I Forgot to Tell You

by Charis Marsh

  “What are you doing?” Taylor asked, curious.

  “I decided that I want to work for the Cirque de Soleil when I grow up,” Alison said calmly. “Is that boy not going to eat any dinner?”

  “Nope,” Charlize said. “He’s trying to get some sleep, not that he can do that with your sister constantly interrupting him.”

  “Hey!” Taylor protested. “It was only once.”

  Charlize spooned out some pasta on both of their plates. “I can’t believe that summer is over already,” she said, sighing. “I haven’t even seen you all summer, Taylor, and now school is starting. We need to make some time to do family stuff.”

  “Mom, we see each other all the time.” Taylor reached for the parmesan jar and began sprinkling it liberally.

  “Oh!” Charlize said, suddenly, snapping her fingers. “That reminds me — your father phoned me. Apparently Vivienne thinks you should see a nutritionist.”

  “Who cares what Vivienne thinks?”

  “Why do you guys hate Vivienne?” Alison asked.

  “We don’t hate Vivienne, Alison,” Charlize said at the same time that Taylor said, “Because she’s Vivienne.”

  “Anyway, in this case, she might be right,” Charlize admitted. “You eat straight carbs, Taylor. You have to start getting some protein and vegetables into your diet.”

  Taylor jabbed her pasta with her fork. “I feel fine,” she argued.

  “Tell me about California,” Charlize asked, changing the subject. “How was the end of show performance?”

  “I already told you about it,” Taylor said. “Oh, but I forgot to tell you — I saw Anna there!”

  “What? Really?”

  “Yeah! It was cool to see her.”

  “Does she miss the academy at all?”

  “No. She hasn’t gotten any better, though. She’s still at about the same level as she was when she left. I almost have higher extensions than her now.”

  “Was she in your level?”

  “No, the level above.”

  “Oh.”

  Crash.

  They stayed sitting for one second, and then as one they all ran downstairs in the direction of the noise. Charlize knocked on Nat’s door. “Is everything all right in there?” she asked solicitously. She pushed open the door without waiting for an answer.

  Nat stood in the middle of the room, looking confused. The wooden dresser that had been sitting on the back wall was now lying on its side. “I’m not entirely sure how that happened,” he said, sounding bewildered. “I dropped something behind the back of the dresser, and the next thing I knew the bloody thing was on the ground. Pardon the language.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” said Charlize in a tone that clearly meant that it was not all right. “Here. You take an end.” Together Charlize and Nat managed to set the dresser right side up again. “All right then. Good night,” Charlize said firmly. “You, too, Alison and Taylor. It’s the first day of school tomorrow and I don’t want to hear any whining about how tired you are tomorrow.”

  Taylor obediently went to bed, but once she had gotten changed into her pajamas, brushed her teeth, laid out her clothes for the next morning, checked Facebook, texted kk :) to Zack, and climbed under the covers, she still wasn’t tired. She was excited to go back to the academy, but it felt weird being back. The summer had been so fun and different, and she had met so many people, both other dancers and teachers. She’d made new friends with people from all over the world, and her new teachers had seemed to think that she was really good. Even Anna had been kind of nice to her in California; they had eaten dinner together in the cafeteria a few times. It was going to be strange to be back at the academy.

  Taylor rolled over and pressed her eyes shut in an attempt to go to sleep, but she still couldn’t. It was too warm. She got out of bed and opened her window, letting the fresh night air blow in. As she stood by the window, she smelled something strange. Something smoky.

  She walked lightly out into the hall, trying to figure out where the smoke was coming. Oh. It was downstairs. She was about to go and wake up her mother to tell her that something was on fire, when she remembered that that Nat’s room was downstairs. She decided to sneak down instead.

  Nat’s room was firmly closed, which Taylor was beginning to suspect was normal for him. She knocked twice, quietly. He didn’t come to the door, so she walked out into the garden and around to where Nat’s window was. The window was open, and Nat’s head was half out, as he smoked a cigarette. He blinked once, but other than that his face did not register much surprise. “Hello.”

