Bright Burning Stars

by A. K. Small

  “If you tell someone about this storage room, I’ll go to The Witch and report your hobby.”

  nineteen

  Marine

  Cyrille and I ran through our pas de deux in the rococo second-floor foyer near the First Division girls’ dressing rooms. We jumped, our every landing in unison, the soles of our shoes thudding against the marble.

  “Always practice the variation before curtain call,” Cyrille said as we moved, hips almost touching. “You’ll rank higher.”

  I hated him and, most of all, I wanted to tell him that lying was a nasty habit, that impregnating a girl, even if by mistake, then dropping her, was cruel, that the onus fell on them both for heaven’s sake, but I was too hungry, too nervous, and too weak to explain. The worst part was that, despite his lousy actions, I could still see why Kate had fallen so hard for him and why everyone still believed that on a scale of one to ten, Cyrille was a twenty-five. His passion for dance funneled through his body and filled up the foyer, eclipsing the elaborate marqueterie. In his velvety shirt, princely tights, and full makeup, he dazzled. The brilliantine in his hair made him look older. Plus, there was no denying it: the way I felt about him, how much I went on to trust him or not, and my respect or lack thereof for him would dictate my future and my promise to Oli.

  “And one. And one. And one,” he repeated, crisscrossing his ankles, furrowing his brow.

  But I knew rhythm the way I knew how many calories were in one teaspoon of honey. “No,” I said. “It’s one and. One and. One and. We push up on the counter beat.” I demonstrated two fast brisés volés into jetés battus, accentuating the slight edge of the offbeat with the flick of my pointe shoe.

  Cyrille smiled, illuminating the room. “See. That’s why we run it. To catch the last-minute glitches.”

  We did it again, this time holding pinkies, the beat an invisible pulse pounding between us.

  Cyrille said, “All you have to do is replicate the same thing onstage.”

  “What if I can’t?”

  “You’ve done it. You can do it again.”

  I placed my palms against the wall and gulped in air. I was exhausted just from this. How would I perform on the big stage?

  Cyrille laid a hand on my back. “You’ll shine,” he said. “I promise.”

  “Help me with my arabesque turn,” I said. “Let me inhale before you release my hand.”

  Cyrille hooked his thumb with mine. He slowed down the turn, pulling at me just right. I pivoted, my flame-red Kitri pointe shoe digging into the ground, my working leg lifted behind me, toe up to the ornate ceiling, tutu straight out, chin up. When Cyrille let go of my hand, I balanced three whole seconds.

  “Ma belle,” he murmured.

  I stepped back, momentarily giddy from him or from hunger, which one I was no longer sure. The floor swayed beneath my feet. I was bone-weary and had been skipping so many meals for so many days that it wasn’t traditional hunger pains I felt anymore but a strange lightness, as if my insides had been filled to the brim with cotton balls. Yet somehow, even in that fragile state, Cyrille had helped me blossom. His light was undeniable, sexy, and infectious. I briefly contemplated falling into his arms in spite of everything, how easy, even logical and soothing it would be—after all, he was my partner and we were about to take on the stage—but something made me pause. Perhaps it was what my mother called principe ou vertu, principle or virtue. I could never forgive him no matter how much he illuminated everything around him, including me. And besides, wasn’t there a difference, I thought, between splendor and intimacy?

  But then he said, “You’re what I’m looking for.”

  “What do you mean?”

  A deep voice came on the intercom, forty-five minutes left to the last bell.

  “Look, let’s dance this one for Oli,” he said. “We’ll see where we land number-wise then we’ll talk more.” He lifted my chin and before I could say anything else, he kissed my dimple. “See you downstairs.”

