he asks.

I nod, feeling each one of his words land on my cheek. I want him to kiss me. I shouldn’t have a crush on him. Even saying the word in my head makes me blush. He’s with Bette. We’re only dancing together. It’ll be all over after
The Nutcracker
performance. He lowers my leg, then I lift the other one for him. And he repeats the movement, pushing into me, his chest against my leg. He taps a beat along my thigh and I try not to laugh.

“Hey!” I say with a big smile.

He flashes his signature grin at me and puts my leg down. “Here, let me try a few of those lifts. Do you mind? I’m struggling with them.”

I almost ask him if I’m too heavy. But I bite my tongue. He’s used to dancing with Bette, who is smaller, wispier than me. I shake the thought off. I shouldn’t worry about something so foolish when my body is so strong and reliable. I need to focus on getting these lifts right, finding the right partner rhythm with him.
The Nutcracker
’s grand
pas de deux
is one of the most intricate and difficult partnering variations. The audience anticipates the dance between the Sugar Plum Fairy and her prince the entire ballet. I won’t let it be a disappointment.

We don’t do the lifts in the staged, practiced way we’re supposed to. We don’t mark our movements, the way our teachers showed us, then slowly slide into the dangerous positions. Instead,
Alec just grabs me by the waist, presses his thumbs into my back, and raises me sloppily into the air for a shoulder lift. It isn’t a sanctioned ballet move. It isn’t part of our choreography or anything we would ever rehearse in the pressure cooker of the ballet class. But I soar and he is strong beneath me. I throw my head back and let myself get lost in the cracks of the ceiling. My arms stretch behind me, my heart thumps, and Alec’s arm muscles twitch below me.

The way down is slippery and hot. He lowers me so that my body meets his, our torsos kissing. I am all tingles in my spine, my stomach, my heart. The beat pulses all over me, and I’m embarrassed. If he touches my skin, he’d feel it, and know how excited he makes me. We do the lift a few more times until his thumbprints are permanently indented in my back, and little raw blisters have started to form. I don’t let him see the pain as he slides me down for the last time.

I stand below him, my head still back so that I am lost in his eyes. And while I’m distracted by the way blue meets green meets black at the very edge of his pupils, he surprises me by touching my face. Letting his fingers linger along my cheek and down my neck, like he’s drawing shapes on my skin, leaving a burning a trail behind.

I want him to kiss me. I want to know what his mouth tastes like. I want to know how his tongue would feel. I inch back because standing there, framed by the glass panels, peering in, breath fogging the glass, is Eleanor.

I pull away from him.

“What’s wrong?” he says.

Eleanor disappears down the hall. I don’t say anything about her. “What about Bette?”

He scratches his head and shrugs.

I chew my bottom lip, and have to stop myself before I split the skin there again. “Aren’t you together?”

“We were always on and off. Hot and cold. Like in a cycle, sort of. One that’s off. But now”—he touches my cheek again—“I want something different. Like you.”

I hold his gaze as excitement flushes through me. I feel the cheek he’s touching grow warm, and I hope his use of the word
different
isn’t related to the color of my skin, and just that Bette and I have opposite personalities.

He cups the back of my neck, and wraps a loose curl around his finger. I try not to flinch, and fight the urge to not want him to touch my hair. What if it’s all sticky from the product I put in it? What if the curls feel rough to the touch, and not smooth and silky like Bette’s perfectly straight blond hair?

“I’m going to talk to her. Tell her it’s over. It kind of has been, these past few weeks.”

I fight away a smile. “How are we different, besides the obvious?” I rub a finger over my forearm to highlight the color.

“When I saw you helping one of the little girls with her first pair of pointe shoes, I knew,” he says. “I watched you outside of studio A.”

“Oh, Celine,” I say, remembering catching the little one, struggling to break in her first pair of
pointe shoes.

“You were late for class, and didn’t care.” His comment causes my cheeks to redden again. “Let me show you something.” He pulls me forward and out of the studio. We climb all ten flights up to the eleventh floor, and he won’t tell me why we were taking the stairs instead of the elevator. I work hard to keep my breathing calm and even. I’m nervous about him being so close to my room or, worse, Bette’s. We duck through the hallway exit door. There isn’t an RA doing surveying rounds yet. We slip past slightly open doors and the bathroom. He tugs me forward. I try not to laugh. I try not to get us caught. I hear only a few girls. Mostly everyone is getting a postrehearsal snack in the café. We go to the very end of the hall.

“Have you been to the Light yet?” he asks.

“The what?” I say.

“You haven’t then.” We step into a dark closet at the tail end of the hall. I always thought it was just a storage room. He pretends to fumble for the light switch, and rubs his hands along my neck and over my bun.

“Alec,” I say, not really wanting him to stop. He clicks on the light. The small space is collaged with pictures: Anna Pavlova, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev, and others. Quotes about ballet. Quotes about dance. Perfect bodies, perfect feet, perfect costumes. Conservatory graduates. Company members. Dancewear ads featuring up-and-coming primas. All white faces, startling as first snow. I try to suppress a sudden pang of homesickness, of wanting to belong somewhere.

“What is this?” I say.

“June didn’t tell you about this? It’s been here as long as the school’s been open. No one knows who started it.”

Of course she didn’t. She hasn’t been talking to me much at all lately. No matter how much I’ve been trying to connect with her. He tells me more as I run my fingers over the walls, trying to soak up each quote, studying each image.

I see my name and lift up on my tiptoes, but can’t reach. “Alec,” I say.

He comes up behind me. I feel his hips press against mine and it flushes me with warmth. There’s barely an inch between us. I can feel the warmth of his body through my leotard.