You in Five Acts(5)
It never got old: the theaters rising up out of the square like mid-century modern monoliths; the twinkling lights, like distant stars; the water that leapt tirelessly behind us even when temperatures dropped below freezing; the tourists crossing back and forth, arguing in foreign tongues, snapping pictures of our city; the dancers we could sometimes spot with their telltale duffle bags and muscular calves, walking quickly with spines so straight they could balance plates on their heads. It felt like the center of the universe, especially with those tiles that radiated out to the edges of the square, drawing paths to the door of each theater, fifty feet and a million dreams away. The future seemed tangible and invisible all at once back then, like a specter, like a promise. Like seeing your breath on a cold day.
There one second, and then—gone.
Chapter Two
January 6
127 days left
I LOCKED EYES with myself in the mirror, scanning my features for signs of tension. Another thing Ms. Adair was always telling me was that my face hardened when I danced. “Make it look joyful, Joy,” she would say with an audible smirk, and it was all I could do not to rise up en pointe and give her a joyful double finger.
While the professional ballet track had its moments of rapture, it was anything but easy. As my parents liked to remind me, it was essentially a full-time job exempt from child-labor laws: four hours of intensive classes every morning, followed by afternoon academics, followed by another two hours of rehearsal and conditioning, followed by homework, followed by stretching, alternating applications of ice and heat, and then, finally sleep—which was the only part of the routine that was optional. Add to that sore muscles, bruises, tendonitis, bunions, blisters, rubbed-off skin, black toenails, aching feet covered in callouses, and you had a recipe for exhaustion, fierce drive and competition, and sometimes flat-out resentment.
But Ms. Adair was right: ballet was about appearances—people wanted to see the sleek swan floating on the lake, not the crazy paddling beneath the surface. The hard part wasn’t supposed to show, and my expression gave me away every time. When left to their own devices, my eyebrows knit together, my lips thinned out, my nostrils flared. I looked like I was trying to move something with my mind, or solve an advanced calculus problem. But it seemed impossible not to tense up when the whole point of ballet was being in control—I never understood how anyone could expect the real estate above my neck to look all slaphappy when I was concentrating so intently on keeping everything below positioned perfectly. I shook out my muscles and did a few warm-up plié relevés, forcing a wide smile on every exhale. (Ms. Adair also liked to tell me that smiling, even when I didn’t feel like it, could stimulate feelings of elation. So far, it wasn’t working.)
“OK, you look insane.”
I hadn’t even noticed you walk over, but suddenly there you were in the mirror, leaning against the wall behind me in your warm-up sweats and JANUS FOOTBALL ringer T-shirt (which was ironic since our school had no organized sports unless you counted the tap elective). You broke into a grin that slowly morphed into a cartoonish grimace, like something you’d see on a deranged clown.
“That supposed to be me?” I spun around, my arms crossing into say-that-to-my-face position. Somewhere nearby I heard girls giggling, but I couldn’t tell if it was at me or for you. Either way, you didn’t seem to notice.
“You just don’t have to try so hard,” you said. “Don’t think about your face, I can tell it’s psyching you out.” I pursed my lips and looked around the room I had been intentionally turning my back on for the past ten minutes. It was warm and stuffy from so many bodies in motion. All around the barre, which spanned three walls, girls—and the few and far between boys—were stretching, practicing, whispering excitedly as they massaged their legs and stretched their feet and wrestled their pointe shoes into submission. None of them had to dye their ribbons and straps to match their skin tone. They didn’t have to specialty-order mocha-colored tights online because none of the dance supply companies considered “brown” a variation on “nude.” You were right; I didn’t have to try so hard. I had to try twice as hard, every day, just to get half as far.
When I was ten, my mom had clipped an article from the New York Times that still clung to our refrigerator, held up by two novelty magnets from our family trip to the Grand Canyon. Where are all the black swans? the headline asked. I swallowed hard, looked back at you, and practiced my fake smile. Wherever they were, they weren’t in the room with me. I was paddling all by myself.
The accompanist, Mr. Stratechuck, started warming up at the piano then, banging out an off-key version of the overture from La Sylphide, which drowned out the nervous chatter. Every single senior ballet major was gunning for the same coveted Showcase solos. Janus was the kind of place that only took students who were already the best in their classes. “Look left and look right,” Ms. Adair had told us on the first day of orientation. “The days of being teacher’s pet are over. Now you really have something to prove.”
“Hey, zombie.” Your voice swam up through the clang of piano keys and I realized that I’d forgotten you were there, for the second time in as many minutes.
“Sorry,” I said, unconvincingly—because I wasn’t. “I’m just trying to relax.”
“You better.” You leaned in and gripped my arms, the corners of your mouth curled in a teasing smile. “’Cause if I end up with Lollipop in the pas de deux, I’ll never forgive you.”