This wasn’t my world anymore. Maybe it never had been.
People buzzed around me, getting ready, getting their costumes on, getting their makeup just right, and generally oblivious to the world around them, which didn’t matter nearly as much as pointing their toes, shaping their hands, and dancing their way into the hearts of America. I was so envious of them that it physically hurt. My chest ached like I’d bruised my sternum from the inside. I wanted what they had: I wanted the ignorance and the innocence that came with it.
There were things I didn’t know about in the world. There were things I didn’t want to know about. I wasn’t being judgmental when I called them ignorant; I was being jealous. They didn’t know, and so they didn’t have to worry. They could just live their lives, and be happy.
“All done, Val,” said the makeup assistant, taking the clips out of my hair. Lyra was still being painted. She flashed me a thumbs up, keeping her face as still as possible.
“Break a leg,” I said, and grabbed my bag off the floor and my costume off the rack as I started for the stalls at the back of the room. They were just heavy fabric sheets that we could pull closed for an illusion of privacy, allowing us to change without the producers worrying about an invasion of privacy civil suit from a disgruntled, eliminated dancer.
The mirror on the back wall showed me smoky eyes, red, red lips, and a wig that desperately needed to be styled. I hung the dress bag on the hook and dropped my duffel on the stool that had been provided for my use. Then I yanked out the pins holding the wig to my head and pulled it off, revealing my spiky, matted blonde hair. Instantly, it was my own reflection looking back at me, and not Valerie’s. The bruised feeling in my chest remained, but it diminished, becoming easier to overlook. This was her world. She wasn’t accustomed to feeling like an outsider when she was in it. But it wasn’t mine.
If what I had to do tonight meant I got eliminated, or even banned from the theater, that wouldn’t matter. I wouldn’t be losing the world I belonged in. Valerie . . . there was every chance she was about to have her last dance. I owed it to her—and to the part of my life she represented—to make it as memorable as possible.
It only took a few minutes to get dressed. I’d been slipping in and out of competition costumes for my entire adult life, and that process had always included putting on and properly affixing my wig. I’d be wearing this one for the rest of the night; it would see me through my solo, and through elimination, whatever the outcome of that happened to be. It was long enough to frame my face, with careful curls running down my back, while still being believably the hair I’d had since the start of the season. The audience would accept a certain number of extensions and styling tricks, but it was important to keep them limited enough to be believable.
The dress was less realistic. Bright red and mostly consisting of fringe, with no modesty panels to cover the wide expanses of bare skin at my right shoulder and left hip, it was the kind of thing my father used to call a “maybe.” As in “maybe you’ll get a knife under that, but I wouldn’t want to know how you managed it.” I gave my hips an experimental shake. The dress continued moving for almost two full seconds after I had stopped.
Strapping on the matching heels added four inches to my height. I stomped, making sure they were firmly on my feet, and gave myself one last, assessing look in the mirror. Valerie looked back, red-haired, red-garbed, and ready to dance with the Devil himself for the chance to own the spotlight. I smiled.
“I’m going to miss you,” I said.
Someone rapped on the wall outside my little cubby. “Five minutes, Miss Pryor,” called a voice—a wonderfully, frustratingly familiar voice.
I stuck my head out through the opening between the curtain and the wall. Dominic, who was holding a clipboard and wearing a headset, smirked at me. It was the slow expression of a man who is profoundly amused by what he sees, and it didn’t waver one bit as my eyes widened and my eyebrows climbed toward my artificial hairline.
“Five minutes,” he repeated.
“You’re here,” I said, pushing the curtain open and stepping into the changing room. It was still a bustle of activity, but none of those people were paying any attention to us: they all had their own roles to play, their own tasks to accomplish before they could take their turns upon the stage.