Elle
For one moment, it’s hard to tell if I’m looking at Beaulieu’s car park or a luxury car show that’s come to town for the weekend. Each spot holds a car shinier, grander, and more expensive than the last and just when I think I’ve chosen a favourite, ten more choices come rolling lazily through the gate in glimmering ivory, dark chocolate, and deep cranberry. I swear the colours themselves look like they’re from an entirely different era, and then I realise with a rush of stupidity that they are. The manufacturers don’t make them anymore. These are the colours great-grandparents grew up with. Colours I could barely identify.
I jump back onto the sidewalk as a creamy olive (?) convertible roadster rolls up to Beaulieu’s front steps and nearly clips off my toes before swinging into the nearest empty spot. Immediately my ribs begin to hurt as I tense up, and my fingers fly to the little three-pointed, indented scar hidden beneath my coat and leotard. Every time I cross a road, I swear it flares up, a tingling reminder that I could almost not be here.
Just like Madame.
The roadster’s too curvy and the wrong shade of green. And the owner, a grey-templed man in a double-breasted blazer, doesn’t remotely resemble the driver that got away with hurting me. That got away with taking Madame off the planet. Still, I watch as he slips into the crowd headed for the theatre.
Once again, it hits me that I’m the only person who saw the driver’s face. No, the murderer’s face. Not even the Auclairs can track him down, but I can. I can give Gant what he wants. I can help him to leave his loop, his prison.
Then what, Captain Save a Hoe?
There must be a way to silence your inner, intrusive voice.
I blink and cross the lot, easily finding Mum’s old beat-up wagon. It’s like playing ‘one of these things is not like the other’ and winning in record time. The craziest part is that Mum’s wagon is undoubtedly the newest vehicle in the car park.
I don’t miss the stiff head turns of the family members exiting their glossy vehicles as I jog up to the wagon. Rich people are always so stiffly polite and egregiously rude at the same time. If it weren’t for Botox, those ‘I’ve just sucked on a lemon’ lines would be permanently etched above their lips.
I ignore them, but a tiny pit blisters in my stomach when Rin’s words zoom back to the forefront of my mind. ‘Grand Pa Pa won’t even let you onto the estate.’
Who cares?
Maybe you do.
I didn’t. Until Rin brought it up and I hate her for that alone. I hate the intrusive thoughts that constantly whisper in my ear about how much I don’t belong in this world.
Gant’s rigging of my application only exaggerates the feeling.
I shake my head and pull open the driver’s door, ready to confront Mum. Ready to see if my anxiety over our living rearrangements was all in vain. I have enough anxiety on my plate as it is with the play. I may not belong, and I may just be in the chorus, but I’d been given a chance on stage and I’m not about to waste the opportunity and further prove everyone right. I’m going to perform and be the best member of that damn chorus that I can be. So good, maybe a scout will spare me a glance.
Maybe…
When I pull the car door open, I stretch my arms out for one brief second before letting them fall flaccid at my sides. They feel just as awkward as I do. I don’t know if I should reach out and hug her as if nothing is wrong. Or if I should wait to see if something is wrong. Would it matter either way? Would I not hug her even if it turns out we have nowhere to go?
I hadn’t seen her in months and she’s my mother after all.
‘What is a mother then?’ Gant’s earlier words cross my mind.
Regardless, I expect Mum to open her arms wide for me. I expect her to lock me into a bear hug and call me Elle Belle. But she doesn’t.
She doesn’t move at all. She’s slumped over the wheel, her hair strewn across her face, her left arm limp in her lap, her right hand on the gearshift that’s wet.
Plop!
Plop!
I flick my eyes to the dash in front of the passenger seat and watch a golden brown liquid drip steadily from a near-empty beer can.
BANG!
The slamming car door rings in my ears as I sprint over to the passenger door and slide in. A second ring as I shut myself inside rattles my ear drums and holds me stationary until the final vibration becomes inaudible.
Plop!
Plop!
