Chapter Twenty Rosalynn
Chapter Twenty
Rosalynn
Her parents sat on the front row, their prime-seat tickets comped since she had the starring role. Finally. So many years of work were paying off.
And her parents were smiling for a change, even holding hands instead of arguing over money and everything else under the sun.
Behind them, the lead dance instructor from a private school for the arts watched.
If she landed that scholarship, her parents would never have to pay for lessons again. They might hold hands more, smile more.
Maybe they wouldn’t get the divorce she’d heard them whispering about.
Rosalynn raised her arms in a perfect pirouette, the familiar music and movements bringing her to life.
Except she wasn’t on a stage. The wooden floor under her became a rubber mat that she couldn’t feel, and she wore a plain black leotard for her daily morning yoga, the unadorned Lycra smooth against her body, unlike the itchy costumes of recitals decades ago.
The stretches in the privacy of her home helped with neuropathy.
For an hour a day, she could pretend she was still a dancer.
She didn’t share the time with anyone else for fear their faces would pull her out of the fantasy.
The symphony played from the app on her cell phone and she floated her hands through the air, arched upward on her stomach, shifted her weight to swing her legs around in a dance all her own.
Then the past pierced her dream, shifting her performance back to that long-ago stage in the darkest of ways. The lights dimmed and her footing was all wrong.
She grappled through the air, reaching out for something or someone to stop her fall.
Her stomach tumbled harder than her body hurtling off the stage.
Unexpected and shocking because she never lost her footing during a performance.
Never. The shock of it made her heart pound faster as a thousand thoughts raced through her mind.
The embarrassment. The gasps from the crowd. From her parents and the visiting dance instructor.
Already, tears clogged Rosalynn’s throat. She’d ruined this once-in-a-lifetime chance that meant as much to her parents as to her.
Then she landed.
Pain exploded through her. The worst she’d ever felt. Even more than when she’d broken her arm during a rehearsal last year because a boy dropped her.
She tried to pick herself up and climb back onstage to recapture the magic and finish the show. She needed to regain control of the performance. But the wooden floor beneath her became the yoga mat again.
Dusty ran toward her, his lopey legs eating up the ground. Yet he never got closer and she needed him. For more than help up. For consolation. He sensed her grief and never faltered.
Except why was he here when she didn’t have him back then?
Her dad pushed past Dusty, his voice full of panic as he repeated, “Breathe, Rosie, breathe . . .”
His dear and familiar face morphed into another. One that was decades older, with wrinkles and gray hair. Elsie stood beside him calling out, “Ace, Ace, you can’t leave us.” Grady became Ace and he was gasping for air, suffocating in spite of the oxygen mask.
Rosalynn snapped awake, even as the fog of sleep still paralyzed her.
“It’s my fault,” she screamed. “I wasn’t focusing and it’s my fault.”