Chapter 3
“And run, and run… Arabesque… Mia, stop giggling, you’re a snowflake.
Act like one… I want to see clean footwork, now…
Beautiful, Evangeline. Chin up, my darling…
” Madame Germaine accentuated her words with a tap of her cane as we soared across the studio, our bullet pointe skirts fluttering while we moved.
“Excellent, Evangeline! Arms up high for this next eight-count…”
I smiled in the mirror while the teenager playing Clara leaped across the room, the Nutcracker following behind her. But instead of seeing the choreography I’d spent months perfecting, instead of seeing what Madame Germaine saw, I only noticed the flaws.
My skirt was slightly wrinkled. A single flyaway escaped my bun, smudged lipstick streaked the corner of my mouth, and my leotard dug into my skin just enough to feel wrong.
A voice in the back of my mind hissed, “You are not enough. You are not perfect.” The voice kept repeating, sharper with each heartbeat, until my chest ached.
Another layer to the mental illness that had been buried inside of me for years.
We finished the dance, and Mia spun onto her toes as she bounded over to the side. Her body looked otherworldly as she practiced one of her moves as the sultry Arabian dancer, bending and turning into impossible form.
“See. She is perfect,” the voice said. “You are not.”
Mia pinched my cheeks. "Well, you're a sad-looking snowflake, aren't you? Why are you frowning so much?"
"I'm not frowning. I'm concentrating."
"Sure." Mia laughed, giving my shoulder a playful shove. "Look at you, Eva. You've been staring at your reflection like it's personally offended you for at least fifteen minutes. You're obsessed with... what? Your hair? Your outfit?"
"Maybe both," I said with a shrug, retying my ribbon.
Glancing at my reflection one more time, I corrected a slight tilt in my shoulders and cursed at a small spot of sweat on my skirt.
“Not perfect… Not perfect… Not perfect…”
"You're ridiculous," Mia said, shaking her head. I couldn't help but notice how wonderfully in place all her golden hairs were. What did she do that I didn’t? Was it a different hairspray?
“Hey, princess,” she continued, snapping me out of a spiral before it began. “You’ve been acting weird for the past couple of days. I’ve given you space. Now I want you to spill.”
"I'm fine, Mia. Really. Don't worry about me."
“Uh-huh,” she said, not buying it for a second. She patted me on the shoulder like a doting older sister. “Tell me right now, Evangeline Vale, or so help me God: I will tell your brother that you have nasty blisters all over your feet. Or maybe a fungus….”
My eyes widened. My hands trembled as I clutched her arm, every thought spiraling into worst-case scenarios. “No, Mia, you really can’t. If he thinks something is wrong with me, he won’t let me dance in the show! He’s already upset about the little bruise on my head.”
That was an understatement. When Jules saw the teensy little bump on my forehead, he went ballistic, even though I told him I’d tripped and fallen. Last night was the first night he let me stay in my apartment again.
Though it was a little overboard, I enjoyed our time together—Jules caving and watching rom-coms with me every night. Despite his sometimes stubborn ways, he cared for me. We’d never fought, never argued. So I knew what he was doing was probably best for me, even if I didn’t agree with it.
Mia rolled her eyes. “Relax, Evie. I know. But you’re telling me when we leave. Okay?”
Instead of letting myself burn under her questioning gaze, I faced the rest of the studio, which was lined with mirrors, reflecting the dozens of dancers standing against the walls while the Prince and the Sugar Plum Fairy danced in perfect harmony.
So romantic, I thought with a sigh as I watched their pas de deux. I wanted someone to dance with me like that, to look into my eyes, pull me close, and—
There was a loud banging sound as the Fairy fell to the ground, rubbing at her ankle.
"Are you all right?" I mouthed to Elsie, one of my brother's oldest childhood friends and prima of the City Ballet Company. I itched to run to her, but a part of me remembered that Elsie wouldn’t want me to make a big deal out of her injury as it healed.
She kept her emotions locked in a box even more than I did.
Elsie was the reason I’d always dreamed of auditioning—which I did as soon as I was invited to, even though it meant leaving university a year early.
The close-knit dancers, the glittering costumes, the graceful choreography sounded like a dream, and I’d loved the idea of getting to dance alongside her even though she’d talked of retiring for years.
But when she badly sprained her ankle right before the season began, I thought she’d finally make the leap.
Though she was young, ballet was incredibly hard on our bodies.
Our feet were covered in blisters, the skin sometimes falling off when I took off my pointe shoes, and our muscles were almost always sore.
Despite this, Madame Germaine somehow convinced Elsie to come back for one last season.
It was nice to have a familiar face when I first joined, but I still didn't like knowing she was in pain every time she danced.
And my brother really wouldn’t like it if he knew how hard it was on her.
He said they were just friends, but I had my doubts. Jules was Elsie’s Prince Charming… if only he would acknowledge it.
"I'm fine. Go," Elsie mouthed before getting back into position while Madame Germaine dismissed the rest of us.
Mia slung her arm through mine and led me to the dressing room, which was steadily filling with loud voices laughing and talking about the upcoming show.
The Nutcracker was every ballet's biggest show—generating enough revenue and interest to keep the theater going for the rest of the year—and the excitement for the upcoming shows reflected it clearly.
I arranged my shoes with exact spacing, adjusted the hems of my skirt three times, and smoothed the tiniest crease in my costume, my hands trembling until everything felt right. When I looked perfect once more, I slipped my coat on and reached for my scarf.
Well, not my scarf.
His.
