by Yelana Black
Confused, Vanessa looked between the two boys. “What is he talking about?” she asked Zep, but he ignored her.
“And you wouldn’t,” Zep said, taking a step toward Justin until their chests were almost touching. “Because you’re not half the dancer I am.”
Justin studied Zep with cool eyes. “I pride myself in that,” he responded. Vanessa could almost detect the sound of pity in his voice. “I would never want to be the kind of dancer you are.”
“Which is what?” Zep said. “Or are you not man enough to say it to my face?”
“Maybe I’m not,” Justin said, stepping back. “Why don’t you tell her?”
“Tell me what?” Vanessa said. “What is he talking about?”
“I have no idea,” Zep murmured.
Justin laughed in disbelief. “Exactly what I expected,” he said to Zep. “Be careful, Vanessa,” he added, giving her a steady look, and stalked off.
When Vanessa stood up, she realized the entire dining hall was silent. All heads were facing her. She saw the table of girls from her class whispering by the window. Suddenly she felt her stomach swirl, like she was going to throw up.
“Let them stare,” Zep said in her ear, and held out his hand.
With the beginning of a smile, she slipped her hand in his, and together they walked through the center of the room and out into the crisp October evening.
Bars of buttery light stretched across the stones in front of the opera house. It was all happening, Vanessa thought as they walked across the plaza. She was here with Zep, holding his hand, and everyone knew. A part of her was still waiting for the curtain to roll down, to wake up in her old life without Zep or the Firebird, because all this—the tall glass buildings, the clear night sky, and the distant lights that shone down on them like stars—seemed like a fantasy. Vanessa stopped. “Zep, wait. Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
People meandered past them, stopping by the fountain to take photographs. Vanessa lowered her voice. “Did you talk to Josef about me? I mean, did you tell him to …”
Zep inched toward her, a lock of hair falling over his forehead. “You’re worried that the only reason you got the role was because I convinced Josef to give it to you.”
A cool breeze tickled the back of Vanessa’s neck. She crossed her arms and nodded.
“I was planning on meeting with him tomorrow after rehearsal.”
Vanessa paused. “So you haven’t met with him yet?”
Zep shook his head. “No.”
“So he chose me on his own?”
Zep took her by the waist and pulled her closer, his wool sweater soft against her face as he enveloped her in his arms. “Yes. Do I have to spell it out for you? You’re an amazing dancer. You should have more confidence in yourself.”
“It’s just that the other girls—”
“Who cares about the other girls?” Zep said. “I don’t.”
Vanessa’s insides seemed to melt beneath his touch.
“Come on,” he whispered, lowering his hand. “Let’s get out of here.”
They ran through the evening into the empty studio where they had danced before. This time, Zep left all the lights off, keeping them in darkness, save for the dim beam that shone through the window in the door. Her toe shoes on, Vanessa walked to the center of the floor and closed her eyes until she felt Zep behind her. Gently, he lifted the hem of her sweater, pulling it over her head and tossing it on the floor. He ran his hands up the sides of her camisole and down her bare arms.
Without speaking, she extended her leg high into the air. Zep lifted her from the floor as if she were weightless. She landed on one foot, her body shivering as they tried it again and again, practicing until it was perfect. Vanessa laughed as Zep lifted her over his head and lowered her into his arms.
“See?” he said as he bent over her. “It’s not that hard. All you needed was to feel your way through the dark.”
Vanessa raised her hand to his cheek, which was obscured in shadows. “Like this?” she said, and ran her other hand up his neck and into his hair.
Zep let out a soft moan and gripped her waist. “We keep getting interrupted,” he breathed, his lips grazing hers.
Vanessa felt something inside her shudder. This was a real kiss, from a boy she actually liked, and now that she was standing here with Zep in the dark, she didn’t know what to do. Was it like dancing?
Zep slid his hand up her side, arching her back. Gently, he ran his thumb over her trembling lip. She closed her eyes, feeling the weight of his body, the taste of sweat lingering on her tongue as she let him envelop her in a warm and salty kiss.
