I say, “Okay, then who.”
“Angela.”
“Shut up, really?”
“You stopped coming to group, what else was I going to do!”
For some reason I’m really baffled that she kept going to group even when I didn’t. I think a part of me still thinks that Bianca is a windup toy someone needs to crank. Maybe she is, more than she should be. But we’ve all got our faults, so I should stop trying to make a poem or a statement or a damn thesis out of hers.
“She thinks it would be a good idea,” Bianca says. “Everyone at the hospital was saying it too. I didn’t think I’d really reached . . . that point. Any point.”
“You okay?”
She shrugs. “I want to keep going.”
“I know, baby.”
“I didn’t get there.”
“To where?”
She shrugs again. “Seventy. Sixty. I don’t know. Ten.”
“Hit ninety before I’m back from the audition and I’ll give you a snow globe.” When weight gain happens in eating disorders, it happens fast.
“Two snow globes.”
“Brat.”
She smiles, just for a second, then says, “I don’t know, Etta.”
“Where’s our miracle cure, right?”
“I want to get better!” she shouts, up at the sky, and then she looks at me and says, “Why doesn’t that just work?”
“I love you, Bee.”
“Love you.”
“If I figure it out, I’ll tell you.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
We link pinkies back to the car.
The funny thing is that the Dykes would approve of this.
The funnier thing is that I don’t give a shit.
I just like her.
24
MY MOM DRIVES ME TO the airport. My brain has stopped going NewYorkNewYorkNewYork for long enough for me to remember to be scared out of my mind. I know I’m meeting up with a group when I get there, but I have no idea if any of them are on the same plane as me or how many of us there are. Five got through from my region. Four now, without James. I really wish he had gone through with this and just thrown the audition or something, just so I wouldn’t be alone. Codependent pot calling the codependent kettle codependent, yeah, I know.
My mom gives me a hundred dollars “for emergencies” and hugs me before security and says, “Ugh, sweetie. Kick ass.”
She looks tired. She’s keeping her sunglasses on now that we’re outside so that people won’t see her dark circles because she cares what all these people will think of her. But she didn’t hide them from me in the car.
I think about Bianca’s parents in their pajamas and my mom here in her sharp business suit, her straight edges, and she overflows for me, you know?
She tries so hard.
She loves me so much.
I hug her tight.
• • •
I take Benadryl and sleep on the plane, which is lovely except for the part where I’m still kind of stupid when I get off. It takes me a while of wandering around with my bag before I find my group, and once I do I don’t know how I missed them. There are these three geeky-looking adults with signs that say BRENTWOOD AUDITIONS and some teenagers crowded around them. Here’s the part I can’t believe: there’s like fifty of them. At most.
Either the other regions sucked or mine encompassed more area than I thought. But . . . holy shit. I actually have a shot at this.
I could be going to a musical theater school.
And I’m trying to keep my focus, I’m here for ballet, these guys are suckers for bringing me here because I’m here for ballet ballet ballet but I blink and see myself and Into the Woods and Cabaret and Guys and Dolls and A Chorus Line, the show that maybe I’ll never see.
And then a few more people show up and we walk outside and get into a bus and New York hits me like a pile of dirty beautiful bricks.
• • •
I’m not saying it’s original or exciting. But I’m also not going to pretend like the past few months and my kinds of startling ties to a handful of these damn Nebraskans have changed how I feel. I don’t know how I ever expected to fall in love with Mason, with anybody, when here was this city waiting for me.
I could go on forever. I could talk about Chelsea that changes personalities at every street or the Midtown that everyone pictures and how hushed you feel going over the Brooklyn Bridge. I could write these long emails home about no, Mom, the Statue of Liberty is on an island but look at this pizza place, look at this restaurant of just peanut butter, look at the parts of the city that really do sleep.
But then they take us through those doors and I see that BRENTWOOD marquee and there are people, these normal-looking people, laughing and wearing not-uniforms and yelling across the halls of the dorms, and I hear The Phantom of the Opera playing from somewhere in here, and oh my God I’m not in New York, not anymore.
I’m at the damn Brentwood School.
And something in me just changed.
I think most people in our group are trying to pretend this isn’t cool, or maybe they’re just genuinely not freaking out as much as I am, but I make friends with these two kids, Skyler and Stephanie, and we stand in the back of the group during our tour and dig our nails into each other’s hands because holy shit did you see the size of that rehearsal room and oh my God is that a bell tower and how does everyone look so happy?
And then we see the girl crying in the bathroom that they try to usher us past and I’m thinking, aha, seeing through the cracks, these people are secretly miserable, this is a manufactured tour, and then another girl goes into the bathroom and holds her and three more come in a minute later and join them and oh God I want to be here, I want to curl up in that bathroom and go to sleep.
