You're So Sweet

by Charis Marsh

  “What are you worried about?” Tristan whispered as they collected their stuff on the other end of the belt, subject to the intimidating glare of the large woman who handed them back their shoes.

  “I’m worried that they will think I’m a terrorist,” Julian whispered back. This thought was not entirely what had been worrying him, but it seemed to give a clear shape to the otherwise formless fog of abstract fear that he was feeling.

  “I am far more likely to be called a terrorist,” Tristan whispered back, pointing at his face.

  Tristan might have a point.

  “You on the other hand,” Tristan continued, “are more likely to be accused of trying to audition for One Direction.”

  “What is One Direction?”

  “You are seriously living under a rock, Julian. Never mind, they’re English,” Tristan answered, unwilling to explain the finer details of his love for Louis Tomlinson.

  Julian shrugged, confused.

  They reached the waiting area, where Keiko and Taylor and her mother sat.

  “Are Kaitlyn and Alexandra on this flight?” Julian asked.

  “Alexandra should be here,” Taylor answered. “Kaitlyn I think is going on a different flight — her aunt had air miles or something, but not on this plane.”

  “Right,” Julian remembered. “She said something like that.”

  “Yes,” Taylor nodded. “At the studio. Yesterday.” She sat on the floor and began to stretch; casual conversation, at least of the linear kind, was quite impossible with the level of excitement in the air. Beside her, Keiko did the same.

  Behind Julian, an elderly gentleman rapped him on the back with a rolled magazine. “Excuse me,” he asked, “but what is going on?” He pointed to the curiously shaped tutu suitcases.

  Julian laughed. “A dance competition,” he explained. “Those are tutus.”

  The man raised his eyebrows so far he nearly raised his hat. “I see. I couldn’t guess it, was thinking maybe music. Or the circus. Interesting.” He walked off, and Julian got the definite impression that they had been the odd point of his day.

  Alexandra arrived, panting and leading her mother by several metres. “Everyone ready?” she asked. “Where’s Kaitlyn?

  “She’s going to be on a different flight,” Taylor repeated, cracking the bones of her left foot through her shoes.

  “How unique of her.” Alexandra sat down and began to flip through their schedule. “Julian, I think I’m going to be able to watch you and Taylor’s contemporary pas de deux.”

  “Sweet,” Julian said, blushing. He could feel the warmth fill his face. It was so annoying, he seemed to be entering his awkward pubescent age at seventeen, and he objected. He squished his hands against his hot cheeks, trying to restore them to his natural pale colouring.

  “Did you —” Alexandra paused. She had been on the point of asking Julian a question that would have revealed that he had choreographed the pas de deux, and while she had no real commitment to keeping his secret, it did seem a bit tacky to blurt it out with him right there. He might stop telling her secrets if she did so. There was a moment of awkward silence as everyone looked up, the inevitable result of breaking off a sentence that hastily. They stared at each other, and suddenly Julian collapsed to the floor, giggling. “Oh, God.”

  “What?”

  “You all know that I choreographed it.”

  They started to laugh. “We are so good at keeping secrets, Julian,” Taylor said.

  “You might as well have just posted a notice on the bulletin board in that case,” Alexandra said dryly.

  “At least the Demidovskis don’t know I choreographed it,” Julian shrugged.

  Taylor looked up. “Uh, Jules, I heard Theresa telling them about it.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Alexandra shrugged. “You have nothing to worry about if you’re any good.”

  “Thanks, Alexandra, that really makes me feel better.”

  The hotel was packed with dancers, and as Taylor and Julian disappeared to rehearse, Alexandra stood in the middle of the lobby, digesting the scene. Tristan stood behind her, the two of them having made the decision to leave Beth and Tristan’s mom Kaveri to gossip together. Alexandra needed air, and space, and this brightly lit hotel had neither. It smelled of central air and was filled with people hurrying around. There was an oddly stressed vibe in the hotel, and it was clear that YAGP was to blame.

  “Alexandra!” Tristan pulled on her arm.

  “What?”

