Bright Burning Stars

by A. K. Small

  The next morning, I was released and put on a rest and meal plan for four weeks. I had to report every other day for weighing. For the next few days, I mostly slept and forced myself to eat when I was awake. My body had grown accustomed to fasting and I fought an aversion to food. All I could stomach was broth and a little bread. Once, I tried a bite of chicken but spit it right back up. I also had trouble catching my breath.

  One night after everyone had come back from duet rehearsals (Kate and I had been placed on hold), Kate gave me the rundown, concluding that out of all the variations Bessy had oddly danced the best. As she described her beautiful arabesques I stood and felt woozy again. I wasn’t sure if it was part of the healing process or if Kate, sitting casually on my quilt chatting away, was the cause of my nausea. I folded a long-sleeved shirt and placed it on my desk, wondering how Kate’s days at the theater were going, but I didn’t ask.

  The strange thing about fainting was that I had woken up feeling empty but also as if I’d been given a brand-new perspective, not just on dancing, but on life. It was a cleansing of sorts. I was still mad at Kate for Claire’s sabotage but the acuteness of that evening had died down. The demonstrations seemed way in the past, and the task at hand—getting strong again both physically and psychologically—monopolized my brain.

  “Anyway,” Kate was saying. “Everyone in the studio is working triple hard. It’s as if they know that cuts are imminent.”

  I grabbed another long-sleeved shirt, folded it, and placed it on top of the other one. But then I blinked and my knees weakened, so I sat next to Kate to catch my breath.

  “You okay?” Kate said.

  I thought of the way everything had disappeared that night, how easily my body had given up. How profoundly tired and cold I felt all the time, even bundled in blankets. I reached for my glass of lemonade and drank.

  Kate watched me for a while.

  “I’m dating this guy, M,” she said, blushing. “You can probably smell his cologne. He came by here a lot while you were recovering.” She blushed more.

  I wondered if that’s why I was feeling woozy, that soupçon of something that wasn’t Kate. I nearly asked if he’d spent the night but Kate now leaned against me and wrapped her arm around my shoulder, squeezing me like old times. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine us back in Fifth Division, both in our pale blue leotards. Except that tonight Kate wore a gray one and a silvery skirt while I lounged in jeans, two long-sleeved shirts, and a sweatshirt. Kate reeked of stale cigarettes, her woodsy scent gone, making me long to open the window. I waited for a second then asked if she could get up so I could lie down.

  Kate said, “I’m headed to Bastille anyway.” She added, “M? You’re scaring me. Are you sure you should be up and about?”

  I didn’t answer, just curled up on my quilt, longing for sleep.

  Kate said, “Benjamin took me to the Pointe Shoe Cemetery. He told me about this dancer Rose who hanged herself next to her slippers. I don’t want you to turn out like her. Or Yaëlle. Okay? Plus,” she said, “I need you here because at some point soon you’ll be my maid of honor. That’s how much I love him.”

  I closed my eyes. Toi et les garçons, I thought. You and boys. Aren’t you repeating the same mistakes? When will you ever learn?

  Kate kept on babbling about Benjamin’s serpents, his gorgeous torso and lake-blue eyes, how they frequented all these cafés, how he was not a boy but a man, how they’d fallen for each other so hard, how raw and unexplainably intense their relationship was, and how he would love me once we met. But then Kate paused and said, “Are you listening?”

  I pretended to be fast asleep. Kate sighed. She fiddled with hair stuff on her side of the room, then draped another blanket over me, shut the blinds, closed the door, and left.

  twenty-eight

  Kate

  Benjamin didn’t show for the next four rehearsals. This was the longest I’d gone without seeing him since that very first day at Bastille. I could barely sleep. I kept waking and shivering, certain that if I stayed up long enough he would sneak inside my room. We would lie in perfect silence so as not to wake up M, his amber smell enveloping me enough to satiate me. But Benjamin didn’t come.

