by Cara Malone
***
Forty-five minutes later, the studio door opened just as Melody predicted and the class let out. She waved goodbye to Ellie as she came tearing out of the studio, thrilled with her first ballet lesson, and Jessie’s eyes lingered on Melody’s from across the crowded lobby.
Then they were gone and Mary Beth was finally making her way back to the desk.
“How are you doing, kiddo?” she asked.
“Fine I guess,” Melody said. “I organized the costumes alphabetically. I hope that’s okay.”
“Okay?” Mary Beth asked, a wide grin spreading over her face. “I’d kiss you if you weren’t my employee. You’re in, right?”
“Yeah,” Melody said, despite the fact that she’d never felt more uncertain about a decision in her life. Had the gorgeous redhead really had that big an impact on her that she was willing to put herself through dance studio hell just to see her again?
“Great,” Mary Beth said. “We’ve been in dire need for someone with your organizing skills, and they’ll come in handy during the recital next month.”
“I have to go to that?” Melody asked, blanching at the thought of being surrounded by all those costumes, not to mention the stage lights and the auditorium. She really didn’t know what she’d gotten herself into.
“Yeah, I need somebody to keep the dancers organized and make sure they get to the stage on time,” Mary Beth said. “Don’t worry, it’s not hard and the whole thing’s over in a couple of hours.”
She didn’t give Melody any further chance to object before she was moving on and talking about the studio’s schedule and Melody’s shifts at the reception desk. It was clear that Mary Beth had a lot of enthusiasm but she didn’t run the tightest ship around. Melody tried not to pay any attention to the racing of her heart and push thoughts of the recital out of her head as she accepted the job, telling herself it would be fine and she’d cross that bridge when she came to it. If worse came to worst, she could always quit.
“Is that going to be a problem?”
“What?” Melody asked, realizing that she missed the last bit of Mary Beth’s words while she was imagining herself backstage.
“I was saying that the studio closes down for a couple months every summer right after the recital,” Mary Beth said, not the least bit annoyed at having to repeat herself. She probably got that from being surrounded by hyper kids all day. “I know it’s not the best situation to be hired and then immediately have to take the summer off, but I really need help during the recital so is that going to be okay with you?”
“Oh,” Melody said. “Yeah, that’s fine.”
If the recital turned out anything like the last time Melody came near a stage, she might need that time to recover.
“Good to hear, kiddo,” Mary Beth said, extending her hand. “Welcome aboard.”
***
Twenty minutes later, after Mary Beth gave Melody a perfunctory training session on running the desk and then handed her a class schedule to coincide with Melody’s new work hours, she walked outside having landed her very first job. Her mother would be thrilled.
The cool spring air filling her lungs and Melody still hadn’t quite gotten Jessie out of her mind. She was a gorgeous girl with an intriguing stoicism running like a current behind her moss-colored eyes, and a small part of Melody hoped to find her lingering out here. Of course, that wasn’t realistic and the parking lot was nearly empty, so she started the trek back to her neighborhood six blocks away.
It was a nice afternoon, sweater weather mixed with the fresh smell of new life as everything turned green and flowers were in bloom. Instead of going straight home, though, Melody took a familiar detour. She cut across the tall grass of a yard three houses down from her parents’ place and let herself into a door on the side of the house without knocking. She went down a flight of creaky stairs to a cool, partially finished basement that she’d gotten to know quite well in the past six months.
“Andy?” She called as she reached the bottom of the stairs. “You home?”
The basement was one large room with cinderblock walls and concrete floors, and aside from the washer and dryer in one corner and the furnace in another, it looked pretty convincingly like a stoner kid’s studio apartment. There was a mattress along one wall with its box springs sitting directly on the concrete and a makeshift living room in the center of the open space.
The stoner kid himself, Andy, was sitting on the couch playing some shoot-em-up video game and spooning soggy cereal into his mouth from a bowl cradled in his crotch.
“Hey,” he said without looking at her, his eyes locked on the television.
“Did you just get up?” Melody asked incredulously as she flopped into the reclining chair beside the couch that she’d come to think of as hers.
“So what if I did?” Andy asked around a mouthful of cereal, pausing the game.
“It’s almost three,” Melody said.
“Okay, little miss judgmental,” Andy said, “What have you done today that’s so impressive?”
“Well, I guess that depends on your definition of impressive,” she said, glancing at a rather large bong sitting on the coffee table in front of them, then she added, “but I did get a job.”
“No shit,” Andy said, drinking his cereal milk and putting the bowl on the table. He picked up the bong and said, “Does this mean the golden child is finally back on her feet?”
“Hardly,” Melody said. “It’s a part-time gig with almost zero responsibility. Not exactly what you’d expect a golden child to be doing with her life.”
“What is the golden doing with her life?” Andy asked, digging a lighter out from between the cushions of the couch. “Aside from hanging out in my basement and making disparaging remarks about my lifestyle?”
“About the same as you,” she said. “Except with less stains on my clothes.”
