4. Jolie
4
JOLIE
T he window’s stuck.
Water is everywhere. It pours through the slat as I try one last attempt to roll it down. Leaning back, I slam the heel of my boot into it. The force of the water spilling in works against me, its chill pounding into my limbs. I reach behind me and shake Mom, who’s slumped over the steering wheel’s deflated airbag.
She doesn’t move. She just stares at me.
My pulse skyrockets. If I let reality sink in, I’ll stop moving. Stop fighting for breath. Soon the car will be fully submerged, taking me with it. I need to think of something. There isn’t much time.
But Mom…
Agony claws at my chest.
I can’t leave her. Not like this.
I pop the glove compartment, searching for something sharp to wedge open or crack the window. Items explode out from the force of the water. I grab a small window scraper and try to lever the window down. When that doesn’t work, I pound on it. The strength behind my strikes wanes and I’m desperate for air. I lift my head just above the water, face squished against the ceiling, gasping.
With a final slosh, I’m submerged. Pain radiates through my chest—
Light catches my attention from outside.
Two bright eyes stare back at me, silvery with winking flecks of iridescent blues. They glitter like shattered glass, so beautiful that I can’t look away.
The space between my ribs sears, pinching as an overwhelming rush of bubbles bursts against my skin.
My lungs fill with water, those eyes the last things I see before I’m swallowed by the lake’s dark grasp—
I wake with a gasp, grappling with my comforter and clutching my chest, as if I can somehow physically drag the air into my lungs. Reality crashes into me.
I’m not there. I’m here. In my room.
With that comfort comes the weight that threatens to drown my waking hours.
I’m here but Mom’s not.
She never will be.
I shiver and hug around myself. It’s freezing, as if the temperature of my bedroom has somehow blended into the nightmare. I jump out from under the covers and turn up the thermostat before I run to my desk and grab my journal. I write down everything I can remember, scribbling quickly across the pages. Flipping through the previous entries, I check if I’ve learned anything new. Some clue to understand what happened. Unfortunately, most of its contents are nonsensical. Splatters of ink across a canvas I don’t understand. A full picture I can’t see yet.
Maybe I never will.
Regardless, I comb through the words, weighing what matches against what I can piece together. I still don’t know how I survived the crash. At first, I figured I was able to smash open the window and lost consciousness as I floated to the surface. My therapist believes I’m repressing the traumatic memories of my mom’s death and the accident. When they were able to finally fish the car out of the lake last spring, all evidence said the window had been smashed from the outside. From the gashes, now thick pink scars, the investigators guessed I was pulled from the wreckage.
But by whom?
The police ultimately chalked it up to some good Samaritan who wanted to remain anonymous. But the water was freezing, and they would have had to cross the ice beneath the bridge we’d skidded off of. Who would go to those lengths only to vanish?
I stare down at the colorful sketches of eyes spread through the pages. No matter how I try to draw them, I can’t get the shades right. They’re always too silver or too blue, and they never glitter enough. Not that they could be real…
Nevertheless, they haunt me.
I’m sure Dr. Tanner will reassure me it’s a coping mechanism. That I’m looking for answers in my past instead of focusing on gratitude for my future.
I glance over at the clock. 3:55 a.m. I still have another hour of sleep I can snag before it’s time to get up and prepare for the long day ahead. Climbing back into bed, I stare up at the ceiling, trying to fall asleep but unable to think about anything other than the day ahead at Ballet Potomac.
In the corps, it’s important to build the visuals, stay in sync with the rest of the dancers, and keep our lines as consistent as possible. It’s a different mindset for me now, purposefully trying to blend in versus adding my personal touches to stand out. I’ll have to save my flair for class. It’s something I miss desperately about solo work, the magic that comes from letting a variation sink into your bones. A choreographer could set the same piece on twenty different ballerinas and they would all do it slightly differently if allowed to get lost in the music.
We spend hours perfecting our craft, studying every placement of our body, and that all pays off when we get on the stage. Under the warmth of the spotlight, we come alive, moving through the piece as if it’s second nature. Embedded into our soul. By the time it reaches opening night, it basically is. The beats and our bodies carry us through. Despite wanting to showcase to the hundreds of people in the audience, there’s something intimate about letting go to the music. A few minutes of defying the gravity holding us back. Of freedom.
