*****
The last weekend before school starts is the worst. This year, it was particularly horrible for Emi, who woke late, and with such a pain in her neck that she could barely turn her head left and right. To make matters worse, she had ballet class and there was no way she would make it to the studio on time.
Frantically pulling shorts on over her leotard, she ran down to the kitchen and grabbed a banana. She stuffed her toe shoes into her ballet bag and ran in a mad scramble toward the front door. From one of the kitchen chairs, her father was watching Emi over his newspaper. She would have considered asking him for a ride, but she knew it was one of his workdays. Even though dad worked from home, he was always very rigid about his “office hours.” He said an artist needed a fixed space and time in which to be creative.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“Firf day a ba-ay cla-hh,” Emi said through a mouthful of banana. She swallowed. “First day of ballet class since Madame got back. Gotta go or I’ll miss the bus.”
“Emi, afterwards, I want you to go over and apologize to Mr. Kerrigan,” he said. “Charlotte’s over there right now.”
“Yeah, yeah, got it,” Emi said impatiently as she hurried out the door.
The entire bus ride long, Emi obsessed over her wristwatch. The seconds seemed to tick by faster than usual. 9:30 came and went. Then a kid in a wheelchair was getting on the bus and they had to wait for about six million hours for the special ramp to move up and down. Emi swore under her breath. Then she felt guilty about swearing at some poor kid in a wheelchair.
But still, Madame would be so angry. Madame was a strong believer in following rules, especially punctuality. Whenever somebody complained about traffic or having to get up early she would say, “When I grew up in Latvia...” and then launch off on some anecdote about the hardships of growing up during the Soviet occupation.
When Emi finally reached her stop, she flew from the bus and down the sidewalk, ignoring the tight pain in her neck. Her ballet bag bumped up and down against her thighs as she sped up the stairs and through the door at Oahu Ballet Academy. The class had already finished stretching out and was starting their barre exercises.
Emi’s eyes immediately honed in on Kainoa who was mid ronde de jambe en l'air when their eyes met. Next to him, of course, was Natalie who didn’t even have the dignity to acknowledge Emi’s arrival. Why did her ex-boyfriend and ex-best friend have to be in the same ballet class? Why was fate so cruel!?
Meanwhile, Madame Inese was standing behind the front desk sorting through paperwork. This was an advanced class, so she could afford to be a little more hands-off during the barre routine. When she did pay close attention, she would bark at students for their sloppy arms and improper turn-out, but today she seemed preoccupied.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” Emi said through her heavy breathing. She flinched as she turned her neck the wrong way to fix her hair bun.
“What good is ‘sorry’?” Madame muttered without even looking up from the ledger she was scribbling in. “In dance, there is only commitment and lack of commitment.”
Emi sat on the bench in the waiting area and started prepping her feet for the pointe shoes. “I am committed,” she promised.
“Don’t say it,” Madame replied in her heavily accented voice. “Prove it.”
Emi noticed distractedly that Natalie was whispering to one of the other girls in the class, Mackenzie. They both stared at Emi, who narrowed her eyes back at them suspiciously. Either by design or coincidence, Natalie and Mackenzie turned their backs on her and continued their ronds de jambe on their other feet.
Emi stamped thoughts of her former fiends from her mind. She had more important things to attend to. Like drumming up the courage to ask Madame the question that had caused her anxiety all summer vacation. Emi knew it was probably not the best time to ask, but she was too impatient to wait.
“I was wondering if you had a chance to look at the recording I made?” Emi asked Madame. “I was thinking of using that same routine for my audition? The one for the summer intensive at SAB?” Whenever Emi got nervous, she started speaking in questions. It was a nervous habit.
Madame still refused to look away from her work. She seemed to be in a particularly foul mood. Apparently she wasn’t too happy about returning from her summer holiday.
“I remember.”
“Could we talk about it after class?” Emi asked. “I mean, I really, really want to train at SAB and there’s so much riding on this audition.”
SAB was the School of American Ballet in New York. It was Emi’s big dream to take summer classes there next year. She had been obsessing over it for months.
Madame let go her pen and cast hard, flinty eyes on Emi. Her voice was suddenly quiet. “I think, perhaps, it’s time you reevaluated your commitment to dance.”
“What does that mean?” Emi asked.
“You might consider applying to a different school for summer intensive. One less rigorous than SAB.”
Emi shook her head, not comprehending. “I want to go to SAB. I’m going to go to SAB.”
“You misunderstand me.” Madam looked straight up at the ceiling, as if searching for the right words there. “For the kind of dancer you are, Emi, the caliber of technical instruction offered at SAB would be too much. You’re under qualified.”
“Oh,” Emi said, a lump rapidly forming in her throat. “I- I still have a couple months before the application is due. We can work on my audition tape, right? I can improve before then.”
Madame smiled, though Emi found nothing funny about this conversation.
“Ah, American optimism,” Madam said. “You think that just because you want something desperately, you’re entitled to it. But, my dear, you simply don’t possess the physical attributes necessary for dancing at a professional level. You won’t ever possess those attributes. Why is that so hard for you to understand?”
Emi’s face was burning and her ears were buzzing. She wanted to defend herself – to tell Madame she was dead wrong – but there was so much authority in her teacher’s voice. It did not invite debate.
“You’re telling me I’m too fat,” Emi said bluntly. Madame might as well have stabbed her in the gut.
The up tempo piano music was still burbling from the stereo, but Emi felt she had gone deaf. The whole world was falling down. In some part of her consciousness, she registered that Natalie and Kainoa were dancing behind her, along with Alysha and Sam and Mackenzie and all the others in the class. They may or may not have heard Madame’s harsh words. Emi was too afraid to look.
“If you never thought I was serious about dance, then what the hell did you think I was doing here?” Emi demanded. “Why didn’t you kick me out before?”
She didn’t wait for a response. She was too angry. “You know what? If this is how you feel about me, then I quit. I really don’t need this right now.”
Grasping feverishly for her bag, Emi left the room with as much dignity as she could muster. Once outside, she tripped over her shoes on the stairwell and had to grab the railing to keep from tumbling head first onto the concrete.
She was glad no one was there to see that.
The past 24 hours were surreal in her mind. Spitting Caves, the car accident, Madame’s cruel words. It was too much for Emi to process at once.
She got as far as the sidewalk before the sob started rising in her throat, but she stamped it down. Tears would get her nowhere. Then again, she was nowhere now. She felt bereft of everything that had ever mattered. Dance was her world.
It struck her that she had lost something she never had to begin with. Her dream of dancing professionally had been an illusion, according to Madam. She had deluded herself into believing ballet was something attainable, but now…
She couldn’t bear to think of it. Not yet. But she felt it imprinted in every bone in her body: failure, failure, failure, right down to the marrow.
Chapter 4