Chapter 2
Chapter Two
It’s a little before midnight and everyone has gone to sleep.
Especially my roommate, Wyn.
Which works out great for me.
Because as I said, Thursdays are pretty special and I have somewhere to be.
So slowly, I climb out of my bed and go to my dresser. I open it and grab my pre-packed bag and creep out of my room.
Out in the darkened hallway now, I close the door behind me and look from left to right. The coast seems to be clear so I walk down the narrow hallway, which is flanked by beige doors and walls that have bulletin boards and motivational posters hung on them.
My feet are quick but quiet, matching the silence this time of night.
Well, except for the low drone of the television up front in the reception area.
There’s a twenty-four-hour warden – they change shifts – to keep an eye on things and I’ve chosen Thursday in particular to sneak out because I know Miss Alvarez likes her late-night shows way more than she likes watching over the bad girls, and after two years of sneaking out, I’m an expert.
I know all the twists and turns of this hallway. I know how long it will take me to reach my destination if I walk at a certain speed. Twenty-five seconds.
It’ll take me twenty-five seconds to go where I want to go.
I’ve timed it.
And sure enough, twenty-five seconds later I’m there.
At the exit.
Which is located in the back of the building.
It’s a metal door with a trick handle. You have to jiggle it and push at it just so to spring it open; it’s something that none other than Poe discovered the first year she was here with me.
The metal door thuds open and I step out into the September night, which is slightly chilly but nothing I can’t handle.
I wedge a rock between the door and the jamb before I take off running through the concrete pathways and cut through the grass clearing toward the campus brick fence. Propping my feet on the gaps, I climb and cross over to the other side.
When I get down, I start running again.
From here I have about ten minutes to make it to the St. Mary’s bus stop, which will take me where I want to go. I run through the woods that line the back of our campus and reach the bus stop just as the bus is pulling in.
The inside is empty except for a woman who’s sleeping in the fourth row. It’s slightly scary, traveling in an empty bus at midnight, but I have no other choice, do I?
I show the driver my bus pass — I bought it over the summer with my own money, thank you very much — and then I’m off again.
It takes about thirty minutes to reach my destination.
Back to my own town, Bardstown.
My heart always flutters when we cross that line, from St. Mary’s to Bardstown, the town I grew up in and the town I adore.
The town in which I fell in love for the first time.
The town in which I fell from grace.
When the bus pulls in at my stop, I thank the driver and get off.
So far things have been okay, slightly risky but nothing illegal.
This next part that I have to do is sort of a felony.
I mean, it’s not as bad as say, stealing someone’s car and drowning it in the lake — which I have a little experience in — but it’s still pretty bad.
Because as I said, I have no other choice, do I?
I pull out a pin from my hair and jam it into the lock on the door, twisting it in a precise motion. When the door clicks open — which I knew it would, I enter.
Into the Blue Madonna, my old ballet studio.
The place where I spent years and years training to be a ballerina.
Until they kicked me out.
Honestly though, kicked out is a harsh term.
They didn’t kick me out, per se. They gave me a choice to leave and I took it.
By they I mean my teacher, Miss Petrova, who once upon a time was super proud of me and my talent.
She looked very sad when she said, “Parents are worried, Callie. They think you’d be a bad influence on their kids. I’m really sorry. You’re one of my star students but girls are pulling out because they don’t feel safe around you and I don’t know what to do. I’m at a loss here.”
So I told her that I’d leave.
See? She gave me a choice and I took it.
I left.
Because the girls — some of whom I’d danced with for years – and the parents didn’t feel safe around me. Because of what I did.
Because of what my broken heart made me do two years ago.
I don’t want to dwell on what I did and what happened after and how I came to be at St. Mary’s instead of being sent to juvie.
The time will come for me to remember.
But for now, I’m here to dance and I will.
I’m here to fulfill my dream, the only dream I’ve had since I was five years old. Of going to Juilliard and dancing for the New York City Ballet Company one day.
When I left the Blue Madonna, my dream of Juilliard was sort of hanging in the balance. Miss Petrova’s a Juilliard alumna and she was going to give me a great recommendation letter when the time came. And getting in there is so difficult and competitive that I needed that letter.
