Bright Burning Stars

by A. K. Small

This was supposed to be a celebratory night. We were moving up, for God’s sake. What could we do this late that would trump anything we’d ever done before? And then, the words spilled from my lips. “Let’s go to the top floor of the dance annex.”

  “To the circular studio,” Kate added. “For magic to help us.”

  “Why not?” I said, suddenly excited at the idea. “I bet we also see the full moon in the skylight. Maybe we can even find a pair of First Division pointe shoes left behind.”

  Kate grinned. “We will make a pact together the way I once saw back home on TV. We will hide valuables and become moon-sisters.”

  Valuables? Moon-sisters?

  I wasn’t sure I understood, but Kate grabbed a golden lipstick tube from atop her desk.

  “This belonged to my mother,” she said. “The only good memories I have of her are red lips and how once, a few weeks before she disappeared, she laced her fingers with mine before crossing the street. I remember feeling warm and safe, zigzagging through traffic. How she would always protect me.”

  “Disappeared? How old were you?” I asked, thinking, of course, of Oli. Too many memories of him filled me. They piled up on top of each other, like precious letters his ghost might have sent me.

  Kate came closer. “Five.”

  “Did she ever come back?”

  Kate shook her head. “One time,” she said, “I found her curled up in a wet bathing suit under the stairwell, fast asleep, before dinner. I tried to wedge myself between her and the wall but I couldn’t. Anyway.” She pointed to Oli’s demi pointes on my bed. “Will you bring those?”

  “No,” I answered.

  “Why not? They are treasures,” she said. “You sleep with them.”

  I didn’t want my throat to tighten but it did. Kate was right: Oli’s demi pointes were treasures. I placed them near my pillow. It was odd, I knew, to love someone’s old slippers but they were the thing Oli had cherished the most. They were the shoes he would have used for his Nanterre auditions. Some kids slept with soccer balls. My twin had slept with ballet shoes.

  “They were my brother’s,” I managed.

  “Can I see a photo?” Kate said.

  “I don’t have one,” I lied.

  In the back of my drawer, I did keep one—a small photo of the two of us goofing off right outside our old elementary school during pre-Nanterre days. But I didn’t like to look at it. My chest hurt when I did. Kate must have sensed my lie because she gently moved me out of the way, opened my drawer, and felt around. In a few seconds, she was holding the photo. She brought it to her light and peered at it.

  “Handsome. Dark-haired like you.”

  “Yeah, but way more ambitious,” I replied.

  With our riches and a water bottle in hand, Kate opened the door. By then I’d conjured up Oli spinning a million times in his socks. I’d repeated the word ambitieux in my head and had cooled at the idea of breaking The Cardinal Rules. I had to live up to my promise to Oli—I owed it to him. But Kate’s pull was magnetic. Somehow I found myself following this friend, me in my nightgown and she in her shorts, both of us barefoot and tiptoeing quietly as only little rats could toward the common room, then through the side door. It was too late to say never mind. Wasn’t it? We crossed the outdoor pathway to the dance annex.

  I stopped. “What if someone sees us?” I said. “We should go back.” I would never forgive myself if I got expelled for something dumb like running around the halls past curfew.

  But Kate clasped my hand.

  “The Witch is snoring. Everyone is snoring.”

  At once, I felt brave with Kate by my side. We hurried up the grand staircase. When we got to the top floor, we giggled and ran as fast as we could into the circular studio. We made our way to its sacred center. Above us, the skylight framed a full moon.

  “Luna,” Kate said, bowing deeply. “Be our witness.”

  She pulled out the photo of Oli and me, held it close to her heart. Then she handed me the golden lipstick tube. Mirrors snaked like dark ribbons around the room.

  “We exchange treasures in return for best-friend rat vows, yes?” Kate said.

  “Yes.”

  “I am your Nanterre sister from now on,” Kate said.

  “And I, yours.”

  “Together,” she said, chin pointing toward the sky. “We will rule this place and never let anyone come between us. The faculty will love us so much that they’ll make an exception and one day grant us each a spot in the company. If they only pick one of us—” She paused. We stared at each other, at our reflections as if they too had a say, then I continued, “We shall both leave.”

