Elle
Gant may not be Beaulieu’s king anymore, but everyone”s still following his orders to ignore me after a few days of sniggers, gossip, and clear contempt. Or are they just distracted because dress rehearsals are sheer madness?
Plays at Beaulieu are such grand performances that it seems like half the student population is involved in one way or another whether they are ballet dancers or not. There are costumes and set design, technical aspects with the lights and sound system, and even the constant shuffling of food carts thanks to the home economics students as Mistress will have a stroke if any of the dancers leave to eat in the hall.
Our lives are the stage now. No more theory classes. No more ringing bells to suggest the end of a session. No more anything but dance and no more Gant and I.
He’s always with Cinderella, Aria, and I’m always with the chorus.
Every waking hour has been a blur of aching feet, sweat, and tons of costumes that Ms. Trix and the drama costume department are still sewing finishing touches onto mid-pirouette. Ms. Trix had the brilliant idea to keep Cinderella’s bodices reasonably simple, adding far more sparkle and jazz to the adjustable tutus and headpieces. That way if I did get a chance on stage, I wouldn”t be spilling out of the costume made for a petite Aria.
Not that there’s a chance in hell I’ll get the opportunity.
I watch the happy, newly married couple now as the music for the wedding guests comes to an end and I slip into the shadows with the rest of the chorus.
Aria looks absolutely beautiful with the stage lights streaming through her sheer veil and lighting up the gorgeous, silvery-white wedding dress beautifully. If I didn’t know it was a ballet, I would truly think Aria and Gant are in love because the way they’re smiling at each other seems like nothing sort of wedded bliss.
Wedding.
Family.
Grand Pa Pa.
Estates.
I shake the thoughts away. Despite Rin’s projections, I’m not that far gone into delulu land, temporary girlfriend or not. I know I can never be an Aria, dancing in a wedding dress with Gant Auclair. It just isn’t in the cards for girls like me, and neither is being the lead yet. Just watching the way Aria moves so effortlessly only reminds me that I don’t deserve the part. Yet. But the Christmas production is right around the corner, and I’ll practice until my eyes bleed if it means getting my moment in front of the scouts just like Gant promised.
I hate how much I’m leaning into his promises. How much I want, no need, a break.
I want to fall into his net.
If only for a little while.
We can just pretend.
Sighing, I eye the back of Rin’s evilly-fitting stepmother dress. For all of its purposeful and hideous gaudiness, I wish I was wearing it. At least I would’ve gotten some stage time, but Madame insisted there was no time for me to learn both choreographies successfully, and Cinderella’s was far more important.
I couldn’t pout too much though, as it could be worse. I could be a swing in the flanks. As an understudy, I”m able to perform with the ensemble on stage at least. As a swing, I wouldn’t get any stage time at all unless a member of the ensemble fell ill or was missing. And there are far worse things than dancing with Bae for hours on end as he’s my partner in most scenes.
I eye his high caveat now, as we stand shoulder to shoulder, waiting to go back on stage for one final short number. From the corner of my eye, I search the high ridge of his collar for a peak of one of those tattoo’s Gant told me about. I can’t find a single hint of one, however, just smooth glass-like skin. It’s criminal how flawless it is. I bet he has one of those twenty-five-step skin care systems. I have two steps: bar soap and whatever body lotion I have that I can be watered down and mixed in with sunscreen. As a redhead the latter is nonnegotiable. Stassi lambasted me about my ‘beauty’ routine to no end, but when all your hygiene products come from bins, what did you expect?
Bae’s eyes twinkle, his lips stretching into a smile as if he knows what I’m up to.
“You won’t see them,” he says, continuing to stare straight ahead at Aria and Gant’s duet.
I refuse to look and watch him instead, mildly embarrassed at being confronted.
“Has anyone ever seen them?”
His smile widens. Damn, he’s beautiful. His elbow-length hair is curled into bouncy ringlets that make mine look like sad limp noodles. One thing I noticed about Bae almost immediately is that he hardly sweats and when he does, it doesn’t stink like mine. A genetic blessing to be sure. I’d sprayed myself in full body deodorant Stassi blessed me with to spare him but I can’t say the rest of the performers got the hygiene hint. Despite the wide-open theatre, the scent of feet and musk had reached an unbearable crescendo after the first four hours of practice.
But Bae isn’t the only one who won the genetic, odourless lottery.
For all her heavy makeup and dark costumes, Rin never broke a sweat either. She looks like a black widow with tons of feminine dark energy that radiates across the stage when she dances her parts. Perhaps her emotional stuntedness while performing only pertained to roles that didn’t fit her dark aura.
I can feel her eyes burning into my back now as she watches from the flanks too.
“Besides my tattoo artist?” Bae asks. “No.”
