Chapter 13 Sonya
SONYA
It takes two days to get back to normal.
But my plié, ronds de jambe, fondus, port de bras. Off the barre, my glissade, and tendu execute perfectly.
There’s a break for lunch, but I don’t take it. I can’t stop, even if my abs, hamstrings, adductors, and spine ache like they’ve been dug at for hours. When class ends, I continue.
Madame Kozlova nods in approval.
I’m not the only one who doesn’t slow down, fogging up the windows of the studio. Beside me, Robert Chang is rising onto the balls of his feet to work on his relevé. He’s also a soloist, desperate to become a principal.
That’s because while soloists are outstanding, principals are the absolute best. The most difficult steps and most challenging roles are assigned to them. They possess the audience’s eyes when moving across the stage.
Robert and I practice our expressions in the mirror.
They’re sickly sweet smiles. The kind of smiling that if attempted in my non-ballet life, people would accuse me of being body-snatched by a clone.
Or wonder if I’ve gone ill, diagnosed with a terminal personality-swapping illness.
Which begs the question, for someone who hates everything about openly expressing emotions other than reserved amounts of contempt, why am I a ballerina? Why this career?
Simple.
It’s because a ballerina is so polished and poised that everyone watches them with disbelief, because how do they do it?
How do they rise on their toes to stand en pointe, stay like that, and then leap on stage as if they can magic all their heaviness in and out of existence.
None of it is delicate if you look closely enough.
It’s all controlled explosions of power made to look delicate.
Effortless. So inspiring that it can’t be dismissed. You can’t be dismissed.
And principals? They are the superstars at the top of the pyramid, remembered for their greatness.
I’m going to be one of them, and when interviewed in the press and they ask me who I attribute my success to, I’m going to turn my finger around and point it proudly at myself.
Sonya is the first South Asian principal, because she’s capable of accomplishing anything and everything on her own.
Madame Kozlova snaps her fingers.
There are only six of us left in the studio now. Her private class of protégés. We’re the dancers Madame Kozlova is banking her reputation on and putting forward to audition for Bob Pepita’s final ballet.
Three men across three women. Pairs dancing together—the pas de deux.
“Ready?” asks Robert when it’s our turn.
I nod.
His hands settle on my hips. We begin.
“Straighten your foot,” barks Madame Kozlova at me. “Belly to your backbone,” she screeches at Robert. “Curve your neck!” she screams back at me.
We fix ourselves and go again. These aren’t beginner moves we’re performing. Legs and arms whip and unfurl, timed to a razor point of precision.
Then Robert pulls me to the center of the floor, preparing us for our grand allegro, tying together all the steps we’ve done so far.
He leaps. Gestures at me.
I run en pointe toward his arms.
For this scene I’m pretending to be rejected so my head ducks as if I’m forlorn. Then it’s my turn to leap. Smaller jumps at first. Once, twice, three times before the big one—
And it happens.
Mid-air, I lose it. My sense of space erases in a blink of an eye. Instead of sliding through the air into one graceful leap, I’m bent forward too much. My knee drags too far behind. No, no, no!
Robert’s eyes go big. The timing is so wrong, but I’m already going down so fast that he can’t rearrange himself to avoid the collision.
An elbow clips my temple, and the ground races up to swallow my vision.
“Are you okay?” someone screeches.
I open my mouth but find I can’t answer. That’s okay. I’ll just get up. I make it halfway before toppling again. My eyes squeeze shut and I moan.
“Call an ambulance,” orders Madame Kozlova. “Now!”
“I’m not hurt,” I mumble.
“Didn’t she fall in front of Bob Pepita?” whispers Nina Hart.
Seriously?
I want to scream at her for reminding everyone, even though in her spot I might have done the same. She’s aiming to be the first East Asian ballerina promoted to principal. We’re each other’s biggest competition.
I make another attempt to get up, but Robert blocks me. “Rest,” he urges. “Better safe than sorry. Something could be wrong if you keep falling like this.”
When the ambulance comes, I’m strapped to a gurney and whisked away. My entire face flushes. How humiliating.
I can’t talk. I’m so embarrassed, answering the paramedics with one-word answers on the way to the hospital.
My shoulders don’t uncurl for hours.
“We ran a few tests,” the doctor finally says later.
Madame Kozlova perks up and so does Nina Hart, because for some reason, she’s also here. Actually, I know why Nina is here. To keep tabs on the competition, probably manifesting that I need to sit out Bob Pepita’s audition so she has the upper hand in winning a principal dancer spot.
“So…” I wrap the hospital blanket tighter around me. “What’s wrong with me?”
Because something has to be wrong, and it’s going to cost me everything I’ve ever wanted if I don’t fix it. Still, I pretend that nothing’s the matter, so nobody catches on to the seriousness of it all.
What doesn’t help my forced Zen is the patient I’m sharing the room with. They don’t seem to believe in privacy. The curtain separating us is only half-closed, and the TV in their corner is blaring loudly.
It’s so much stimulation that I almost miss the doctor smiling at me.
“Nothing is wrong. We were concerned about the bump to the head, but your scans are clear. Just make sure someone at home closely monitors you for concussion symptoms, and if you experience any of those in the next twenty-four hours, come back to the hospital.”
