Bright Burning Stars

by A. K. Small

  Chevalier stopped the tape. “Without notice,” he said, “we will be asking you to perform this together then separately. We will be looking for similarities and differences. What professionals have is style.” He lingered on the word, giving it an unattainable feel. “Others might call it voice. We will be looking for your own styles. If I were you, I would practice alone and together. Losers may or may not be sent home depending on the expanse of the gap between the two rats.”

  There was a collective gasp in the room.

  Chevalier pulled out a small notebook from his back pocket. He flipped pages, announcing partners. “One, Marine and Kate for Firebird. Two, Isabelle and Bessy for Swan Lake. Three, Suzanne and Colombe for Coppelia. Four, Thierry and Fred for The Nutcracker. And five, Jean-Paul and Sebastian for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

  “That’s not everyone,” Kate pointed out.

  “Gia and Cyrille will perform something from Aubade,” Chevalier replied. “As for Luc, he will dance the coda from Firebird.”

  For a moment, there was silence, except for the gurgles of the heater and Chevalier’s pacing. We held our breath. Were Gia and Cyrille new partners? Why was Luc dancing alone? Then, anger flared. We all separated from each other, making one staggered line around the room.

  “Unfair,” Bessy said.

  She stepped forward and stood with her arms akimbo in the middle of the studio. Ever since the winter demonstrations, her technique had wavered. She’d slipped in the rankings. Sometimes she ranked fifth, even sixth. Her face now turned almost the color of Kate’s purple leotard and her voice shook. Monsieur Chevalier ordered her to settle down but Bessy could not contain herself.

  She walked over to him. “I want equality. I’m tired of all these rules.”

  “Mademoiselle Prévot, would you like to go home tonight?” Monsieur Chevalier’s voice was calm. “Rule Four: Believe in the faculty and in the school’s vision.”

  I thought Bessy might shove him but she didn’t move.

  “Unfair,” she repeated.

  As she walked back to the barre, tears fell down her cheeks. I felt like crying too. I couldn’t cool down and my eyes burned. My tongue was dry, though I’d been drinking loads of water. I fanned myself with my hand and hoped that soon we’d leave the stuffy studio.

  “All of you, sit on the side,” Chevalier said. “Marine and Kate, take center.”

  “Maintenant?” I asked.

  “Yes, now. As I told you,” Monsieur Chevalier said, “we will not always give you notice. Like an understudy in the company, you must perfect all the repertoires and you must be ready to be sent to the stage and to shine under any circumstances.”

  The room spun. I glanced at Kate, who was practicing soutenus, readying herself for speed. In her newly broken-in shoes, Kate flittered around like a firefly. As the music started, I peered down at myself. All I saw was my chest, a big mound pushing against my white leotard. When I looked up and opened my arms to second, Luc nodded, giving me the thumbs-up. Cyrille did the same. He sat between Gia and Isabelle on the right-hand side of the studio. Everyone looked nervous and overwhelmed. I slid my feet into fifth position. Vas-y, I coached myself, but shapes appeared in front of my eyelids. I rubbed them, hoping to make them go away.

  “You okay?” I heard Luc say.

  When I tried to answer that I was fine, just hot, I unintentionally shifted my weight backward. Go ahead, I repeated. As four counts went by, I did not dance a single step. A dull pain in my head replaced hunger in my gut. I smelled fresh sweat, lost my balance, then stepped back to grab the barre to hold myself steady. Des taches grises et dorées s’étendirent devant mes yeux. Spots in my eyes expanded from gray to gold. Before I could request an extra minute, my knees buckled, and then tout disparut. Everything disappeared.

  twenty-six

  Kate

  Monsieur Chevalier scooped M into his arms. He managed to sit down and prop her up against his chest. He offered her tiny sips of water from his paper cup, but Marine did not drink.

  “Pauvre petite,” he said. Then he ordered Sebastian to fetch help.