It reeks. Everything reeks of a smell I thought I’d finally escaped. A smell synonymous with Jarett because he wore it in lieu of cheap cologne.
I eye his favourite brand of beer on the dash. There are at least six more cans in the back seat. On the floor. And dozens of little cards. Scratchers. All showing that she’s won nothing at all besides the papers they’re printed on.
It’s comically absurd. But I’m not laughing.
It’s freezing but I don’t reach for the heating knob. It’s been broken since I was eight.
Plop!
Plop!
And indescribable fury flares through me.
The sound of tinkling metal fills the silence as I swipe the can out of my sight. It falls onto the gearshift, dinging Mum’s hand before tumbling and disappearing under her foot, still mashing the brake pedal to the floor.
“Mmm,” Mum stirs, but I don’t look at her. I stare straight ahead through the tinted glass at the domed roof of the theatre. The theatre hundreds of people are moving towards. The theatre I should be in, getting into the lineup. The theatre I’d snuck out of just to get a quick hug and a bout of reassurance from someone who didn’t hate me. Or used to hate me.
“Ellie?” Mum croaks, lifting her head from the wheel, and I swear I hear the sticky, filmy sound of her skin peeling away from the leather as she does.
Gone is her shiny hair. Her pretty almond nails. Her groomed brows. But her face animates as she stares at my costume, half hidden beneath my coat.
“Ellie, you look so beautiful!” She practically screams in my ear as she clings to my neck. Her frosty breath’s stale, like her body odour that’s not bad, it’s just old, like she hasn’t changed in two days but it’s too cold so the funk hasn’t brewed enough for her to reek to high heaven just yet but it will in a day or two.
She’s grinning so widely, so falsely that I can see the black fillings in her molars.
“What is wrong with you?” I ask slowly, peeling her arms from my neck and she’s so wobbly that she immediately slumps against her seat for support. “Seriously, what is wrong with you?” I don’t just mean the liquor.
“What do you mean?” she slurs, wiping drool from her chin before staring around the car park and zooming in on the thinning crowd heading for the theatre. It’s nearly showtime. “Why are we still in the car?” She turns to me, brows knitted, her fingers already curling around the door handle. “The show…isn’t it about to start?”
I ignore her. “The drive here is over three hours. You drank the entire way over?”
“Of course not.” She waves a hand dismissively. “I was right down the street at a bar. The Happy Hole or something.”
Or something.
But we both know it’s the Watering Hole. Jarett’s favourite bar.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” I ask.
“What?”
Her feigned ignorance makes my neck damn near crick with how fast I turn it to finally glare at her. “Jarett. Did you find him at the bar? I know you miss him. I know you’ve been looking for him. That’s why you’re suddenly drinking his favourite drink. Why you’re buying all those scratchers. Why you’re getting dolled up to go to the Watering Hole.”
Well, Mum’s version of getting dolled up. She has on heels. Chunky kitten heels. She never could walk in stilettos. And she’s wearing a square neck top. It may be plain cotton, but it’s as fancy as she can muster. It’s in Jarett’s favourite colour too, orange, which clashes atrociously with her flaming red hair.
Suddenly, it all makes sense.
The drinking.
The new wardrobe.
The carefree, sixteen-year-old Jaime Jarett fell in contempt with.
“Did you think with all that money you won, you could convince him to come crawling back to you?” I pause. “Is that why you made a social media profile? Why you look like you were posing for a rock music magazine in the newspaper article. You were hoping to lure Jarett out of hiding?”
“Ellie?”
“Why?” I ask softly, my voice cracking. “So he could spend all the money, treat you like trash and leave again?”
“You don’t know Jarett like I do.”
“Like you think you did.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean, Elle?”
“That you idolise a Jarett that didn’t exist. A Jarett and Jaime that didn’t exist. J and J,” I mock. “Can’t you see that Jarett never loved you?”
“You weren’t there.”
“I didn’t have to be.”
More cars come into the lot.