“Ouch,” Andy said as he grabbed the lighter and put it to the bowl. With his lips hovering just above the glass, he said, “Seriously, what’s the gig?”
“Receptionist at a dance studio,” Melody said quickly, trying to distract them both from this admission by getting off the recliner with a grunt and going over to a mini fridge beside the television.
Andy didn’t object when she made herself at home, retrieving a pair of sodas before plopping back down in the recliner, but he did snort at her new job, coughing as the air filled with an opaque cloud. Melody tossed one of the sodas on the couch beside him, gently enough that it wouldn’t explode when he opened it, and then waited while he recovered.
“You’re joking, right?”
“Nope,” Melody said, offering no further explanation as she took a sip of her soda.
“That’s the last place I thought you’d want to work,” Andy said. He didn’t know much about why she came home from New York after only four months there, but he knew it was all about ballet and her brief enrollment in the Pavlova School Dance Division.
“Right you are,” Melody said. “Tell him what he’s won, Johnny!”
Ignoring this quip, Andy asked, “So what gives?”
“My parents,” Melody said with another roll of her eyes. “And what they gave was an ultimatum. There’s something about having a really promising career ahead of you and dashing it against the rocks that tends to make parents kinda grumpy.”
“I don’t understand them,” Andy said with a shrug and a glance toward the ceiling, in reference to his own parents. “You’d think they would be thrilled that we’re helping them ward off Empty Nest Syndrome by staying as long as possible.”
Melody and Andy lived a few doors down from each other their whole lives, but she never really knew him until she came home from New York City six months ago with her head hung low. When they were kids, he was a boy and she was a girl, and when they reached puberty and started looking at everyone differently, well, he was a boy and she was a girl. More important to Melody’s parents, though, he was a stoner with no ambitions who spent all
of his time in his parents’ basement. That was not the type of friend the Bledsoes wanted for their darling daughter, who was driven and talented and destined for great things.
When she came back to her hometown of Lisbon, though, Melody found that suddenly she was a loser with no ambitions who didn’t mind the idea of spending all her time in a basement, too. And so, a new friendship predicated on apathy was born.
“They’ve got my sister for that,” Melody said. “Besides, I think they were looking forward to turning my bedroom into an office.”
“So are they making you pay rent or something?” Andy asked. “My mom tried that right after I graduated but I was able to bargain her down to yard work.”
“The yard looks like shit,” Melody said and Andy laughed and took another rip off the bong. She waited until he set it on the coffee table, motioning it away politely when he offered it to her, and then she leaned back into the old recliner before adding, “My dad’s been on my case for months to stop ‘wallowing around the house’ and figure out what I’m going to do with my life. I don’t think he’ll be appeased if I mow the lawn every now and then. He keeps saying ‘six months is long enough to get over anything’.”
“What are you getting over?” Andy asked. Melody shot him a withering glare and he put his hands up. “Hey, it was worth a shot. You’re never going to tell me what happened in New York, are you?”
“Nope,” Melody said. “I would never tell anyone if I had my way. My parents only know because they’re the ones that had to drive out there and pick me up, and I had to tell Doctor Riley because otherwise what would we talk about for an hour every week? Besides the three of them, though, I’m planning to take it to my grave.”
“Okay, okay,” Andy said. “And yet you’re going to work in a dance studio. Why not be a waitress, or a quirky indie bookshop girl, or a dog groomer?”
“Are those the kinds of jobs you see me doing?”
“Maybe if you dye your hair hot pink,” Andy said with a shrug.
“Well, I spent three months appeasing my dad by applying for every job I could find online, and the only thing I found was that no one wants high school grads with no practical experience,” Melody said. “My mom found the dance studio job, and I’m not really in a position to turn it away. She thinks it’ll help – as if it’s exposure therapy or something. I told her Dr. Riley never approved that, but she was persistent.”
“You’ll be fine,” Andy said with a shrug. “It’s just a desk job.”
That was exactly the kind of flippant attitude Melody’s parents had when it came to getting a job – it hadn’t even occurred to her mother that the mere thought of stepping foot in a dance studio was enough to send Melody into a panic attack. No one understood – how could they? – and that was exactly why Melody would never tell Andy or anyone else but her therapist about the events leading up to her New York disgrace last winter.
After a long silence, Melody said, “At least there’s one up side to working at Mary Beth’s.”
“What’s that?”
“The dance moms.” Melody blushed and looked down at the grungy carpet, suddenly embarrassed at her own words.
Andy guffawed and clapped his hands together, asking with a wide smile, “Melody Bledsoe, are you into cougars?”
She already wished she could take back her comment. It was a mistake.
“Not really,” she said.
“But there’s one particular cougar who caught your eye,” Andy guessed. “Is it Mary Beth?”
“Gross, she’s more like a saber-toothed tiger,” Melody said, unable to keep from smirking.
Mary Beth with her silver hair and loud mouth would never be Melody’s type. Jessie, on the other hand… she’d been running through Melody’s mind ever since she left the school, and it felt like she might burst if she didn’t tell someone about their encounter. There were sparks… weren’t there?