“So they’re ultra special?” I whisper as the Prince and Cinderella continue to spin around the stage in newlywed bliss. Their chemistry is undeniable after a decade of friendship and while I know that’s all it is, the sight of Gant moving so in sync with someone else for weeks on end stirs up a feeling in the pit of my stomach I hate. A feeling I’ve never felt this intensely before. Jealousy.
The last thing I want is to be jealous of Gant in a romantic sense. Of his beauty, his wealth, his confidence that bordered arrogance, his insane dancing abilities, sure. But not when it came to who he has undeniable chemistry with. With who he looks good with.
Who he looks better with.
Who his family would accept him with…
I blink, turning, so that my back is to the happy couple. Maybe if I couldn’t see them, the growing tightness in my chest that made it too difficult to breathe would ease. Is that why étienne is nowhere to be found? I’ve literally never seen him watch them dance barring auditions.
“They are. Even I barely see them. Even when I don’t have to wear turtlenecks or long sleeves, I usually do.”
“Why?” I ask, my brows knitting. “What’s the point in getting covered in tattoos, in so much artwork if you aren’t going to show them off? Not even to yourself?”
It sounded crazy.
“I will show them off, to the right person. My body’s sacred, and so are my tattoos.”
I pause physically but my mind immediately begins to race as I think of the way the other boys rip off their shirts without a single care in the world during practices. Half of them are shirtless now.
Then I think of the way Bae didn’t resist Rin licking him…
“That’s actually really cool,” I say genuinely, though I can’t help but feel an intense curiosity bloom in my stomach. “Is there an exception for pool parties though?”
Bae”s laugh is so deep and calm it rattles me. That dark energy feels so familiar.
“Are you inviting me to a pool party so that Gant can murder me?” He tilts his head and I follow the motion of his beautiful hair.
“No. No,” I say hastily, a blush already climbing my cheeks. I can’t even swim yet, just doggy paddle. “As if I even have a pool.”
I don’t have anything…
My stomach bubbles at the thought as I envision Mum’s hungover face, smeared in the previous night’s makeup. That must be what she looks like now because it’s Tuesday, and Tuesdays are double-shot night at The Watering Hole.
But a thought more than Mum’s newfound drunkenness starts to bombard me. If she’s always on this side of town, how is she making it to work on time? Sure the deli opens at eleven, but the drive’s three hours. If she’s drunk she can’t be driving.
…
Right?
Yeah, because she’s so responsible, my inner voice snarks. Like when she’d still let you go anywhere with Jarett after you’d told her how many times he’d accidentally left you, here, there, and everywhere.
I finger the tarnished ballet charm, hidden under my leotard now.
That was different. Mum’s been trying. She’s been taking ceramics classes again and getting back to her old self, pre-Jarett.
Or her old self, right when she’d just met Jarett.
“Gant does,” Bae says thoughtfully, bringing me back to the present. “Are you staying with him over the midterm break?”
Staying with Gant? Over midterm? Sure, Gant had brought it up but was it a common occurrence for these rich kids to have their girlfriends, fake or otherwise just spend midterm break at their houses? The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind because it was absolutely out of the question for most small-town teens I knew, eighteen or not. Or rather that I used to know. These teens are a different breed clearly. Any concept of what I thought was ‘normal’ doesn’t seem to apply to them.
That aside, did I even want to spend fourteen nights with Gant?
I did and I didn’t.
Despite his offer, I still have to live in the real world eventually and the real world is calling me to get a J.O.B until Libuelle’s opens next month. And I knew exactly where to get one. At the deli, with Mum. My old boss would definitely let me pick up a few shifts.
Yep, that would be my break. Deli cuts and pungent cheeses. Not penthouses and parties, and whatever else rich kids do that I couldn’t get caught up in because it wouldn’t be my reality after graduation.
No, I wasn’t going to Gant’s penthouse, regardless if I slept far better with him at my side in the greenhouse which I’d done every single night last week thanks to Miss Trix’s resurgence with liquor chocolates.
Well, that was until rehearsal times doubled.
Now, I rarely see Gant at all and it pains me to admit how much I miss him.
How pathetic would it be to develop separation anxiety from my stalker just because of a little break? That’d be some form of Stockholm Syndrome right? Or is it called something else now?
Regardless, I’ll find a different way to cope with my nightmares without Gant around. Like with my little Gant doll
Yes. The distance will be good for both of us.
It’ll cool down the intensity that’s getting out of hand, the giddiness of being Gant Auclair’s girlfriend.
Calm down, Clowney. That title’s a sweet little nothing and you know it.
“No. I’m heading to the next town over where my mother lives. She’s coming to the play tomorrow night and we’re leaving together.”
“Ah, family time,” he says thoughtfully.