  As I ran back to the dressing room, flustered, voices came from the upper-level stage doors. Everything around me was blurry. I’d sit alone for a few seconds. Catch my bearings. Maybe I’d have my orange slices. More honey. I’d calm down, energize my muscles. But as I entered the dressing rooms, Kate appeared, a warrior look in her eyes, as if she’d unearthed something worth battling for.

  twenty

  Kate

  After visiting the storage room, I’d come back up to smoke a cigarette and found Cyrille kissing M on the cheek, like old company lovers. For a moment, J-P’s drug cushioned my pain and I tried not to be jealous, to look past the tender gesture, to be the reasonable one who understood that sometimes life wasn’t fair, but maybe because I’d just paraded, naked, in front of The Creep, I’d felt not only humiliated and debased but extremely jealous. Even while high.

  And I was still jealous now.

  But at least the drug was helping me concoct a plan. If I wanted to keep up with Miss I-Landed-Prince-Charming, I needed to do something big. Something cataclysmic. And fast. I was going to have to pick off one girl after the next, starting with the ones who’d bullied me in the stairwell. Marine’s presence in the dressing rooms could screw everything up.

  “You look like you’re about to do something bad,” M said.

  I went to my makeup desk, checked the time, then pulled out Claire’s pas de deux outfit—her tights and a tiara—from her ballet bag.

  Marine asked, “Aren’t these Claire’s? Aren’t they part of her Sugar Plum Fairy costume?”

  “Guard the door,” I said.

  I pulled scissors from my bag, big fashion designer ones, and began to cut into Claire’s tights. The feeling was the same as the storage room: my brain felt disconnected from my actions. I jabbed the scissors into the meshlike fabric.

  “Don’t do this,” Marine said.

  But I kept cutting.

  “I don’t get it,” Marine continued. “Vandalizing someone’s stuff?”

  I showed her the leftover scraps of tights then pulled out matches.

  “Are you crazy?” Marine cracked open the door and looked down the corridor.

  The variation from A Midsummer Night’s Dream played. The final call for the highest division rang. Someone laughed. I snapped Claire’s pretty tiara in half, amazed at how easily the glittery headband had broken.

  “Kate!” Marine cried.

  I explained, sparkles stuck to my fingers, “I have not busted my ass for six years to make it to the last demonstrations and not win over the judges. If we don’t sabotage stuff someone else will. You should have seen Claire tormenting me in the stairwell. She’d burn our pointe shoes in a hot second. Trashcan, quick,” I said.

  But Marine stood there unable to move, so I did it. I dumped everything in the bin, lit a match, dropped it in. As soon as the first flame burst upward, I grabbed my water bottle from the table and poured some in. We heard a fizzle, then the pungent smell of burned nylon and spandex swirled around, invading the dressing rooms. When I looked into the garbage can again, everything was half burned, half wet, and covered in soot.

  Marine said, “I thought you said you’d fight people like Gia fair and square.”

  I opened the window. “That was back in September. Before your boyfriend got me pregnant. And, unlike you, I don’t have him, the über-talented Prince Charming lifting my board numbers. So, becoming a little more resourceful is my only option.”

  Marine said, “‘Über-talented Prince Charming lifting my board numbers’?” Then she added, “Are you going to destroy us all one by one?”

  “Don’t be so dramatic,” I said.

  By the time I’d put the burned stuff in a bag then inside a trashcan in the first-floor hallway, Marine looked paler than the moon and like she might have to lie down.

  “When did you eat last?” I said.

 
I took four squares of dark chocolate from inside my bag.

  “Eat,” I ordered.

  Marine hesitated. But she took the squares and followed me. All I could hear was the unfolding of the foil around the chocolate until we were inside the wings with everyone, worrying together, all cracking our knuckles like one big jittery family.

  I was called second to the stage. Maybe because I stood in the middle of the horseshoe in front of hundreds of spectators, maybe because J-P’s drugs had been flowing for a while inside my veins, I felt a surge of adrenaline sweep through me so strongly that I might have been able to fly. In a tight fifth position, arms up in couronne, I was surrounded by darkness. Only one stage light gleamed dimly above in the wings, and fog danced around my feet. As soon as the first four counts of music went by, the days of rehearsals kicked me into gear and I began my variation.