  “Amen,” Kate said. “Now we hide the stuff.”

  She shoved our valuables inside a hole at the end of the lower barre. To seal the deal, she made us spit in her Evian bottle and we passed it back and forth, drinking the whole thing down. We promised that we would never outshine each other no matter what. It was a sacred, solemn moment, and then the sudden flap of a wing against the skylight broke the silence and sent us dashing back down the stairs only to be halted by Monsieur Chevalier, the First Division ballet master. He tapped his cane and said our names, making me grab onto Kate. He knew us by name? This man was more important than all of the Sixth and Fifth Division teachers combined. He was probably eighty years old. What was he doing in this annex so late at night?

  Kate and I froze on the steps. We couldn’t see him. But his voice rose again from somewhere below, ordering us into the main hallway. Once we got there, the moon shone through the windows, its light spilling onto the hardwood floor. Monsieur Chevalier lingered near the Board Room door in the shadows.

  “It’s almost midnight,” he said. “Want to tell me about your jaunt? You are in the wrong building, no?”

  I was sure that we would be sent home. I held my breath.

  “I would like an answer,” Monsieur Chevalier continued.

  I could only make out his outline. He seemed to lean on his cane as if he were very tired.

  “We took barre upstairs,” Kate blurted. “We are sorry.”

  We curtsied as deeply as possible, me holding on to my nightgown, Kate to her shorts.

  “Barre in your pajamas?” Monsieur Chevalier said. “Barefoot? On the last day before summer after successful générales?”

  Was he smirking?

  “We want to become First Division rats,” I said, which was the honest truth. “We have to practice more.”

  “Come here.”

  Monsieur Chevalier beckoned us over with his index finger. I was so scared that he would smack me with his cane when I got near that I trembled on my way to him. When we arrived and tilted our chins to meet his gaze, I winced. But all the ballet master did was place his right palm on each of our heads in turn, as if he were giving us some kind of benediction.

  “Hustle back to your bedrooms before I ring the bell and alert everyone to your illegal wanderings.”

  Kate was the first to sprint away. I ran behind her as fast as I could. I longed to grab her hand, to yell, “Moon-sister, wait,” and to feel bolstered in our frantic getaway, but all I could hear was Kate’s raspy breath in the space growing between us. It wasn’t until we’d thrown ourselves into our room, shut the door, and jumped under our covers that Kate started to laugh.

  “He blessed us,” she said between whoops.

  I followed. For a long time neither of us could stop. When we finally did, as we were settling down and almost asleep, I said, “Why didn’t you wait for me while we were running?”

  Kate didn’t answer for a while. Then, she said, “I was trying to save myself. Plus, I knew that you weren’t far behind.”

  four

  Kate

  While Marine worked as petite mère in the common room by teaching younger rats how to sew ribbons on their demi pointes, I skipped my c
ommunity chore (sweeping Hall 3) and instead made my way to the dorm’s upper floors, where the boys lived. I should have been thrilled—I’d Beyoncé’d with M and couldn’t stop thinking about my Board Room connection with The Demigod—but what I felt, as I slunk into the forbidden back stairwell, climbed up to the fifth floor, then pushed the heavy door open, was a strange restlessness, an unhinging feeling as if the dorm annex might collapse once I got to the very top.

  The first time I’d ever visited the older boys’ floor was fall of Third Division and the only person I’d ever told was M. I’d followed the older Dutch First Division student who’d taught me how to kiss. Saar was handsome. Though he and I had hardly ever spoken to each other (he was sixteen and I was fourteen), I’d found him staring at me once in the cafeteria and another time in the language lab.

  One October morning, after contemporary class, only weeks before Saar joined the Amsterdam Ballet as one of their youngest soloists, he’d looked at me in the empty common room and pointed to the ceiling. I nodded, blood rushing to my cheeks. Silently, we walked up the back stairwell and snuck into the tiny fifth-floor conference room. Saar pulled me to him as if we’d known each other forever. He slipped out every bobby pin in my bun, dropping them on the table, each plunk startling me.

