Wallflower In Bloom

by Claire Cook

  “Sorry,” I said. “I guess I wasn’t thinking about your reputation being at stake here.”

  Ilya took his hand out of his hair and shrugged.

  I’d never really thought about it from his point of view. I was the booby prize, the short end of the stick. Even if Kelly Genelavive was a thug with hair spray, at least she was a young, beautiful, famous thug with hair spray. And even though this might be the most embarrassing thing I’d ever do in my entire life, dancing was Ilya’s religion. His livelihood.

  “Do you get paid the same amount no matter how well we do?” I asked.

  He waited a beat, then shook his head.

  “So how does it work?”

  I watched him try to decide whether to answer. “A hundred and fifty K for the first two weeks.”

  “But that’s good, isn’t it? I mean, if they can’t vote us off until the end of the second week. Or is it the first week? Never mind, don’t tell me. What else?”

  “Twenty thousand for each week we stay in it, then fifty K for making it into the finals.”

  “What do the winners get?”

  He grinned. “The mirror ball trophy.”

  “That’s it?”

  He nodded.

  “Who gets to keep it?”

  He shook his head. “The celebrity dancer keeps it. The professionals all have entire rooms full of trophies.”

  I took a deep breath. “I want that mirror ball trophy. And I want you to know I’ll do anything I can do to help you win this thing.”

  It was my dance partner’s turn to close his eyes. When he opened them, he cat-walked the distance between us and grabbed my hands.

  “Repeat after me,” he said.

  I nodded. I threw my shoulders back and pulled my stomach in. I dug down to reach the strength that was deep within me. I steadied myself for the fight of my life.

  “We cannot win,” my dance partner said.

  “What?” I said. “But—”

  “Uh-uh-uh.” He squeezed my hands between his. Hard.

  “I really think if I focus—”

  He squeezed my hands harder.

  “Ouch.”

  “We cannot win. Say it.”

  “Fine.” I let out a puff of air. “We. Cannot. Win.”

  “Say it again.”

  “We cannot win.”

  “Louder.”

  “We cannot win!” I yelled. My voice echoed in our big empty practice studio.

  Ilya was still holding my hands. “Now we have faced reality.”

  “I guess I’m not a huge fan of reality,” I said.

  “It’s the first and most important step,” he said, as if it might lead to a chassé or a kick ball change. I tried to slide my hands out from under his, but he held on tight.

  I had an itch right in the center of my forehead that I was dying to scratch. I blew some air at it instead. “But I mean, if we can’t win, what’s the point?”

  “The point is that we start where we are. We play to our strengths and keep improving. Americans love to cheer the underdog, so we accept that as our rightful place in this competition and enjoy the ride for as long as it lasts.”

  “Wow,” I said. “You’re so mature. Okay, so what do we do now?”

  “Now we buckle down and get to work. We find our discipline and we see how far it can take us.”

  I sighed. “I have to tell you, I’ve never been all that great at discipline.”

  Ilya’s steely gray eyes held mine. “When I was growing up, my father had a saying: ‘Whether or not you are good at discipline, discipline she is always good for you.’”

  “Your father would fit right in at my house,” I said. “Okay, I’m in. What do I have to do?”

  “First of all, you can’t dance like a grandma.”

  “What?”

  “You can’t. Dance like. A grandma.”

  “Sorry,” I said. It was as if my self-esteem were a balloon and Ilya had just popped it with a pin. I mean, I knew I wasn’t Kelly Genelavive, but a grandma?

  He didn’t seem to notice. “You’ve watched the show?”

  I nodded.

  “Did you ever see anyone dance like a grandma?”

  I bit my lower lip and shook my head.

  “Right. Even the real grandmas don’t dance like grandmas.”

  I didn’t mean to, but somehow I started to cry.

  “Shhh,” my dance partner said.

  I kept crying. I bent forward and covered my face with my hands.

  Ilya started patting my back as if he were burping me. “Let it out. Just let it out.”