More parents stream past our windows. Some hand in hand, just like Mum envisioned her and Jarett.
“Why? Why do you need his approval so badly? Why do you need him so badly? Because it can’t be him that you’re desperate for. It must be what he represents and for the death of me, I can’t figure out what the fuck that could be besides bumminess.”
“Elle!”
“What? Literally what? Why can’t I ever speak to you candidly about this? Oh, that’s right. It’s because you love living in some alternative universe. Look at you. Look—” I turn to grab a handful of scratches from the back seat and that’s when I notice the stacks of trash bags hidden behind my own chair.
I dig my fingernail into the squishy mound and see clothes, dishes, and a toaster oven I’d gotten us for Christmas last year.
“I knew it,” I say slowly turning to her, but she has no answers for me. “You got evicted. You got us evicted.”
“Ellie—”
“Don’t call me Ellie!” It feels like the heat of a thousand suns is raging through my body as I scream the words, spittle flying out along with the fire. “You said you were going to pay your rent until the end of the year with the money that you won.”
“I…”
But as I scan the back again, there’s more than closed bags. There are open ones she’s clearly been using regularly. Like the opened bag with her toiletries and food and dirty dishes…because she didn’t just pack up recently…the clothes strewn on the floor are recently used. I recognize them from her IG.
“You…” I lower my voice. “You’ve been living in the car for weeks, haven’t you?”
Silence.
“But…your official eviction date was this morning. You…you moved out before then? But…the landlord said you never opened the letter. How did you know—”
“How did you know that Elle?” she asks, and has the audacity to look angry. “That witch called you, didn’t she?”
“She’s a witch?” I ask incredulously. “You’re the one flying all over the city on your broom! Is that it? You moved out all on your own because you needed to be closer to town? Closer to the Watering Hole? What the hell were you thinking?!”
“I wasn’t!” she screeches back before clasping her head in her hands as if holding it would help it to retain more common sense.
“You said we would have movie night knowing we have no home? No place to go?”
A sob.
“You said you’d spend the money wisely. You said…”
What did it matter what she said? Her words mean nothing.
“Did you seriously just blow it on scratchers and beer? On band tees and concerts?” I gaze down at my stockings, the ones Mum bought me off my wish list, and suddenly guilt contaminates my anger. “You didn’t have to get me all this ballet stuff if it meant not handling the bills first.”
She shakes her head. “That stuff was less than a hundred dollars, and you deserve it, Elle. I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to ship it yet.” She reaches for a tiny plastic bag in the glove box and hands it to me. Plastic…a plastic bag….not the beautiful white box I got under the staircase. “Here.”
I stare at the thin plastic for the longest time before opening it with trembling fingers. There are three leotards that are so thin I can see my pale fingers shining through the fabric. These hadn’t even been on my list. The colours are all wrong for the advanced class. She hadn’t even looked at it.
All my skin and hair care products. All my new dance equipment. All my blue jelly pads and pointe shoes, heck, even my tampons, all Gant.
He knew I thought Mum bought them all, and he let me believe it just so I’d wear them. Even though he wouldn’t get the credit.
He didn’t care about getting the credit.
And I don’t care about having designer things, but I couldn’t wear these leotards without getting kicked out of class for indecent exposure, which I’d been on the cusp of when I wore Aria’s leotard. I turn the white leo over in my arms and note the lack of a tag. No, I don’t need designer clothing, but don’t I deserve quality? Like panties that could withstand three washes before the elastic band stretched out. Maybe Gant was right again. I was conditioned to accept what I was given and equated it with my worth. Old Elle would’ve been happy with just getting the leotards at all. I would’ve worn two of them to increase the thickness. I would’ve made it work.
But I shouldn’t have to.
“You won ten grand, and you couldn’t get me leotards that aren’t see-through?” I ask quietly. Emotionlessly. “These weren’t the ones on my list. And the ones on my list were less than thirty a piece.” In the ballet world, that was damn near unheard of, but I wanted to be reasonable, grateful, conservative because asking alone was out of my comfort zone.
