A Lily in the Light(55)
“Am I coming home this time?” she asked.
Esme did not stop to look because Lily was never there. She spiked through the choreography, playing the music in her head, turning it up to drown out Lily, ashamed of herself for imagining Lily now, of using her sister to find the feeling Adam needed her to.
“Did they find me?” she asked again and again.
She was charged now. There was no darkness. She finished the set and did it again until she was sweating and her heart was pounding in her chest, and she pushed back a scream. She wiped her face with the backs of her hands and turned on the light, flooding the studio until she was sure she was alone.
“No,” Esme whispered to no one. “You’re still gone.”
She gathered her stuff and counted down the list of things to do before the show, before she’d have to think about the girl in the basement again. Alone in the studio, she was exorbitantly grateful for the world she’d stumbled into, for not stopping the clocks but pushing them forward instead.
Chapter Fourteen
That night, there was a fire backstage. It started in a trash can and caught a dressing robe on the moveable rack. The girls threw water over it until it went out. It ruined a box of pointe shoes but didn’t catch the costume rack with seventeen tutus or ignite the cloud of hair spray that blanketed the room. Aside from the pointe shoes, the smell of burnt plastic, and a smoke smudge on the ceiling, it was over quickly. But it felt like an omen.
The smoke smudge looked like a crow and made Esme uneasy. She threw a wet paper towel at the ceiling. It stuck for a minute before dropping to the floor. The smudge stayed. The intercom in the dressing room crackled with static, but the message never came.
“Where would you go?” someone asked in the hallway, a passing conversation. She finished her makeup under the smoke stain and tapped her feet, hoping to shed the jitters.
No matter where she traveled, there was one family photograph she tucked inside the vanity mirror. It had been taken after her first Nutcracker as Clara. Esme had floated offstage, beaming and breathless, leaping into the wings while the audience cheered. They’d stood for her, a wave of faceless people rippling from front to back, a sea of clapping hands, until her cheeks had hurt from smiling. Her family had waited backstage, squished between costume racks. Her father had a bouquet of pink roses. Cerise had been wearing makeup and a floor-length black lace dress she’d made, a beautiful version of regular Mom. Lily had been on her hip in a red velvet dress, black beads swirling from belly to neck. She’d been staring at something in the distance, a dancer maybe, a costume. Her face had been flushed and sleepy. It was past her bedtime.
Madeline’s arm threaded through Esme’s, smiling brightly, suddenly proud to share her room. Her father and Nick blended into the dark wing. Nick already looked like Andre, with his chiseled jaw and dark eyes behind long lashes, a glimmer of the man he’d become. And Dad. He never smiled much, but he was smiling here, so much younger than Esme remembered. He’d cheered for her with his football voice, so loud she’d heard him onstage, chasing her dream with her, all five pieces of her family. Esme tapped the picture for good luck and kissed it gently in Lily’s place.
Esme’s hair is in a tight bun, held in place by an invisible net, perfectly in line with her cheekbone. Her eyebrows are drawn on, fake lashes in place, skin dusted with bronzer, pointe shoes stitched. She closes the door on her pointe shoes to soften the box and rubs them in rosin, thanking FG, her maker’s mark, an anonymous, faraway person who’s made her shoes for as long as Esme remembers. She’s ready. She will take all her feelings about the girl in the basement and make them part of the story. The intercom beeps. It’s time.
There are last-minute instructions. Esme listens, but she’s thinking about the girl. If it’s Lily, is there any of the old Lily in the new? There’s so much of little Esme in her tonight. For as much as she’s stayed away from her family, she hasn’t really moved on, not really, not when she carries so much of them with her. The thought is comforting. Adam catches her eye and smiles. Her skin tingles with the thought of his touch. She shivers a little under his gaze and wonders why she’s never noticed it before. She shakes the thought away. Tonight. She focuses on tonight, on the Waltz Girl.
Esme finds her tape mark on the floor. The audience is restless. It’s a small show, a small theater. All of the audience sounds are magnified. The lights have not dimmed yet. Behind the curtain, they’re chattering and finding seats, rustling ice in glasses, scrolling programs, listening for seventeen pairs of pointe shoes to thud into place. She is the center point of the diamond. She inhales, and her costume stretches with her skin. The stage smells of deodorant, powdery and soft. Nervous sweat. The line of light disappears under the curtain before it rolls away. Stage lights are as blinding as old stars. The heat and Tchaikovsky’s long strings and the dark mass of cantaloupe heads moving and shuffling programs while Adam watches in the wing feel like breathing.
Esme reaches for the light on cue, shielding her eyes from the glow with every dancer onstage. She loves this part, even though it still reminds her of that day with Amelia when she saw Serenade for the first time, her hands bathed in blue light, and realized Lily was not coming home. Now she is on the other side of the audience, and all the dancers are the same, equal, their movements in sync. We all come from the same place, Esme thinks, finding a story in choreography that isn’t meant to have one. We write our own journey. She’s always written her own journey.