  Within minutes, Mademoiselle Fabienne and Monsieur Arnaud appeared in the studio. They whisked Marine away on a stretcher, rolling her into the elevator no one ever used. Still in my pointe shoes, I ran after the stretcher all the way down the grand staircase. I rushed through the common room into a narrow hallway, made a right, and ran straight to the nurse’s quarters, which was located in the dormitories on the bottom floor, tucked away in a back nook. I knocked softly on the door, trusting that someone would let me in, but I was soon rebuffed by Monsieur Chevalier, who must have followed behind me and now glared in my direction.

  “Please, Mademoiselle Sanders, let faculty handle this matter.”

  Monsieur Chevalier’s tone was sharp. He leaned heavily against his cane. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to change his mind. I mumbled, “Sorry,” then went to my room. But after a few hours smoking cigarette after cigarette and replaying M fainting, her body collapsing to the ground like an empty garment, I couldn’t stay still any longer. I tiptoed out of Hall 3 and made my way back to the nurse’s quarters. This time I didn’t knock. I twisted the doorknob and let myself in. By now it was nearly midnight and the only light in the small room came from Mademoiselle Fabienne’s computer screen. Marine lay asleep on a cot next to the beastly scale. Someone had dressed her in a cotton nightgown. A sheet covered her body up to her waist. Her arms, so skinny, stretched out by her sides. Bones protruded above her sweetheart neckline. At her meager sight, a giant knot formed in my throat. How bad had this fasting become? Was M not eating at all? And since when? It was one thing to fight, to compete, not to speak, but it was another to see the person you’d loved for years drop to the dance floor then lie immobile on a cot. Suddenly, I felt like an idiot and worse, irresponsible. I’d been so caught up in Benjamin and Bastille that since my visit to The Witch’s office, I’d forgotten about Marine.

  “M?” I whispered. I took her hand and squeezed it. “I’m so sorry,” I said, the words tumbling out in English.

  I was about to say a lot more, like let’s please stop fighting and get you better, when light footsteps padded right outside the room. My heart jumped and before I could do anything, Mademoiselle Fabienne was swinging the door open and clasping her hand to her mouth.

  “What on earth are you doing here?” she whispered.

  The nutritionist didn’t wear her usual red Chanel suit. Instead, she was in a pair of dark pajamas. Without makeup, she looked far older than usual.

  “I suggest you never come back here uninvited,” she said. “Now get out.”

  I let go of M’s hand. For the second time in one night, I ran back to my room. For a while, I sat not on my comforter, but on M’s. I rubbed my palm along the embroidery, the small mirrors, the beading. I thought of us in Sixth Division, the night that we’d snuck up to the circular studio, how we’d come back after Monsieur Chevalier had blessed us, then fallen onto our respective beds, laughing. At once, I missed my friend like I sometimes missed my dad and the memory of my mom, not just with my heart but with my whole body. I needed to help M figure something out. I’d go back to the nurse’s office in the morning even if it meant getting yelled at again. I’d just changed into sleep shorts and a T-shirt and was about to get into bed when my door opened and Benjamin walked in. Maybe it was the surprise, or his staggering sight, or the way he looked at me with one side of his mouth curled up, but I started to cry.

  “Hey, hey,” he said.

  He closed the door behind him, made his way over to me, and engulfed me in his arms. I inhaled his smell, sage and amber. I pressed my face to his chest and as I told him about duets and M, I soaked his shirt.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, squeezing me.

  He made me sit down on my bed and held my hand until I breathed more evenly. Moonlight shone through
the window, flooding the room. A couple of leotards were flung on the back of my chair and my alarm clock read the wrong time. A stick of deodorant, nail polish remover (I was painting my nails again because company members could), and my brush, barrettes, and rubber bands littered my desk. On the floor, there was nothing too disgusting, just a bunch of demi pointes that needed sewing and, on top of my pillow, Benjamin’s brown bear.

  Marine’s side was spotless. Her ballet bag lay at the foot of her bed and her favorite gold chain was in her jewelry box. I knew that if I were to open her closet door, I’d see M’s clothes hung from darkest to lightest. At that small detail, a new knot formed in my throat; Benjamin must have sensed it because he tickled my earlobe.

  “She’ll be fine. I promise,” he said. Then he whispered, his lips touching my ear, “I missed you.”

  “Me too,” I replied.