There’s nothing like it.
It’s what I miss most. That and having my mom out there, supporting me. My biggest fan.
Dread sinks in my gut thinking about how different this first season back is going to be.
Focus on the positives, Jolie.
I’ve paid my dues before. I can pay them again. Hopefully, this time around won’t take as long to reach soloist. Every year is another year closer to retirement, especially with my injury. I understand how to excel in the corps with the experience I have—there’s a reason why every dancer begins their journey there. I just need to use that to my advantage. Show them I can be a team player but also my value as an individual if they are willing to give me a shot.
My thoughts twirl and leap in and out of focus, each wanting to be at the forefront of my mind. At least I’ll be seeing Dr. Tanner soon to talk through it. We’ve moved to bi-monthly appointments, and while I’m glad not to have to go weekly, I find myself itching to see her when it’s a few days out.
By the time my mind slows its cadence, I glance at the clock. It’s twenty minutes until my alarm is set to go off. With a groan, I head into the bathroom. I’ll just get a jumpstart on the day. Taking out my scar gel, I peer at the mirror from over my shoulder, applying it to the streaks of deep pink raised on my skin.
My fingers linger over the thick ridges, reminders of the accident and all the things I still don’t understand about that night. I should hate them, and sometimes, when I catch them in the mirror, they make me self-conscious. But every time those feelings come, a stronger one falls into place—I’m alive.
It’s a force that keeps me going, a second chance I refuse to waste.
I brush my teeth, wash my face, and put on my makeup. My blue irises pop against the dark liner winging out from my lashes. Wetting my brush, I pull my hair up and secure it with an elastic tie, then I feed my ponytail through my bun maker, tucking the dark-brown strands around the mesh before covering it with a hair net. The bobby pins scrape my scalp, my signal that they are in tight enough to not fall out during rehearsal. I spray it in place, the overly floral scent mixed with aerosol clogging my nostrils, before using a few more pins to hide my wisps.
Perfect.
When I return to my room, I cross my arms, rubbing my shoulders. My gaze darts to the window, double checking that it’s fully shut so I don’t come back to a repeat of yesterday’s snow-covered desk.
It is.
I almost think that it’s all in my head when I glance over at the thermostat. It’s down a few degrees again, and I bump it up to where it should be.
Strange.
I’ll have to see if Lark is having the same issue. Maybe we need to contact the super.
I dress as quickly as I can, then lean over my journal to dump a few thoughts and doodles onto the page.
“Coffee’s brewed!” Lark’s too-cheery-for-5:30-a.m. voice calls through the door. I sigh in relief. I need some caffeine after that night of sleep—or lack thereof. Throwing extra clothes into my dance bag, I turn off the light and beeline for the coffee pot.
“I can’t believe you invited Blake over last night,” Lark groans from behind her steaming cup of coffee. I pick mine up and take a sip before setting it down on the table in front of us. Lark can’t stand Blake, both at the studio and outside of it. She’s made it very clear she doesn’t enjoy his regular visits to our apartment. “I’m just grateful to be immune to his charms. Watching everyone moon over him is gagworthy.”
“I didn’t invite him over. He asked to see me.”
We are both busy, both building our careers, though his is leaps ahead of mine. As a man, his ballet career is set up for exponentially quicker promotions. The reality is there are not as many of them, which creates a higher demand for strong male dancers. Despite her personal dislike for him, Lark can’t deny that Blake is a phenomenal performer. He had his pick of companies, but he chose the Institute because of their illustrious reputation and they’d all but guaranteed him an accelerated track to principal.
Lark sips her coffee before setting it on the table, then she places a hand on my knee. “You deserve better than being an asshole’s booty call.”
“He’s not an asshole.”
She cuts me a glare.
“Well, sometimes he can be a bit of a prima donna, but he doesn’t think of me like that.” We might not be ones for fancy date nights or prophetic declarations, but when he looks at me, it might as well be a spotlight beaming down.
“Oh really?” Lark nods at Delilah as she emerges from her room in an oversized t-shirt and heads over to the coffee pot, pouring herself a cup. “What did you talk about for the whole hour he was here before he quickly cut out?”
