The Dancers: An Artist Story

by M.L. Cameron

start packing,” Ana said and suddenly smiled, she was going home.

  Infinity

  I stood in front of the mirror in my bathroom and took a deep breath. It was my first day at the high school where my parents had gone. There was no doubt in my mind that it was going to be hard, not the work, just the school transfer. I would still be able to go out for the hockey team though and I got all the classes I wanted to go to.

  “Infinity!” I heard my mom yell, why was she awake? I didn’t even have to go to school for twenty minutes. I went downstairs and back into the kitchen. She was waiting for me with a bowl of cereal in her hands. “I figured we could have breakfast before your first day at the new school.”

  “All right.” She held out the bowl and I took it to the table. I started eating the cocoa pebbles while my mom sat across from me with a bowl of apple slices.

  “I love apples. I love apples for breakfast and lunch and dinner and every time in between. Oh how I dislike being pregnant.” She didn’t usually like apples. Every time she got pregnant she was usually sick.

  I lifted my spoon out of my bowl and saw something shine. I spilled the milk out and saw a key. “Mom?” I asked and held it up for her to see. “What’s this for?”

  She smiled… “All right, that’s just one of seven keys that you can choose from.” She stood up and took my hand, pulling me down the hall and out of the house. I didn’t have shoes on and it was getting cold. Then she pulled me around to the garage. In the garage were a dozen or so cars. A dozen expensive, European cars. “The seven on the left are free, and one of them is yours.”

  “What?”

  “My dad left me his entire collection of cars, I swear, I didn’t pay for any of them. Now, your father already took the Harley and the blue Lamborghini. I took the silver Mercedes and the white convertible Porsche. We decided that you need a car too, and these will just sit in the garage. I’m giving two of them to a charity to auction off because after this baby, I am done.”

  I looked at the row of cars and took a deep breath. I liked fast cars. There were so many to choose from and I had no idea how I was going to make the decision. “Which is the fastest?”

  “Probably the Ferrari. It’s a Spyder, I think it tops out at two hundred and some odd miles. It’s that one.” She pointed to a red car. “Do you think that’s the one you want?” I nodded and smiled.

  ♪♪♪

  The school was huge. I went over to the office and waited for my schedule. I saw a flier for the hockey try-outs and grabbed one. All that it required was a physical. “Prelapsarian?” the principal muttered and nodded. “You’re Luke and Anastasia’s son, correct?” I nodded. “They were two of our best students. I saw you took the hockey flier.”

  “Yes sir. I suppose I take after my father in that way.”

  “I hope so. Our hockey team hasn’t been the same since he and his friend graduated. So, we usually have another student to lead you through your schedule…”

  “That’s fine, really.”

  He ran a hand over his bald head and looked over my records. “You’ve got good grades, taking forward English classes?”

  “Yeah, and one science class. I know that next year I won’t be able to take the class I had scheduled but that gives me another elective to put in place and I was hoping to actually take a second English class.”

  “So you plan on being a lit major?”

  “It’s actually sports major and then a literature minor.”

  I hated how most educated people treated me like I was stupid because I played hockey. We went through my schedule, parking passes, text books and then he sent me to my first class. Walking in was the hardest part. It was my math course, which was technically my worst class.

  The teacher greeted me with a smile. “All right, class, this is Infinity? Infinity?” I nodded. “Infinity Prelapsarian. Some of your parents might remember his parents. It’s good to have you,” she said and gestured to the one open seat in the back of the room.

  When the class ended shortly after I arrived everyone poured into the hallways. I had weight training after, with the hockey coach, the faster I could make an impression the better, even if it wasn’t a good one. The class started with general stretches and then we were told to partner up and do spot checks with our most comfortable machine.

  I went straight for the coach, I had already counted and knew there was an uneven number of guys in the class. “Coach Harper? There’s an uneven number…”

  “Then go and join a… You’re Luke’s boy? Right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “My father coached here when your father when to school here. He was always boasting about the Surmise kid. At the end of senior year however he was the Prelapsarian kid. Hockey, right?” I nodded. “You’re going to try out aren’t you?”

  “I’m planning on it.”

  He looked at his clip board. “Good. Well join up with Jason and Elliot, they’re both trying out too.” I nodded and he pointed across the room to the pull up bars. One guy was doing pull ups and the other was counting.

  The first guy dropped from the bar and swung his arms to loosen the muscles again. “Twenty seven,” one of them said and laughed.

  “Damn I’m out of shape.”

  I decided to cut in, “If you held your head higher it would reduce the stress on your shoulders and you’d be able to raise yourself faster, get more reps in.” They both turned around to face me. “Infinity,” I said and we all shook hands.

  “Elliot,” the pull-up guy said. He had almost blonde hair and he sort of reminded me of my grandmother.

  “Jason.” The other guy had died black and green hair.

  We spent the class talking about hockey and doing pull-ups, sit-ups and push-ups. My first few days were slow, it took a while to pick up the rhythm. And then I had it. I hated that girls thought I was a player. No girl was interesting enough for me to talk to more than once. And some girls would never give up.