  I had missed him. Ever since the night where he’d run after me, we’d spent time together daily. Sometimes, he snuck me to cafés during breaks. Other times, we hid in the symphony theater on the third floor of Bastille and made out in the dark.

  “Come here,” Benjamin said.

  He pulled open my comforter, climbed into my sheets, and waited until I’d gotten under the covers too. I snuggled against him. His warmth, like a giant hot water bottle, filled up my bed, making my worry for M lessen. And, of course, there was his face—his lake-blue eyes, his squarish chin, and those incredible lips—not to mention his body, the violin strings.

  “Aren’t we so good together?” I murmured.

  “So good,” Benjamin repeated.

  He kissed me, making me close my eyes and shiver.

  At first, he was tender, even cautious, as if he didn’t want to break me, but as he glided his fingers on my shoulders, down the length of my arms to my painted blue nails, his kisses took on new weight. Unlike Cyrille, he didn’t ask me questions like “Here or here?” Benjamin touched me with ease, making me wish for this moment to last forever. I yanked at his clothes and he at mine until we were both naked. Benjamin circled my belly button and ran his thumb ever so lightly on my hipbones, then down the side of my thigh. The sensation was a tickle, butterfly wings fluttering against my skin.

  When he asked if we could make love, I thought of Cyrille and even of the baby’s small ghostly face, its wrenching cries in my sleep, of the possibility of making the same mistake twice, but then I felt Benjamin’s lips on mine, the melting sensation of two people becoming one, and the high galvanized me. I blocked the past from memory, preferring to bank on the future. You are my über-talented Prince Charming, I thought. And drunk on passion, I clasped my hand on his Rodin-like chest and said, “Yes.”

  Soon, we were skin to skin. Bone to bone. Our bodies entwined. Benjamin fished something out of his pants pocket. He moved on top of me, slid on a condom. That amber-sage smell seeped everywhere and the sound of his voice whispering how beautiful I was made me cling onto his broad back until we shuddered then lay quiet, sweaty, and tired.

  For the next three nights, Benjamin let himself into my room between midnight and two a.m. He tiptoed out before sunrise. Under the comforter, in the dark, we whispered. I updated him on M and how sick she still was, how she couldn’t hold anything down, and how when I had tried to visit her, Mademoiselle Fabienne had not let me in, how scared I was for M. Benjamin listened, spooning me.

  “It’s going to take some time for her to recover,” he said. “But not everyone is cut out for this place. Maybe it would be best if she went home.”

  At the thought of M leaving, my stomach hurt, but I thought of her on the cot, how skinny her arms had become. I also remembered Would You. All the rounds we’d played. How in the courtyard, way back in September, M had said that she didn’t want to die for The Prize. Maybe Benjamin was right. Except that I stopped wondering because he was nudging himself closer to me, turning me around, pulling me back to the now, to my bed, to us in it together. He mentioned something about a later evening rehearsal, how he’d overheard Serge say that I might understudy a trio with him in it.

  “Really?” I asked, my heart lifting so high I thought it might burst out of my chest.

  Benjamin kissed me.

  I lived for those few hours, for the way he woke me from dead sleep and made me forget about everything.

  On Monday morning, after he left my room and told me that he wouldn’t be at rehearsal that night, I clutched his brown bear to my heart, then put it in my ballet bag next to J-P’s pills, longing to keep some part of him close to me. I was so distraught at the fact that I wouldn’t see him later that I went ahead and swallowed one of the tablets. It took a few minutes for the drug to circle my veins but as I sat in my pajamas stretching, my legs in splits, my anxiety dwindled and changed to peace.

  Splayed on my rug, I thought about what life would be like once I was in the company, too, and once Benjamin was my forever partner, how perfect the world would be then, how I wouldn’t need J-P’s pills anymore. Or at least not as frequently as I’d been popping them. About once a week. My room flooded with sunshine, particles of light hovering over everything. I imagined my brown bear not shoved in my ballet bag the way it was now but displayed on a queen-sized mattress in a sunny loft somewhere between two fluffy pillows, and as I got up and dressed myself for the day, Benjamin’s amber scent still on me, that image made me dizzy with happiness.

  twenty-seven

  Marine

  Four days after I’d fainted, I no longer lay on the nurse’s cot but sat up in a chair looking out the window while Fabienne worked at her desk. With a blanket draped over my shoulders, I stared at the sunset, at the crocuses poking out of the grass, the snowflakes from duet night long gone. I thought of The Witch, how she’d come by earlier to give me the most unanticipated warning.

