Bright Burning Stars

by A. K. Small

  Madame Brunelle knew everything but she wasn’t kicking me out, and she was asking for Cyrille to partner with me?

  The Witch added, “You’re wondering why you haven’t been punished for breaking cardinal rules?”

  I impulsively nodded.

  “Everything here is subjective. Isn’t it? Art equals subjectivity. Yes? Sometimes rules are broken but the student is talented enough to stay. Sometimes no rules are broken but the rat goes anyway. And sometimes, as you know, there are unbreakable bonds that change the trajectory of a dancer’s future. But those are few and far between.”

  Unbreakable bonds? I wondered why The Witch chose to tell me that she’d known all along and spared me. I wondered what measures they would take with Marine. Before I could ask if we could keep this meeting confidential, The Witch said, “Dismissed.”

  With a wave of the hand, she pointed me to the door.

  On Friday night, Benjamin Desjardins arrived unannounced in the common room as Division One was returning from inspecting The Boards. The Ruler had danced an exquisite générale from Concerto Barocco and had ranked not only Number 1 but had also received a standing ovation from the judges. Marine had found strength and somehow followed suit at Number 2 for a new Isadora waltz. I’d landed Number 3 for my Magic Flute allegro. But frankly, I didn’t care. I had larger pointe shoes to fill.

  I didn’t notice him right away. He must have been lingering by the front doors. When I turned my head, startled by hushed murmurs, there he was, in the flesh, ultra sexy, cloaked in a long gray coat.

  “Am I dreaming?” Isabelle said, batting her eyelashes.

  Gia stood up from one of the love seats and bowed. Two Division Three boys ran up to him, asked for his autograph, then fled up the back stairwell. Eventually, everybody left except for me. I sat on the couch and sewed a hole shut in my woolen overalls. I was so stunned to see him that I poked myself with the needle.

  “Christ,” I said in English, shaking my hand.

  Chuckling, Benjamin sat down next to me. Beneath the coat, which he immediately removed, he wore a dark blue shirt and jeans. I stared at his serpents, the way they wrapped around his knuckles, their inky tails slithering up his forearm. I liked the way he’d pushed up his sleeves, then leaned back, taking up space, as if the common room, all these years later, still belonged to him. It was strange to see him outside of the theater. My entire body blushed, even my toes.

  “What are you doing here?” I managed.

  Benjamin said, “Didn’t you ask me to visit?”

  “What about The Witch?” I said.

  “What about her?”

  It was now my turn to chuckle. Company members got away with anything. For a second, I remembered Madame Brunelle’s pointed words—getting burned if I got too close to the sun—but I was thrilled to see him. The truth was that without M at my side, Nanterre had been lonely. At the Bastille, things balletwise weren’t great (I was just an understudy), but socially, at least, I’d bloomed. Adèle and I kissed on the cheeks every morning. Maude filled me in on new steps and spacing. Plus, yesterday in the wings, Benjamin had slid behind me and squeezed my waist. For the rest of the night, I hadn’t been able to concentrate.

  Suddenly afraid to look at him, I said, “Have you heard of the boys’ initials on the terrace?”

  “Yeah. My roommate’s are etched there,” he said.

  “I want to see what the girls do.”

  “Come on.” Benjamin grabbed my hand. “I was a lifer here, ma chérie d’amour. I know everything about Nanterre.”

  It was true. Benjamin knew every corner. In the stairwell, we went down. He opened doors, flicked on lights, made rights then lefts. After a while, the smell of mold and detergent gave it away. We stood at the entrance of the cavernous laundry room.

  I shuddered.

  Benjamin pulled me inside and had me sit on top of one of the industrial dryers.

  “Relax,” he said. “Nobody ever comes here.”

  The lights were dim. He played with my earrings, then he kissed me. He tasted earthy, a mix of amber and sage.

  “I like you,” he said. “Those dazzling blue eyes. I really do. But I have to be honest. I’m not sure you can handle this.” He motioned at the space between us.

  “What are you talking about?” I said.