“This girl’s not really a cougar,” she said. “She looks young, like she had kids early. Her daughter’s around five, so I’d guess she’s about twenty-three? No older than that for sure.”
“You’re okay with the kid?” Andy asked. “Or do you just want to bang her?”
“That’s so crude,” Melody chastised. “Unlike you, I don’t immediately want to screw everyone I meet.”
“Sure,” Andy said. “When’s the U-Haul coming?”
“That is such a played-out stereotype,” Melody said, glaring at him. “At least be original with your lesbian jokes.”
“I can’t help it,” Andy said with another shrug. “You’re the only one I know. So is she gay or do you think I have a better shot with her?”
“You don’t have a shot with her regardless of her orientation,” Melody said with a laugh.
She had not attempted to flirt with a girl since… well, now that she was thinking about it, Melody wasn’t sure if she’d ever actually flirted with someone. Sure, there had been crushes in high school, and a meaningless kiss here and there. But for as long as Melody could remember, there had also been ballet. Ballet practice, ballet rehearsal, ballet recital, ballet auditions. Ballet before school, and after school, and in her sleep. It always came first and there was never time for anything else.
Now, though, Melody found herself with an abundance of time. There was time to figure out what her life should be about now that ballerina was off the table, and time to explore the world beyond her pointe shoes.
So why the hell was she working at a ballet studio and crushing on the dance moms there?
“I probably won’t pursue it,” she said with a shrug.
“Why not?” Andy asked, getting irritated with her because living vicariously through Melody was one of the only ways that he ever left the basement.
“I don’t know,” Melody said. “It seems dumb to… mix business with pleasure?”
“You’re scared,” Andy said, leaving her no room to argue.
“Whatever,” Melody said, checking the clock on her phone. “I gotta go home.”
It was nearly dinner time and her parents would expect her to come home with a report about how the job application went. She heaved herself up from the depths of the recliner and gave herself a quick spritz with the can of Febreze that Andy kept on the coffee table. It wasn’t a perfect solution, or an elegant one, but she was always nervous that the skunky smell of weed clung to her clothes when she left the basement, and this would at least mask the worst of it.
Melody went the first eighteen years of her life without having tried so much as a can of beer or a cigarette. That was another area of her life in which ballet trumped all the normal teenage interests, but now there was no reason to worry about drug tests or hangovers or decreased lung capacity. Andy passed her a pipe on the first night that she came down to the basement after she came back to Lisbon, and after he got done dying of laughter when she looked at him with eyes wide and asked him if it was a crack pipe, she took her first hit of weed.
It was okay – nothing special – and it made her tired, so most of the time she just hung out in the basement and let Andy have all the fun. That didn’t mean Melody wanted to go through the hassle of letting her parents think she was throwing her life away even more than she already had by coming home reeking of marijuana. It certainly wouldn’t endear Andy to them, who Melody’s father once called a mooching deadbeat. That was before Melody moved home and became a mooching deadbeat herself, so she could only imagine the high opinion of Andy that they must hold now that he was her best friend.
Melody took the stairs two at a time while Andy flopped back on the couch and turned his attention back to the television.
CHAPTER 4
“No,” Melody said, “They haven’t posted the list yet.”
She held her phone between her shoulder and her ear and was trying to balance on a narrow bench in the locker room. There were a dozen other girls buzzing around her, changing into leotards and tights and chattering at each other, and it was hard to hear over the
commotion.
“But how do you think you did?” Her mother was asking. “Good enough to get out of the chorus this time?”
“I don’t know, mom,” Melody said, an edge of irritation coming into her voice despite her best efforts to bite it back.
She had five minutes to put her hair in a bun, jam her sore feet into her pointe shoes, and warm up before class began, and her mother had a way of choosing the most inopportune times to badger her. Melody had been at Pavlova for three months and after every single try-out, her mother pestered her relentlessly for the results.
“Please don’t take that tone with me,” her mother said, and Melody shut her eyes, feeling a tension headache coming on. Once it started, the only way to treat it was with a big, juicy chicken breast, or something else loaded with protein. Too bad for her, she still had two more hours of class before she could stop to eat something. Her mother was still talking when she zoned back into the conversation, struggling with her pointe shoe at the same time. “…forty thousand dollars a year. Your father and I had to make a lot of sacrifices for you to go-”
“It’s not like I’m volunteering for the choral spots,” Melody snapped as she pulled a thick lambs’ wool pad over her blistered toes and pain screamed up her leg. “I gotta go, mom. I’ll call you tonight.”
She pulled the lambs’ wool off her toes and tossed her phone angrily into her duffel bag. There were bandages wrapped around almost every one of her toes, raw and bloodied where her knuckles scraped against the insides of her pointe shoes day in and day out. Even on the weekends when she didn’t have class, Melody put in three or four hours in the practice studio, and her poor, battered feet never got a break.
That was the price of being a Pavlova ballerina, though, and every one of the other girls rushing around the locker room had pulled her shoes on over blistered, bloodied toes without complaining about it. Melody set her jaw and prepared to do the same.
