Elle
Spotlights are like damn infernos, but as I dance beneath them, a fire from an internal heat source ignites within my veins.
This is my moment.
I may not deserve it, but I am Cinderella.
I’m Cinderella, sweeping the already clean floors and dusting the already tidy shelves just like at the deli.
I’m Cinderella with a deceased mother because while mine isn’t dead yet, she’s slowly dying all over again.
I’m Cinderella whose horrible circumstances don’t entitle her to anything but sheer luck from a fairy godmother and a chance encounter with the prince changes her life forever.
Gant’s both my fairy godmother and my prince. From hell. But does it negate the fact that he shows up for me?
In the hundreds of seats that ascend damn near up to the vaulted ceilings, there’s not a single person there for me. Perhaps the scouts, if I manage to catch even one of their attention, but there’s no one that cares about me, about Elle, in any capacity. The only person that does isn’t going to appear in a cushy seat. He’s going to dance on stage with me.
Because good or bad, he’s always there and it feels good to have someone there.
It feels good to fall into someone’s arms and as the minutes tick on with each petite allegro sequence as I make my way around Cinderella’s home, I’m dying to do just that.
I’d always thought I needed to think about the next move a second before it was time to execute it. But as the music continues on, and my heart and breathing seem to hum in perfect beat to the music’s timing, I’m too swept up in being Cinderella to think about the choreo. It just flows through me naturally.
It’s like driving along your daily route. One minute I’m fastening my seatbelt at the old apartment, the next I’m pulling into the deli’s car park. Sometimes there are glitches along the way, like when I notice the massive billboard of flying pigs advertising an unbelievable mortgage rate with a local bank.
Or when I’m tossed, albeit aesthetically, to the floor by my wicked stepmother flanked on either side by my stepsisters, Kesia and another one of Rin’s lackeys.
Mistress couldn’t have picked a better casting of spiteful women if she tried. The hatred all three girls have for me is channelled with sheer perfection into their roles. When Rin swipes the mop bucket across the floor towards my elbow, I know her despisal as she glares down her nose at me is one hundred per cent real.
She doesn’t need to tell me how angry she is that our Beaussip plan backfired. How jealous she is of Gant, even when he’s in the wrong. Even when he’s abdicated and is still liked by everyone, maybe even me included. She doesn’t have to tell me that in some twisted way; she thought, because we shared a common goal, a bond of sorts, that I broke our alliance by not playing by her rules.
I hadn’t played by her rules or Gant’s and I won’t. I’ll do what I feel is right and learn the hard way if I lose or gloat in bliss if I don’t and she hates it. She despises me because I’m the opposite manifestation of what she swore I was. Of what she swore I would be if I didn’t play it her way. Of what she’s afraid of allowing herself to become.
Yes, the bitter stepmother role is so fitting. She thinks she’s helping her daughters and her sisters, but all she’s doing is hindering them with spite and bitterness.
As a stunning brunette swoops in as my fairy godmother and the music picks up pace, so does the choreography. In the wings, Gant’s hovering face in his prince costume keeps me grounded. With every passé, pirouette and sauté, he’s there. There’s no malice in his stare like he wants to put a bullet in my head. Or lust like he wants to devour me. I like that look. I’d thought it was the best look of recognition he ever gave me, but no, it’s this. It’s appreciation. It’s pride. It’s…love?
And I feel that love surge when the ballroom scene begins, and it’s my turn to admire him pass off Rin and Kesia dismissively as he breezes through their dances, eager to leave the ball altogether.
Until I arrive.
The chorus fades away and once again, there’s just him and I.
He always said it’s best just him and I and I couldn’t agree more.
I’m genuinely sad when the clock strikes midnight versus simply pretending to be. I want nothing more than to feel his touch again as I watch him from the wings. I’m purposefully keeping my eyes glued to him and not the crowd. It’s not like I can see the scouts anyway beneath the lights, but still. I don’t want to think about them. I don’t want to extract myself from Cinderella’s thought process because in this moment they are my own as I watch Gant go through a chorus of dancers trying on the baby blue pointe shoe that’s either too big or too small. When it’s finally my turn to emerge from hiding, it fits me perfectly and as Gant fastens the ribbons around my ankle, the lights dim and for one second more, it’s just him and I.
Until chaos breaks out. We’re both pulled and tucked this way and that as the costume department swarms us. My tutu is exchanged for a longer one that doesn’t resemble rags. Its sheer layers glimmer beautifully beneath the lights, a pretty silvery, pale blue that’s nearly white. Cinderella’s wedding dress. The big finale.
Once again, I’m plunged into this feeling of surrealness.
I’d gotten through the play. Dozens of acts, dances, and costume changes, and I’d gotten through it without feeling like I was acting at all. Like I was trying my damnedest to get through the choreo with as much grace as I could muster. It just felt like I was being me. It’s the finale that finally makes me realise that I am acting as I eye the sparkling ring that Gant’s slipped onto my gloved finger.