  I let it out. I cried and cried and cried. I cried about dancing like a grandma. Then I worked my way backward from there. I cried about the fact that the only thing people really liked about me was my brother. I cried about Mitchell not caring enough to commit to a life with me, even if I hadn’t been sure I wanted to commit to a life with him either. I cried about wasting such a big chunk of my life not having a life. I cried about always feeling second fiddle, or even fourth fiddle, in my family, and then hitching my wagon to the family star anyway. I cried about not having the guts to make it on my own after college, about drifting through high school, about the parties I hadn’t been invited to, the friends who’d dumped me, about being such a wimp that I just sat back and let Joanie Baloney take away the things I should have fought for.

  I cried because I was sad. I cried because I was embarrassed. And lonely. And scared. I cried because I wanted with all my heart to be a different kind of person, the kind of person who knew who she was, the kind of person who didn’t dance like a grandma. But I simply didn’t know how to get there.

  When I ran out of tears, Ilya handed me a tissue.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just a lot, that’s all.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “If only I’d started dieting and working out about six months ago. Or even six weeks. If only—”

  “Shhh.” Ilya reached for my hand. I started to tuck my damp tissue in the waistband of my yoga pants, then stopped when I realized it was a totally grandmotherly thing to do. Ilya pointed and I lobbed it into a little plastic wastebasket in the corner. With my luck I probably threw like a grandma, too.

  “Let’s go talk to wardrobe,” he said. “I think it might help you get into character if you’re wearing a costume.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Just let me run out to my car first. I can’t remember if I locked it.”

  I focused on not walking like a grandma as I blinked my tear-ravaged eyes against the hot Southern California sun. My legs and shoulders screamed as I climbed into the Land Rover. I turned on the engine and cranked up the air-conditioning as high as it would go. I dabbed my eyes with a tissue and blew my nose.

  I fired up my cell phone. I had no idea who I thought I was going to call. A massage therapist? A therapist therapist? 911? My mother?

  My phone came to life. According to the phone log, my parents had called twice, Joanie had called a million times, and Tag was apparently just sitting there hitting redial over and over again.

  Mitchell had called, too. Three times.

  I knew better, but I tapped his name on the screen anyway.

  He answered on the first ring. Instead of hello, he said, “She lost it.”

  For a minute I thought he meant his pregnant bride-to-be had lost it the way I had, maybe tried to run him over with a golf cart or even an SUV.

  “What?” I said.

  “She lost the baby.”

  I felt an awful jumble of relief and guilt for feeling relief.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I finally said.

  Mitchell let out a long sigh. “I don’t know. I guess I needed someone to talk to. . .”

  I leaned forward and propped my forehead on the steering wheel.

  “It’s just. . .” Mitchell said. “I mean, you’re a girl. Do you think she’ll still want to get married?”

  My neck muscles were so tight I had to use m
y hands to help me lift my head back up.

  “I’m going to hang up now,” I said. “I have a lot going on, and none of it has anything to do with you.”

  Mitchell laughed a sad little laugh. “That’s right, I almost forgot about the dance thing. You’re all over the Internet, by the way. Are you out there now?”

  “Yup.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “Scary.”

  “I bet. You’ll do great, though. You always could do anything you set your mind to.”

  “When did I ever set my mind to anything?”

  “Seriously? I mean, holy crap, you run your brother’s entire empire. He wouldn’t have any of that without you. You’re smart. You’re organized. You can charm the pants off of anyone.”

  “Yeah, right.” I was a little bit surprised by Mitchell’s supportive words, and maybe even a tiny bit bolstered by them—at least enough to head back into the studio. “Listen, I have to go. Take care of yourself.”

  When I got to the wardrobe room, Anthony was pinning up the hem for a former famous gymnast. Or maybe she was a former famous ice-skater. In any case, I’d definitely seen her before. She had long strawberry blond hair, cornflower blue eyes, and the body of an eight-year-old boy.

  She turned a dazzling white smile on me. I wondered if her cosmetic dentist knew Tag’s cosmetic dentist.

