Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
And so they went. Ivy, reluctant PR pro that she was, arranged for the local paper and a Blue Mountains TV station to be there when he arrived to meet Miss Mary at what used to be the church hall, and she made sure the mayor found a printer who could make an enormous novelty cheque for them all to pose with.
Justin balked at the idea of the giant prop—he had half hoped they only existed in movies—but Ivy insisted they needed one.
The drive into Hillstone was sobering. No amount of TV news footage could have prepared Justin for the emptiness that met them when they turned the car off the highway and onto the two-lane road that led into town.
The bush was gone. The lush green trees that lined the road, and the dense tufts of grass that covered their roots, had vanished.
All that remained were thin, blackened trunks, sticking up out of the charred ground like a forest of discarded matchsticks.
Usually, when Justin drove this road it felt claustrophobic, not only because his childhood miseries lay waiting for him at the end of it, but because the bush crowded the roadside, and blocked the driver’s view of everything but the road ahead.
Now, Justin could see clear across the land on both sides of the car.
It was empty, and eerie, and for once he found himself wishing for a little less space.
Ivy sucked in a breath at the sight of all the charred bushland. “I know it’s meant to burn sometimes, but…” she murmured, and she didn’t need to finish her sentence.
The experts were already saying that this hadn’t been a normal fire, because this wasn’t a normal fire season.
Natural disasters weren’t truly natural anymore.
Fires were hotter now, and they traveled faster and burned longer.
And even though the trees had evolved to regenerate after fire, scientists were saying that some species wouldn’t recover from this kind of burning.
Some of these trees would never grow back.
Justin fidgeted as the car rolled towards Hillstone, and soon the town came into view.
What was left of it. The footy fields had burned, the goalposts still standing but blackened and one of them tilting at a perilous angle.
The fairgrounds, a few hundred meters later on the other side of the road, had also burned.
Next to them, a cluster of almost-destroyed houses stood huddled together, and Justin swore he could see smoke still rising from the ground around them.
The high school and primary school, where Justin had spent his days counting the hours until he could escape to ballet class, had fared better, probably because they had commercial sprinklers.
The Country Women’s Association building was burned out, and if Justin hadn’t seen the CWA logo on the wrought-iron gate at the side of the road, he wouldn’t have known what the building had once housed.
“It’ll take years to rebuild all this,” he said, almost to himself.
No matter how much money they raised, it would only somewhat smooth the long road ahead.
Even if the school buildings were usable, where were those students going to live?
What would the town look like years from now, when it was finally done?
How long would it be before there was another unprecedented fire season, and this all burned again?
“Are you okay?” Ivy asked. “It’s not too late to cancel. We can… I don’t know, tell them there was a ballet emergency.”
A small smile curved Justin’s mouth, despite himself. “A ballet emergency?”
“Yeah.” Ivy shrugged.
“What would that even be?”
“I don’t know… a spandex shortage. Tariffs on tulle. All the foam rollers got recalled.”
“Don’t joke about that,” he warned.
“Right, that’d be a real emergency,” Ivy smiled.
“Unlike, say, bird flu,” he mused.
Ivy cocked her head. “Why would bird flu be a ballet emergency?”
“Because of all the swans.”
She chuckle-groaned and shook her head. “I think we could do better than that. But seriously, if you’re not ready for this, I can turn around right now and we’ll tell the mayor…
something.” She glanced across the car at him, then turned her attention back to the road, which was leading them inexorably into the blackened heart of what remained of Hillstone.
He reached across the console to where her hand rested on her thigh and, just as they had half a dozen times on this drive, they twined their fingers together and held on tight.
“I’m okay,” he said. “And the church is right up there on the left.” He gestured with his free hand, and she flipped her turn signal and slowed the car.
Justin swallowed as Ivy pulled up in front of the church.
Its large rectangular sandstone bricks were scarred with streaks of black, but it was still standing.
Around it, where there had once been a glossy green lawn, he saw nothing but scorched earth and the debris of a cluster of smaller buildings that had been made of the same timber and corrugated iron as the hall.
