You're So Sweet

by Charis Marsh

  “Are you excited?” Beth asked. She seemed genuinely curious.

  “Yes,” Alexandra shrugged. “A bit nervous.”

  Beth shook her head. “I don’t know how you can do this,” she admitted. “I could never to up on stage and do what you do. I don’t know how I gave birth to you and Emma.”

  Alexandra shrugged. “I don’t really get scared,” she said. “Just, worried if I don’t feel like I am the best, or if I’m not ready. If everything’s perfect, then it’s so much fun.”

  Beth shrugged. “I didn’t even like speaking up in class.”

  “This isn’t like speaking up in class,” Alexandra said impatiently. “It’s completely different. It’s telling a story, and it’s awesome. I don’t like talking in class, either.” They walked down to the breakfast area.

  “Are you feeling ready, then?” Beth asked.

  “Yes,” Alexandra said firmly. “I am. I think.”

  Taylor couldn’t stop moving when they got to the theatre. Julian finally grabbed her by the shoulders and held her in one place. “Tay. Stop it. You’re making me seasick.”

  “Okay, okay,” Taylor agreed. The second he let go she began to hop up and down on the spot. “I’m so excited! I’m so excited! It’s finally time!”

  “Taylor, please save some of that energy for your dances?” Charlize requested. “Come on. Calm down and start doing your makeup.”

  “Okay, okay, okay.” Taylor sat down in front of the mirror. “Can I put on blue eyeshadow?”

  “No.” Charlize sat down beside her. “Here. I’ll do it.” She began to expertly brush on the shades of brown and white eyeshadow.

  Kaitlyn went online, staring at the YAGP website. There were pictures of previous winners scrolling on the top of the page,. She so badly wanted to be there. She just wanted to try to win. “Kaitlyn,” Cecelia called from downstairs. “Come here.”

  Kaitlyn ignored her mother, clicking to the list of past winners. She knew most of them.

  “Kaitlyn! What are you doing up there?”

  “Coming,” Kaitlyn answered, annoyed. She went downstairs.

  “What were you doing?”

  “Stuff.”

  “Well, I thought that you could start getting ready for your summer school auditions,” Cecelia said impatiently. “Come on, you need to do something. You have just been moping about all day.”

  “I wanted to go,” Kaitlyn muttered under her breath.

  “What was that?”

  “I said I wanted to go to competition!”

  “No, you didn’t,” Cecelia said firmly, getting angry. “You agreed with me that it was best to stay home, because you were going to lose. Don’t you dare say that to me now.”

  “Fine,” Kaitlyn said. “I’m going up to my room.” I didn’t say that. You tricked me into saying that.

  “Write down what you need for each audition, Kaitlyn. And the dates.”

  Kaitlyn walked up to her room and sat on her bed. It was so stupid; Mr. Moretti had kept changing what variation he wanted her to do every day, and now she couldn’t go to competition. If he had just let her rehearse only the variation that she had wanted to do, she was sure that she would have won.

  Julian was waiting in the wings beside Tristan. It was almost time for their solos. “You’ll be okay,” Tristan said, sounding worried. Julian realized that he must look as nervous as he felt.

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “It’ll be fine. Fine, fine, fine …”

  “Just don’t think about it as an audition or anything,” Tristan advised him. “Just go out there and treat it like a show. All those people, they’re just there to watch you, not to judge you. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  The bell rang, and a poised female voice announced: “Julian Reese, from Vancouver, Canada. Vancouver International Ballet Academy.”

  Julian ran on, smiling and looking not nervous at all. But then he stumbled on his first step.

  “He’s nervous,” Kageki commented, standing next to Tristan.

  “Yup,” Tristan said, watching him worriedly.

  “Does he go to your school?” Nat asked, stepping up behind them.

  Tristan jumped. “Um, yeah. That’s Julian.”

  Nat watched for a few minutes. “He’s a bit shaky, isn’t he? Oh dear. He just almost fell on that pirouette.”

  “He’s good,” Tristan said angrily. “He’s just nervous. This is his first big competition.”

  “How old is he?” Nat asked, frowning.

