Skipped dance today to hang out with Win. Not even on purpose—forgot to go. Didn’t miss it until Rowena called the house. So tired of Rowena and buns and perfection. So tired.
Win says it’s a gift to be good at something as good as I am at dance. And that I’d regret it if I didn’t go to New York. But Win is being Good Boyfriend Win and I know he’ll miss me. He’s been so strange. Sadder than usual. I’m worried. Won’t say what it is. And I have my own worries. Jess is so excited. Applying for jobs by the dozen. Talking about Greenwich Village and MOMA and concerts in Central Park. Going to New York is how I pay her back for the past nine years. Get her out of here. Can’t imagine six hours a day, so far from Win. I used to dream about it but now it seems such a waste.
When I finished reading I realized I was sitting on the edge of the bed squeezing my wrist so tight my hand had started to turn red. The pain was a hammer banging rhythmically on a metal spike. Old Ari’s words hit so hard I got dizzy.
She didn’t love to dance.
I didn’t love to dance.
I went cold all over, like being dunked.
I had assumed that she and I had most things in common. She had Win and I didn’t, but we shared dance. Something so important couldn’t change so much. Right?
Unless there was something about my relationship with Win that made me not want to dance. Or not need to dance. Because that’s how I’d always thought of it before, a need.
Jess thought the spell had saved me—the one that took away the memory of the fire. But she was wrong. Dance had lifted me out of the pit of my parents’ death. Without it, I’d still be down there, wandering blindly, looking for escape.
I checked the time. An advanced ballet class would be getting out soon. I got in the car and drove to the studio, then ducked my head under the wheel and hid until all the students left.
Rowena was the last one out, locking the door behind her, heading to the only other car in the lot.
I almost fell in my rush out of the car, unfolding clumsy limbs. She didn’t seem startled to see me, but then again she’s always been unflappable.
“Ariadne. How lovely to see you.” Her eyes flicked to my legs, my arms—I clenched and didn’t move so that I wouldn’t give myself away. (I had a flash of memory of how it used to feel to dance, with every part of me in sync and under control, and with that flash a sudden sureness that I would never feel that way again, no matter what Echo’s spell might fix.) “You’re looking well.”
“I’m okay,” I said. “You heard—about my memory spell.”
She nodded. “I spoke with Jess. And the girls—such gossips. But I understand, now, about your difficulty. Side effects, yes?”
“Did I . . . Rowena, did I want to keep dancing? Before Win died?”
Rowena leaned a little bit against her car door, tired but still precise, straight-backed, poised. “No,” she said. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Because of Win?” I asked, bitterness twisting my mouth.
“Not exactly. Mind you, you never spoke of this directly. But you changed.” She smiled. “I am quite used to my girls changing; it can be lovely to see someone discover the type of person they’re going to be.”
“Even if that person wants to give up dance?”
“Even if. There are many things a person could be that are as important—or more so—than a dancer. Goals shift. They change. You were as talented as always, and the Manhattan Ballet saw that at their Institute last summer, but over the course of the year your heart went out of it.”
A wave of shame passed through me. “I gave up.”
“A dancer’s world can be very narrow. Yours expanded.” She looked off into the thin scrub lining the parking lot, as if seeing great forests and mountains and rivers. “Then after Win passed away and you came back—I was happy to see you, of course, but not surprised that your body didn’t want to obey. I had the reasoning wrong, but it did make sense, at least to me.”
I could tell Rowena considered this the end of her speech, but I couldn’t let her go while I was struggling to make sense of it all. “So . . . even if I think I want to dance right now . . . if I meet some guy, in six months I’ll probably change again?”
“I don’t know,” Rowena said. “Perhaps there was an alchemy unique to you and Win. But I will say to fear change is the most hopeless fear one can harbor. Change will happen, Ariadne. Injuries. Loves. Deaths. There’s never a moment where you’re finished, that’s it, all changes over. Change is forever.”
I knew I should’ve thanked her—for caring about me, for teaching me, for noticing me—but if I opened my mouth I would’ve cried, so I backed away to my car, nodding at her helplessly. She nodded back.
I drove out of the studio’s parking lot for what I knew would be the last time.