  During the day, I tried to focus on the new short contemporary ballet titled Moon Beam that The Twig was teaching us but I had trouble remembering steps—they were so modern, a combination of angular elbows and constant chaînés. I kept floundering so much that one afternoon I was removed from Moon Beam’s substitute roster.

  “I’ll do better,” I said to Serge after a break. “I swear. It’s school and work. I’m inundated.”

  I hoped he would understand but Serge directed a few girls to the right of the stage.

  “Everyone is,” he said. “Welcome to the real world.”

  He waved me out of the way and asked Juliette to step in.

  I watched in horror as he said this next section would be a trio with Benjamin and that subs would need private time to rehearse with him. He explained that Benjamin was a soloist who liked a turn with all the girls, that even backups got duo time. In case. Everyone laughed at that except for me.

  The next day, Benjamin returned. He dropped his ballet bag to the floor and kissed Julie, Juliette, and Adèle on the cheeks. His hair was wild and his face more flushed than usual. I waited for the twins to leave then ran up to him. In front of Adèle, I swallowed hard.

  “Where have you been?” I said.

  I hoped—no, prayed—for one embrace, for one ma chérie d’amour. Just one.

  But Benjamin only poked my side. “Remember what I told you in the laundry room?” He pointed to the space between us. “How I didn’t think you could handle this?”

  I nodded, recalling but not understanding.

  “Well, now is the time for you to grow up and prove me wrong. Okay?”

  “But what about us being so good together?” I said.

  “Oh, we were,” he replied. “And I hope you take those moments, all that heat, and bring it under the spotlights.” Then he turned to Adèle, adding, “You’ll never guess but I was at Garnier all day working with Sarah Barinelli.” His eyes lit up as he spoke the name. Before I could ask who this Sarah was, Serge called him to the stage.

  Adèle and I stood next to each other.

  Adèle explained, “Sarah just got here from Belgium. She’s the newest principal dancer. Nineteen years old. Unheard of. You should see her. She has the most divine extensions. Her back is like chewing gum and as if that isn’t incredible enough, she’s got violet eyes.”

  I fled to the bathroom, splashed water on my face, then popped one of J-P’s pills, which kept me from sobbing and making terrible mistakes. But none of it mattered anyway because I was relegated to dancing in the back row only during group sections, unable to show off my technique. During Moon Beam, Juliette, who now shadowed Maude, radiated as Benjamin took her hand and helped her promenade in front attitude. I waited all afternoon and night for Benjamin, hoping that as I caught my car, he would come running after me the way he’d done once before. Or that he’d sit next to me during a break, say he was sorry, then tell me our time together had been one of a kind and far too precious to ignore, that he’d continue to love the stage, of course, but needed me and only me.

  Except none of that happened. Benjamin rehearsed nonstop. Shirtless, barefoot, and in a pair of black tights, he was the only one onstage. He spun with his elbows out and everyone watched as he picked up speed, his hair flowing in his face and his legs bow taut. Then he opened his arms, fingers spread, serpents coiling up his skin, and slowed his turns to a final halt. Dancers hollered. Others clapped from their seats.

  “Ja, ja, ja!” The Twig yelled in Swedish.

  When I came out of Bastille, it was pouring rain. As I waited and waited and waited, my eyes locked on the glass doors, my clothes drenched, my hair sopping wet, makeup run
ning down my face, Benjamin never came. After a while, the driver buzzed down the window and said, “Please come, Mademoiselle Kate.”

  Part three

  Spring Term

  twenty-nine

  Marine

  Maybe it was the way Kate lay in bed at night in her sweaty leotard and tights, unshowered, eyes locked on our green fluorescent stars, or the back-fence talk that something épouvantable, terrible, had happened to her at Bastille—someone had said, Sebastian maybe, that Kate had somehow been ridiculed—that made me decide to reach out. Maybe if I told Kate how last week, I’d thrown up my ratatouille again, my shrunken stomach incapable of holding cooked vegetables down, or how I’d sat out of the end of ballet class, heart racing, or how I was retaining fluids not only in my ankles but under my eyes, and how nearly impossible getting back on my own two feet had been and still was, Kate would in turn share her problems, and maybe we would connect again.

