Chapter 5
brOOKLYN
It’s not a “moving” day for Pearl and I when I wake up a few hours later, thank God. I decide to skip Fit World, since I’m exhausted , and end up going back to sleep for another hour of gray early morning before it’s really time to go.
Carefully, I change out of the priceless clothes I fell asleep in, fold them neatly, wrap them in a canvas bag, and stow them in the bottom of my dance bag.
I’m the only one at the Mercury Theater when I arrive an hour and a half before morning company class starts. That’s on purpose, and not just to shower.
The practice studio is utterly quiet as I begin my stretches. My back bends smoothly as I slide my hands down my calves, wrapping my fingers around the arches of my feet as I exhale.
And yet, despite the calming stretches, the deep breathing, and the blissfully quiet, empty studio, there’s nothing “calm” about my state of mind at all.
The easy answer would be that I was jumped last night. But the sad truth is, if it was “just” being jumped, that wouldn’t even make the top ten awful things that have ever happened to me, between my time spent living out of Pearl and my years in the foster care system.
Fuck. Maybe not even the top twenty.
If Kir hadn’t intervened, being gang-raped by those four assholes—or whatever else they had in mind—probably would have been the worst moment of my life.
But that didn’t happen, because he was there.
He fought them off, brought me to his palatial home, and took care of me.
And cut your clothes off, and saw you almost naked and completely unconscious.
I try and shake those thoughts away, desperate for the calm Zen that stretching alone in the practice studio in the early morning usually brings.
But there’s no Zen to be found today.
Not with Kir Nikolayev and his devil eyes running amok through my thoughts.
Prying into the darkest recesses of my mind. Feasting on the secrets there.
The weirdest part is, I still feel the way I did when I was naked in that bed, trembling under his dark gaze with that slithering sensation in my core.
It’s been like that ever since I stepped out of his car last night outside Val’s place.
It was there when I woke up. When I took the subway to the theater.
And it’s still there now, tightening around my middle and consuming me from the inside out.
Eventually I manage to banish it to a corner of my mind as I stand from my stretches and move into a series of warmups.
When I’m dancing, everything else slips away.
The stench of neglect from broken homes. The empty feeling of having no one to hold me and tell me it’s going to be okay. The looming threat of a “foster brother” who you just know is waiting for your eyes to close so he can put his fingers between your legs or grope your breasts.
When I move through the five positions of the feet and arms, or ease into a tendu, or nail a pirouette, it’s all I know. All I feel.
That’s why I’m okay with everything that’s going on right now.
Pearl. Navigating the crazies at the early morning budget gym, or at the food bank, or the rare times I can find room in a women’s shelter.
Taking my clothes off and writhing on a pole while monstrous men throw wrinkled dollar bills and yell all the disgusting things they want to do to me.
I do and endure all that for dance .
My greatest love in the world.
None of my friends knows that I’m shooting for a spot with the Ballet Imperiya Korona .
I don’t know why I haven’t told them yet—maybe because that adds more pressure that I don’t need, maybe because they’ll be the only thing I miss about New York if I get it and need to leave.
But if they did know, and wanted to understand why I was so focused on getting into the company, I think I’d tell them that if ballet is my one great love, the Ballet Imperiya Korona is my ultimate Prince Charming.
Val would mock me relentlessly for framing it like that. Milena, too. Naomi and Lyra would probably smile and nod, and at least make a show of understanding.
Evelina, though? She’d totally get it, if for no other reason than she’s the real-life version of every singing, dancing, talks-to-animals Disney princess. If anyone would get a Prince Charming analogy, it’s her.
After a workout that leaves me breathless but grinning, I get to the slow and painful task of peeling off Kir’s bandages.
The wounds are going to mean questions from everyone today, and I don’t know what to tell them.
The scrapes on my knees aren’t that bad, and my tights will cover them anyway.
My hands aren’t awful either: I can explain those marks with a lame “I tripped” excuse.
The bruising on my hip and shoulder will be noticeable if anyone’s paying attention when we get changed at the end of the day.
But I’ve learned, thanks to James, how to angle the marks away from any of my friends to avoid any conversations I don’t want to have.
The forehead is trickier, but I end up exchanging Kir’s bandage for a much smaller Band-Aid, using concealer on the bruising, and letting my hair fall over it.
