Chapter 1
Clementine
I was taught a lot of useful things in my life.
How to twist my hair into a bun so tight it could survive endless fouettés.
How to break in pointe shoes with a needle, an X-ACTO knife, and a tube of glue.
How to tell creditors Mommy isn’t home in a voice so innocent it almost fooled me too.
And the most important lesson of all: one swipe of a credit card can sand down the edges of almost any disaster.
Today is a disaster.
The kind a normal person might call horrid, or appalling, or just plain bad.
But normal people don’t spend twenty years drilling their bodies into the shape of a machine.
Normal people don’t measure their worth by whether their name is bolded on a sheet of paper thumbtacked to a bulletin board at Lincoln Center.
The new season’s cast list went up this morning.
I should have been promoted from soloist to principal. I’ve been waiting for it, training for it, starving for it. Instead, my name remained lost in the middle column, trapped with the workhorses.
Everyone else in Rose Hall was giddy about their promotions. I couldn’t even fake a smile. My chest felt like someone had wound ribbons around my ribs and kept pulling.
So, I did what I always do when I can’t breathe. I ran. Out of the theater, down the marble steps, straight through the revolving doors of Sephora. The air conditioning hit like salvation, freezing the shame still burning under my skin.
Stores do that. They can change the weather inside your body.
A perfume haze greets me first, sweet enough to smother bile. Foundation samples glitter under fluorescent lights. Paper bags crinkle with promise. There it is, a glittering eyeshadow palette, staring me down like it knows exactly what I came for.
This is the kind of sparkle a principal dancer deserves, it whispers. The kind of beautiful that makes you believe you’re worth the price tag.
I run my pointer over the shimmering gold. For one suspended second, the world hushes, muffles as if I’ve slipped underwater. My pulse slows, and air floats into my lungs again.
“It’s a beautiful color, isn’t it?” The sales associate appears with a smile so wide it feels rehearsed. “I can make you a sample pot.”
I don’t need a sample. I know exactly what this eyeshadow will do. It’ll fix the ache inside of me.
“I’ll take it,” I say.
“Would you like to try the new line of ethereal lip gloss?”
“Of course.”
She floats around me, plucking items like petals from a stem. A blush to accentuate my cheekbones. Foot masks that promise to soothe my bunions and won’t tell anyone that I’ve been shoving lamb’s wool between my toes for ten years.
At the register, she folds each item into tissue paper, tucking my things into a chrysalis of happiness.
Perfume: $319. Eyeshadow palette: $95. Mascara set: $72. Lip gloss: $62. Foot masks: $35.
Total: $583.
I slide the good Visa into the reader—the Sephora card went to collections months ago— picturing myself in Act II of Giselle, lips lined with the most glowing pink money can buy.
Beep. Freeze. Flash red.
Declined.
That can’t be right.
This card is new. I got it last month. I think?
I only put rent, a MetroCard refill, and new tights on it. I do the math in my head. Except math has never been my strong suit.
I swipe again. Maybe I didn’t hold it right. Maybe I didn’t breathe correctly. Maybe Mercury’s in retrograde!
Declined.
“Would you like to try another card?” the salesgirl asks gently.
I laugh brittlely. “Yeah, the chip’s just temperamental.”
Out comes the other card. The one I swore I’d bury after the collectors started calling. The one I typically keep wedged in my nightstand between athletic tape and unopened envelopes screaming URGENT: PAST DUE.
Declined.
The reality I’ve been outrunning all day slams into me. My face goes hot and molten.
“Would you like to put these aside and come back—”
“No!” I jerk toward the lip gloss.
The salesgirl freezes, pity already softening her face. Pity.
“You don’t understand,” I blurt. “I’ve been with the New York City Ballet for eight years. Eight years of auditions, of understudying, of clapping for ovations that weren’t mine. I missed birthdays. Summers. Bread.” My throat cracks. “God, I miss bread.”
A couple behind me stares. I’m unraveling, and all they can do is watch.
“I skipped my prom for a Bolshoi master class in some basement in Hell’s Kitchen.
Smiled through shin splints, sprained toes, critiques that gutted me.
My ribs ache from compression tape, and my hip flexor clicks like a metronome gone rogue.
And this was supposed to be my year. Clementine Lennox, Principal. ”
The associate tries again. “Ma’am—”
“Ma’am? Really? Has it come to that?” My laugh splinters into something manic. “Every single lead went to girls who aren’t even twenty-one. Twenty-one! I’m twenty-four, which in ballet years is practically spoiled meat. I’m freezer burn with a bun.”