“Aren’t you going to spend the break with yours?” I immediately want to recant the statement the moment it leaves my lips. With a fucked up father like Jarett, and Gant’s stories about Bart, and even Rin’s tidbits, it was probably best to not assume.”
“None of us really spend time with our parents,” Bae says.
I shift uncomfortably. “That’s a bit sad, isn’t it?”
“What’s sadder, living with toxic parents, or having your toxic parents rotate around the globe so they can infect other people instead?”
Yes. I’d been relieved when Jarett became an absentee father, and my Mum….well, she’s there.
Or she was.
I meet Bae’s gaze again, but he isn’t looking at me. More importantly, however, I can see that neither is Rin who’s standing just left of us.
Mistress cuts the music and whacks her cane before shouting out instructions to Aria and Gant to start again. She’s such a perfectionist that everyone knows the duet would be run through no less than four more times in a row. At least. So I use the opportunity to grab my water bottle from my gym bag and that’s when I hear the vibrating.
All phone vibrations are the same, right? Then why does it sound so angry this time? Or maybe it’s just the floorboards it’s bouncing against that’s amplifying the sound and causing my anxiety to soar as I fish my phone out.
Another private number rolls across the screen and for a second, I hesitate to answer it. Then, I think of Mum and her partying and her lack of posts and calls. Maybe she’d lost her phone. Maybe she was hurt and borrowing someone else’s phone. Maybe someone else was calling me on her behalf because she couldn’t…
I try to swallow down the negativity but I can’t. It’s like a hard lump in my throat.
I’m being ridiculous.
I swipe the green phone icon across the screen and answer it. “Hello?”
I barely get the last syllable out when the angry, feminine voice of an older woman blasts across the speakers.
“Jaime! I’ve been trying to reach you for two weeks. I know you’ve blocked me on your new number.”
Mum and I had shared my phone for a few weeks after we left town two years ago when she’d lost hers in the chaos of the move. She’d quickly recovered her old mobile number though. It was something she prioritised because how else could her beloved Jarett ever reach her otherwise?
It must be someone we met during that time.
“Umm, who is this?” I ask tentatively but once again I’m blasted.
“Funny. Listen, you have until tomorrow to pay the rental balance—”
Rental balance? Then it hits me. Maisy, the landlord. We’d used my number on the lease, but Mum had updated it a week later. I guess Maisy had kept it just in case. She never did throw anything away if her apartment just beneath ours was any indication.
“-or I’ll have the locks changed and before you start up with that ‘I know the law’ bullshit, so do I. You’ve had a court order for weeks.”
“Weeks? Wait—”
“It’s not my fault you never bothered to open it. It’s still on your step.”
What?
“How long has it been on the steps?” I ask, my stomach freefalling.
“Nearly a month. Maybe you’d have noticed it if you spent more than two hours at home.”
“Wait—” My head’s spinning.
“No more waiting. To be frank, I don’t even want the money. I’m only calling to show the judge a record that we’ve spoken and that I’ve been trying to contact you for weeks. Come to my office with the check by ten a.m. or not at all.”
Beep! Beep! Beep!
I flinch, pulling the phone away from my ear as the call’s disconnected. I didn’t even know modern phones could make that ear-crawling disconnection sound.
Our apartment”s filled with damp, and the walls are too thin, and the water never gets hot enough, but it had been our home. Our home after the shelter. Our new home with no memories of Jarett besides the shitty ones that crawled through the windows during a bad dream. It was our new start. It was the ‘start’ of a new relationship between Mum and me.
Now, it’s gone, or it will be by ten a.m. tomorrow.
I catch sight of Gant holding onto Aria’s waist as she spins around and my twisting intestines immediately work themselves into a knot.
Slipping away, I slip into an empty corner and bring up Mum’s contact with shaky fingers. Each ring seems to conflict with my heartbeat and the lack of synchronisation triggers a shitstorm of anxiety within me as I wait. And wait. And wait.
I’m about to hang up with the intent of blowing her phone up until Mistress calls the chorus back on stage when a groggy ‘hello’ croaks through the speaker.
“Ellie?”
“Mum.” It doesn’t come out as angry, irritated, or even concerned as I’d intended because the moment I hear the word, Ellie, I know there’s no use. Suddenly the whirlwind within me spins to a standstill. There’s more than one way to skin a cat right? “Is everything okay?” I ask instead of ‘why didn’t you pay the rent in advance like you’d promised me’.
“Of course, why wouldn’t it be?”
“I haven’t heard from you for a few days.”
“I’ve just been…”
“Reminiscing? Going through a nostalgic phase?”
“That makes it sound like a midlife crisis.”
“Isn’t it?”
“You think it’s a crisis?”
Seeing as we’re about to get evicted, I’d say so.