But after everything, I didn’t think she’d give that to me and so I stopped thinking about it. I’d stopped expecting to end up at Juilliard. In fact, I’d started to look into other dance programs, like the one they have here at Bardstown Community College.
But then over the last summer, something changed.
Something sprung back to life.
I wanted that dream again. I wanted to at least try to have that dream.
So I decided to make an audition video for Juilliard after all. The applications for next fall are due by November and I’m doing it. I’m going for it.
That’s why I’m here. To try.
I shed my dress in the bathroom to change into my leotard and my practice tights that I brought with me in my bag and get ready to practice.
The main practice area has polished hardwood floors and mirrors running along one wall, plus a steel barre for barre exercises. I sit on the floor to tie up my pointe shoes before I begin.
I do the warm-up exercises, stretching my legs, flexing my toes. I go through arm and leg positions one by one, checking my posture in the mirror, correcting the arch of my spine and the line of my shoulders.
When I’m done, I grab the CD that I want from the collection and put on the song that I’ve been working on all summer.
Well, I’ve been working on this song for the past two years actually.
It’s the same one that I was going to perform at Bardstown High that night.
The one where I had to wear the wings because I was a fairy who falls in love with a human who betrays me in the end.
It’s the song that I never got to do.
It’s the song that I want to remember, however.
I want to remember the pain, the misery. The tears I’ve cried.
I want to remember my heartbreak.
So I never make the same mistake again.
And so I wear the wings; these ones are borrowed from the storage closet. They are cheap and made of fake silk as opposed to my furry, custom-made, heavy wings.
But it doesn’t matter.
I’m not a fairy. I never was.
I don’t need pretty wings. I can make do with these fake ones and as soon as I have them in place over my shoulders, I start the music and close my eyes.
I let myself remember now.
I let the beats drop into my body, my stomach and chest. I let them drop into my arms and my legs.
When I’ve become sufficiently heavy with memories and light with the violins, I raise my arms and take my first spin.
After that everything becomes easy.
Everything becomes natural.
Like I was born to do this song.
Like I was born to fall in love one day and have my heart broken. Like I was born to be the girl who dances on those broken pieces of her heart.
I jump and leap and spin and turn without my conscious volition.
By the time the song ends and I fall to the floor on my knees, my feet are throbbing and my cheeks are wet from my tears.
Oh yeah, that happens.
I cry.
I cry every time I let myself remember. I cry every time I dance to this song.
It’s okay though. I’m used to the tears.
But I should stop now.
I’m here to dance, not waste whatever precious time I have on crying and…
Wait.
I feel something.
Something on the back of my neck that makes me jerk my head up and look out the tall window.
There’s nothing there except the view of a quiet, dark street, with a lamppost pouring down yellow light and a lone bus stop.
But.
But it felt like…
It felt like I was being watched. Like someone was watching me.
Like he…
At the thought, I spring to my feet. I run to the back door, the door through which I got in, and go outside. It opens into a narrow brick alley and I round the corner to get to the front.
To get to the spot directly outside the window of the practice room.
Of course there’s nothing here.
Of course.
But for some reason, my body is buzzing.
My legs feel restless, excited. My chest is filled with a rush.
A rush, an eagerness that I used to feel two years ago.
Back when… when he watched me.
When he’d come to the school auditorium and sit in the third row.
When he wanted me to dance for him and he couldn’t take his eyes off me when I did.
Back when I was his fairy.
I lie. That’s what I do…
I shake my head when his voice, his words — some of the last ones that he spoke — flit through my brain, my fake wings brushing against my back.
I’m being silly.
No one’s here.
Sighing, I go back and I’m about to enter the building to finish practicing when I hear a thud, a boot hitting the pavement, and I spin around once again to look.
Okay, I did not imagine that, did I?
I did not imagine that sound.
Someone is here, and when a different possibility occurs to me, my heart leaps to my throat in fright.
What if there’s an intruder?
An actual villain.
Not that he’s any less of a villain, but still. What if there’s some guy here, a thug, a thief. What if they’ve come to steal something from the Blue Madonna?
Oh heck no.
I’m never letting that happen. Never ever.