When Vanessa got back to her room, she closed the door and slid down the wall into a smiling heap. She could still smell him on her clothes, feel his weight against her ribs. Zep had given her his thick sweater to wear, the dark wool still warm from his body. Leaning into it, she breathed in his earthy scent.
TJ was still at the library, so Vanessa had the room to herself. As she slipped off Zep’s sweater and tucked it between her pillows, she noticed a small box beneath her bed.
Vanessa never remembered seeing it before, though it had clearly been there for a while, judging from the amount of dust clinging to it. It must belong to TJ, Vanessa thought, and accidentally got kicked under her bed. But when she turned it over, she saw her name on it.
Confused, she opened it. Inside was a thin piece of rosin, the same kind Vanessa had seen in Josef’s office, except this one was wrapped in a piece of paper. She held it up to her nose, recoiling from its smoky smell. Holding it away from her face, she slipped off the square of paper and unfolded it.
Just heard the craziest convo between J and H. Come by my room as soon as you get back, and I’ll show you what this does. Don’t tell anyone. Hurry.
—Elly
Her handwriting was messy, as if she had written it in a rush. Vanessa reread the note, confused. Elly had been gone for almost a month. Did that mean that she had written this before she dropped out of school? And why had she written an actual note instead of just texting or e-mailing? The only reason Vanessa could think of was that she didn’t want anyone to find this except for herself and TJ. But why?
She glanced down at the slice of rosin, sticky in her hand, and turned it over, examining its dark-amber hue. Had Elly taken it from Josef’s office the night they all went to the ballet, and then slipped it into Vanessa’s room before she disappeared? The box was small enough that Vanessa could have overlooked it, especially since TJ’s side of the room was more than a little messy. What did she mean by “what this does”? And were “J and H” Josef and Hilda?
Placing the rosin on a napkin by her bed, Vanessa wiped her hands on a towel and picked up her cell phone. She punched in Elly’s number, but just as it had before, the call went straight to voice mail. Vanessa listened to the automated message, the voice stiff and lifeless, as it told her one more time that Elly’s mailbox was full.
Chapter Thirteen
Steffie paced around her room, holding Elly’s note. The block of rosin sat on her desk. Vanessa and Steffie had spent the last hour rubbing the rosin on paper, on their skin, on their ballet shoes; they dunked it in water, pressed it between their palms, even cut off a corner and heated it in the kitchen microwave until it melted. The resulting smell was so unbearable that it was all they could do to scrape the bubbling syrup into the trash and evacuate to Steffie’s room.
“Taste it,” Steffie said. Behind her, the Manhattan night drifted through the open window, the lights from the high rises dotting the sky like stars.
“No way. You taste it. She was your roommate.”
“But she left the rosin in your room,” Steffie said. “Which means she specifically wanted you to see it.”
Steffie had a point. Why would Elly have slipped it under Vanessa’s door when she could have just shown it to Steffie? Was there something about the rosin that made Elly think of Vanessa? She gazed at the am
ber block, its smoky smell drifting through the room.
“Let’s both do it together,” Vanessa said finally.
“Fine.”
Both girls approached the desk and pinched off a bit of rosin from the top. It was gummy, like congealed maple syrup.
“One … two …” Vanessa lifted it to her lips. “Three.”
The moment the rosin touched her tongue, Vanessa felt her face tighten into a grimace. She lunged for a tissue on Steffie’s nightstand and spat it out. Steffie did the same.
“Well, that definitely wasn’t what Elly was talking about,” Steffie said, passing Vanessa a bottle of water. “What now? I wonder why Josef has it in his office. Maybe it’s some special rosin that he only gives to the best dancers. What do you think?”
