Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
COLLETTE
Shock. I was definitely in a state of shock. That had to be why my heart was pounding like this—like it wanted to escape. That had to be why I could hear my own breath and why it was coming too quick, like I was about to hyperventilate or—
“I swear, Collette, if you throw up on the dance floor, I will kill you.”
I whipped around to face Bianca. I’d almost forgotten she was there. I’d thought maybe she’d have left when Ethan did, but nope. There she stood in all her tall, slim glory looking like the evil harbinger of doom that she was.
“What are you still doing here?” I snapped.
Couldn’t a girl wallow in private? Tears were already threatening and I needed to make sense of everything that had just happened. Everything he’d said.
He expected me to dance. In public. For Juilliard.
In front of my mother.
Was he insane?
I should have clued him in on the state of the studio but after our chat, Mom swore me to secrecy and I had no problem keeping it quiet.
There was no need to panic all the dancers.
Especially since Juilliard was going to pick someone from our studio and the donors would start taking us seriously again.
Going against my wishes and signing me up for a slot didn’t help my resolve to put dancing in the past. But neither did dancing with Ethan until all the walls I’d built up came crashing down.
I was still so confused by everything that was happening and everything I felt that I needed to sit down. Or a good ole’ slap across the face to wake me up.
“Seriously, have you lost your mind?” Bianca said. I had a feeling she’d been talking nonstop for a while now and I was only now tuning in. “What were you guys even doing in here?”
I shook my head, gathering up my stuff so I could go back to my house, away from Bianca, and away from this space.
The studio used to bring me so much happiness, but now?
It held too many memories. My breathing grew even faster as I remembered the way Ethan held me.
The way he’d touched me. The way he’d made me feel so exquisitely beautiful, so… so perfect.
For a second there I’d actually felt like I was perfect. Like I was beautiful and graceful and like…
Like a freakin’ princess in a fairytale.
That’s exactly what it had been. A fairytale.
All it took was one look for me to throw my resolve out the window. I was weak and I hated that I felt that way.
“So?” Bianca’s voice was insistent. She had the kind of personality that refused to be ignored. If she wasn’t the center of attention, her world would implode. Right now there’d be no getting away from here without giving her what she wanted.
“What?” I snapped, my bag over my shoulder as I got ready to flee.
“What do you want to know? Was I dancing?” I slapped a hand over my chest as I feigned shock.
“Yes. I, Collette Boucher, actually had the nerve to dance. For fun. In private.” I gave her what I hoped was a withering stare as I approached. “Now, can I leave?”
“Can you run away, you mean?” she taunted, not shifting from where she stood in the doorway, blocking my path. “I suppose. It’s what you do best, right?”
I stopped in my tracks and stared at her. Anger was almost a relief compared to all the other emotions that were brewing under the surface.
Anger I understood. Anger was actionable.
Anger was so much better than hurt.
“You don’t know anything about me, Bianca.” My voice was little more than a growl.
She didn’t look phased. If anything, she seemed amused as she studied me. “Oh please. We’ve been going to school together for years. I know you.” She glanced meaningfully toward the area where Ethan had been standing just moments ago. “I also know you’re an idiot if you let that guy go.”
I narrowed my eyes, clutching my bookbag strap as I tried to keep my cool. “Don’t talk about Ethan,” I said. “You have no idea—”
“That you two have been dancing together?” she finished. “Uh, yeah, that was pretty clear from that little Dirty Dancing routine I just caught.”
I scowled. “It wasn’t—”
“Whatever.” She waved away my protest like it was an irritating gnat. “I don’t really care what you two have been getting up to after dark, but don’t insult my intelligence. There was enough steam in this room to open a spa.”
I stared at her open-mouthed for a minute because…she was serious. She honestly thought there’d been something there.
Because there was.
I gave my head a little shake, blocking out the image of his head dipping down toward mine, his hands on my waist, that look in his eyes…
“Ugh, you people are the worst.”
Bianca’s words, muttered under her breath, had my focus back on her. She looked prissy as ever with her lips pursed and her perfect blonde hair gleaming in a long ponytail.
“You people?” I repeated.
She rolled her eyes, shoving away from the door frame to drop her own bag on the floor. “Non-dancers. Normal people. Muggles. Teenagers.” She waved a hand. “Whatever you want to call yourself.”
My anger was only briefly interrupted by surprise. “You know what muggles are?”
Her even gaze told me clearly that she thought I was an idiot. Or possibly that I was missing the point.
Everything else she said came to me in a rush and I found myself scowling in indignation. “I’m not a non-dancer.”
Even when I’d stopped taking the advanced classes I’d still thought of myself as a dancer. I mean, I still went to the academy, and I still danced on my own time, and I still loved it with all my heart. That counted for something, right? “I am a dancer,” I said, a little more forcefully.
She arched a brow in disbelief.
“I dance,” I said. “Just…” I gestured around the room. “After hours.”
“Mm-hmm.” She turned away, and I got the feeling I’d been dismissed.
“Hey, I love dance just as much as you—”
“No.” She whipped around so quickly I jerked back. She jabbed a finger in my direction. “There is no comparison to my training and whatever it is you’re doing here with that guy when no one is watching.”
I blinked in surprise at the rare show of emotion. Her normally icy eyes flashed with anger and pink tinged her high cheekbones as she glared at me. “You were told by one teacher that you didn’t have what it took—”
“That teacher was my mother,” I felt compelled to point out.