  “He just turned seventeen. Like me.”

  Nat sighed. “Look, I’m sorry that you got offended about me teasing you over having never done a big competition before, okay? I was just joking. I can be a bit harsh sometimes. I like to think that’s part of my charm.”

  “Huh.” Tristan turned back to the stage, watching Julian. Beside him, Kageki watched, looking back and forth between Nat and Tristan as he tried to figure out what they were talking about.

  “Of course, if you’re easily offended, I can understand why you’d be upset. My apologies.”

  “I don’t think this is the time. I need to go over some stuff, sorry.” Tristan walked over to the rosin box and rubbed some more into the bottoms of his shoes, and then began to test them out, pirouetting carelessly with his arms out to the side.

  Nat followed him over. “Look, I’m sorry.”

  Tristan looked at him, considering. “Okay,” he said suddenly. “But only because Alexandra showed me some clips of your variations at last year’s competition and you were really good.”

  Nat laughed. “Okay. Valid.”

  Alexandra was waiting with Taylor and Keiko before their variations started, when she noticed that something was wrong. “Has anyone seen Kaitlyn yet?” she asked, worried.

  “No,” Taylor exclaimed.

  “Me neither,” Keiko agreed.

  “Should we try and find out where she is?” Taylor asked.

  “No,” Alexandra answered. “There’s no time. Look, they’re about to start.”

  “I’ll call her after I finish my variation,” Taylor decided.

  Alexandra nodded. She stepped out en pointe, practicing her pique turns. The place where her big toe rested in her right shoe suddenly felt a little soft, but there wasn’t enough time to change shoes. It would be good for pas de deux, though; softer shoes were usually better for pas de deux work.

  “Kaitlyn Wardle, Vancouver, Canada,” the announcer called out. “La grande pas classique.”

  The man with a clipboard full of papers who was in charge of sorting all the dancers out backstage looked around. “Are either of you Kaitlyn?” he asked.

  They shook their heads. “Kaitlyn doesn’t seem to have showed,” he said into his headset.

  “Taylor Audley, Vancouver Canada,” the announcer said after a pause. “Kitri, Act 1.”

  Taylor ran on, and Alexandra turned back to her own work, hearing the music in her head and going through everything that Mr. Demidovski had said to do in her privates.

  After Taylor had finished, she ran outside to call Kaitlyn. She thought that she had done well, but it was hard to tell sometimes. She wasn’t quite sure. It had felt good, she hadn’t fallen, but who knew if it was what the judges wanted? She frowned; Kaitlyn wasn’t picking up her phone. She pressed call again. And again. And again. She finally left a message; “Hey Kaitlyn, call me if you get this? We’re worried about you … you just missed your variation. What happened? Call me back, babe. Kk, bye.”

  Julian walked out. “Time for our pas de deux,” he said, grinning.

  Taylor looked around for her mother; she wasn’t around. “As soon as it’s time for our contemporary pas de deux, I’m going to put some green eyeshadow on overtop,” she said. “I think it will look awesome with my costume.”

  “I agree. Maybe you could do something else, too, like some abstract stuff on your face or something?”

  “Help me when we finish our classical?”

  “Yeah. Hey, wher
e’s Kaitlyn? I haven’t seen her yet.”

  “I don’t think she’s here. She didn’t go on for her solo.”

  “Oh, wow.”

  “Yeah. Come on, let’s run it through once more, just marking it? I’m so nervous!” They began to dance the pas de deux on the concrete ground outside of the theatre, Taylor dancing with her huge warm-up boots over top of her pointe shoes so that the cement didn’t ruin them.

  Alexandra was getting changed into her contemporary costume when Lux came back, frantically undoing her bun to have it loose for her contemporary solo. She spotted Alexandra, and her face lit up. “Lexi, I watched your variation! You were so good!”

  “Thanks,” Alexandra said, half-sarcastically. She thought that Lux was just trying to be nice; she had been wobbly, and had almost fallen at one point.

  “By the way, there’s a slippery spot at —”

  “Downstage right? Yeah, I found it.”