  “Look over there!” Tristan pointed, and Alexandra saw before them a very well-dressed pair. It is a wonderful sight when money meets taste, and Alexandra admired their clothing for a second. They were both of average height, with the same unusual combination of very tan skin and auburn hair paired with green eyes. They also had the muscle tone of exceptionally good dancers. Alexandra swallowed. “It’s them! You know, I can’t remember their names, remember you showed me their pas de deux on YouTube?”

  Alexandra nodded, slowly. “Lux Amdahl. Lux and Nat Amdahl.”

  “Lexi, please introduce me? Please, please, please?”

  “All right,” Alexandra shrugged. “If she even remembers me — I only met Lux, and that was a while ago.” They started to walk over, and before they had reached the pair, Lux had spotted Alexandra.

  “Lexi! Omigod, you are here?”

  “How are you?” Alexandra asked, smiling as she reached out to hug her.

  “I’m good,” Lux said, grinning. Alexandra watched her, a bit confused. The last time she had seen Lux, she’d been a spoiled but extremely talented eleven-year-old who had looked up to Alexandra. That had been two years ago, and Alexandra had a feeling things had changed. The spoiled brat had turned into a very determined-looking thirteen-year-old.

  “This is Tristan, he goes to my school,” Alexandra said, awkwardly pointing at him. Lux smiled at him. “Tristan, Lux. Well … I’m going for a walk. Do you want to come with?”

  “Yeah,” Lux agreed. “Omigod, so exciting, right? I can’t wait to get on stage, and I love how so many people I know are here!” She pulled out her phone and began to text. The four of them began to walk toward the doors. Alexandra felt extraordinarily happy. She felt like she was home in this foreign hotel; she respected Nat and Lux, and that was an unbelievably freeing feeling. She hated the academy because she never knew what was going on, why they chose some people over others, why they loved Grace more than her. Here, she knew where she stood. Tomorrow she would be able to see if Lux was as good as she looked. She hung behind her, walking arm-in-arm with Tristan as he talked to Nat, and Lux strolled down the street ahead of them, too full of energy to wait. The skinny kid was still extremely skinny, but there was hard-core muscle on that body, and the hyperextension in her legs was something new. She listened absent-mindedly as Tristan and Nat argued about the point of competitions.

  “I don’t think that it should be like that,” Tristan was saying, sounding a bit unsure. “You shouldn’t have to do competitions to get a job, because in a company you will have to dance completely differently. Competitions are kind of stupid, it’s like they turn ballet into gymnastics or something. I’m just doing it because I’m Canadian, so I should do anything that I can put on my resume that will help me get a visa for the U.S. or wherever. If I just wanted to work in Canada, I wouldn’t compete.”

  Nat snorted. It was a very obvious and kind of grown-up snort, and Alexandra could feel Tristan’s arm tense. She squeezed his arm, reminding him not to be too rude; she wanted to hang out with Nat and Lux; they were definitely the most important and interesting people at competition this year.

  “That is because you are a total competition virgin,” Nat declared, “and you have been brainwashed into believing all the pretentious crap about competitions taking away the artistry. It’s such total idiocy.” They continued to argue for the rest of the walk, Tristan losing more ground with every step. He seemed to have had his feeling
s hurt by Nat suggesting that it was his lack of experience that made him think like he did, and as a consequence he was too emotional to formulate a logical argument. Alexandra didn’t bother to help him; the truth was that she agreed with both sides.

  Kaitlyn was currently sitting on a chair in her living room, worrying about what people must be thinking of her disappearance. The truth, that after the morning she had crossed nobody’s mind, probably would not have reassured her, but was nothing compared to the conversations that were playing out in her mind. She bent her head down into her hands, massaging her forehead as if that could make her brain stop worrying.

  “It’s for the best, Kaitlyn,” Cecelia said with a shrug, as she came out of the kitchen with a pile of her grade three students’ math work to mark. “This way you won’t be placed in a position where you will fail.”

  “Mom, nobody’s going to believe that I got pneumonia.”