  “Hello.” Taylor stood awkwardly. The grass was a bit wet from the sprinkler, and her feet were cold. “I smelled the smoke, so I thought something was burning.”

  “Well, it’s not,” Nat reassured her.

  Taylor wasn’t sure what to say next.

  “Do you want to come in and talk?” Nat asked finally. “I’m a bit bored. The sleeping idea isn’t working out for me so far.”

  “Okay.” Taylor walked back around, and this time Nat opened the door to let her in. She noticed that he shut it tightly after her.

  Taylor sat on his bed. “How come you’re coming to the academy?” she asked. “Everyone thought that you were going to the Royal Ballet School.”

  Nat went back to the window, sitting on the sill so he could tap his ash out onto Charlize’s flower bed. “Well,” he said slowly. “My parents didn’t really like the idea of me going to England. They’re thinking of relocating to Canada in a few years, and I have family in Toronto.”

  “But, that’s not a good reason,” Taylor protested. “You should have talked to them.”

  “I also didn’t get in,” Nat admitted quietly.

  “What?”

  He shrugged. “I got in to the summer school, and I thought they’d offer me a position for the fall, but they didn’t. It was rather upsetting at the time, but now I guess it’s all right. I mean, Theresa Bachman teaches here, right?”

  “Not really,” Taylor corrected. “She was giving me and Julian privates, but that’s pretty much it.”

  “Oh. Lovely.” Nat finished his cigarette and laid it on the sill. “That was pretty much the only thing I was looking forward to.”

  “Hey!” Taylor protested. “The academy is a good school!”

  “It has managed to train good dancers,” Nat corrected. “There’s a difference. I don’t know. I suppose I am feeling pressed. Grade twelve and all that. Got to get a job by the end of next year, or my parents are determined that I go to university.”

  “Oh. That sucks,” Taylor said. She watched Nat light another cigarette. “Can I try?”

  “No. Cigarettes are bad for you. I’m quitting, actually.” Nat ran his hand through his hair, looking frustrated, “Let’s talk about something a little less stressful than my life.”

  “My parents want me to be an actor,” Taylor offered.

  “What about university?”

  “Oh, they don’t think I’d be able to go. They want Alison to go. She’s really smart.”

  “Well, being an actor wouldn’t be so bad if it worked out.”

  “I know. But I don’t want to be an actor, I want to be a ballet dancer.”

  Nat didn’t answer, so Taylor searched for something to say. “You’ve lived in a lot of places, hey?” she said finally.

  “Yeah,” Nat agreed. “Our home has always been Hawaii, but I’ve lived in New York, Bristol, Tobago, Amsterdam, Honduras, Johannesburg, Frankfurt … I think I’m leaving places out, but I’m too lazy to remember. I’ve never lived in a small town though — that would be the strangest thing for me. I want to try some day. I want neighbours who watch me every day and gossip about the lunatic things I do, and say hi to me in the grocery store. It’d be like being famous, except if you found you didn’t like it, you could always just move away.” Nat pointed at the shelf across the room. “What’s that?”

  “My old paint set,” Taylor said. “I haven’t us
ed it in ages.”

  Nat put his cigarette out on the sill and walked over, picking up the dark wood box and setting it down on the floor. He sat down and opened it up. “Do you mind if I use it?” he asked.

  “I don’t care,” Taylor assured him. “I’m hopeless with paint.”

  “Come here,” Nat ordered, patting the seat beside him. “I’m going to show you our place in Tobago.” He poured a bit of water from his water bottle into its lid, and opened up a tube of blue, squeezing a small amount onto a thick paintbrush. “The water there isn’t like the water here,” he explained. “Here, you look down and maybe you see seaweed, rocks, but mostly it’s a darker blue, and you can’t see very far or at all below the surface. In Tobago, you can see to the bottom.” He wetted the paint brush constantly to get the acrylic light enough, mixing blues with greens.

  Taylor sat with her arms around her knees as she watched him paint. “You’re really good,” she said. “It’s cool that you can paint. I can’t do really anything except dance, and some days I think that I’m not really even any good at dancing.”