  Benjamin sighed, then caressed my shoulder, filling me up with anticipation. “I’m not one to go steady, ma chérie d’amour. My only lover is the stage. Everything I do, the new experiences, are to make me into a better performer.”

  Me too, I thought. Before I could explain that I understood, that we were the same, that I was surviving Nanterre so far on pure adrenaline, that I was game for whatever, he said, “Look up.”

  The ceiling was open. Exposed pipes snaked from one end of the room to the other. But what startled me was the collection of pointe shoes that hung from the pipes like ornaments from a Christmas tree.

  “Oh my God,” I said.

  “Welcome to the Pointe Shoe Cemetery,” Benjamin replied. “This is the last place they go after the Grand Défilé. They wear black, I hear. They carve their initials inside their last pair of slippers. Then they climb on the machines and hang them.”

  I stared at the dangling ribbons, at the light pink satin, hundreds of lonely shoes draped from the metal pipes. At once, the old pain in my heart returned but even sharper than when I’d felt it back in Cyrille’s dorm room or on the days following. So sharp that I placed a palm on my chest, coughed, and asked myself where the burn might be coming from. But the answer slipped away from me so I kept on staring at the wretched shoes and silently thanked the judges for my gold medal, for my understudy position, and for this soloist kissing me.

  “Don’t the housekeepers take them down?” I asked.

  “No way,” Benjamin said.

  “You think faculty knows about the cemetery?”

  “Absolutely,” he said. “Once, way before your time and mine, one of the maids found a dancer. The rat-girl’s name was Rose. She was supposedly lovely and talented. She hanged herself next to her shoes in her bun, ivory leotard, and tights. She hadn’t even taken the time to change.”

  When Benjamin kissed me again and when he ran his hands down my leotard over my tights, when he asked me where I wanted to go next, that he would show me all the nooks and crannies, I hugged him so tightly that he eventually pulled away and said, “You okay?”

  “I don’t want to ever hang my shoes here,” I said.

  “Nobody does,” he replied.

  The next afternoon at Bastille, I couldn’t wait to see Benjamin. Were we dating? Would he publicly lace his arms around me? Or better yet, call me ma chérie d’amour in front of everyone? I wasn’t sure. In bed, I’d played and replayed his visit. While M was sleeping, I’d pulled out my old shoebox and instead of cutting out new hearts the way I might have for Cyrille in the fall (I was done with those, even embarrassed by their childish sight), I’d taken out my journal and scribbled Je t’aime over and over, then Kate and Benjamin forever. After, I’d clutched his brown bear to my chest and hugged it to me all night long. In the morning, I’d sprayed lemon juice in my hair before making my low chignon, yearning to lighten my front strands to a pearly blond, then I’d slipped on a new turquoise leotard, hoping to catch his eye.

  Except that the lemon and leotard tricks didn’t work. Benjamin strolled into the theater hours after everyone else and spent the evening ignoring me. As different groups were called to the stage, he sat between the twins. They laughed and whispered long strings of words to each other. At first, I tried to shrug off my resentment. I mentally played back our kisses in the laundry room. But the more I stared at the trio, the more the night seemed to stretch out indefinitely. Minutes felt like hours.

  During the second-act rehearsal, as I shadowed Maude in the front row, I thought that Benjamin would f
inally wave to me or blow me a kiss but he didn’t do either. He never even looked my way. The twins leaned their heads on his shoulders. The one with smoldering eyes kept blushing while the other, wearing a long-sleeved silver leotard, seemed smug and engrossed in something Benjamin was telling her. Once, he even grabbed her hand. And as if that wasn’t horrible enough, Serge yelled at me.

  “What are you looking at?” he said.

  When I turned and saw that the director was staring at me, at my turquoise leotard, I shook my head and wished I’d worn something else, something far less noticeable.

  “Nothing, Monsieur,” I replied.

  Everyone stopped rehearsing. The music quieted. Serge ran his fingers through his hair and said, “If I were you, I’d pay attention to every step.”