She ignored that. “One teacher told you that you should quit…and you did.” Her pretty face turned ugly with a sneer. “Some of us deal with criticism and rejection on a daily basis and we don’t quit. Some of us are killing ourselves trying to prove that—”
She cut herself off so abruptly, the silence seemed to echo with her unspoken rage.
I could only stare in disbelief, because of all the many faces of Bianca I’d seen—the brown-noser, the spoiled brat, the determined dancer—I’d never once seen her lose her cool like that.
But that glimpse of genuine emotions was over in the blink of an eye.
She straightened her shoulders, took a deep breath, and—just like that—the angry teenage girl was gone, and she was once again in full control as she eyed me from head to toe with that judgmental smirk I knew way too well.
“You might dance for fun,” she said coolly. “But you’ll never be a dancer.”
I sucked in air to try and buffer the blow. I should be used to this already. For years I’d been hearing comments like this from her, and it was time to face it head on. “Right,” I said, as matter-of-factly as I was able. “Because I look like this and you look like…you.”
She turned to me with her brows drawn together like I’d just grown a second head. “What? No.” She took a step toward me, her ponytail swinging over her shoulder. “You’re not a dancer because you’re not cut out for it.”
“Exactly,” I said. “I’m not built for it. You and my mother and everyone else has been telling me that for years. I get it.”
“Clearly you don’t,” she snapped. “I didn’t say you weren’t built for it. I said you weren’t cut out for it. There’s a difference.”
I didn’t want to listen to her. I didn’t need to hear this, and yet…a little part of me was curious.
She sighed loudly, not trying to hide her exasperation. “Your body is…whatever. It’s fine. But if you’re going to quit at the first sign of an obstacle? Then clearly you’re not cut out for the life of a dancer.”
I stared at her. Was she saying what I thought she was saying? “You are saying that my body is ‘fine.’” I’d used air quotes and she arched her brows as she looked at my hands in the air.
She shrugged. “Yeah, I mean it’s not ideal, but people have made it in the dance world with worse handicaps than hips.”
My mouth was definitely hanging open now. “You…you—” I drew in a deep breath and tried again. “You’ve been telling me I’m too fat for years.”
Bianca shrugged. She shrugged. “So? Kids at my old school called me skeletor all of junior high, you don’t hear me moaning about it.”
I gaped at her but her expression was bland, like she honestly didn’t get what the big deal was.
“You’re cruel to me—”
“No, I’m honest with you,” she said simply. Throughout all of this her voice never rose and her cheeks never flushed. She looked so unperturbed, so unflustered. It made me want to pull her hair until she screamed.
“People will call you fat,” she said over her shoulder as she fiddled with the knobs on the stereo.
“Especially in the ballet world which is crazy, I mean, let’s face it, there will always be someone skinnier or better than you” She stood up and brushed her hands on her tights, like this was a common place in dance.
She was prepared for it, why wasn’t I?. “And some people will call me skinny, and they’ll call Eve short and they’ll call Tilly stupid and…
” She threw her hands up in disgust. “What are you going to do? Run away every time your feelings get hurt?”
I blinked at that because I had no answer.
She seemed to know it, too, because she went over to her bag and started rustling through it like we were done and she was ready to move on.
Except we weren’t. I wasn’t close to being done. I felt like everything I thought about myself, my future, had already been set in stone. Hearing I could change fate—from Bianca, no less—was, unsettling.
“I don’t—” I started, not even sure what I wanted to say. “I didn’t mean to—”
She mercifully cut me off with a loud, exasperated sigh. “Do us both a favor and save the heart-to-hearts for your boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I said automatically. The moment I did, it all came rushing back. The sadness. The hurt. The confusion.
“Well, that’s your own dumb fault.” Yup, that was Bianca. Always the sweetheart.
I started to walk away. “It’s not that simple.” She didn’t know everything, even if she believed otherwise. Sure, I could accept my weight with some work, but none of that mattered if the school was shut down.
But no matter how much I wanted to throw that in her face, I couldn’t. I had to bite my tongue and just let her think the only issue standing between me and dancing was my weight.
“Uh huh,” she muttered. “Whatever you say.”
I should walk away. I should just leave and ignore her and—
“He could have anyone he wanted.” I hated my stupid mouth for blurting it out like that. As if Bianca didn’t already think I was pathetic.
She turned slowly to face me, crossing her arms like she was settling in for another unwanted conversation. Everything about her demeanor was patronizing and annoying and…honest.
At least she was honest with me.
Olivia and Ethan—they see what they want to see. They cared about me too much to give the harsh truth. And right now, that was what I wanted.
I pursed my lips and started again. “He can have any girl he wants—”
“But he wants you.” She finished my sentence with a shrug. Like it was so obvious. Like it wasn’t totally crazy.
I stared at her in silence for a moment until she arched her brows in obvious annoyance. “Are we done here? Some of us have to practice for auditions.”
I left the studio so she could rehearse, but her words stuck with me.
But he wants you.
Did he?
The thought was terrifying, and I didn’t know why. Maybe because I knew that if I let myself believe it…If I even let myself hope…
I’d be opening myself up to a world of hurt.
My dance with him, the way he’d held me, the things Bianca had said afterward…
my head was reeling for the next few days.
I half hoped that Ethan would text, and then I told myself it wouldn’t fix anything if he did.
Even if I had enough courage to dance because I was a dancer, it didn’t change the status of the school.