  “Hi,” I said. Hopefully she’d leave before I had to take off any clothes.

  “Hi,” she said. “I am so excited to finally meet you.”

  I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder.

  She stuck out her hand. “Who are you again?”

  Dying to dance is the only diet you need.

  That’s what I’m talking about,” Ilya said when I walked out of the dressing room. Actually, I was pretty sure my top half walked out a full minute before my bottom half did.

  “Are you sure?” I said. I was wearing a black push-up bra that had lifted my breasts so high they were practically in my line of vision. Anthony was still working on my costume, but he’d given me a black strapless sheath to wear. It was short, really short, and seemed to consist mostly of fringe and sequins. And two little flesh-colored spaghetti straps to keep me from losing it entirely, for which I was thankful beyond words.

  “Now that’s a lot of sexy,” Anthony said.

  That’s what I was afraid of. “Does it make me look, you know. . .”

  Anthony flung his arms wide. “No, it does not make you look fat. This is what a woman should look like. Trust me, if we took you out of la-la land and dropped you and that balance beam who just walked out of here off on a street corner, every red-blooded straight male in Middle America would jump right over her and make a beeline for you.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I think.”

  “You’re not fat,” Ilya said. “You’re curvilicious.”

  “You’re a bombshell, dumplin’,” Anthony said. “It’s all about the Spanx. It’s a beautiful thing.”

  The truth was I was wearing two undergarments, one that started just under my push-up bra and then turned into panty hose and another that wrapped around me and hooked in the front, like a corset. Actually, it probably was a corset.

  But the best part so far was that Anthony had given me a shopping bag full of underwear samples to keep. There wasn’t a pair of cotton grandma panties in the bunch. I’d buried my own graying underwear in the bottom of the bag since I was too embarrassed to leave it in the wastebasket for some hip cleaning service person to find. Or worse, maybe the paparazzi went through the trash looking for intimate details about the celebrity dancers. I could imagine turning on my laptop again only to see my pitiful underpants splashed all over the virtual front page of the Hollywood Reporter.

  A pretty platinum-haired woman holding a round brush came out from behind a screen that divided the huge room in half.

  “Gina,” she said.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said. “I’m Deirdre.”

  She lifted a section of my hair with the brush. “You’ll need highlights and lowlights. And a good cut. Maybe an uplift for the first dance, to give you more height.”

  Another pretty woman, this one with pitch-black hair with a white streak in the front, came out from behind the same screen. “Lila,” she said. As soon as she glanced at my toes, I wished I’d put my dance shoes back on before I came out of the little dressing area. “Yikes, we’re talking a major panicure here.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  Lila brushed away my apology and reached for one of my hands. Her fingernails were painted black with white polka dots. I couldn’t take my eyes off them.

  “Not good,” she said. “We’ll go with long fake nails, give you a French manicure, and cover it with lots of clear sparkle. And presto, those short, stubby fingers of yours will be long and elegant, a dancer’s dream.”

  I looked down and faced the new reality of my short, stubby fingers. Who knew?

  “And false eyelashes,” she said.

  “To cover my short, stubby natural ones,” I said.

  “Your eyelashes are fine,” Gina said. “We just need to up the glam factor. And wait till you get your spray tan. You’ll look like you haven’t eaten in a week.”

  “Speaking of which,” Ilya said, “let’s go grab a quick snack from craft services and get back to work. Thanks, team.”

  I thanked the glam squad profusely. Too bad the winner couldn’t take them home along with the mirror ball trophy.

  I’d read just enough about the entertainment industry to know that craft services meant the food that was delivered to the set of a television show or film set. As Ilya and I walked down the hall, I promised myself that I wouldn’t eat a thing when we got there. I’d just keep Ilya company while he ate.

  The door to one of the other studios was open, so we peeked in. A famous football player, at least I was pretty sure it was football, was shuffling his feet slowly in a circle. A beautiful professional dancer had one leg up with her ankle resting on his shoulder. Her arms were extended gracefully, like butterfly wings.