  Later, while I was taking off my pointe shoes, trying to hold it together—after the yelling, I’d nearly twisted my ankle on one of the grooves, rainures, that Julie or Juliette had warned me about my first day, inflaming my tendonitis again—Adèle sat down next to me. She was dressed in a pair of Levi’s, white button-down shirt, fuchsia lipstick, and her hair was still wrapped in a low bun.

  “Ma poulette,” she said. “I warned you about him.”

  My eyes filled. It had been a long day. I tried to explain that it was different between us, that Benjamin had not only visited me at Nanterre but that he’d also taken me to the Pointe Shoe Cemetery, that we’d talked about the rush, about being stage junkies, and that we got each other on a cellular level, but all of it somehow came out sounding whiny and young. I rooted through my bag for a new pack of cigarettes, avoiding Adèle’s concerned gaze, and she eventually stood up, squeezed my shoulder, and left.

  It was after that, when the theater had finally emptied and I was about to jump into my car, that Benjamin came jogging out of the glass doors.

  “Wait,” he said.

  Go away, I thought. Hadn’t I already suffered enough and learned my lesson in the fall? But as he caught up to me, held the car door open, and gave me his million-dollar smile, his unkempt hair wet from showering, I couldn’t help but change my mind. I wished that he would climb into the backseat with me and that we would ride into the sunset together, or better yet, drive back to his apartment, where he would ravish me and then make me a four-course meal.

  “I’ve known Julie and Juliette for decades,” he said. “Something happened with their living situation. I was trying to help. Plus, you know where I stand. Don’t be mad.”

  He leaned in and gently touched my cheek.

  That night, when I walked into my dorm room, I found M lying facedown on her quilt, legs fanned out in a full straddle against the wall, feet pointed. Marine was so still and the room so dark that for one second I thought of Yaëlle, how they’d found her in her single, also lying on her twin bed, dead. I held my breath. But M flexed her feet and pointed them again, making me exhale and long for our old friendship, for the way I might have once turned on the lights and said, “You scared the bejesus out of me.” But what I said instead was, “Everything all right?”

  M didn’t answer.

  I looked at her more closely. Her eyes were shut. She wore headphones and hadn’t even heard me come into the room. Sit up, I thought, hoping that M would somehow hear me and say something, anything, but she stayed quiet. Maybe because of my own exhausting day and now her prolonged silence, I grew weary. I dropped my bag onto my unmade bed, dug through my closet for a clean pair of leggings and a sweater. In the bathroom, I wiped off my mascara and showered, and as I checked the hall board I realized that M hadn’t gone to nightly chores. Division One girls were supposed to be teaching Sixth Division rats how to knit and sew wool, M’s wheelhouse.

  I should have asked her why she wasn’t downstairs being a model petite mère but since Bastille I didn’t know how to act around her anymore. She seemed so young, even more naïve than usual. I hesitated, stayed in the hallway, and poked my head in. If she looks my way, I’ll tell her to come downstairs. I thought of Adèle, squeezing my shoulder, of us smoking onstage during breaks, then of Benjamin, kissing me in the laundry room. Don’t be mad, he’d said earlier, stroking my cheek. At the memory of his fingers brushing my skin, I shuddered. Marine never looked my way so I shut the door and ran down to the common room.

  “I didn’t know you could sew,” Little Alice said, raising a suspicious eyebrow after she’d curtsied.

  I grabbed a piece of wool in one hand, a needle in the other. “Sure,” I said, not wanting to explain that I was only sitting here because I couldn’t miss nightly chores anymore for fear of getting cut at Bastille. Company members were now the only people that truly mattered to me, or understood me, the ones who wished me well and who wanted to see me win The Prize. If I thought about them, the hollowness for the most part stayed at bay, a murky lake quivering down low in the pit of my chest. I kept trying to insert the dark blue thread into the hole but its tip collapsed against the needle head.

  “Told you,” Little Alice whispered to one of her friends.