  With razor-sharp precision, I flicked my foot from my ankle up my knee then onto my thigh into a side développé. I held the tip of my pointe shoe straight up toward the beams above the stage then elegantly turned into a promenade. Had I not been high, my left ankle might have buckled, making my shoulder blades jut out, or I might have slipped on the water droplets accumulating on the floor from the fog. But tonight I electrified. I swiveled smoothly, my breaths pumping steady, my left knee locked into place. “Your variation is the ultimate adagio,” I heard Valentine Louvet say. “So stretch, pull, lengthen, and hold.”

  As the fog lifted and the violins played, I moved with heavenly buoyancy. My legs were taffy, my feet anchors, and my arms wings. In a penché, my forehead nearly touched my standing leg, my tutu opening up like a pale blue sail.

  Yes!

  I was Giselle and I owned this palace. As I floated from one side of the stage to the other, my pointe shoes molded to my feet like bedroom slippers. I held all my balances and executed my jumps. My manège went by smoothly—I nailed my piqués, forming a flawless circle across the stage, arms gracefully flitting above me, a smile fluttering on my lips. Time slowed. As I noticed the golden ropes twisted around the curtains and the long table in the shadows where the judges sat, as I inhaled a hint of my Clairol hairspray and tasted brine, I felt at once grateful for and bound to my natural talent. Past and current étoiles who at once graced this stage seemed to hover above me: Sylvie Guillem, Noëlla Pontois, and Marie-Agnès Gillot. Artistry was something beyond technique, something intangible, related to the soul, and this performance was ferrying me closer to it. My glissades and pas de basques proved it. They were candle-wax fluid. I melted into them.

  Finally, the orchestra launched into my finale, only a few minutes of the variation left, the fog nearly evaporated. I moved to the center of the stage. This was the place where rat-girls panicked, where their blood pressure rose, where some even stumbled and improvised steps, unable to finish what they’d started. Yet I calmly placed my feet into fourth position. I needed twelve clean double fouettés in order to medal.

  I twirled and twirled and twirled, spotting, my heart full, my dreams blossoming, my right leg in a high passé, gravity lifting and lifting until I counted nine, ten, eleven, twelve, then thirteen, eighteen. People began to clap. The music stopped but I kept on spinning. Twenty, twenty-two, twenty-five. My left pointe shoe was the only noise rhythmically landing on the naked stage. I whirled thirty-two times and finished on a triple pirouette into my final pose, arm up, as if I was blessing the audience.

  Spectators stood up and hollered. A brown teddy bear flew to my feet. I bowed, catching my breath until The Witch walked briskly out onto the stage.

  Holding a microphone, she said, “I’m not sure Mademoiselle Sanders knows how to count to twelve.”

  People laughed.

  My cheeks burned. Could judges deduct points for too many fouettés?

  But then Madame Brunelle added, “What a performance. Now, please welcome Mademoiselle Prévot.”

  When I bent down to retrieve the bear, I noticed amongst all the parents’ reserved orchestra seats my father’s empty one in the front row. Look away, I scolded myself. But it was too late. One glance and the narrow crimson seatback with its satiny material etched itself forever on my brain. The earlier feeling of mastery, of being carried by an invisible hand, disappeared. I ran first into the wings then back to the Grand Foyer. What was the point of performing if no one you loved ever came to see you? Then, I tried to reason. Had my father been there, he might have ruined my performance. He might have clapped too early or yelled Go Katie at the height of my turns. Or, worse, he might have fallen asleep midway through my variation.

  I sat in the splits on the marble floor and rubbed my ankles, my tendonitis hurting again. Bessy’s Sleeping Beauty variation was well underway. Soon it would be time for the pas de deux competition. I’d go looking for Sebastian but first I snuck out J-P’s pills and counted them. Thirteen. My high seemed to have lessened. My blisters hurt. The gold in the foyer glittered less and it was winter-cold. I shivered and wondered how long the pill worked, if I should take another one. But then Colombe scurried in, making me hide the drugs deep in my bag. Marie-Sandrine, she said, had slipped and fallen during her allegro and Claire was crying because she couldn’t find her Sugar Plum Fairy costume. I mumbled something like, “How awful,” then popped two aspirins and looked away.

  twenty-one

  Marine

  After everyone had performed, The Witch arrived onstage, holding a handful of medals.

