Chapter 26 #3
Justin still hadn’t said anything, and now Kieran was looking at him questioningly, his eyes flicking between Justin’s face and his oddly extended hand.
“Kieran,” Ivy jumped in hastily. “It’s very nice to meet you. I’m sorry you missed the performance in Sydney.”
Kieran ducked his head again and glanced away, and Ivy used the opportunity to gently push Justin’s hand back down to his side.
“The other kids said the show was pretty cool,” Kieran mumbled in the direction of Ivy’s knees, and Ivy felt a thrill of satisfied excitement zip through her.
She’d known that the kids had fun touring the Opera House and seeing the dancers and their costumes up close, but the knowledge that they’d come back and declared ballet “cool” made her feel like she’d pulled off something unlikely.
Something that might do some real good in the world.
Ivy flicked her eyes at Justin, who was still stiff and wide-eyed next to her.
Miss Mary was looking askance at him, too, and Ivy had a feeling that the other woman wouldn’t let him stand there pale and silent for much longer before she prodded him to speak to the kid.
Ivy glanced over Justin’s shoulder to where the reporter appeared to have stopped filming.
“Miss Mary, could you check if Rowaida wants any more footage of you or Justin? I want to make sure she has everything she needs to make the story sing.”
Miss Mary cast a curious glance at her, then at Justin, but to Ivy’s relief she gave Ivy a short nod and turned away, walking towards the reporter and waving to get her attention.
“Kieran,” Ivy said gently. “Did you have any questions for Justin? About what it’s like to be a professional ballet dancer?”
Kieran raised his wide brown eyes to Justin’s, and Ivy watched as he seemed to take in Justin’s broad shoulders and muscular arms. “I thought ballet was for girls,” he said bluntly.
Justin didn’t reply, and after a long beat, Ivy jumped in, barely resisting the urge to step on Justin’s foot to get him to snap out of it.
“It’s for everyone, of every gender,” she said brightly. “It’s true that lots more girls take ballet classes, but Justin has lots of guy colleagues and friends in the ballet company, right?”
“Right.” Justin finally spoke, but his voice sounded rough, like his throat was constricted by something.
That seemed to be all she was going to get out of him. Kavanaugh. She looked at Kieran, searching the recesses of her brain while trying to figure out how to keep this conversation, if you could call it that, from drying up entirely.
“Are you interested in trying ballet?” she ventured, and the boy looked up at her quickly, alarm all over his soft, round face. He looked younger than ever.
“I play footy,” he said hastily.
“That sounds like fun,” she said, noticing that he hadn’t technically answered her question.
“But you know, plenty of people take dance classes and play sports. I bet there are some girls in Miss Mary’s class who do swimming, or soccer.
Maybe you can talk to your parents about taking a class with Miss Mary, to see if you like—”
“No,” he shook his head hard. “I mean, they wouldn’t want that.” Kieran threw a look over his shoulder down the street in the direction from which he’d come.
“Kieran,” Ivy said gently, keeping her voice low. “Why couldn’t you come to the performance?”
She knew, though. It was written on the kid’s face.
“My parents didn’t want me to,” he said, speaking to her knees again.
“Your parents, or just your dad?” Ivy asked.
Out of the corner of her eye, she felt Justin’s eyes fly to her face.
Kavanaugh. She’d found it, buried in the pile of details and data she’d collected about Justin in the last few weeks as she desperately tried to succeed in this job she was now ready to quit.
Justin’s childhood tormenter, the ringleader Kyle Kavanaugh who liked to play “Boxer Versus Ballerina.” The bully who’d bloodied Justin’s nose more than once.
Who, if Ivy had to guess, still lived here in Hillstone.
And who now had a son who wanted to dance.
Through his shock, and over the roar of an old, long-buried panic that was suddenly rushing in his ears, Justin couldn’t help but be impressed.
Ivy Page never forgot the details of a story, he thought, his admiration briefly outweighing all the other emotions that roiled his stomach as he looked down at Kieran Kavanaugh, who was the spitting image of his father Kyle.
Had she written that name down in her notebook, too?
That day in New York, when he told her the truth about growing up here, he’d barely mentioned Kyle by name.
But she’d remembered. And now, she was looking at Kieran as though she understood everything, as though she knew why he, Justin, was rooted to the singed ground and couldn’t seem to move his body.
Even though he wanted to fidget and pace—no, he was past that.