It still smelled like him—like winter and leather and the faint hint of soap. The cream-colored fabric was much too warm for the studio, but I looped it around my neck anyway and savored the feel of it against my skin. Soft, unlike his body underneath mine.
The memory of him made my cheeks heat.
A lightly tanned hand slapped against my assigned vanity. “Rehearsal is over. Now spill.”
I sighed. “I’m just nervous for The Nutcracker. I don’t want to mess up.”
But Mia clearly didn’t buy it.
“Liar,” she said. “You did great today. Madame Germaine called you excellent, which is practically a promise to be a principal next year. And though you like to pretend that you do, you don't have to earn your place here every second. You’re incredible, Evangeline. We all know it.”
Mia's reassurance loosened some of the knots in my chest, but only a little. Compliments always did that to me. They always felt like things people had to say to me, not ever anything they actually meant. Maybe that was me being insecure, my childhood catching up to me.
“What’s wrong? Really?” Mia asked again, this time much softer.
The truth was that, while I was nervous about the ballet, my mind was a tempest. And at its center was him.
My Prince Charming.
His hard face, chiseled as if formed underneath a sculptor’s hands.
His body, warm and safe and so muscular, filling out his suit in the most delicious of ways.
His eyes, which were the color of the sky in the middle of the night when my dreams of him were strongest. His dark, swirling tattoos peeking out from under his collar.
His presence, which sucked all the air out of my lungs, leaving my soul to crave him instead.
His velvet soft lips pressing into mine and devouring my every uncertainty.
I bit my lip. “Can I tell you another time? I’m really tired. I think I just want to chill. But I promise I will tell you if you can keep a secret.”
“Um… do you even have to ask that? Bitch, I’m your best friend.
Of course, I can keep a secret—as long as you agree to tell me when you’re ready.
For now, though, want to come over and rot our brains with cheap wine and reality TV?
” Mia asked, wincing as the bitter winter wind greeted us outside the studio.
“Sure. Let me call and tell Jules.”
Her groan echoed all the way to the metro station. “No! He’s a buzzkill who’s gonna say no.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I’d have to be an idiot not to! Your brother and fun go along together like peanut butter and drywall. Not at all, Eva. Not at all.”
I shook my head as I fumbled in my bag for my phone to call Jules, who was supposed to be picking me up.
Was it a little embarrassing to be picked up by my big brother when I wasn’t in school anymore?
Yes, a little. But even without my anxieties around driving—I still flinched whenever Jules hit a small bump—I didn’t have the money for a car of my own.
I could barely afford my apartment that, sure, had the occasional rodent and roach and, yeah, sometimes had people that terrified me digging through the discarded needles in the nearby alley, and, yes, wasn’t nice even remotely.
But I was sure there were worse options out there.
Every princess had to live in squalor before finding her castle… at least I thought so. I usually liked to skip ahead to the happy endings with all the kissing and weddings and pretty dresses.
Mia waited impatiently as I turned my phone on, only to find several missed calls from my brother.
Crap.
"Hey, Jules," I greeted him after he picked up on the first ring, no doubt seething by the phone while he waited for me.
"What is the point of purchasing you a phone if you aren't going to call me with it?"
"To get cute cases and take lots of pictures of puppies and kittens. Oh! And play those cozy restaurant games.”
"How are we related?" he grumbled. "You were supposed to call me an hour ago, so I could pick you up from rehearsal. Are you all right? Did something happen? Do I need to—"
"Nothing happened. We got let out late. Ask Elsie if you don't believe me." Because he wouldn’t.
Jules always insisted I was too optimistic for this world, too easy for people to take advantage of.
We chose to move through the world in different ways.
While he barreled through it, doing whatever he needed to do to get what he wanted, I’d spent it wearing a hundred different faces, my smiles always enough to keep the peace.
People pleasing was a language I spoke fluently, one I’d learned early and never quite forgotten. It was easier that way.
And maybe some of what he said was true.
Mia kept trying to instruct me on how to grow a backbone, though it wasn’t really working, and I often found myself believing every sob story on the internet.
But I didn't consider myself naive. I knew there was darkness in the world.
I just chose to ignore it in favor of all the light it had to offer instead.
"All right. Well, I'll come pick you up—"
“That’s okay. I’m going to Mia’s tonight.”
“And how are you getting to her house?”
“We can take the metro.”
"WHAT?!" he screeched so loud I had to rub my ears to get the ringing to stop. “No way, Evangeline. You are not riding that death trap train in those sketchy tunnels. Not at night— scratch that. Not at all.”
I sighed. Our conversations always went like this—me trying to be a little more independent and Jules shooting me down while I bit back tears.
I knew Jules still saw me as his baby sister, but if I was old enough to consume a questionable amount of liquor in Mia's living room while watching reruns of reality TV, then I was old enough to figure things out on my own.
Things like taking the metro or working a dead-end job or…
Or finding my Prince Charming. A guy like Alek.
But I didn't say any of that to Jules. Because I would do anything to make sure the people I cared about had their happiness. Even if that came at the expense of my own.
Still, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to try one more time. “I’m twenty-one years old. I’m old enough to ride a train to a friend’s house. Mia lives in a nice neighborhood. It can’t be that bad.”
“No.”
“Jules, please—”
“No. I’ll come and pick you up right now.”
“But—”
“No buts, Annie,” he said, using the childhood nickname my whole family called me. The one he knew would soften me to the point of caving in. "Don't fight me on this. Love you.”
And then he hung up.
Mia sighed. “See! Buzzkill.”