  “Yes, they are, Kaitlyn.”

  Kaitlyn sighed and turned on the TV. She might as well catch up with the latest episode of Once Upon a Time, since there was clearly nothing else to do. She felt so wrong; all that rehearsal, just to not dance. Logically, she knew that did not make sense, improving as a dancer was valuable all the time, not just for competitions and exams, but it felt horrible to put in that amount of work and then not get to go. She glared at her mother’s back as Cecelia marked her students’ work.

  The rehearsal studio that Charlize had found for Taylor and Julian was painted pink and had posters with inspirational sayings and small girls in floppy tutus putting on pointe shoes covering the walls. In the corner was an ancient CD player, and next to it was a plastic bucket full of stuffed animals. Taylor giggled. “I miss dancing in places like this,” she said.

  “Uh-huh,” said Charlize, her heels making a clicking noise as she walked across the floor to the cheap chair in the corner, sitting down and crossing her legs. “I don’t miss you dancing in places like this. I don’t want to be rude, but the mothers were a bunch of crazies.” She found her lipstick in her purse and began reapplying it as Taylor and Julian warmed up and Theresa tried to figure out how the CD player worked.

  In the end it was Charlize who managed to get the CD playing, and Taylor and Julian began to rehearse. Charlize couldn’t help laughing as they finished even though she had seen them do it a million times. “Looks good,” she said. “You guys look adorable.”

  Alexandra laid out her outfits in front of Lux, as the other girl sat on the bed, admiring them. “I like that tutu. Did you get it made in Vancouver?”

  Alexandra nodded and changed the topic; Cromwell Gilly made tutus for her, she didn’t want him to make tutus for Lux. “Your brother seemed a bit … passionate about competitions earlier. I think he kind of hurt Tristan’s feelings.”

  Lux shrugged. “That’s just Nat. He doesn’t mean to be rude. It just happens. Tristan should be less sensitive, Nat was only having fun.”

  “Oh.” Alexandra began to fold her contemporary leotard, keeping her opinions to herself. As far as she was concerned, Nat’s comment to Tristan about him being a competition virgin, had been entirely meant and calculated to hurt. It had made her slightly angry as she believed that she was the only one allowed to be rude to Tristan. Tristan was partly right, anyway, international competitions were pointless most of the time when you were younger, except as practice; you weren’t going to be looking for a job then. “So, what are you going to be doing when he goes to the Royal Ballet School in the fall?”

  Lux shrugged. “It isn’t even decided that he will go to RBS — he made it sound that way, but it isn’t. I really have no idea. I guess I’ll wait until after competitions.” Lux looked at her foot, moving her big toe up and down out of her shoes, trying to air out her blister. “I’m going crazy. Gonna go find Nat and see if we can rehearse somewhere. Nice seeing you.”

  With that, Lux disappeared out the door. Lux is possibly the most hyperactive person I have ever met. Alexandra put her shoes down and went to shower.

  As they walked into the hotel, Julian couldn’t stop thinking about how nervous he was. The hotel was full of people who were obviously competitors, and Julian couldn’t stop looking at them, trying to imagine what they danced like, how good they were. Taylor turned to him and gave him a quick hug. “See you tomorrow then?” she asked. “Unless you want to hang out with me and Keiko, I think we’re gonna go to the pool before bed.”

  “No you aren’t,” Charlize said firmly. “You need some sleep, Taylor.”

  “I’ll see you guys in the morning,” Julian assured them, spotting Tristan across the lobby. He walked across, feeling extremely self-conscious. There were so many dancers, and even though logic told him that they probably didn’t even notice him, emotion made him feel like they were watching and scrutinizing his every move. He finally reached Tristan’s side. “What’s up?” he asked. “Why are you behind here? Hiding from your mother?”

  “No. Well, yes, but no.” Tristan picked up his mug of tea and stood up, and he and Julian started heading to the elevator. “Guess who I just met?”

  “Please say it was Joss Whedon.”