“These can’t be more than ten…” I look at a scratcher near my ankle. She’d spent more on them than on me. “Is this what you think I deserve?”
She shakes her head frantically, and the stiff strands, held in place by dried beer, shake a half-second later. “Of course not! I…I’ve never had money like that before. I’ve never been alone before and I just…I just got carried away and ran out before I got to your list. But I wanted to make sure I got you something—”
“Leftovers,” I whisper, putting the leotard back in the bag.
I’m just leftovers to her. Scraps.
She probably keeps me because I’m a trace of Jarett.
A token, hadn’t Gant called it?
A calmness overtakes me and then it’s like a spark ignites and all I see is red as I smack the bag against the dash, over and over again, until the plastic bursts and the leotards fall under my trainers.
Then there’s silence. Pure silence as I slump against my seat, defeated.
Then, from nowhere, there are throat gurgles, then spitty swallows, then tears. Just silent, useless tears as Mum’s shoulders begin to shake.
“I don’t know why I listened to what you said. But why did you say it at all? Why did you lie about movie night?”
Silence.
“We can still have movie night, Elle. We can get a room and enjoy the weekend and worry about finding a new place come Monday.” She leans closer and attempts to touch my arm, but I pull away, pressing my forehead against the freezing glass pane until my mind feels numb.
“This can be a good thing. A blessing in disguise.”
“How? How is this good? If you move, what about the deli? Your job?”
“I-I quit when I won the money.”
Whatever emotion is left within me withers and dies. Everything is numb now.
“I can get a new job, Ellie.”
Ellie. There it is.
“It took you months to get that one. You have no qualifications.”
“I’ll find something. And I can be closer to town now.”
“So you can keep looking for Jarett.” It’s not a question.
“So I can be closer to you.”
“Why would I want that?”
Maybe Gant was right, in a way. Subconsciously, I always wanted to go to Beaulieu, or any performing arts boarding school to get away from Mum. Jarett was gone for two years, and I still wanted to leave her. Desperately.
“You don’t care about me.”
“Don’t say that!”
“It’s the truth. Why do you always choose Jarett? Why can’t you ever choose me?” I ask once my back hits the backrest, all my energy already dispersed. “Why can’t you choose you? Why Jarett?”
“You don’t understand—”
“You tried to turn back the clock. You dress the same, act the same, go back to the same places as twenty-one-year-old Jaime, except now you’re his wife, with his kid, and ten grand richer and guess what? He still doesn’t want you. He’d still rather fend for himself under the guise of hiding from the Aucalirs. Give it up Mum. The only thing he’s hiding from is you. Nothing you do will make him want you because he never wanted you from the start.”
“That’s not true…” she croaks.
“That’s just what you keep telling yourself.”
“Jarett…” she begins, but then her watery eyes peer through the windshield and for a second they stop their frantic movements as she peers anywhere but at me. Suddenly they’re frozen, peering straight ahead through the windshield. “Jarett?”
What?
I follow her widening gaze but I can’t see whatever hallucination she is.
“What are you—”
Her fingers curl around the door handle and before I can blink, a gush of cold night air rushes in and she rushes out. “Jarett? Jarett!”
I slip out of the car after her, and the chilliness of the night pricks me back to reality. The few latecomers are staring as Mum stumbles between the vintage cars, her hips knocking into each shiny paint job as she goes.
“Mum!” I hiss, trying to catch up with her, but for someone so drunk, she’s as fast as she is tiny.
“Jarett!”
I gaze over her red bob and between the parked cars at two retreating figures. From the costume on the shorter man, he’s clearly a student, and from the tailored suit of the taller man, he’s clearly a visitor, perhaps a father.
But I stumble and freeze at the sight of him as he turns around, and Mum stumbles just out of my reach.
I’d know that height, those straight, broad shoulders anywhere and gait anywhere.
That dirty blonde hair that’s cut in a way so it’s feathered in the back, almost like a bird’s ass when its wings are closed.