  She’d said, “If you lose any more weight, Duval, you’re history.”

  My brain was still fuzzy but now that I’d held a small cup of broth down and was sitting upright, I decided that The Witch’s words sounded like I was too skinny. I almost chuckled at the irony. Except that tonight, maybe because I didn’t feel as nauseated and because I could feel a wee bit of strength coming back, I didn’t worry about my weight as much. I didn’t touch my ribs nonstop to see how far they protruded. What I desperately longed for was to go outside, to sit in the courtyard, and to feel the breeze on my face. This tiny room where everyone looked at me with slight pity and where Mademoiselle Fabienne furiously typed on her computer recording God-knows-what all day was making me claustrophobic. I was about to ask when I’d be released when Cyrille’s voice startled me.

  “If it isn’t The Pulse,” he said.

  He stood in the doorframe wearing his usual leather jacket, but beneath it a gray T-shirt read Ça Va Pas?—You’re not okay?—in black ink. I smiled for the first time in what felt like days, but then I looked away, back down at myself, and noticed a broth stain on my cotton nightgown. I grew embarrassed.

  “I’m so happy to see you sitting,” Cyrille said.

  At that, Mademoiselle Fabienne stopped typing. “You have a few minutes to discuss adage class,” she said. “And please leave the door open.”

  As soon as she left the room, Cyrille knelt down by my chair and clasped my hand in his.

  “I had to beg The Witch to get in here,” he said.

  At first, it was nice to see him. I liked the way he didn’t scan my body and judge me like others had. He looked me square in the eyes as if we were about to begin a new duet and he needed my full attention. His fingers felt warm and strong entwined in mine. And when he told me how much he was counting on me, I momentarily believed him. Except that as I returned his gaze, everything came back—Kate in her ivory leotard, belly swollen, the two of them eternally entangled. Him, lying to me during rehearsal. How he had broken not only her trust but mine. Even with all his light, Cyrille would never be who I imagined he once was
or could be. I thought about Oli too, what he would be thinking right now if he were still alive, kneeling beside me the way Cyrille was, what words he might offer me. Yet the idea of Oli witnessing me this awful way made my heart beat faster and irregularly. I rested my head against the back of the chair.

  Cyrille said, “I wasn’t supposed to like you. It just happened.”

  His face bent close to mine. His gray eyes were especially dark and he hadn’t shaven in a while so stubble grew around his mouth.

  “When you told me about your brother, things changed for me. I saw a path for us. I couldn’t stop thinking about our kick-ass Kitri pas de deux, our ranking, the way you fish-dove in my arms months ago, your perfect waist, how music coils through your body and ignites you from the inside out, how loyal you are. The other girls pale in comparison.” Cyrille spoke fast. “After the demonstrations, I wanted to tell you that you were The One. I wanted to explain. But Claire’s stuff got burned. You got close to Luc. And there were new cuts. Anyway, please get better. We’re so close to the end. You and I will win this if you recover fast.”

  At Luc’s name, I felt my ears warm. I missed him, Little Alice, and the costume room. “I’ll try,” I said, meaning it.

  Cyrille stood up. “Marinette,” he said.

  I didn’t have the strength to scold him, and besides, the way he said my nickname with a bit of heaviness in his voice sounded loving, genuine even. But I couldn’t take Cyrille at face value. At least, not anymore. I was about to tell him to leave when he dropped back down to his knees, urgently cupped my face with his hands, and kissed my lips.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know how hard this must be.”

  For a split second, I stared into his dark gray eyes, felt the magnetic pull, all of his light flowing into me, but then I came back to my senses, nudged him away, and readjusted the blanket on my shoulders. Seconds later, Mademoiselle Fabienne returned and shooed him out of the room.