  “Me, too,” Lux said, annoyed. “I nearly fell flat on my butt.” She finished getting changed, and they both went backstage to mark out their solos. The curtain that separated the audience from the dancers was closed, and the stage was full of dancers marking out their solos (setting it to make sure that their solo fit the stage, using all the space). Alexandra started to go through hers, weaving through the other dancers with a determination that guaranteed her a clear path. With little warning, one of the backstage people started to come through, sprinkling Coca-Cola on the floor with apathetic abandon. As he passed, dancers jumped back to save their costumes from the Coke. The downstage right corner, the downstage right corner, Alexandra willed him. He got there and sprinkled liberally. Alexandra sighed in relief; now she didn’t have to avoid that corner for her solo. The cola quickly dried, and the dancers began marking their work again.

  Kaitlyn heard her phone ring and picked it up. The caller ID said Taylor Audley. She set it down again. The phone kept ringing, and she threw herself on her bed, giving up. She started to cry. It wasn’t fair; she had rehearsed, she wanted to be there, she wanted to dance! She was better than Taylor, and stupid Taylor was there. Taylor was probably doing horribly. Kaitlyn was so much better. Her phone beeped, notifying her of a voice message. Kaitlyn ignored it, her face in her pillow. At least I’m the youngest. I can go next year.

  Taylor waited in the wings with Julian, nervous, but not of performing; her fear over what her mother was going to say if she didn’t like the new makeup she and Julian had painted on her face had managed to completely overtake the fear she had about going on stage. “It looks good, right?”

  “It looks good,” Julian reassured her. “Freaky, but in a good way. You might want to pull up your top a bit.” Taylor pulled her top up so that less of her chest was showing and bit her lip. It was Julian’s idea, he thought it would look good, she rehearsed in her head.

  “Taylor Audley and Julian Reese, Vancouver, Canada. Performing ‘Sail.’” They ran on, and Taylor stopped thinking of anything but the choreography. It was so fast, and the timing was so difficult to keep on top of, that she couldn’t think of anything but what she was dancing.

  Alexandra and Keiko had both finished all their dances. “Come on, let’s go watch,” Alexandra said to Keiko.

  “Is it okay to leave our stuff?”

  “Um … Let’s bring it.” Carrying their bags, they went into the audience. Alexandra headed toward Beth and then saw Tristan. She went over and dropped her bags down next to her mother. “I’m just going to sit next to Tristan, okay?” she whispered.

  “No, you’re not,” Beth whispered back. “Sit down.” She patted the seat next to her, and Alexandra sat down next to her mother. A few seconds later, Keiko and Tristan joined them. “You just missed Taylor and Julian,” Beth muttered under her breath. “You said that Julian was choreographing their pas de deux, right?”

  “Yeah, was it any good?”

  “Good? Lexi, it was amazing. It would have been better with better dancers, but the choreography was incredible.”

  “Lux Amdahl and … Nat Amdahl, Hawaii, United States. ‘Comfortably Numb.’”

  “Don’t you know them?” Beth whispered.

  “Yes. Watch, Mom, they’re really good.” The music started to play, and Lux and Nat came on, Nat dressed entirely in black, and Lux in white.”

  Beside her Tristan was mildly hyperventilating. “That’s Pink Floyd! They’re dancing to Pink Floyd!”

  Lux and Nat stood facing each other for a split second, their profiles to the audience, and then in a sudden motion, Lux stepped up onto pointe, developing her downstage leg a la seconde. She hit almost 160 degrees in less time than it would have taken Alexandra to grande battement her leg. Alexandra leaned forward, her mouth open. Lux and Nat were slightly scary when they danced together normally, but the combination of their intense personalities and the dark music that somebody rather wise had set their piece to, was frightening. The audience was quiet for a few moments after their pas de deux, and then suddenly they all started to clap, giving Lux and Nat the biggest round of applause of the night. Alexandra bit her lip.

  Taylor and Julian were getting changed backstage when they heard the applause. “Uh, Julian,” Taylor said, making a sad face as she took off her makeup; “I don’t think that we won for contemporary.”

  “It’s okay,” Julian said. “Thanks for letting me choreograph it, Tay. It made this competition so much funner.”