After a shower, I head outside to meet up with everyone else as they arrive. When I step out into the alley behind the theater, my phone rings just as I notice that nobody’s here yet.
It’s Diego, Derrick’s lawyer.
“Brooklyn, hi,” he says curtly. It’s his way of starting almost every phone call we’ve ever had—which at this point is, frankly, a lot.
Derrick, my stepfather, has always been one of those guys who just has a way of finding trouble. He’s a not a bad man, and he really did try after mom OD-ed and left him to care for me without any help at all.
He worked every odd job, watched YouTube videos to learn how to braid my hair, and kept me safe, clothed, and fed. Well, mostly.
It was the second time I showed up to school with lice, no socks, in clothes that definitely could have used a wash, and with a sandwich on moldy bread for lunch, that the school called CPS for a wellness check.
Again, Derrick’s not a bad man. And he really did his best for me. But everyone has unlucky days. This was one of Derrick’s.
When they showed up for the wellness check he was high, and in the middle of selling a bag of oxy to some buddies.
To be clear, he was never high around me , not that I knew of. But I was sleeping over at a friend’s house that night, and I guess he just felt like he could…unwind.
Bad timing. Bad luck. Bad circumstances. Whatever you call it, that’s the day I went into “the system”.
Since then, Derrick’s bad luck streak hasn’t ever really ended. He’s been in and out of jail a couple of times, mostly for things like petty theft. It was probably so he could eat or keep a roof over his head, still, a crime is a crime.
The last time I saw him, a little over two years ago, he was really turning things around.
He was sober, going to meetings, staying in a clean halfway house, and had a good job working for this high-end shop that did aftermarket work and fancy paint jobs on street racing cars.
He even had a pretty decent-sized envelope of cash for me, which he insisted I take.
Then, bingo, a month later he was looking at federal grand larceny charges.
And that’s when I met Diego Padilla, Derrick’s lawyer.
The owners of the car shop claimed he’d been selling racing merch out of the back of the shop at night, to the tune of a million bucks.
But I know Derrick didn’t do it. I can hear it in his voice when he calls me on the phone from prison.
The owners of the shop saw a guy no one would believe, ran some kind of insurance scam for “stolen parts”, and dumped the whole thing on my stepdad.
The legal system is cruel if you’re poor, and it’s been a spiraling nightmare of bureaucracy, bullshit, and bills ever since.
There’s Diego’s fee, because there’s no way I’m letting a public defender decide Derrick’s fate.
Forensic accountants. Third party evidence auditors.
Witness coaches. The court costs themselves.
It goes on and on. So between the mountains of money I put toward that, and the fact that ballet pays a poverty wage unless you’re one of the superstars, you can see how shaking your ass on a pole for crumpled dollar bills suddenly becomes a viable option.
“Hey, Diego,” I smile wryly. “Long time no talk.”
It’s a joke. I saw him two nights ago, when I gave him that wad of cash for Derrick’s newest forensic accounting expert.
He sighs.
Fuck.
I know that long, drawn-out sigh. It means “You’re not going to like this, and your wallet is going to like it even less.”
“The Gordon brothers’ counsel is claiming our forensic specialist is a nonstarter. He has a criminal record that wasn’t disclosed.”
I blink.
“ What ??”
“The guy stole a Mets jersey from a store. He was seventeen, but he was charged as an adult.” Diego sighs again. “It’s stupid kid bullshit, obviously, and it was forty fucking years ago. But…their legal counsel does have the right to challenge him, since he didn’t disclose it.”
I groan. “Okay, fine. So we get a refund and just use another?—”
“Unfortunately, as soon as he was hired, he took a cursory look at the books. Technically speaking, services have already been rendered.”
My stomach drops. “So…no refund.”
Ten thousand dollars. Gone. Just like that.
“I’m sorry, Brooklyn,” Diego sighs. “Look, I’ve got another guy, and I’ve thoroughly vetted him personally. He’s good, but he’s also fifteen Gs.”
I want to cry.
It’s not just that I keep having to fork out huge sums of money to get Derrick’s name cleared that has me sleeping out of a Honda Accord. It’s also that I’ve been squirreling away as much as I possibly can.
Because when—not if—I get into the Ballet Imperiya Korona , it’s a full-time position. But it’s unpaid , because it’s an apprenticeship.