The Dancers: An Artist Story

by M.L. Cameron

Perpetual said and handed me another tube of colored glitter.

  “And that makes her sick?”

  “Our mother doesn’t take well to pregnancy. So you were saying something about using quotes with the presentation?”

  The day seemed to go on forever, between the project and my siblings I was starting to freak out. Megan asked questions about my family that I wasn’t comfortable telling anyone and it was hard to distract her once she had a question in her mind. When the girls started to get tired I carried them up to their rooms and got them in bed. Megan was finishing our presentation on my laptop.

  When I went back downstairs she asked me, “Do you have a big family?”

  “Sort of,” I walked over to the cabinet where my mother kept all of our photo albums and took one of them out. I opened it to the pictures of our family reunion the year before and held it out. “That was a year ago.”

  She raised her eyebrows and whistled. “Big family.”

  “That was only the people who could actually make it.” I sat on the couch in the living room next to her as she turned the page.

  “Your parents?” she asked, gesturing to one of them dancing together.

  “Yeah.” She turned the page and I saw myself dancing with one of my cousins.

  “Your girlfriend?”

  Then I laughed. “No, she’s one of my cousins from Italy. I have yet to have a girlfriend actually.”

  I took the book back and stood up to put it in the cabinet. “Why not?” Megan asked, turning back to our project. I opened my mind to her and was contented to find that she wasn’t interested in actually being my girlfriend.

  “I really want to go to a good college. And between college and studying, there’s not really time for a girlfriend.”

  “And two sisters. You know, if any of the girls had seen you fixing their hair and doing their make-up they would just love you even more.”

  “And I don’t care. So let’s run through this.”

  Megan

  So he didn’t have an ego, didn’t care what the girls thought of him, didn’t hang out with the popular crowd, cared about his family, spent his time training and learning instead of drinking and partying, he was the perfect guy, and yet… He wasn’t an Artist. My parents had strong issues with me seeing people who weren’t Artists.

  After our project we had no reason to talk but I couldn’t get him out of my head. He was perfect, in every way. I wanted to know if he was the one for me, but the harder I tried the harder it got to even touch his hand. All I needed was a millisecond of skin to skin contact, that was it but I couldn’t get it. “Hey skank,” Courtney said while walking by my desk in our European history class.

  Instead of ignoring her like I usually did I stood up and smiled. “I’d rather be a skank than bitch,” I said and crossed my arms over my chest. I could see Infinity rolling his eyes and walking to the back of the class, I doubted he even knew what was going on.

  “You did not just call me a bitch,” she gasped and I shrugged.

  “Well it can’t be the first time someone’s told you the truth.”

  “Burn!” some random guy yelled out and I just stood there.

  Courtney was fuming and it was an amazing feeling. She pushed her fake blonde bangs from her eyes and glared at me. “You’re just jealous,” she huffed and stuck her nose in the air.

  “Jealous of what? You have no boyfriend, no guy wants you because you’re a whore, none of your friends care about you and if they do it’s because you make them look good, your hair is dyed, your nails aren’t real, you wear about a pound of make-up, you have no life outside of this building… And I’m jealous of that? Sure, whatever makes you happy.”

  Some of her cheerleading friends were laughing behind perfectly manicured hands. “You… You… Bitch!” And she slapped me.

  Her face turned red and her hand raised to hit me again. I held my arms over my face, so maybe I was a little bit of a coward, but I wasn’t going to hit her back. “Hit her again and you’ll regret it,” I heard Infinity say. When I looked up he was holding her wrist. The entire class was so silent you could have heard a pin drop.

  “Infinity,” Courtney stuttered out and he shook his head.

  “I don’t care for class A bitches.”

  He dropped her hand and went back to his seat. How in the world had he kept his cool? Everyone dropped back into their seats and the teacher walked in with a smile on his face. I spent the entire hour wondering if Infinity cared…

  After my last class I went out to the parking lot and waited for my brother to come out of the school. Courtney walked over to me with two of her friends and glared. “You ruined everything!” she yelled. “Now Infinity won’t even look at me. I hate you! I can’t believe you did that!”

  “I thought he made it pretty clear that he didn’t want you. Get over it.”

  “Well he’s not here now.”

  She slapped me for the second time that day and I held my hand on my cheek, it stung horribly. There was a moment of silence before all of us heard, “What the hell is your problem?”

  And then she was smiling, batting her eyelashes and trying to flirt. “Infinity,” she giggled and grabbed one of his hands in both of hers. “I knew you’d see it my way. Aren’t some people just completely horrible?”

  “I think you are one of those people Courtney.”

  Why could I just take his hand like she could? Why couldn’t he just touch my shoulder or my hand for one second? I took a deep breath and took my hand from my cheek. “We,” he looked at me and pulled his hand from hers, “Need to talk. And unless you’d like to get hit again you’ll go get in my car. It’s the red one over there.”

  I walked with him to his car and he opened the door for me. I got in and then he got in beside me. I waited for him to say something but he didn’t say anything. We just sat in the car, waiting for something to happen. “Infinity…” I turned to apologize for what happened but he gave me a look and I stopped talking.