  So one night in early May when the windows and doors were open, when, outside, younger divisions were throwing a cache-cache hide-and-seek party to celebrate the end of the lockdown, and when Kate and I sat on our respective beds, blistered feet firmly planted in the ice bucket, I said, “I want to Beyoncé. Don’t you?”

  Kate kept on looking up at the stars.

  “Remember when we used to tell each other everything? How easy it used to be?”

  Kate winced. She said, “God, I hate these damn buckets.”

  The acute pain from dunking my feet into the ice zipped through me like an electric current. Suddenly, I was furious at Kate for not trying harder, for not yearning to bridge the Atlantic-sized gap between us as much as I did.

  “What?” I said. “You don’t think I’m capable of understanding your company problems?” Before Kate could answer, I added, “Never mind. Someone told me that you went to The Witch behind my back and tried to get me sent home. Is that true?”

  For the first time in forever, Kate looked me in my eyes.

  “I got scared, M. I saw you gripping the barre and fighting to get back up from a grand plié one morning.” She paused, then, taking her little brown bear from atop a pile of clothes, she said, “I also think Benjamin is right that not everyone is cut out for this place. And for what it’s worth my problems are just complicated.”

  “What does Benjamin have to do with this?” I asked.

  The ice turned colder and I thought I might never feel warm again.

  “Lately,” Kate said, “everything.”

  “Are you still dating?”

  “I hope so,” Kate said. But she didn’t look me in the eyes anymore. Instead, she stared at her bucket, the bear still clutched in her hands. “I’m sorry,” she added. “I shouldn’t have gone to The Witch.”

  I momentarily yearned to get up and sit by her, to say something that would make Kate smile because tonight she looked even more worn down than usual. She’d cabbed back from Bastille late that afternoon and her glazed eyes were still caked with makeup. But everything below my shins had grown numb, and besides, you never pulled out your feet early. I looked at our beds, how exploded Kate’s side of the room was and always would be, and how my attempt at connecting, at rebuilding our friendship, had been wishful thinking. Too much had happened between us. It had been such a long time since we’d laughed, hugged, and helped each other. Soon, we would be separated anyway—as painful as this thought was: one of us would win, the other lose, or both of us would lose and learn to go on with our lives. What I was now finally certain of was that both of us could and would not win.

  When Monsieur Arnaud opened the door and peered at us, asking if everything was all right, I said, “Do you think I’d have a shot at transferring into Yaëlle’s old single this late in the year?”

  Kate threw me a sharp glance and then the housemaster placed a towel on her bed and said, “Maybe. I’ll speak to Madame Brunelle.”

  Monsieur Arnaud must have used all the right words because The Witch said yes. The next day, Luc went to her office to request a Hall 3 pass in order to help me move my belongings. Madame Brunelle not only handed him one but told him that she thought he was a gentleman for helping. Luc then spent a big chunk of the day telling me to hug him for his gentleman-ness. He also carried my suitcases and all of my knickknacks, and when I grew so tired that all I could do was curl up on my bed (something I did multiple times a day), he taped my dance posters to the walls and read beside me while I slept.

  “This place is tiny and oddly shaped. It reminds me of my room at home,” he said once I’d woken up and gathered myself. We put everything in its place then sat together on my quilt. “Want to call it The Shoe too?”

  “Sure,” I said, liking the idea of sharing the name of a bedroom with Luc, which made my ears warm, then made me wonder if this meant something more.

  After that, Luc returned the pass but still visited me clandestinely anyway. In the afternoons, after classes and before dinner, we sat either in the courtyard or on my bed and listened to music. With Luc by my side, not just at meals but all the time, each day got a little bit easier. I didn’t worry quite as much about my weight or the way my body looked. My self-esteem grew not only because I was sleeping again but also because Luc constantly told me how pretty I was. Except that he used different adjectives for every day of the week: radieuse, splendide, canon, trop belle, magnifique, superbe, top. He also checked my energy level.