He’d forgotten about them, he realized, but now that he was here, he remembered.
An old outhouse, maybe, that had been converted into a storage shed for folding chairs and music stands, and a few other small structures.
In Justin’s memories, there was only the church and the hall, and since his mother and Shane weren’t religious, he rarely set foot inside the church itself.
To him, the hall had been the only building that mattered.
Now, looking at the charred debris, he let out a long, slow breath and leaned back in his seat.
He’d know this would be hard, but seeing it with his own eyes was a punch in the gut he couldn’t have braced for.
Ivy squeezed his hand, then released it to put the car in park and turn off the engine. A second later, though, her fingers wrapped around his again.
“Tell me about it,” she said quietly, and he couldn’t help but think of all the times she’d pressed him for answers he didn’t want to give her. Now, he wanted to tell her everything. He knew she would hold everything he told her gently and carefully.
He closed his eyes and breathed in through his nose. “It smelled like dust. Dust and rosin. And sweat. No air conditioning, just a dinky ceiling fan that hardly did anything, and a little standing fan that Miss Mary would break out if we begged for it.”
Ivy let out a low chuckle. “Ballet teachers.”
“I know. Ruthless.”
“What else?”
“Wood floor. I didn’t even know what I was looking at the first time I walked into a studio with a dance mat. The floor here needed a fresh coat of varnish every year or else you’d end up with splinters in the balls of your feet.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah.” He opened one eye and looked over at her. “So what I’m saying is, I can relate to the pain of pointe shoes.”
She scoffed, like he’d known she would. “You’ll never know that pain,” she said darkly.
He smiled to himself and sighed. “It was just like any other dance studio. Rosin box and lost-and-found in the corner. Mirrors along one wall, scratched up but always spotless. Miss Mary didn’t tolerate students touching the mirrors, and if you did she’d hand you a bottle of Windex and a pile of old newspapers and put you to work after class.
We learned pretty quick that it wasn’t a rule worth breaking. ”
“Did you ever get in trouble with her?”
He shook his head. “I was always on my best behaviour here. I know a lot of boys in ballet can’t say that, but it’s true. I needed this place. I’d run here from school so fast I once got bruises on my shoulders from my backpack. I’d be all sweaty, even before class started.”
“Warmed up, though.”
“I guess.” You got pretty warm when you were running away from bullies and from the silent complicity of all your classmates and teachers.
The back of his neck prickled as he thought about it, and he fidgeted with the hem of his shorts.
“I just wanted to get here as soon as I could. I knew what was expected of me here, and I knew I could do all of it. I knew how to be here.”
“It was home,” Ivy said simply.
“Well, home was home, but this place was a haven. And that was all I had.”
Ivy let out a breath and nodded in recognition. “I remember that feeling.”
“Which one?”
“That ballet was all I had. That it was the only thing that made me me. When I stopped dancing, it felt like I vanished, because without ballet I didn’t really know who I was.
” She shook her head darkly. “My best friend would say that ballet wants people to feel that way, because why else would they put up with the pain and the sexism? Why put yourself through all that and make all these sacrifices if ballet’s not essential to your very being? ”
“But you didn’t vanish,” he said. “You found a whole other career that you’re really good at. You became—”
“Poison Ivy?” she asked, one brow raised.
“I was going to say you became a journalist, but okay. You found another thing that makes you you.”
Ivy tipped her head, thinking. “I used to think that. But journalism doesn’t make me me.
And neither did ballet. They shaped me, obviously, but I’m who I am because of my family and my friends.
I’m me because I grew up watching my parents dote on each other, and listening to Broadway musicals with my opa.
I grew up dancing, too, but I don’t think I really grew up and figured out who I was until I didn’t have ballet to lean on anymore.
I’ll probably always love it, and a part of me will probably always resent that it rejected me over a couple of centimeters.
But ballet didn’t make me who I am. Getting over ballet made me who I am. ”