“Ballet is all I really want right now.”
It was Friday. The last time I remembered dancing was over a week ago. I could recall the combination we were working on, the music, every step. I remembered how my body felt. I felt like . . . one muscle. My arm and my ankle and my hip and my eyelid—all one, strung together taut and ready.
Everything would be okay if I could only get to dance.
I said goodbye to Diana and threw on my dance clothes as fast as I could. Something felt strange right away. Nothing I could point my finger at, but an allover oddness. I figured I was sore, but nothing actually hurt, apart from the pain in my wrist.
A feeling unfurled in my stomach. Something worse than nervousness, but maybe not quite panic. Not yet. I held my sore wrist close to my chest as if to protect it.
Aunt Jess seemed startled when I stumbled down the stairs, twisting my hair into a bun.
“You’re going?” she said.
Her eyes were red. I touched the skin around my eyes: puffy, tender. I’d been crying, too.
She wore the same work pants and plaid button-down short-sleeved shirt as always, but for the first time, she looked old to me. She was only fifteen years older than me, but her sadness brought out the lines in her face, and I could swear she had more gray hairs than the last time I’d looked. Someday soon someone at her coffee shop would call her a “tough old broad” and they’d be right.
“I thought we could talk,” she said. “Spend some time together. I took off work.”
“That’s nice of you. Thank you.”
“Of course I’d take off work.” She seemed offended that I thanked her.
It was clear I had not told Jess I was getting the spell, either. She thought I was grieving, still, like her. I had to tell her.
My legs started shaking.
Later.
Dance first. Dance, and then I would come clean.
“I really want to dance,” I said. “It’s . . . all I want to do.”
Jess stared at me, her no-shit-taking stare that usually came with flexed biceps to show off her tattoos, and then she softened, deflated, and nodded. “Come right back afterward.”
“I will.”
I hugged her, and she clutched me tightly. In our miniature family of two, we weren’t much for hugging. But it wasn’t only my lack of experience making me feel awkward. That feeling I’d had in my room—the strangeness, the not-rightness—ran down my arms like goose bumps.
“I love you,” she said.
“I love you, too,” I said, and hurried for the door. “See you soon.”
The worried feeling in my stomach only grew.
The other dancers stared at me when I stepped into the changing room.
“I’msosorryforyourloss,” one of them said, then the rest all mumbled something similar. Then they looked down at their pink shoes and tried not to look me in the eye.
Rowena, a former prima ballerina at the Royal Ballet and my teacher for the past nine years, hugged me when I came in (just as awkward and just as well-meaning as Jess’s), but she didn’t seem surprised to see me. Perhaps going to dance was the right thing to do after all. I belonged here, in this wood-floor practice room, with its three walls of mirrors and one of windows. The ancient piano player noodled gently in the corner as always, and as always the room smelled like sweat and talcum.
I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on dance, on getting my body ready to move. But my mind wouldn’t settle. I could think of nothing in particular: my thoughts cast about in a large white room, nothing to land on, nowhere to rest. I tried checking in with my muscles and joints, but could only feel the insistent, pulsing pain in my wrist. Usually I could ignore that—I’d had years of practice—but this time I couldn’t quite block it out.
By the time we started warming up, my breathing had gotten shallow. I didn’t know what it was, yet, but something was wrong.
The piano music. There. That was vivid in my head; the same chords, same melodies, same movements as always. It existed complete in my mind, elegant, precise.
I began to move.
First position. Second. Fourth. To the front. To the right. To the left. To the back.
I kept my eyes closed and concentrated on the steps.
I needed to relax. To get into the steps.
Somewhere around the eighth measure, I felt a pressure on my bad wrist—Rowena’s hand—and I opened my eyes.
“Watch the mirror, please,” Rowena said.