  “Infinity! Would you be my partner for that biology assignment?” the blonde cheerleader giggled and twisted her hair between her fingers. “Mrs. Gardner said that we needed to work with a partner.”

  “Actually…” I looked around the room for a quick getaway. “I’m working with Megan.” I pointed to the brunette across the room and she turned around with a puzzled look on her face. “Yeah, sorry Courtney. But I can’t work with you.”

  Megan walked over and sat in the desk beside me. “You’re really working with a partner? Ugh, you’re such a bitch Megan.” Courtney walked away to her other cheerleading friends.

  “Thanks, that just saved my ass.”

  “No problem,” she murmured and took a deep breath. “You do realize this means we have to do the project together? She may seem stupid but she’ll realize if we don’t present together.”

  I sighed and then nodded. “That’s cool. I don’t mind. Unless you already had a partner, I probably should have thought about it first.” I opened my notebook and took a deep breath. “Sorry, you don’t have to actually work with me.”

  “I don’t have a partner. I never work with partners. So if you want to work together, I wouldn’t be completely opposed.”

  “So it’s agreed, we’re working together.”

  The project wasn’t due for three weeks, but we had tons to get done and I knew it. “So, we could go to the library tomorrow if you want,” I suggested.

  “That would be fine.”

  And then I remembered that I had agreed to watch my siblings all weekend while my parents went to see my grandparents in England. “Actually, I have to stay home pretty much all weekend… Um, would you mind if we met up at my house? It’s probably ten minutes away from the school.”

  “That’s cool too.”

  The class started and I had plans for working on a school project. Megan was sort of a loner, Elliot told me that I was like her, in the classes anyways. She sat in the back of every class and got really good grades.

  On Saturday I was bus
y pulling Perpetual’s hair up while Everlasting helped get Eternity’s hair fench braided with ribbons. I heard a knock on the door. My hands were buried in Perpetual’s long hair. And looking over Everlasting looked very determined while dealing with Eternity’s blonde hair. “Why did we get stuck with the younger sisters?” Everlasting grumbled as the doorbell rang again.

  “All right Perpetual, let’s go. Take small steps to the front stairs.” With my hands in her hair we went to the stairs. “It’s open!” I yelled and the big door opened. “Hey Megan,” I said and when I went to wave my fingers pulled on Perpetual’s hair and she whimpered. “I’m sorry darling, I’m sorry.”

  “I wish I had my camera,” Megan said and smiled.

  “Come on up while I finish this and then we can get to work.” She climbed the stairs and we made our way back to the master bathroom. Everlasting was wrestling with the French braid and Megan laughed again. “Sorry, the deal was that if we do hair and make-up they won’t make us play with their Barbies.”

  “It’s all right, are you trying to get it like the picture?” she asked me.

  “Yeah, but I’m sort of failing. I’m not very good at this part of the makeover deal.”

  She smiled and flashed her perfect white teeth. “Do you want any help?”

  “Uh… If Perpetual doesn’t mind?”

  “I want it to look like the picture!” Perpetual whined. “And you promised.”

  “I know, and Megan can make it look like the picture.”

  “Fine.”

  I let go of her hair and Megan took my spot, running the brush through Perpetual’s hair. “If anyone at school could see you like this… you’d be dead. Pink or purple ribbons?”

  Before the screaming started I made a leap for the white ribbons. “No pink, no purple, no blue, white. Right Perpetual?” Perpetual nodded and Megan began to seamlessly twist and turn her hair so it began to look like the picture. “Right… Megan this is Perpetual and Eternity, they’re the youngest right now. And Everlasting, he’s fourteen.”

  “You’re parents have a thing for stuff lasting forever?”

  “No, mine is that when my father saw my eyes he said it felt like he could fall for an infinite amount of time. Everlasting is that my mother was in labor for three days and she said it was like she would be in everlasting labor. Perpetual is that she was constantly screaming and Eternity because she’s eternally pure of heart.”

  She nodded. “And I’m Megan.” She tied a ribbon into Perpetual’s hair and smiled. “All done.”

  Once Everlasting finished we all went downstairs to the dining room where Perpetual had laid out all the make-up she could find. They were eight years old and loved attention. “So I thought we could start with a quote from Mark Twain about money, to compare it to the economic sort of idea’s today,” Megan said and I nodded, attempting to hold a steady hand while applying shiny silver glitter to Perpetual’s hair.

  “That’s cool. We could compare his theory to the president’s ideas now or something like that. You know, I’m really sorry about all this… I didn’t realize I would be stuck giving makeovers.”

  “It’s fine. I don’t have any objections.”

  “Infinity, she’s nice,” Eternity whispered from across the table and Everlasting swore under his breath.

  “Darn, I said darn,” he muttered and I laughed. “And yeah, you know mom is going to harass you like there’s no tomorrow about her.” Megan looked at him questioningly and he explained while brushing dark blue eye shadow on Eternity. “Our parents are… They like the idea of meeting your one true love early and then staying with them. They grew up together. Once I was lending a girl my notes and my mother bugged me about it for about a month afterward.”

  I made a face. “She doesn’t have to know. She’s sick anyways, there’s no reason to bother her.”

  “Why is she sick?”

  “She’s having a baby,”