He wanted to run. He wanted to flee this place and never, ever return, no matter how badly it needed him.
Instead, he willed himself to stay where he was, to listen to Ivy’s conversation with the kid.
“Just my dad, I guess,” Kieran shrugged. “He says boys shouldn’t be interested in stuff like that.”
Justin felt the air between his body and Ivy’s go taut as she stood straighter, pulling herself up to her fullest height.
“Boys can be interested in all kinds of things, including ballet,” she said, and he could hear how much effort it was taking her to keep her fury out of her voice.
Kieran ducked his head. “Miss Mary said I couldn’t go without a signed form. She called him and asked him to sign it, but that just made him mad at me.”
Justin watched Ivy’s eyes flash, first with anger, and then with something rebellious. He remembered her telling him that some people deserved to get punched in the face, and wondered if she was going to let rebellion win now and tell Kieran that next time, he should try forgery.
“Well, we’re here now. What do you want to know about ballet?” he said, finally finding his words before Ivy could encourage a child to commit fraud.
Kieran shifted his weight back and forth from one foot to the other. “Do the boys wear those big skirts?”
“No, we wear shorts and T-shirts. Sometimes a singlet and tights. On stage we wear all kinds of stuff. Once, I got to dance with a sword.”
“That sounds cool.”
“It is cool, but I was also dressed as a giant rat,” Justin chuckled.
“A giant rat?”
“Yeah, a rat with eight extra rat heads, and a crown and a sword.”
Kieran frowned, looking confused.
“Ballet can be kind of weird sometimes. But it’s beautiful, too. And rewarding. You get to go up on the stage and show everyone how hard you worked and how strong and graceful you’ve become, and you know they’re wondering, ‘how does he do that?’”
Kieran nodded like he understood, and like he wanted Justin to keep talking, and Justin watched as his shoulders un-hunched. “Do you have any other questions?”
He did. Lots of them. How long did Justin take classes before he became a professional?
Did boys ever dance in pointe shoes? What was the scariest thing that ever happened to him during a performance?
Justin answered them all—11 years, not usually but that was changing, and watching his friend Marcus tear his Achilles tendon in the middle of a stage—and Kieran listened to each answer, rapt, before volleying back with another one.
It was only when Miss Mary returned with Rowaida and her cameraman that Kieran went quiet. “I should probably get home,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at his bike.
“It’s good to see you again, Kieran. Get home safe, won’t you?” Miss Mary said, and the boy nodded obediently. Even people who weren’t her students knew that she was someone whose words they should heed.
Except, of course, Kyle Kavanaugh. He’d always gotten away with whatever he wanted, protected by his own hubris and the town’s refusal to notice what he was doing to a boy who might have been gay or might simply have wanted a kind of boyhood that they’d never imagined before.
Protected by the silence and fear he instilled in that boy.
But Justin wasn’t a boy anymore, and despite the bolt of old fear that had silenced him when he realized who Kieran was, he wasn’t afraid of Kyle Kavanaugh now. He wasn’t going to protect him anymore. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to let him bully another boy away from ballet.
As Justin watched Kieran lope away and throw a leg over his bike, resolution and courage made his muscles feel warm and alive.
Kieran turned the bike around and started down the street, and Justin recognized the feeling; it was the same one he felt when he stood in the wings right before dancing a new role.
Like the steps hadn’t totally soaked into his muscle memory, but that he knew them well enough to step out on stage and perform them, trusting that his body would carry him through.
“Justin?” Ivy was looking up at him as though she was waiting for him to answer a question he hadn’t heard.
“Yeah?” he replied vaguely.
Ivy gestured at Miss Mary, who was eyeing him curiously again, brow furrowed.
“Do you want to have dinner with me on your way back to Sydney? They’ve moved most of us into a hotel in Hartley and their dinner menu isn’t half bad.”
Justin shook his head. “No,” he said firmly. “I’ve got some old business to take care of.”
And without explaining further, he set off down the street towards the heart of town.
Ivy caught up with Justin after offering Miss Mary a hasty thanks and an even hastier goodbye. By the time she reached him, he was ten meters away, his long legs eating up stretches of deserted footpath.
“Where are we going?” she asked, when she arrived at his side, grateful once again that she’d ditched her heels. The heat of the fires had cracked the concrete, and the ground was uneven beneath the soles of her sandals.
“We’re going to find Kavanaugh,” he said.