  “Your hair is so soft,” he said, his French perfect.

  He unrolled my ponytail and slid the rubber band off.

  “I was dying to know how long it was.”

  The scent of my cedar and tea tree shampoo filled the room. Sunlight poured in. Saar inhaled the top of my head. He tilted my chin to meet his gaze. His eyebrows were nearly white and his lips thin lines.

  “Prachtige,” he whispered. “Beautiful in Dutch.” Then, he kissed me.

  Our tongues pas de deux’ed. Our bodies moved in close. All I could think was that he was Number 1 on The Boards and that he loved me. Me. I’d leaned into him and had felt secure, anchored to the earth in the same way as when I danced. After, when he’d pulled away and playfully ruffled my hair, I’d noticed the way his eyes scanned me in a new light, as if he wanted to live inside me, or as if I carried a secret he yearned to know.

  The next day, a silvery eye shadow palette from Saar was delivered to my room. By the time he left Nanterre, we’d kissed a handful of times: once behind an oak tree in the courtyard, in the second-floor mop storage area of the academic annex, in my room. After each time, more gifts were delivered. A box of perfect-sized safety pins—which M begged to use for pinning the front of her leotards—heavy socks for winter, and a bottle of miel de sapin, a special energy booster made by our very own beekeeper, a legend, who raised hives next to the costume room. I cherished these boy-gifts. Yet the highs were always followed by erratic dips, washed-out feelings. Sometimes after I’d see him, I’d shut off the lights and curl up in bed. Once, I even lied about a sore throat. When the nurse forgot the cough syrup on my windowsill, I chugged half of it, its alcohol content blissfully sedating me.

  Now once again on the fifth floor, where the top three male divisions lived, the air was stale and the windows shut. A pungent body odor mixed with cheap cologne wafted through the hall. Someone blasted the Beatles. First Division boys lived in the very back where there was a mini kitchenette and a long bar with stools. I tried not to look around and to act as if I’d received a visitation pass, a legitimate reason for being up here. I hoped the hall would be empty and that Cyrille would be waiting for me in his room. But when I got close to the bar, Jean-Paul, the resident creep, sat on a stool next to Sebastian, who wore silk pajamas. They drank something dark through twisty straws. I found Cyrille’s name on one of the rooms to my right, but just as I was about to knock on his door, Jean-Paul turned.

  “Mais c’est la reine Américaine,” he said, grinning. If it isn’t the American Queen.

  There was something oily about him. His skin and hair, sure, but something in his personality, too. I had the urge to smack him. Sebastian waved at me with the tips of his fingers.

  “Looking for candy?” Jean-Paul said.

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m here for tutoring.”

  “Tutoring my ass,” Sebastian said. “Cyrille spent time in London. He’s practically fluent.”

  London? There were so many things I didn’t know about him. I ignored their comments and knocked on the door.

  “What if a dorm patroller walks by?” Jean-Paul said. “What will you give me to stay quiet?”

  “I doubt her virginity. She’ll be too busy handing it on a platter in there.” Sebastian pointed to Cyrille’s bedroom and guffawed.

  “You’re disgusting,” I said.

  I waited for what felt like an eternity, yet as the boys kept on making lascivious jokes, I wasn’t really disgusted. I felt all-powerful and wanted. I tugged at my polyester gray overalls and checked that the note I’d tucked inside my leotard was still there. I’d written “Would You” on a heart-shaped piece of red paper. It was sappy, I knew. I was just about to jam the note under the door—hoping he’d get it and come down to find me later—when the door opened.

  “Hey,” Cyrille said, half yawning, peering down at me. He was at least a head taller than I was and far more handsome than any of the other rats. His eyes were cloud-gray and his cheekbones high.