Everything in the play that had happened to Cinderella, felt like it happened to me, even if some portions were a stretch of the imagination at best, but this? Something as simple as a wedding felt like some fantastical dream.
Again my hatred for Rin peaks. None of this had crossed my mind before. I’m eighteen. Marriage is nowhere on my horizon for a decade or more and yet…this little piece of jewellery is just another reminder of what I can never have with Gant Auclair. With any blue blood in this room. I don’t belong. Like Rin said, princes like Gant are real. Cinderella herself is real. But them actually ending up together? Not a chance in hell.
I peel my eyes away from the diamond for long enough to see that someone’s slipping my foot into the other pointe shoe. The one Gant hadn’t put on me. Quickly I dismiss them. I need to make sure the ribbons are tied just right on both. My moment isn’t over yet and if I hadn’t captured a scout’s attention before, now is my final chance.
The moment I stand up, Gant’s soft lips descend on mine, even as his arms are being tugged behind him as the costume department rips off his old jacket and replaces it with the white wedding one. When he has the use of his arms again, his hands cup my face and I allow myself to simply melt into them again.
“It looks good on you,” Gant says when we pull apart and get into position. The curtains will open at any minute.
“It almost looks real,” I whisper back, trying to not get distracted by the sparkle.
“It is real.”
“Twenty seconds!” a stagehand calls.
“What?”
“I wanted to see what the real thing could look like… one day. So I swapped it out.”
“Why?“ I gasp. “Why would you do that? It’s just pretend, remember?”
He kisses me again.
“Pretend is just a warm-up.”
A warm-up to nothing.
“Come to the penthouse with me. Warm up with me.”
I can’t. This isn’t real. He isn’t real. We aren’t real.
But why does he feel so damn real when he holds me against him? When I breathe in his scent? When he kisses me again, this time with more passion than I’ve ever felt before.
Something dark overtakes me, because suddenly I feel possessed when I peer into those endless abysses. They’re casting a trance on me. They’re parting my lips.
“I think I love you,” I blurt and immediately I bite my lips shut, but the damage is done.
There’s a new sparkle in Gant’s eye that mirrors that of the diamond on my finger. It’s in the glint of his teeth as he smiles. It’s in his hair that shines almost blue in the ethereal lighting. It’s in my dress, my hair and my heart as he leans in to kiss me again, his warm tongue coaxing mine gently. I didn’t know a kiss could be effortless, but that’s exactly what it feels like. Like we’re in such perfect harmony that it’s simply, easy.
Is this what love’s meant to feel like? Melty and warm and effortlessly comforting? Because despite my racing heart, I feel safe. I feel calm.
“I’ve loved you before I knew what it was,” he says when we break apart. “Thank you for being my little doll. Thank you for finally telling me what I’ve wanted to hear for weeks.”
It’s the second time he’s thanked me and somehow hearing it from his lips feels overwhelmingly intense.
So much so that it’s suddenly overriding my newfound calm. My newfound delusion.
In fact, as the curtain rises and I go en pointe, something stabs me back to reality as I twirl onto the stage.
For a second I can’t fathom what it is and then all at once when I perform a jump, it hits me. Pain. Sheer agonising blinding pain.
I miss a step, then another and then I fall out of pointe so hard to the floor that my bones scream in agony and the air’s knocked out of my lungs. But something else is screaming with a thousand pinpricks. My feet. They’re itchy, so itchy, so raw, like a million cuts have lacerated my soles. But they’re so small, so microscopic that they feel like individual and yet a collection of wounds all at once.
Gasps from backstage and from the audience sound, but there’s no movement. Everyone’s waiting to see if I’ll get up. To see if the show really can go on, but it can’t. Because I can’t move. It’s too painful.
Wetness.
Something’s wet.
Everything’s wet.
I don’t…
What’s happening?
My wavering vision beneath the strong lights flickers from my useless feet to Gant’s unreadable gaze across the stage.
One moment he’s opposite me, the next he’s beside me, dropping to a squat.
“You’re bleeding,” he whispers, but not to me. It’s like he’s talking to himself. He looks dazed. As dazed as I suddenly feel.
Red.
Everything is turning red. From my once pale blue pointe shoes and the white stockings peeking out of them to the stage just under my feet. Dark red is spreading over everything, fast, like ink diffusing through water.
Everything’s growing fuzzy.
Everything’s swaying, including Gant, as he rushes forward to gather me into his arms.
I can’t process anything that’s happening even as I see it. The bright stage lights. Gant’s ghostly white face.
The blood?
The blood!
I peer into his pale face, searching for an answer.
“Didn’t you always say you wanted me to bleed for you?”
“Elle,” his tone is emotionless. Dry. Almost robotic. So unlike the sweet allure of a few minutes ago. “Don’t move—”
“I thought I already had. That I had already bled for you.”
“Elle!” he taps the side of my face gently. “Don’t close your eyes. Someone call the medic!”
My head’s growing so light that it feels like it’ll drift off my body.