“I don’t think it is. I feel like I’m just getting back to me,” she says. “The me you’ve never met before.”
“Whose fault is that?”
“Mine. Your father’s…look, Elle, I know I’ve been absent lately but it’s the first time I’ve been on my own. It’s the first time you’ve been on your own. You can understand the new freedom aspect, right?”
Begrudgingly I could.
“Is this who you were before Jarett? Always at bars? Always partying?”
“Yes and no. I was always at bars, but not to party or drink. Just to dance. Just to feel the musical vibrations.”
I sink to the floor, and catch sight of Gant and Aria again, turning in perfect harmony to the music.
“It’s the band, That Night, that lured me to the bar scene. They recently got back together again after decades of fighting.”
Is their reunion giving Mum hope about hers and Jarett’s?
“I fell in love with the first song I”d ever heard from their album. They were big on the bar scene when they were still too small to have their own concerts.”
“It’s that how you found The Watering Hole?”
“Yeah, they were performing there, back when they could barely book a gig. I’d been following them for at least two years at that point. Well, following them as best I could without social media. You have no idea how hard it is to be a groupie without IG.”
I don’t want to smile, but one cracks my lips. I thought Mum could only be a groupie for Jarett.
“I was big into music and art back then. Heavy into my ceramics. Anyway, I’d just had the worst year of my life. Well, up to that point.”
It’s hard to imagine worse years than the ‘Jarett Years’.
“I’d gotten rejected from the art school of my dreams.”
“I thought you couldn’t afford it?”
“I couldn’t and there were no scholarships then.”
My brows crease. “So? How would you have gone?”
“I don’t think I would’ve,” she laments. “I think I would’ve joined my crappy public university ceramics course instead and teach workshops and summer camps for extra cash.”
“But you were devastated all the same?”
“I just needed to know that I was good enough to get in. I wasn’t good enough for my parents to keep me…I wasn’t good enough for any family to want to adopt me. I wasn’t good at maths and literature, or even the musical instruments I obsessed over but could never play in tune. I wasn’t good enough to even get picked as a roomie in an apartment so filled with draft, you’d swear the walls were nothing but cardboard. But I was good at ceramics. Really good, Elle. Even though I could never actually attend that art school, just the acceptance letter was good enough for me to know that I could’ve made it somewhere in the art world.
“Anyway, that same day, I saw an ad in the paper about the band performing at The Watering Hole. That’s where I met your father.”
“I know,” I say, hating the fondness in her tone.
“But did you know he was the bouncer?”
“I didn’t.”
“He wouldn’t let me in. I’d been turned down for bars before, but there was something about him, about the club, about that night, turning me down that I just couldn’t handle. I wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
“So what did you do?”
“I tried everything. Begging. Pleading. Bribing. Flashing.”
Flashing?!
“Then finally force. I dropped between Jarett’s legs, crawled through the door, and disappeared into the crowd to hear the band. There was a line behind me and he was the only guard on duty so he couldn’t leave the door just yet. By the time he managed to find me, the band had almost finished their set.”
“And then what happened?”
“He kicked me out. For the entire week. Because the band had booked gigs there all week. By the following week, on the night of the last show, he caved. He just let me in.”
So you wore him down.
Are we having the same conversation? Why does she sound almost dreamy as she reminisces?
Their relationship sounds exactly the same then as it was two years ago. Jarett never wanted Mum. He tolerated her. Barely.
“Speaking of the past, I’m so excited for our movie nights again.”
Is she?
“Will we watch them in the front room?”
“I already have the snacks ready.”
“So you’re home?”
“In a little bit.”
“Don’t forget to check the mail as soon as you get in.”
I could tell her about the notice. About the appointment time, but I won’t.
I need to see.
I need to see if she’ll do for me what she’d do for Jarett in a heartbeat unprompted.
“Mum?”
“Hmm?”
“You promise it’ll be just like before you won that scratcher?” Before you let the ghost of Jarett back into our lives.
“Just like old times. I’m trying to relive them, remember?” She laughs but it sounds hollow.
“So everything’s fine?”
“What’s gotten into you Elle? Everything’s fine. I’m heading to the apartment in an hour and then I’ll start packing for our mini road trip tomorrow.”
“Then we’ll go back to the apartment.”
“Where else?”
“Okay.”
But it’s not okay as I end the call.
Gant was right. About me being scared. About my feelings for him. About Mum.
She’s lying to me. All for him.
All for Jarett.
“Are you going to South Korea over the break?” I hear Bae ask lowly.
“Why? Do you and the other chaebols need another joke already? It must be so boring when the hafu isn’t around right? Is that why you came all the way to Beaulieu? So you can keep laughing?” And then she’s stalking off, disappearing somewhere backstage.
Bae doesn’t follow her but he stares at where she was for entirely too long.