  “You’re good,” Nat reassured her, concentrating on creating the texture of the waves crashing on the pale sand of his shoreline. “You did well in that contemporary pas de deux you did at YAGP.”

  “But what if I’m not good enough?” Taylor asked.

  “Well,” said Nat, “that’s the question, isn’t it? I guess we’ll find out.”

  Taylor yawned. “Your house was pretty,” she said, watching him sketch the outline.

  “It was all right.” Nat shrugged. “It was mostly the water I loved. Lux didn’t like it in Tobago because she had nowhere good to train, so my parents left her in Hawaii with my aunt and uncle so she could keep going to school there. She’s always been more driven than me.”

  “That sucks.”

  Nat considered. “That depends. On whether it works out or not. You see, if I don’t get a job with a dance company, I have other things to explore. I have the ocean of Tobago, I have my collection of coats, I have my love of physics and Allen Ginsberg. If Lux doesn’t find a job, which admittedly is very unlikely, she will be devastated.”

  “I guess even I have acting,” Taylor said slowly. “I’m pretty sure my dad could find me work.”

  “And you have Zack,” Nat pointed out. “Lux would never have time for a boy. She’s too focused.”

  Taylor yawned again. “Go to sleep,” Nat told her. “I’ll wake you up when the painting’s finished.”

  “Okay.” Taylor lay down on her old bed and almost immediately fell asleep, lulled by the comforting smells of her old blankets, the smoke from Nat’s cigarettes, the acrylic paint, and the fall air blowing through the open window. Just before she fell asleep, she thought of something. Julian would love living in Tobago. He could pretend that he was a pirate. I wonder who is going to be the Nutcracker Prince this year.

  Copyright © Charis Marsh, 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

  Editor: Shannon Whibbs

  Design: Courtney Horner

  Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Marsh, Charis

  I forgot to tell you [electronic resource] / Charis Marsh.

  (Ballet school confidential)

  Electronic monograph.

  Issued also in print format.

  ISBN 978-1-4597-0432-9

  I. Title. II. Series: Marsh, Charis. Ballet school

  confidential.

  PS8626.A7665I46 2012 jC813’.6 C2012-903212-3

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and Livres Canada Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

  Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

  J. Kirk Howard, President

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  Also in the Ballet School Confidential series by Charis Marsh

  Love You, Hate You (Book 1)

  978-1554889617

  $12.99

  Kaitlyn, Taylor, Alexandra, and Julian are all students at the Vancouver International Ballet Academy where ballet and drama dominate everyone’s lives.

  Kaitlyn was the star at her old school, but the competition at VIBA is fierce and her reputation as a prodigy is threatened. About to turn fifteen years old, Taylor is a bit of a scatterbrain. She’s got a lot of potential, but the teachers are frustrated with her lack of confidence, and her troubles at school aren’t helping. Alexandra has done everything right, and she’s determined to become a dancer, but the teachers at VIBA seem to be against helping her. Julian, at fifteen, loves dance, so going to a professional ballet school seems fun — even if it does take over every aspect of his life.

  It’s only their first semester, but these four students will have to push themselves to their limits to make it through their first major performance, The Nutcracker, and continue on the path to becoming professional dancers.

  You’re So Sweet (Book 2)

  978-1459704176

  $12.99

  The Vancouver International Ballet Academy has opened its doors after the winter break, and everyone is back! Julian is finding it difficult to concentrate on dance because of his family; his teachers think he could be great if he could just focus. Kaitlyn believes she’s the best dancer, but her body type is getting in the way of her (and her mother’s) dance ambitions, tempting her to tell lies. Alexandra is as focused as usual, but others don’t seem to understand how much time and energy she has to give to ballet if she wants to be the best. While Taylor is still criticized at VIBA, she’s getting a lot of positive attention from outside — especially from a recently retired Canadian ballerina who’s taken an interest in her and Julian. Who will get noticed in competition and the spring seminar? Whatever happens, someone’s going to lose and someone’s going to win.

  Visit us at: Dundurn.com

  Definingcanada.ca

  @dundurnpress

  Facebook.com/dundurnpress