Jarett?
No. It can’t be.
It’s some coincidence.
I speed up, by passing a couple and offering them a nod of apology as Mum tramples past them, only to be met with Rin’s frozen face. She’s with an older Korean man I’d mistake for her father. Or the man from the cafe. But something tells me that this man is neither because he’s carrying shopping bags and a bouquet almost as large as Rin.
We exchange a quiet glance and then I’m shooting after Mum again.
I’m just about to grab onto the back of her lumpy knit sweater when she reaches the man first.
“Jarett!”
He spins around and so does the other man in the costume.
I hadn’t recognized Sylo because his signature white blonde hair is covered in a jester’s hat. He’s taken on a half dozen roles that require brief solos, and the jester is just one of them. The minute his icy eyes land on me though, I finally realise why he looked so familiar.
He doesn’t look like Gant.
He doesn’t look like anyone I’ve seen before, besides the man standing right beside him.
The man whose face I can fully see now that a steering wheel isn’t masking half of it as he peers down at me scrawled across the pavement.
A man whose grey eyes are just a shade greyer than Sylo’s.
A man whose face resembles Jarett’s far too much for it to be a coincidence.
My brother.
The uncle I’d never seen.
My brother.
The wealthy uncle that never spoke to Jarett again.
My brother…
The man whom Madame must have been in love with but couldn’t have? Because aren’t Gant and Sylo cousins through their mothers?
…
The world spins as Mum sways before me.
“Jarett?”
“Mum,” I say, grabbing her fingers before they can curl around the lapel of the man’s, Sylo’s father’s jacket. “It’s not him.”
It’s not him, but it could be.
How hadn’t I noticed his resemblance to Jarettt sooner?
He was wearing a hat. You couldn’t see his blonde hair. Besides, Jarett’s eyes are pale blue, not grey…
But they look grey when it’s gloomy.
His face isn’t as chiselled. Jarett doesn’t have hollowed cheekbones…
Only because he’s always bloated with too much beer.
They’re not identical…It’s not like they’re twins…
But the resemblance is unmistakable.
So why hadn’t Gant noticed it? Why hadn’t his father, Bart Auclair?
If he stalked me for all these years, he must know what Jarett looks like. He must know what his uncle looks like.
It doesn’t make any sense.
I gaze at the man, who’s gazing at me. Only at me. Not at the bubbling woman before him.
“I’m sorry,” I say breathlessly as I try to hold her back. “She’s mistaken you for someone else.”
But I haven’t.
The man merely nods, but still, he’s just looking at me.
Watching me.
“Elle?” Sylo asks, gazing from Mum to me before he searches the pathway for who I know is Gant. “Is she okay? Do you need help?”
I’m about to refuse when Mum quite literally slumps to the ground, unable to hold up her own weight, like the thought of Jarett was the only thing keeping her upright.
“Can you help me get her to the infirmary?” I ask, still watching Jarett’s doppelg?nger. “Maybe she can lay down until the play’s over then…I can figure it out.”
Figure it all out.
Before I can heft one of Mum’s arms over my shoulder, someone’s stumbling outside the theatre’s back entrance. No, not just someone, a bunch of someone’s all in costumes, all bent double, all flying toward the infirmary just a building away.
“Aria?” I ask and the moment she makes eye contact, she doubles over the rose bushes and sprays them in vomit.
étienne’s at her side in seconds. One minute she’s down on all fours and the next she’s up in étienne’s arms and he’s flying them both towards the nurse’s station.
Behind them, Zedd trails with an empty tray looking utterly murderous. Hale’s arm is around his shoulder and Stassi’s yapping animatedly in his ear.
“What the…” Sylo whispers beside me but someone else is emerging from the theatre with a click of her cane.
Mistress takes in the fleeing students, the rose bushes covered in puke and then me.
First, there’s sheer shock on her face, then acceptance, then a quick pivot.
Because the show must go on.
“Elle. Get into Cinderella’s first costume.