  “I hope you are as proud as I am of your children’s progress,” she announced in her microphone. “Please refrain from clapping until all the winners in specific categories are announced. Without further ado, here are the solo rankings for Division One: Kate Sanders is the winner of gold, Gia Delmar of silver, and Marine Duval of bronze. For the boys, Cyrille Terrant is the gold winner, Luc Bouvier the silver, and Jean-Paul Lepic the bronze.”

  From the shadows, the judges clapped while company members and parents stood up from their red velvety seats and shouted bravos.

  The Witch continued, “Pas de deux variations. Also in order: Marine Duval and Cyrille Terrant won gold, Gia Delmar and Jean-Paul Lepic silver, and Kate Sanders and Sebastian Cotilleau bronze.”

  Judges and families clapped again.

  I sat on the floor hidden between two seats and closed my eyes. Had Kate been right? Had Prince Charming won first prize for us? I’d held my arabesque onstage just as long as I had in the upstairs foyer. But who knew?

  Later, at the after-party, company members plus the upper divisions congregated outdoors near patio heaters in the famous courtyard known as the Cour Diaghilev. Congratulations flew. Dizzy, I stared at waiters passing trays of champagne and petit fours. I couldn’t stop replaying what had happened earlier in the dressing rooms and what faculty might say of my indirect involvement if they found out. And then, Monsieur Chevalier glided in my direction.

  “May we speak en privé?”

  He knew and was about to punish me for my silence.

  We walked back into the palace until we reached the Christmas tree adorning the bottom of the marble staircase.

  “I—” I began, ashamed and worn out.

  “Tell me,” Monsieur Chevalier said. “Do you want to be here?”

  “Yes,” I answered, imagining all the possible punishments: expelled, demoted back to Second Division, daily detention inside The Witch’s office until the Grand Défilé.

  “I mean here, as in today, competing?”

  Of course I wanted to be here. I wished Monsieur Chevalier would go ahead and chastise me. Get the agony over with. As he stood peering at me, I considered pulling off my shoes and showing him the scars and new calluses and blisters I had developed on my feet from the extra practices. I thought about telling him that for six years I’d been suffering from hunger to show Oli—who had to be watching me from somewhere up high—what balletic éclat was. Instead I waited for him to continue.
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  “You, Mademoiselle Duval, are the most musical dance student I have ever taught.”

  The palace turned from cold to warm.

  “You could be une grande étoile if you ever put your mind to it.”

  But Monsieur Chevalier did not seem happy. I bowed so low that my face nearly touched his weathered lace-up shoes. Monsieur Chevalier—a master who’d seen hundreds of dancers come through this house—believed I could become not only a star but a great one, and had chosen to tell me. I imagined sharing these words with Oli, my chest swollen with pride.

  “The sad truth, though,” he said, “is that you might never achieve success. I’ve mentored you in pas de deux class, one of the most important sections of First Division. I placed you with Cyrille. Do you not think that faculty members balked at my request? Number One partnering with Number Three?”

  His words were so raw and painful that I could barely catch my breath.

  Kate was right: the only reason I had won anything was because of Cyrille. Monsieur Chevalier kept on. “I told them that your musical abilities in conjunction with your technique defied any ranking. That your potential was worth fighting for. But you must want it more than anything in the world, more than any other rats, past and present. Do you want it that much? Do you want it enough for me to keep on fighting for you?”

  When I did not look at him because my chest had squeezed itself so much that I thought I might have to sit down on the marble floor, he said, “That’s what I thought. Right now, the American will beat you. Hands down. Not because she is the better dancer. She’s not. Not because she has a better ear. She can barely keep up with half notes. But because of her stage presence. Kate glows like all the crystal chandeliers in this palace. She makes you look dull and she knows it.”

  “What about Gia? You’ve forgotten the best of the best.”