“It wasn’t enough? Was it?”
I wasn’t enough.
“Open your eyes, dove,” he says, suddenly frantic, then into the frozen audience. “Call the medic!”
Everything reanimates then.
Dozens of feet dart off toward the exit and rush the stage. I see a blur of white, cotton hair. Ms. Trix. Then I hear the rapid clicking of a cane. Mistress.
But it’s only Gant hovering above me that I can focus on. Or that I try to focus on because everything’s growing faint. But despite the cloud of fog creeping in on me, I have a bout of clarity.
I’m never enough.
I’m never enough.
Not for Jarett.
Not for Mum.
Not for Beaulieu.
Not for Gant.
He wanted me to bleed, but not until I confessed that I loved him and once I had, once he had almost everything he could take from a girl like me, he went in for the final kill. My dreams. My feet…The scouts… Gone all in a matter of seconds.
We can just pretend.
It was all pretend. A warm-up.
A set up to raise me as high as I could go before bringing me crashing back down.
I was, am, so stupid.
Why did I believe him? Why did I think he could be the exception?
Rin warned me that he was the rule. I’m the rule too. Nothing exceptional or extraordinary.
I’m nothing at all.
“What did you do?” a feminine voice, shaky and frantic, calls. Stassi. “What did you do to her now?!”
Fingers. Soft fingers. Stassi’s fingers.
“Don’t touch her!” Gant barks.
And in an instant, Stassi’s fingers are swiped away, but they’re back in a second, this time with more grip and determination.
“You don’t fucking touch her! What the fuck did you do?” Is she crying? Her voice sounds so cracked, so fragmented, unlike the bubbly smoothness I was used to. “You never know when enough is enough.”
Then, there are more people touching me. Long strands, raven and blonde tickle my forehead as Stassi, Bae…and even Rin peer down at me through a haze of my own burning tears.
I swear they aren’t emotional tears or tears of betrayal. No, they’re just a byproduct of the burning pain searing through me combined with my own self-loathing.
“Get out of the way,” Gant grunts and the hands and hair leave me.
“Haven’t you done enough?” Stassi asks. “Look at her foot!”
“Is she passing out?” a strange voice calls, but the person who replies is Rin.
“Look at all that fucking blood. What the hell do you expect?”
I can feel it pooling beneath my feet, wet, thick and warm. Had I sliced a major vessel?
Little dancing orbs begin to bloom in front of what blurry strip of the theatre’s ceiling I can still see.
“Fucking hell.” Someone murmurs in sheer awe and immediately I know it’s Hale.
“Gant.” A new voice. One I recognize as Bae’s. “Gant…” It’s more hushed this time. Barely a whisper. “Give her to me. There’s a medic stationed outside. I’ll take her—”
“No.”
“The ambulance—”
“I don’t care.” Fingers rub my cheek. Warm fingers, that I want nothing more than to pry off. “Stay with me, Dove.”
“You’re going to waste too much time trying to get into the ambulance,” Bae continues in a raspy whisper. “Give her to me.”
“I can’t.” Gan’t hisses back and I feel the rapid rise and fall of his chest against my arm.
“You have to. You’ll only hurt her even more if you don’t.”
So even Bae knows it’s him that did this to me. It’s always him.
“Gant, the blood,” Hale says somewhere to my left.
“Gant.” A new voice.
Older. Cold. foreign.
Tugs. I’m tugged this way and that and then I’m being scraped off of the floor and from Gant’s arms like the thing I feel like.
I’d believed him. That he loved me.
I’d believed Mum too.
I’d believed Jarett, up until I was nine. Not that he’d ever said it. Mum had tried to convince me.
Gant had tried to convince me.
I’d even tried to convince myself, but ultimately no one loved me.
Not even myself, because why am I like this?
Why would I think someone like Gant Auclair would be any different?
He hated me. Blamed me.
How can I even be upset at his betrayal? This isn’t betrayal, it’s a game.
And he won.
Because I let him.
Numbness creeps in along with the darkness.
Footfalls on wood echo in my ear. Then carpet. Then concrete before they’re bounding down steps onto cobblestones. I can feel it too with every jerk that tries to keep me conscious.
The starry sky sprawls over my head, but something else catches my eyes for just long enough to force them to stay open for a second longer.
Lights. Not the red and blue lights of the ambulance, but yellow ones. Two of them. Round and flanking a tall silver ornament.
As Bae rushes past, I finally get a good look at it, because it’s not an eagle or a woman in a billowing dress. It’s an angel, kneeling, with its robes blowing behind it and in its hands is a little circle. The same one that caused the smoothest indent between my ribs.
It’s not a Rolls Royce at all. I don’t know what the hell it is and I don’t care because I’m losing touch with reality. My head’s floating away, up to the clouds covering the stars.
Someone catches up to Bae and I’s side.
“Rin?” I hear myself ask and then she’s over me, a small smile curling her lips.
And for once, I’m happy to see my wicked stepmother.