  “So much more fun,” Nat corrected as he followed his sister into the change room. She handed him his clothes from her bag and he left to the boys’ change room to get changed. Lux began to get dressed as Taylor and Julian stared at her, rather rudely.

  “Have I met you guys before?” Lux said finally, once all of them were changed.

  “Ah, no,” Julian and Taylor both said together, embarrassed. “I just go to the same school as Tristan,” Julian said at the same time as Taylor said, “I dance with Alexandra.”

  “Oh,” Lux nodded. “Small world. You going to the audience?”

  “Yes,” Taylor said quickly, and they followed Lux to the audience, leaving behind their stuff, still all scattered around the dressing room.

  Kaitlyn finally picked up her phone again. She began to text Taylor;

  “Hey, I’m really sick — I got pneumonia, and I couldn’t go. Have you danced already? Tell me when you know who got what, okay?”

  Taylor and Julian sat nervously next to Lux, who appeared to be completely relaxed. “How can you be so calm?” Julian asked her.

  Lux shrugged. “There’s nothing I can do now,” she said logically. “I’ve danced how I’ve danced; now the judges are going to pick who they pick.”

  “They’re probably going to pick you,” Taylor wailed. “I’m going to go sit next to my mom. I’m way too nervous right now.” She stood up and left, going to find Charlize.

  Alexandra was so nervous that she couldn’t speak. When she had finished her solo, she had felt confident that she was going to get something, but after watching Lux, she was no longer sure. “Calm down,” Beth said, patting her hand. “You were good.”

  “But what if I don’t win anything?” Alexandra whispered back.

  “Then you’ll try again next year. Breathe.”

  Taylor looked at her phone. “Taylor, what are you doing? Put that away,” Charlize said beside her. “They’re about start to announcing the winners.” Charlize bit her long, pink, polished nails.

  “It’s Kaitlyn. She said that she has pneumonia,” Taylor whispered back. “That’s why she wasn’t here.”

  Charlize frowned, taking her finger out of her mouth. “What? That is such a lie. I can’t believe her mother — she just didn’t take Kaitlyn because she was afraid she was going to lose like she did at Spring Seminar.”

  “Really?” Taylor considered. “Maybe.”

  “Tell her that I hope she gets better soon.”

  Taylor obediently texted Charlize’s message, and a few seconds later got a response. “She says tha
nks, that was sweet of you.”

  “See?” Charlize said triumphantly. “People with pneumonia do not text back that fast, Taylor.”

  Taylor considered. “I guess not.”

  The adjudicators began to announce the names, and the dancers began to walk up, the names of all the dancers that didn’t go to the academy meshing into a flow of nothing as they waited to catch their own names.

  “Alexandra Dunstan. First place, Senior Classical Women’s. Second place, Senior Contemporary Women’s.” Alexandra felt her body settle back into stability. She jumped out of her seat and walked quickly up to the stage to get her award.

  “Taylor Audley, third place, Senior Contemporary Women’s.” Taylor ran up, nearly tripping on the stairs to the stage, and accepted her award, giggling the whole way.

  “Keiko Sato, Top 10, Senior Classical Women’s.” Keiko went up and got her award, smiling and taking her time.

  “Tristan Patel, second place Senior Classical Men’s!” Tristan’s mouth fell open and he had to be shoved out of his seat by Beth. Tristan quickly ran up, shocked that he had been beat only by Nat.

  In the audience, Julian’s smile had grown a little more fixed. He hadn’t fully expected to win, but he hadn’t expected to get nothing, either. He waited as each award was finally called, and there was nothing left. He sunk back into his seat, sitting alone; Lux had long since been called up. Lux and Nat got first place for pas de deux, and then Tristan and Alexandra. Julian sunk farther into his seat. I don’t even like competitions. Competitions are stupid, dance is an art, how can it be judged? I wonder what Mr. Demidovski is going to say about me not getting anything.

  “And finally, some special awards,” the announcer said into the microphone. “The student awards are all donated, and take the form of scholarships, and we also recognize exceptional teacher coaching and choreography.”