Vanessa stared at Elly’s bare mattress, the rosin’s warm, bitter taste still lingering in her mouth. Standing in her sister’s old room, talking about the note, the rosin, and Elly’s strange absence, pulled Vanessa back to sixth grade, eating dinner in the kitchen while a stranger on the phone told her mother that Margaret had disappeared.
“Zep kissed me,” Vanessa said suddenly, the words coming out before she realized what she was saying.
“What?” Steffie said. “When? Where? How?”
“Tonight,” Vanessa murmured, trying to remember the way he smelled when he leaned over and pressed his lips to hers. “In the studio.”
Steffie grew still, her eyes wide with awe, before a smile spread across her face. “I can’t believe it took you this long to tell me.”
Vanessa coiled her hair around her finger. “Me neither.”
“Okay, so spill it,” Steffie said, sitting on the bed. “Tell me everything.”
And just like that, Margaret, Elly, and the mysterious rosin all seemed to vanish.
You can’t ignore the past. That much Vanessa gleaned from history class early the next morning. Outside, the sky was overcast, the same gray hue as the stone buildings that loomed on the horizon. The autumn mornings were growing darker and cooler. Vanessa yawned and stared at the board, distracted by the girls whispering in the back of the room. Were they talking about her?
“Shh!” TJ said. She glared at the girls over her shoulder before turning to Vanessa and giving her a wink.
Thanks, Vanessa mouthed, just as Mr. Harbor put down his chalk.
“Now I want you to break into groups and come up with three examples of events going on today that might also have been experienced in Ancient Rome. Whatever you don’t finish, you’ll take home and do for next Monday.”
The room filled with shuffling chairs and the low chatter of voices. Blaine, TJ, and Steffie pulled their chairs around Vanessa. She opened her book to the section on the Roman Empire and was about to speak when Steffie pushed the book aside.
“We’ll do the assignment later,” she said, and took out her iPad. She lowered her voice. “Remember during orientation, when Josef said that at least a quarter of every class quits before the end of the first year?”
TJ leaned back in her chair. “Remember?” she said with a laugh. “Those words have been haunting me for weeks!”
Steffie bit her lip. “Well, there’s more.” She gazed around, her eyes somber. “Elly’s only the latest. They don’t just drop out. A lot of them disappear entirely.”
Vanessa felt her throat tighten.
“What do you mean, disappear?” Blaine asked.
“Like they are never heard from again,” Steffie said. “At best, they’re shrugged off as runaways or drug addicts, and at worst—well, you’ll see.
“I was doing research in my journalism class this morning when I started coming across articles about runaway ballerinas,” Steffie continued. “So I downloaded all these articles about missing students.”
She slid over her iPad.
Vanessa had barely read the first headline when she felt a wave of dread. BALLERINA MISSING. She looked at the photograph of a young girl, the caption stating her name, age, and the last place she was seen. With TJ and Blaine huddled over her shoulder, she began to read about missing dancers—girls who had simply vanished, their photographs printed beside the article with the caption: MISSING. If you have any information regarding this person, please contact the NYPD.
The oldest article dated back twenty years, and the most recent was published in August, with the headline HIGHS AND LOWS OF THE NEW YORK BALLET ACADEMY. It was a full-length feature about NYBA and its history of girls dropping out. Most of it was familiar, the high pressure put on girls from choreographers and even parents, the physical stress and medical risks of rehearsals and dancing en pointe.
“She just picked up and left,” a former NYBA student said of one girl who, like many of the others, had been cast in a lead role. “She left a note saying she couldn’t take it anymore. I thought she was going home, but I guess she wanted to start over.”
Vanessa was surprised to see Anna Franko’s name before the next quote. “I heard she was living with a boyfriend in Queens,” Anna said of the most recent disappearance, Chloë, who had dropped out just before school began. “She cried a lot toward the end. But it was probably for the better. She wasn’t happy here.” When asked if she had talked to Chloë since she’d dropped out, Anna dodged the answer. “I don’t want to talk about that,” she’d said.