My dance mistress gapes. “There’s nothing wrong with her?”
The doctor levels her a strange look. “Yes. Good news, right? Based on our tests, Sonya is in excellent health.”
I draw my legs up to my chest, and my toes curl into the hospital bed. “Just a fluke,” I hear myself say. “It won’t happen again,” I tell Madame Kozlova.
“You almost injured Robert!”
The doctor clears her throat. “Sonya needs rest, not questioning.”
With that, the doctor leaves and a nurse comes in. “Who’s going to take you home and monitor you, Sonya?”
Madame Kozlova’s hands jerk up, and she looks at me. “Oh. I would, but I can’t. I’ve got plans tonight that I can’t cancel. There must be someone else available.”
Nina Hart, who hasn’t said anything in a while, decides to chime in. “I also can’t help. I’ve got a family dinner to attend.”
“I have someone named Quinn listed as the emergency contact,” the nurse notes.
I sit up so fast my blanket falls to the ground. “No, not him.”
I’m not asking Quinn to drop everything and fly back to Vancouver for me. Focusing on winning needs to be his only priority.
The nurse forces a stack of papers into Madame Kozlova’s hands. “I have to check on other patients, so I’m giving you Sonya’s home care instructions. Whoever is looking after her has to read them. Please make sure they do.”
When the nurse leaves, Madame Kozlova points to the side table beside me. “Sonya, your phone is on the table. You should call someone.”
I slowly pick it up. In the background, the TV keeps blaring. My neighbor has switched the channel to another sports network.
I’m going through my contacts, wondering if this day could get any worse. Not only have I been rushed to the hospital because I can’t dance, but nothing’s wrong with me, and so this mystery of falling continues—and now I have to call…
No one.
Considering I feel fine, I don’t need help anyway.
“Just leave the papers on the table. Um, I think my person is running late.”
Madame Kozlova clutches them tighter. “I can’t leave you alone like this. We’ll wait for someone to show up.”
“No—” I try to argue.
“Yes,” insists Madame Kozlova.
Fuckity-fuck.
She’s using her stiff tone, the one that means she’s not budging.
“But I can’t control how long it’ll be until someone comes…”
“You fell in my studio,” she points out. “How would it look if I left you alone without making sure you had help tonight? Now, who’s coming?”
No one. Because—well—I don’t exactly have many options.
Do I call the owner of my favorite store, Gabriela? Farim, the doorman to my apartment building? I know if Kavi was here, I would call her, but she’s not.
The patient beside me clicks his TV volume higher. Sportscasters are furiously debating about the World Hockey Championship. A picture pops onto the screen.
All the air gets sucked out of the room. It’s the last face I want to see.
His stats are rattled off. Everyone is both impressed and thoroughly confused, wondering why one of the best players in the league turned down the chance to play on Team Canada.
“They offered him the role of captain,” one woman in a blazer says. “It’s what every hockey player dreams of when they’re a kid. It’s a huge honor, so why did he turn it down?”
“His rep isn’t commenting, but I wonder if it has to do with the performance of the Vancouver Wings lately. They’ve gone from being one of the best teams in the league to not making the playoffs last season. What a mess. I mean, as captain, a lot of that falls on him to fix.”
“I still think Adrian Hughes could have played for Team Canada. There’s no reason for him to turn that kind of chance down. Not when he’s one of the most talented players this sport has seen. He’s a game-changer. Our country needed him, but he said no—”
The debate drones on, but I’ve tuned out.
All I’m thinking about is how he’s here, in the city. And that I have his number because when we first met, he used to message me randomly.
Most of what he’s sent over the years has been random and likely bulk forwarded to all the fuckable entities stored in his phone.
HUGHES
Another great day in Vancouver. If you want to go for a walk, I’m free!
That was followed up with a shirtless selfie of him in sweatpants and a backwards baseball cap.
Trip to Paris with me? No questions asked. I’ll take you dancing!
That one was oddly specific as it was followed up with multiple ballet emojis.
HUGHES
About to get on the ice! Will you cheer me on, darling??
Later that same night:
I’m sad!!!!! You didn’t come to the game.
And the last message he sent me.
I should move on, shouldn’t I?
Clearly he sucks at texting, sending break-up texts to the wrong person. Regardless, I’m staring at his number now, swearing in my head.
Don’t even consider it, Sonya. You don’t need anyone, let alone him. And even if you did ask, it’s not like he’d come. Not after what happened at the studio and how you snapped at him to go away.
“How far is this person?” Madame Kozlova wonders.
“I might miss dinner at my parent’s house at this rate,” complains Nina. She glances at Madame Kozlova and quickly clears her throat. “But of course I’ll stay longer and support Sonya while I can, because that’s what a good leader does.”
She goes on, talking about how she’s rising to the occasion, coincidentally connecting that to all the traits a principal dancer also has.
Meanwhile, I’m freaking out, wondering how to get out of this situation. I’m still thinking there has to be a way around this, when randomly, my thumb—hovering over the call button—moves.
It’s the barest moment of accidental contact.
But my phone is dialing Adrian Hughes. I’m calling him.
Fuck!
And he answers before I can stab my screen to end the call.