  As if fed up by my uselessness, Marine’s mentee clapped, signaling for her group to follow her. All the little girls hurried over to Isabelle, who was already looping her needle and thread through a sweater sleeve, leaving me alone on the couch with the secret lake inside me and a big bundle of knotted wool on my lap.

  twenty-five

  Marine

  On a Saturday night in late March, Monsieur Arnaud rang the courtyard bell, inviting the First Division rats to the circular studio. I’d only eaten a petit suisse all day and was one of the last rats to arrive. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that none of the judges were there, not even The Witch. Unseasonal snow flurries scattered across the skylight while heaters blasted dry air. Maybe this was a quick rehearsal? A spacing run-through for the end of the Grand Défilé. I hoped so. Regardless of what it was, I prayed they wouldn’t ask me to dance too hard because I’d taken two morning classes, the master class, and rehearsed my big jumps for over an hour and a half. I had nothing left in me.

  I placed my hands on the barre not too far from Luc, who shrugged in shared confusion, and stretched my legs. I rolled my neck from side to side but every time I bent over, I felt faint.

  A little after nine p.m., Monsieur Chevalier walked in and flicked on the overhead lights.

  “It’s as silent as a church in here,” he said.

  His coat was covered with snowflakes. I was glad to see him. For motivation these days, I hung on to his words, the good and the bad, as if they were gold. Monsieur Chevalier marched to the stereo, took out an old tape, and placed it in the even older tape recorder. Within seconds, a series of flutes and oboes burst forth from the speakers. He removed his coat, plopped himself down on the stool, and said, waving his cane, “What music is this, Mademoiselle Duval?”

  “Firebird, Monsieur,” I replied.

  Chevalier instructed everyone to warm up. I winced, then glanced at Kate, who stood beside me. Though we still lived in the same dorm room and sometimes endured the ice bucket across from each other in awkward silences, our lives had diverged. Kate was constantly cabbed to Bastille like a movie star, and I was the same as always except that I’d replaced Kate with double practice sessions and downtime with Luc. And I was hungrier. Tonight, Kate looked the “company” part. While we wore our usual ivory, she flaunted deep purple, bright pink lipstick, and gray woolen tights, and her blue eyes were heavily shaded. She also rotated different colored pointe shoes: golden ones, forest green, and Little Alice’s favorite, a hot-pink pair with embroidered jewels on the top, which she wore tonight.

  “What’s the matter?” she whispered, frowning at me. She took her heel in her palm and yanked her leg in a pied dans la main.

  Before I could answer, Monsieur Chevalier cleared his throat and said, “Listen up. Since some of you have welded into organic ‘teams’—Isabelle and Bessy, Thierry and Fred, Marine a
nd Kate—Madame Brunelle and I thought it would be appropriate to assign variations to each team.”

  I listened, puzzled. Wasn’t it obvious that Kate and I were no longer a team? I thought back to weeks ago when Kate had walked into our room while I was stretching. It was time for nightly chores and I’d forgotten about them. Of late, I forgot everything. But instead of reminding me, Kate had gone downstairs alone. Little Alice was the one who’d covered for me, who’d told Monsieur Chevalier that I’d been in another room helping the younger boys learn how to sew, which I did do, only later.

  “In the next few days, we will watch a series of duets in order to help us make more cuts,” Monsieur Chevalier clarified. “For Kate and Marine, for example, we’ve chosen Firebird.”

  Monsieur Chevalier played the Firebird tape and ran through the steps. I didn’t want to dance a duet. Firebird was mine. Red, gold, and feathery. A ballet for someone with hips. Kate needed a blue tutu. Romeo and Juliet. Or La Sylphide.

  “Will you not join me?” Monsieur Chevalier said, tapping his foot while scrutinizing Kate and me.

  He lifted his arms, showing off his sweat marks as he pirouetted into a gorgeous low-attitude turn, reminding all of us of his past prowess. I came to the center of the studio and pounded my pointe shoes into the floor. Next to me, Kate also danced. But unlike me, Kate displayed a bright smile. When she made a mistake, she laughed and tugged at her tights. She shook off the error and started over. Kate might have been rusty from too much sitting and flirting in the theater but she was fully rested. My heart beat fast even though I wasn’t dancing full out yet. By the time we’d covered the variation, my face was red and wet while Kate’s was composed, barely flushed from the exercise.