  “Did you know that this sucks? All of this. You. You are horrible. You screwed it all up. I have never liked a girl. Maybe, maybe for a second I’ll think, ‘She’s cool,’ or ‘Wow, she’s really hot,’ but not with you. No, with you I spend a few hours working on a project and I can’t get you out of my head. And my mother keeps telling me that it’s because you’re meant for me or whatever.

  “Coach says I need to get you out of my head because you’re screwing with my form. My sister’s tell me that I’m distracted and Perpetual screamed at me for not watching her routine all the way through. All of this is so stupid. And then today, you got in a fight with Courtney, when I thought you couldn’t get any better… You went off on her, which no one seems to have the courage to do.”

  I just stared at him while he yelled at me. He wasn’t exactly yelling and it wasn’t exactly directed towards me but the effect was still astounding. “Infinity, do you know what Artists are?” I blurted out while he went on about how I was screwing with his head.

  “Someone who loves art,” he answered and it could have been constructed either way.

  “With a capital A?”

  “I would bet twenty dollars you’re a Musician,” he said and rested his head against the steering wheel. “Nothing can ever be simple.”

  “You would win that bet,” I whispered and he looked up. “You’re what… A writer?”

  “No. Though most people think that. I’m not a Writer. My parents are both Dancers.”

  And then everything was awkward for a few seconds… Until he leaned over the seat and kissed me. It was sweet and magical and it felt like it was my entire life. Had I finally met my Composer? My parents had been setting me up for months with guy after guy after guy… Was he my Composer?

  When he pulled away I bit my lip and took a deep breath. When I looked in the rearview mirror I saw that my brother’s car was gone. Of course he would leave without knowing where I was. “I… My brother left. I need a ride home.”

  �
��Do you have ten minutes?” he asked and I nodded. “My mother will kill me if I don’t introduce you. Oh yeah, we have two four year olds running around so if you see one of them just walk the other way, we have yet to control their powers. They don’t realize that people dislike having images of cartoons and toys running through their minds.”

  So he had no trouble accepting that I was a Musician… I was still reeling at the fact that he was a Dancer. I never would have expected him to be a Dancer, ever… But then again I only pictured Dancers as ballerina’s. Obviously, he wasn’t a ballerina.

  I took a deep breath and he sped along the empty back roads to his house. When we pulled up to the huge house two cars were in the drive way. He parked his car and walked around to open my door. When I stepped out of the car he grabbed my hand. “The second that door opens we’re running, and then I can technically call it an introduction.”

  “You don’t like your parents much, do you?”

  “I love my parents, more than almost anything but when it comes to talking about my personal life my mother gets a little insane. So, ready? Upstairs to the right and third door on the left.”

  “All right…”

  He opened the door and pulled on my hand. I felt bolts of energy running between us. And then we were climbing the stairs. “Infinity! Is that you?”

  “Mom, this is Megan! She’s my Passion! We’re going to upstairs! I’ll be down later!” He pulled on my hand while we ran up the rest of the stairs and down the hall.

  “What? Did you just say something about your Passion? Who? Where are you going?”

  When he pulled me into a room and shut the door I felt like I was trapped in a space portal. Glow in the dark stars covered the ceiling and parts of the wall so it looked like the stars were falling into the room. “Infinity, I have no problem meeting your mother.”

  “Well I do.”

  “Okay, I’m going to go down there and talk to her while you sit up here. By yourself.” I kissed him quickly and left his room. I walked back down the stairs and towards the main living room. “Hello?” I called and a little boy came running down the hall.

  He toddled to me and raised his arms. “Up!” he cried and I lifted him into my arms, putting up my mental walls, cartoons were not my preference. “Mommy!”

  A woman came from the same direction, holding another boy in her arms. “Endless, come on, you can’t go running to other people. Who are you exactly?”

  “She wanted to mommy,” the boy in my arms said and tightened his hold around my neck.

  “I’m Megan,” I said and reached out to shake her hand.

  “You’re Infinity’s Passion… Right?” I nodded and she smiled. “But… You aren’t a Dancer.” She didn’t ask, she said. “That’s good, he’s never been to into Dancing. All right, you can put him down if you want to, I know that they’re a handful.”

  I smiled and looked at the little boy in my arms. His eyes were pleading for me to keep him up. “He’s just fine,” I said and he smiled. “I don’t mind kids.”

  “I’ve had teletubbies playing in my head for about thirty six hours now.”

  “Just block it out,” I said, bouncing Endless on my hip.

  “What do you mean?”

  I looked up at her. “You just uh… I don’t really know… You just sort of block it out. Build up mental walls. I don’t know, I just sort of block out the rest of the world… Mentally of course.”

  And then she was breathing a sigh of relief. “My grandmother failed to mention I could do that when I called earlier. So, they are just about to go down for their nap and then… we could talk?”

  “That would be good,” I said and followed her down the hall to another bedroom…

  Infinity

  I stood in the studio, counting perfect turns while Megan talked to my mother. I yawned and nodded. “Sixty four…”

  Perpetual stood with her hands on her hips and stopped turning. “I was