  I didn’t know what to do with my hands and with my body. What if he’d not meant for me to come by? What if I’d dreamed what had happened in the Board Room? Cyrille was inches away and he looked down at me, hair falling on his cheeks. He wore his white T-shirt and his tights. No shoes. I was so close to him that I could see the outline of his jockstrap. I reddened and averted my gaze.

  “Want to come in?” he said.

  “Sure,” I answered as if the whole thing was up to me.

  Cyrille shut the door behind us. His room was a small single and burning hot. The Beatles still blared from somewhere down the hall, yet I could also make out Bach playing softly in here. I wasn’t sure what to do next. How to ask him to hold my hand again or how to share everything, every ballet secret, he knew with me.

  “What’s this?” He pointed to the paper scrunched in my hand.

  I blushed.

  “Come on, share,” he said.

  I blushed more, opened my palm and handed him my heart.

  Cyrille smiled, took it, then straddled his chair and read the question jotted on the back. Would you dance with me?

  “Maybe. But I’m not faculty.”

  He lobbed the scrunched heart between a book and a half-eaten sandwich on his desk. And, for what felt like forever, he scrutinized me. It was disconcerting. His gray eyes started at the top of my bun and scanned me all the way down to my feet. I thought I might catch on fire. I was about to run out of his room without a single ballet secret when he said, “Alors, Kate?”

  The way he pronounced my name made my spine shiver.

  “How about we play my favorite game. I’ll recite a dancer’s quote and you guess who it is.”

  I sat down on his unmade bed and wished we were kissing instead. That would be easier. I’d win.

  “Ready?” he said. “I do not try to dance better than anyone. I just try to dance better than myself.”

  I thought of M, how she might know the answer. How this game sounded a hell of a lot like a test, and how The Ruler would, of course, know because all she ever did was read. “Baryshnikov,” I guessed.

  Cyrille hopped off his chair and clapped. “Excellent,” he said, then, “I have found the perfect partner.”

  “Rudolf N.?”

  “Try Margot Fonteyn. Aren’t you doing your homework?” he said.

  Whatever, I thought.

  “In the end all collaborations are love stories.”

  “Martha Graham?”

  Cyrille sighed and knelt in front of me.

  “Twyla Tharp,” he corrected, but then he said, “Have I ever told you how pret
ty you are?”

  He slid off my Converse, took my socked feet in his hands, and made me point my toes. He ran his fingers up my calves, over my gray overalls.

  A new Beatles song came on but I barely noticed. I forgot everything, even the way he’d just scanned every inch of me. All I could focus on was the sensation of his hands, their warmth radiating everywhere, the way his touch filled up my chest with what felt like the shimmery pink bubbles of a Shirley Temple. Not to mention his sexy bottom lip. Who cared about dumb quotes? I nearly told him how much I needed him to be my anchor partner this year when he startled me by placing his thumbs on my hips and pushing like The Witch had done years ago during auditions.

  “Nice turnout,” he said.

  My body hummed while I listened to the two dissonant pieces of music playing at odds with each other. His bed was soft and smelled like him, and I was about to lean back onto his pillows when he stood up. He lifted his sheets and showed me the dance magazines he kept shoved underneath the mattress, taking them out one after the next.

  “What do you love, if not quotes?” He grinned as he asked me, only increasing my desire to kiss him.

  “Is this another trick question?” I said. You, I thought.

  I tried to grab his fingers but Cyrille pulled back.

  “I bet I’d pass the kissing test,” I said.

  “I bet you would too.”

  He watched me slip my shoes back on, then said, “Who helped you get to First Division?”

  I rolled my eyes, then sighed. “My mother’s absence,” I said, surprising myself.

  At once, I saw the upside-down, chipped coffee mug, the way my mother had laid it out to dry, the last thing she, Delaney Sanders, had touched before leaving our ranch house forever. The hollow feeling I had been trying to outrun for more than a decade reeled back, popping all the pink bubbles in my chest and taking up residence inside my rib cage.

  Cyrille opened his door, looked right and left. As I walked, unsteady, into the hallway, he said, “Sometimes someone’s absence sure feels like a thick presence, doesn’t it? Must be hard not having her around.”