Authors: Stasia Ward Kehoe

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Stories in Verse, #Love & Romance, #Performing Arts, #Dance

Audition (11 page)

BOOK: Audition

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I am awake

Before the alarm clock
Blares into the darkness.
The audition is this afternoon.

My feet will look all new
In Bonnie’s doctored pointe shoes.

I pillage through the leotards and tights
Piled on the closet floor.
Today I won’t wear black—too commonplace—
Nor red—too bold.
Navy blue with a velvet bow in my hair?
Burgundy with pink flowers?

Does it matter there’s a tiny hole
Where I’ve gathered the front of the burgundy leotard
With a safety pin?
Does it matter the navy is a little stretched out in the seat?
Will it make any difference?
And if they don’t choose me,
Can I pretend that I don’t care?

The floors of the ballet studio

Are sticky with resin.
The mirrored walls so peppered with fingerprints
Reflections look like those impressionist paintings
Made from tiny dots.
Every conversation is underscored
By the accompanists’ plonking piano notes
As if we are all
Always
Onstage.

“Do you have an extra hairnet, Sara?”
Simone fidgets on the bench beside me.

“Sure.” I rummage through my bag.
Her hair is black and mine is brown.
The net won’t match
But such things trouble Simone no more
Than carrying on a half hour’s conversation
Wearing only a pair of tights.

I need to breathe,
Push out the fear
With the perfect, driving burn of my hamstrings
When my thighs first kiss the floor.

They call me
Into Studio C with Simone and Lisette,
Bonnie and Madison.
We are auditioning for a pas de deux so . . . Yes!
Remington is here.

And my eyes are so stuck
On his broad back
I almost do not hear them tell me,
“Double pirouette, Sara.”

From fourth position
I push my heel against the floor,
Snap my head around,
Open my arms to catch the sunlight
Coming through the side window,
Reach for something . . .

For him.

Everyone is relieved

When it is over.
Draped across the hallway benches,
Lingering awhile before returning
To the locker rooms
To change back from ballerinas
To ordinary girls.

“What did they tell you?” Simone asks.
They said very little, so I just go,
“Could you believe Fernando?”

Bonnie says, “He sure loves his own face!”

I laugh along.
Pretend I don’t notice Remington
Come back through the door,
An absent-looking smile on his face,
Cigarette dangling from his fingers.
The aroma is chalky, dirty, metallic.
I know it is bad
But I like it.

Simone waves him over
But he sits beside me,

His arm dropping along the back of the bench.
Small talk about the audition combinations,
How Yevgeny is a taskmaster.
“But a great teacher.
Don’t you think, Sara?”

Rem sounds so casual I can’t figure
Whether all he’s thinking about is the audition
Or if some part of him feels the blood
Pulsing through my skin where his wrist touches my
shoulder,
The way every other part of me is straining to be
The forearm his fingertips are absently stroking.

Has he been feeling my eyes on his back?
Sensing me hovering near him?

Madison and Simone can’t join him and his friends
For pizza at Denardio’s tonight.

And me?

“Where’s Jane?” escapes from my stupid lips.

“She’s in Ohio. A family reunion.”

I will myself to hear disapproval in his tone,
Feel my head nod yes.

I do not know what I am doing,
Only that I want to go with him.
Stand up.
Leave my fears, my sense
In the sticky dust
Of the studio floor.

For once I don’t hesitate to undress

In the locker room.
Tear down the bun.
Add some lip gloss.
Ditch the baby-doll dress for jeans
And the scoop-necked black jersey
That shrunk in the wash.

I am already by the door when Rem shows up
With two more grown-ups—corps dancers.
Paul has a car.
Don sits in front,
Criticizes his driving in a strident yet tender way.
Rem jokes with them and doesn’t seem to mind
I have too little breath to speak.

At Denardio’s I sit beside him,

Lifting pizza to my mouth
For minute bites,
Feeling ensnared in the red vinyl booth,
A half-acknowledged warning that I shouldn’t have come
Without any other girls.

“So we’re back into
Nutcracker
season,”
Paul sighs.

“Again.” Rem nods.
“Not much time for my new piece.”

“The one you work on in the little studio?”
I wipe my greasy fingers on a brown paper napkin.

“You watch me, Sara?”
Rem’s smile starts in the left corner
Of his mouth.

I swallow hard,
Saved from answering by Paul and Don,
Who wave to some friends by the bar
At which I am too young to sit.
“We’ll be back in a minute.”

“Sure.” Rem inspects the rim of his mug.
I stare at the empty seats across from us
But imagine Rem’s arm unraveling from Jane’s waist,
Sweeping a gallant greeting to the little studio mirror.

Under the table
Rem drops his wide palm
Over my knee.

I mask my sharp inhale with babble
About the fouettés in
Le Corsaire,
The audition, tour dates.
But they are not words,
Just the obligatory sounds of an accompanist’s piano chords
Clanging and echoing in the dark tunnel
Between my ear and my brain—
They tumble from my mouth like marbles,
Round and meaningless.
All that makes sense is to feel
The heat of his palm
Burning through my jeans.

“It’s fun partnering with you.”
His face comes close, grinning
Before he brings his lips to mine.

Sometimes the earth shifts beneath your feet
Like jumping on a hill of sand.
What was true and solid begins to slide, dissolve.
Your thoughts unravel faster than a satin ribbon
Whose edge hasn’t been burned
Until you sit amidst a tangle of limp, pink threads,
Unable to reason
At all.

There is an uncomfortable silence

Across the table.
My eyes flash open for a second to see
Paul and Don return to our booth.
Their expressions seem to telegraph one syllable:
Jane.
Jane!

I remember her offer
To look at my sore legs
With a millisecond of guilt
But

Rem’s head is turned,
Kissing me.
His lips are too soft,
Too wet.
But I have never been kissed before
So maybe this is how it is:
Hungry mouth devouring my face,
Hands dangerous.

I close my eyes again.