  “Whoa,” I whispered.

  “Yeah,” Ilya said, “the male celebrities have it easier. They get to do a lot of holding while their partners dance around them.”

  “Men,” I said.

  The woman glanced over and frowned at Ilya. He grabbed my arm and we continued down the hall.

  “You know,” I said, “I pictured us all practicing in a big room together, cheering each other on.”

  Ilya stopped and held open the door to a little lounge with a kitchenette at one end. “We do some of that once we get to the group dances later in the season, but it’s better to put on our blinders and keep to ourselves until after the first performance. Too much looking over your shoulder to see what everybody else is doing will only make you more nervous. We need to focus on our own strengths.”

  “Or lack thereof.” My stomach betrayed my lack of resolve by growling fiercely.

  I sat down at a long table and used every ounce of discipline I had to pretend I wasn’t hungry. I knew you counted sheep to fall asleep, but I wasn’t sure what to count to make the hunger go away. Donuts?

  Ilya sat down across from me and slid a plate in my direction.

  I tried not to look at it. “That’s okay—”

  “Eat,” he said.

  “Oh, all right. But don’t worry, right after this, I promise I’ll start a strict diet. I’m thinking Dukan, but I was just reading about a resurgence of the apple cider vinegar diet. Did you know it was actually started in the 1820s by Lord Byron? I thought that was so fascinating.”

  The truth was I had enough experience to write my own diet book. I’d gone on my first diet right after Tag’s classmate had called me a porker. Ironically, the Atkins diet involved eating copious quantities of pork rinds, and no carbs, which we called starches back then. My waistbands were loose in no time, but my pee started to smell funny and I got dizzy when I stood up too fast. When my mother found the diet
page I’d ripped from one of Colleen’s magazines under my bed and threw it out, I was more relieved than disappointed.

  Over the years I’d become a diet connoisseur. I’d tried the grapefruit diet, the cabbage soup diet, the Russian peasant diet, the lemonade diet, the South Beach Diet, as well as Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Slim-Fast, and Nutrisystem. They all worked. And then as soon as I started eating normally again, my weight went right back to where I’d started, plus a few extra pounds. Sometimes I thought that if I’d never started dieting, I’d probably be looking pretty good right now. Other times I was convinced I just hadn’t found the right diet yet.

  Ilya popped a strawberry into his mouth. He closed his eyes and chewed slowly, a look of pure bliss on his face. I’ll have what he’s having flashed through my head.

  “Dying to dance is the only diet you need.” Ilya nodded at my plate, then reached for another strawberry. “Eat. But only what will help your dance. Think of your body as a fancy sports car that deserves only the best gasoline.”

  My plate was piled high with fresh fruit—big slices of cantaloupe and strawberries and kiwi and papaya—plus one piece of string cheese and exactly ten almonds. I ate every bit and washed it all down with a big glass of water with lemon slices floating in it.

  Ilya checked his watch. “So now we are ready to dance.”

  In some ways, the second day was easier because based on the experience of the first day, I knew I would probably live through it. But in terms of the actual dance, it was harder. Mind-blowingly harder.

  “Our first performance is the cha-cha,” Ilya announced as he reached for the iPod remote. Yesterday I’d been so overwhelmed trying to keep up as we tried out a variety of steps and sequences, I hadn’t even thought to ask what our first dance would be.

  “Oh, good,” I said. “At least I can count to three.”

  “Actually, it’s four.”

  “Ha. I knew that.”

  Ilya ignored me and clicked the remote. I don’t know what I was expecting, but when “Smooth” by Santana blasted out, I felt like an old friend had just shown up.

  “Ohmigod,” I said. “You can cha-cha to Santana?”

  Ilya winked. “As long as you don’t tell them.”

  One-two-threeandfour became my mantra, my chant, my life. Front-back-threeandfour, back-front-threeandfour, slide-slide-threeandfour, one-two-turnturnturn, walk-walk-walkwalkwalk, step-step-chachacha. Who knew there were so many ways to count to four?