  “Barometer, please,” he liked to say.

  I always told him the truth: thumbs-up on some days and thumbs-down on others.

  One sunny morning a few days after my move, Luc took me to the dance annex. We hid in the corner studio, the small one on the rez-de-chaussée. Luc sat down in the middle of the floor, then tapped it for me to join him.

  “Close your eyes,” he said.

  For a second, I thought he might try to kiss me. These past few weeks, when we’d brushed against each other in The Shoe and in the costume room, I’d felt something different. New. Spine-tingling. I’d become highly aware of Luc, of the way he stood at the barre, feet in perfect fifth, of those small waves hidden beneath his T-shirt, the jazz bristling inside him, and how our legs sometimes touched when we sat and read. Like the day before, for example, I’d been telling him about how hard it was for me to last until big jumps, that I might never finish a ballet class again, when I’d felt his hand resting on my thigh and his eyes, God, they’d shone as green as a traffic light. But Luc didn’t kiss me.

  He said, “You can look now.”

  When I opened my eyes, Luc was sitting in the exact same place, but he’d taken off one sneaker and one sock. He covered his bare foot with his hands.

  “What?” I said, confused.

  “Remember when you asked why I’d chosen ballet over piano?” he said.

  Luc removed his hand. He was missing three toes, his third, fourth, and fifth. The scars and stumps were shocking yet I didn’t turn away. My eyes nearly filled as I stared at the crater where his toes used to be. The sunken area was the size of a large prune, the skin around it was discolored, and at its center there were flecks of perpetual bruising.

  Luc swallowed hard. “My cousin and I were playing with an ax when I was ten and he was eleven. We were in the countryside. I wanted the ax. Jeremy did too. Next thing I knew, he’d swung it. I was barefoot. After the surgery, walking was difficult. Doctors told my mother that ballet would help with my balance. So, I quit taking formal piano lessons and started to do a bunch of demi pliés.”

  Suddenly, everything I had lived through for the past months—my hunger, my fainting, my aversion to food, my fights with Kate, my rankings—felt less important. At once, I thought of Oli, how an accident too had taken him away around the same age. I imagined a younger version of Luc, his hair long and his cheeks red from playing outside. I saw the ax, a flash of silver, shining above a faceless boy’s head. I cringed but was awfully glad th
at, unlike Oli, most of Luc was still here.

  “I wonder sometimes what might have happened to me if I’d never gone to the farmhouse that day.”

  Luc reached for his sock but I stopped him. I leaned forward and felt his scars, the knots and thickness of wounded skin, the bone ruthlessly severed beneath it.

  “Does this hurt?” I said.

  Luc shook his head.

  “How do you jump and do tendus and everything?” I tried to imagine taking barre without my toes.

  “Practice makes perfect, right?” Luc slipped his sock back on. He said, “There’s a rumor that they might reassign us so I wanted you to know. In case you get me. I wanted you to be able to refuse if you’re uncomfortable with it.”

  I looked into his eyes. “Don’t be silly,” I said. “You’ve always been my favorite partner.”

  “Yeah?” Luc replied. “What about his royal highness?”

  “What about him?” I said, making us both laugh.

  But then I recalled Cyrille in the nurse’s quarters and nearly told Luc about that day. He kissed me when I was sick, I almost said. Yet I changed my mind because this moment was about us and not anyone else.

  And it dawned on me: light did not equal desire. Cyrille was a great partner, no doubt, I thought. His brilliance would always rain down on me and further my dancing but that didn’t mean I was in love with him. The boy I wanted shone a different kind of light entirely, one of vulnerability, of acceptance. And, he sat right here beside me. The studio filled with spring sunshine. With both sneakers back on again, no one would have ever guessed what had happened. I reached my hand to Luc’s cheek. His face was warm. His freckles, my constellation.

  “The other reason I wanted to tell you,” Luc said, “is because if I can dance with two toes on my right foot, you can dance with a few extra kilos. Right?”

  “Right,” I said.

  And for the first time in years, I believed it.