“Anna?” Vanessa whispered. Something about her last answer wasn’t right. Even though all of the disappearances were explained—just like her sister’s—none of them really made sense.
“It’s a cover-up,” Vanessa said, just as their teacher bent over their desks.
“And how is everything going over here?” he asked. Steffie quickly slid her notebook over her iPad.
“We just started compiling a list,” Blaine said, holding up a piece of paper scrawled with illegible notes.
Mr. Harbor squinted at them, trying to make out the words. “Very good,” he said, and moved on to the next group.
“A cover-up?” TJ said once he was gone. “What do you mean?”
“Doesn’t it seem a little strange that so many girls went missing without ever being heard from again?”
“But didn’t you read the quotes?” TJ said. “None of their friends thought anything sketchy was going on.”
“But none of their friends ever heard from them again either. Dropping out and going home is one thing, but disappearing completely? That’s not normal.”
“The police don’t seem to think so,” Blaine chimed in.
“The police don’t know everything,” Vanessa began to say, but Steffie cut her off.
“I did a little research of my own, and found out that a lot of these girls were supposed to play the Firebird.”
“What?” said Vanessa. The articles didn’t mention that.
“I know,” Steffie said. “I guess the school never divulged it to the police. But I went through all the old cast lists, and it’s true.”
“Justin knows,” Vanessa whispered. She thought of that afternoon in the library, when Justin had told her about all the old cast members who had disappeared. She had brushed him off, but he’d been right.
“I don’t understand,” said Blaine. “How come we never heard about this?”
“Because the school is probably trying to keep it quiet,” Steffie said. “I mean, if you’d had so many leading ballerinas drop out over one ballet, the hardest one, would you announce it to everyone?”
“My parents …,” said TJ. “They never mentioned anything like this to me. I doubt they even know.” She paused. “But then what about Elly? She disappeared like these girls. But she wasn’t cast as the lead …”
“Elly has nothing to do with this,” Steffie said firmly. “She’s fine. She said she dropped out. And she’s at home. If she had disappeared, her parents would be here looking for her.”
“But what if her parents don’t know she’s gone?” TJ said, unable to control the tremble in her voice. “What if the school never told them because they’re covering som
ething up? Her e-mail didn’t sound like her. Something’s wrong.”
Steffie and Blaine exchanged a worried look. Vanessa had to agree that what TJ was saying did sound extreme, but TJ seemed so shaken that Vanessa didn’t want to upset her further—so she said nothing. She was so lost in her thoughts that when the next article came up, she wasn’t prepared.
At first she didn’t understand what she was seeing. That long, familiar chestnut hair. Those soft hazel eyes staring back at the camera; the delicate lips pursed in a smile. Vanessa touched her finger to the screen. Even in the gritty newspaper photograph, she looked rosy, full of life. And then she read the caption.
MISSING: MARGARET ADLER, BALLERINA
A silence fell over the group as they stared at the smiling girl on the screen, her face a thinner, more delicate version of Vanessa’s.
A memory flashed before her eyes: years ago, back in Massachusetts, when she and Margaret were kids.
“I’m coming for you!” her older sister had yelled. It was the middle of the summer, and their father had set up a sprinkler in their backyard to cool them off. They’d used the hose to fill a few leftover balloons from a birthday party, and now they were having a water fight. “Watch out, Vanessa!”
Vanessa had ducked as Margaret tossed a balloon in the air. It missed her and smashed against the back of their house. Vanessa giggled and ran, her toes slipping through the wet grass. She passed the garage, and then everything was a blur. Suddenly there were two arms holding hers, stopping her from falling.
She looked up.
There was Margaret, her hair soaking wet, tiny beads of water running down her face. “Ness, you’ve gotta watch where you’re going.” Margaret pointed to the street outside their house, where cars were passing by. Vanessa had almost run out into the middle of the road without looking.
“I’m sorry, Margaret,” she had said.
“Don’t worry.” Margaret gave her a kiss on the forehead. “I’ll always protect you.”