“We talked about plenty of stuff.” My mind goes blank when I try to recall, but I’m sure we did. “We talked about rehearsals.”
It’s a vague enough answer. We always chit-chat about dance, though less than we used to since I took my sabbatical. While I was on leave, I avoided talking about myself much—what was there to say? I was grieving, dealing with recovering from the accident, and avoiding everything that came with all…that. Now that I’m at Ballet Potomac, I’ll have more to share with him.
“Are you at least getting off?”
My face heats, and I’m glad I wasn’t mid-sip because my coffee would have been sprayed everywhere. Lark’s lack of a filter is something I love about her…as long as it isn’t directed at me.
“Th-that’s private.”
“That’s stress relief, which is important.”
Grabbing my coffee, I quickly bring it to my lips, taking a big gulp.
“So, no,” Lark replies for me, and she and Delilah exchange smug that’s-a-man-for-you glances.
“I’m not talking about this with you.” When I realize how harsh the words come out, I take a deep breath and another sip of coffee before adding, “But I appreciate that you care.”
I know her concern isn’t really my sex life. We’ve been best friends since we danced together in high school. Even after going our separate ways, her training with the Institute when I went to Tisch, it was easy to settle into the familiar rhythm of friendship when I moved back.
“I don’t want you to get hurt, Jojo.”
“And I love you for that, but Blake makes me feel like I’m not some broken ballerina who will never see the spotlight again.” He never pitied me after the accident. Never mentions my injury, though I’m sure he has noticed it. He treats me the same even with not being invited back to the Institute. What we have is the one constant, other than my friendship with Lark, that still remains all these months later. One part of my life that hasn’t shifted despite the scars I’ve accrued, both visible and unseen.
Lark’s hand squeezes my leg, and I flinch, not at her touch, but because her thumb presses on the spot where I’m most sore from yesterday’s rehearsals. She brings her voice down to a gentle whisper, laying her palm flat on my leg. “You will see that spotlight. But that has nothing to do with him and everything to do with you.”
I sigh in frustration, the sound grating at the back of my throat. “I hate starting over. It’s like all those years of work were for nothing.”
“They weren’t for nothing. Now you understand what’s expected ten times better than those other girls. Soloist and principal may be closer than you think.”
With my luck, I’m not counting on it. I have no guarantees I’ll even make soloist at Ballet Potomac. I’ll be competing against those who have been paying their dues there since the beginning of their ballet careers. Dancers who are hungrier and haven’t been exhausted by the toll this career can take on you mentally and physically.
“Yesterday was awful.” I’m already dreading going back there and having Mistress Maral or some other instructor look down their nose at me. “ I was awful.”
“It was your first day. Give yourself some grace,” Lark says, standing up and taking her coffee over to the sink to rinse out the mug. “It’s going to take some adjustment.”
“You’re right.” But it still sucks.
Lark heads for the door, rifling through her dance bag before throwing on her coat. “Why don’t we meet after rehearsals one day this week?”
“Sure. I can bring coffee to you from Java Joe’s?” I offer. It was our favorite spot when we danced at the Institute together. Standing up from the couch, I go wash out my mug and leave it on the drying rack before turning back toward my room. “It’ll give me an excuse to visit everyone.”
Something flickers in her expression. “You sure?”
“Of course.” She’s probably worried about me getting depressed being back at the Institute. I’m sure it will hurt, but I miss them. I miss the familiar. Besides, seeing Lark, Stasia, and Denise will be fun. I might even get a peek at Blake, if he’s not too busy.
“That sounds great, Jojo.” She tugs on her gloves and wraps her scarf around herself before flashing me a smile. “You’ve been missed. Everyone is always asking about you.”
“It’ll be great.” I return the smile, though I don’t feel it fully. “Just text me your order from JJ’s and what day works best once we get our schedules. I’ll grab it on the way. Then I can say hi and we can catch the metro back together.”
“Sounds like a plan,” she says, giving me one final wave before she’s off.
I trudge back to my room, anxious about the day ahead. I just have to focus on each rehearsal as another chance at reclaiming my career. Today’s class can’t be any worse than day one’s, right?
I’m not sure I want to find out.