I let the lip gloss tube slip from my hand, not bothering to catch it. It clanks pathetically, rolls along the glass counter, and she whisks it away with lips pressed tight.
“I know I can’t afford the makeup. I know. But it’s the only thing that is going to remind me that I still exist. Like if I put it on, maybe someone will look at me and think, she matters.”
The salesgirl doesn’t blink, her mascara flawless.
“I’m sorry,” she says, voice as flat as linoleum. “Store policy.”
Security’s walkie crackles. Behind me, the couple steps aside. And in that spotlight of rejection, I feel the last thread of my life snap clean through.
I need air.
I need to get out of here.
I sprint out of Sephora. The August heat slaps me across the face. The sidewalk tilts, then blurs. I haven’t eaten since a protein bar at six a.m., and my legs wobble.
A storefront mirror snags me mid-flight. I look terrible. Leotard digging into my ribs. NYCB sweats half-slid off one hip, waistband twisted, drawstring dangling. One Croc strap snapped down, laddered tights flashing pale above it.
By the time I crash into the subway, my throat burns like I swallowed a glass of hot water and a pack of matches.
I can’t go back to my apartment. Can’t go back to the studio. Can’t even go back inside my own head.
The air down here reeks of rat piss, brake dust, and wet heat. I press my spine against the filthy tile wall, wishing grout lines could make me disappear. My hands won’t stop shaking. Sweat turns my leotard into shrink wrap.
I dig out my second phone, the cracked-screen burner only Gran, Mom, and a few others know about. The one creditors can’t touch. My pulse stutters as I thumb open my banking app.
Wrong password.
Another wrong password.
It’s been months since I last checked, because if you don’t look at the damage, it’s not real.
But finally, it loads.
Checking: -$172.
Savings: $0.03.
I swipe through the credit card apps. All five maxed. Late fees multiplying like fruit flies.
Broke would be a relief. Broke is solid ground.
I’ve slipped past broke and gone straight into free fall.
The tile scrapes my spine as I slide down it. The air won’t stretch wide enough. I scroll through my contacts. Roommates who need rent from me, colleagues who just got promoted over me, and Mom, who taught me this self-destructive choreography.
No one can fix this.
My fingertip hovers over Gran. She’s the only one who still believes I’m salvageable. For one blistering heartbeat, I consider deleting every banking app, smashing this phone, and vanishing between train tracks. But even escape costs money I don’t have.
This is it.
I press call. The ring detonates everything I’ve been pirouetting toward.
“Clementine?” Gran’s voice is warm as always. “Sweetheart? What’s going on?”
“I didn’t make princi—” The word sticks. “Gran, I didn’t get it. It meant more money, enough to stop subletting a pantry in a five-girl crash pad. It meant first pick of roles, private coaching. It meant proof that years of sacrifice led somewhere.”
“Oh, my darling girl. What can I do for you?”
“Can you buy me a flight home? I’m so sorry to ask, but I literally have negative dollars to my name.”
“To California? To see your mom?”
“No,” I whisper. “To you. To Alaska.”
A pause, then her voice returns. “There’s a seat on a red-eye tonight. Bring your coat. It’s already getting cold at night.”
“I’m a failure, Gran. I thought I could keep doing this,” I choke out, “but I can’t. I’m not okay. I’m not okay.”
“Oh, honey,” she says softly. “You don’t have to be. Just get on the plane. I’ll make up your old room; it’s still just as you left it. I’ll bring cocoa and a blanket for the drive. You’re not alone, Clem. You hear me?”
I nod like she can see me, tears rolling down my cheeks.
And just like that, I know I have no choice.
I have to do this.
When I get home, I’ll pack one suitcase with only the necessities. The rest, the barely worn heels, the hoarded costumes, the unused planners…I’ll tell my roommates to sell them, ship them, burn them. I don’t care.
For six years I’ve been whispering the same lie: This will be the season.
I’ve been patient, longing, pouring another year into the hope that someday the cast list would cough up my name.
People said it was a pipe dream to be a famous ballerina; I heard them and kept dancing anyway, naive and stubborn.
No wonder half the dancers I know are broke and exhausted.
The other half are sleeping on studio floors and pretending it’s romantic.
My studio is filled with sixty other girls with rosary-thin wrists and eyes that light up when someone says maybe this season. It never is.
Let them promote someone else. Let them find another dancer to bleed into her satin. It won’t be me. At least, not this season.
When I land in Alaska, I’ll figure out who I am when no one’s clapping. When no one’s waiting for me to dance myself into dust.
For once, I won’t be living for applause.
I’ll try living just for me.