  “Who’s that? And no, Nat and Lux Amdahl.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Amazing. Lux and Nat Amdahl,” Tristan said, with an air of explaining something to a not-too-bright child, “are both competing this year, at this competition, which means that Lux will probably win junior girl and Nat will almost certainly win senior boy. We don’t have a hope because they are both brilliant. Nat is going to the Royal Ballet School in the fall.” The elevator stopped and they both got off, walking down the hall until they reached the right room.

  “RBS? That is so sick!”

  “They’re both amazing.” Tristan inserted his door key, the green light flashed, and they went in. “I already called this bed.” Tristan pointed at the bed near the window.

  Julian shrugged and dumped his suitcase on the other one, pulling out his laptop. He checked his email — nothing from his dad. He hadn’t heard from him since Christmas, and he wondered if he should be worried. He deleted a bunch of spam, and was about to delete one more when he noticed the subject line; Satyagraha. Apparently his mom’s new email address was childonarock@hotmail.com. He opened it.

  Hello dearest Julian,

  I’m doing well, I feel like I’m in a good space. Busy busy busy as usual, you know me, I work too hard. That’s the price of caring about other people too much — you neglect yourself. I’ve started training as an acupuncturist you’ll be pleased to know, so that’s been truly fascinating. If the West only ever woke up to the higher enlightenment that defines the East, I know we’d see magic happen.

  Luigi and I have parted ways I’m afraid, I just couldn’t deal with his materialistic mindset anymore. You know how it is. I’m too altruistic and sensitive and I hate it when people let themselves be tied down by greed. And his control issues! He wanted me to just be HIS with a capital H. I have to be free to experience life.

  Anyway, Luigi won’t be paying your homestay fees anymore — I understand you probably feel angry at him, babe, but Luigi has always been petty. So I suppose you’ll have to let your father know you will be staying with him again.

  Be good to yourself.

  Julian stared at the screen. Crap. Now what was he going to do? He couldn’t go back to not dancing and staying with his dad, he would never be a dancer that way. Why Satya? Why did you have to get rid of him before I graduated? Just one more year and a bit, that was it. He’d liked Luigi, he was a nice quiet man, and he had been surprised and grateful when Luigi had offered to pay for his homestay bills. But then Luigi had probably thought he was the exception to Satya’s swiftly rotating relationships, had thought that he would be in Julian’s life for a long time. Satyagraha had a gift of making people feel like spending money the way she wanted them to. While she didn’t particularly care if Julian went to the academy or stayed with his father, it would have pleased her for Luigi to
pay her son’s way.

  “Is everything all right?” Tristan asked, stepping out of the bathroom and seeing Julian sitting there motionless.

  Julian forced himself to look up and smile. “Yeah, of course.”

  “Cool,” said Tristan, taking a flying leap onto his bed. “Let’s see if there’s anything on cartoon network. Oh look, Disney Channel reruns are on!

  “I think I’m going to try and sleep,” Julian said quietly. He got into his bed and pulled the covers over his head, but the temptation of Disney was too hard to resist and he poked his head out, watching, half-asleep as Selena Gomez tried to do magic. “Why is her brother so lame? If I could do magic I would be awesome.”

  Tristan laughed. “Yeah. You are also the dude that told me that if you ever choreographed a full-length ballet it would have samurai in it and it would be set to a combination of Radiohead, Coldplay, and Jakob Dylan.”

  “What’s wrong with samurai?”

  “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong with samurai, just saying …”

  The morning started at 6:00 a.m. again for Alexandra. She needed to get up, feel her body moving to make sure that it felt right, that she was in control of it. She went to the small hotel fridge, took out a Happy Planet smoothie, and sat down on the bed to drink it and wake up. Today she could do anything — she hoped. She finished her juice and started to do the first parts of her hair and makeup.

  Beth rolled out of bed, rubbing her eyes. “You up already, Alexandra?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Want to go downstairs to get breakfast?”

  “Okay.” They quickly got ready and then went downstairs. Being alone with her mother felt weird for Alexandra. She wasn’t quite sure what to say. She wished that Justin was there, too.