“We’ll be calling you in alphabetically to meet with the board starting at ten tomorrow,” the geekiest clipboarder says, passing out schedules. “Please don’t be late. In the meantime your room assignments are here, and you’re expected to be in your room by—”
Yeah, who cares—we’re staying in the dorms. I take all these pictures on my phone of every damn corner of the room and of Stephanie and Skyler geeking the hell out, even though I have no idea who I’m going to send them to. I don’t want to make Bianca jealous when she’s been so amazing. Kristina wouldn’t understand. Rachel would . . . I don’t know. I guess I need to deal with her at some point, but Nebraska seems far away, and that isn’t because I’m in New York, because right now I really couldn’t give less of a shit about the (yeah, crappy) view outside my dorm window, because right now I’m sitting on my bed talking to a boy who says he’s bisexual and “Oh, yeah, everyone here is great about it, the queer groups make sure to be so inclusive,” and I am trying not to cry.
I need this.
God, I forgot for a minute that I’m here to look at ballet schools.
And then I remember something else.
I’m not good enough for Brentwood.
I’m here to look at ballet schools.
• • •
Stephanie’s my roommate and we stay up late. She’s singing “For Good” from Wicked and her voice reminds me of Bianca’s, deep, alto, but she’s . . . in all honesty, she’s better than Bianca. Maybe in a few years Bianca will be there. Stephanie’s seventeen like me, after all. And she’s got broad shoulders, a chest, something to support that voice.
She wants me to sing for her but I’m so scared of waking people up, of waking people up with my goddamn mediocre voice, that I just end up sitting on the floor against my bed with my iPod listening to “At the Ballet” over and over again.
Maggie hits that high note and I push my face into my knees.
25
THE AUDITION SCHEDULE IS POSTED and mine isn’t until the afternoon, so I look up the addresses—hooray, so many years of fantasy-walking the streets of New York, I know exactly where they are—for a bunch of ballet schools and I do a few jumping
jacks to amp myself up because it is go-time, Etta “Kick It in the Ass” Sinclair, let’s do this. Ballet or bust.
I choose one sort of because it’s nearby but mostly because it’s near what sounds like a really good Indian restaurant in the village and I guess that’s the place I’m in with food right now and hell if I’m going to question it. I call and they say someone can give me an unofficial tour, and then I eat first, because I’m afraid two hundred ballerinas will scare me right out of that good place I’m in, and where I sit outside I can see some girls walking down the sidewalk with duffels and leg warmers, some leaning against the front of the building and smoking cigarettes, some laughing and hanging out in the courtyard behind the building. They’re tiny and white, big surprise, and they all have that flat stiff-necked way of walking, but they’re talking to each other, laughing, gesturing in that effortlessly beautiful way only dancers can and I never know if I do too, with those wrists and those fingers like you don’t care, like everything’s rehearsed and learned and memorized.
I go to the front desk and sign something and eventually this student comes out who seems bored but nice and takes me on a tour. “This is our practice studio,” she says. “This is our cafeteria, and this is . . . our other practice studio.” She giggles. “And here’s another practice studio . . .”
We finally go into a practice studio that actually has people practicing. A choreographer is ordering around a bunch of them, but most of the rest are in small groups—“wait, I thought it was stage right first,” “wait, I thought frappe was first”—and a few younger girls are stretching in the corner, maybe about to take their place, plié-ing and revelé-ing and making me miss being a kid.
I stretch out one leg and point my toe, just a little. I’m wearing leggings and I have my pointe shoes in my bag, just in case, but right now it’s enough just to stretch out a little with the kids, to be part of something.
My tour guide goes over to the choreographer, and he laughs at something she says and takes a swig from a water bottle. He asks her a question, she smiles and points to me, and then he’s motioning at me to come over.
“How many years?” he says. It’s a pretty common opener.
I was this little fat-legged kid running all the way up the stairs to her first class while my mom panted and paused on the second flight, yelling at me to wait up. “Thirteen years.”
“On pointe for how long?”
“Five years.”
“And you’re how old?”
“Seventeen.”
He smiles. “Impressive.”
“Merci.”
“And you’re interested in the school?”
“Uh-huh.” I don’t need to mention that I have no idea under what circumstances I could end up here. I don’t know if I’m really interested in the school or if I’m just interested in saying good-bye to Nebraska.
He slings his bag over his shoulder and says, “I’m off for a period. Of course I can’t officially . . .”
“No, of course.”
“Can’t officially anything, but I would like to see you dance, if you don’t mind?”
I’m not an idiot. I know why he wants to see me dance, and I know it’s because I don’t look even a little like any of the girls in this room, and hey, if it gets me a look and it gets him to see me I’ll take it, right? He wants to know how I dance with this body, and maybe he wants to know if I’m the black girl I bet they’d like to have at this school, and I will pretty gladly be his experiment if it means I get to dance for someone who knows ballet for the first time in what feels like a billion years.
But then he takes me to this small practice room and I lace up my shoes and holy shit, I’m scared to death.
“Any routine you know,” he says. “No pressure. Whatever you’re comfortable with.”
What I’m comfortable with.
Rachel’s lap.
Sticking my fingers down my throat.
Geometry proofs.
My attic.
Bianca.
Bianca.
Bianca in my attic.
Fouettés.
I dance.
It feels good. I know I’m doing well, and he’s smiling, and I just go and go and go and I’m this free animal, I’m this little bird with a big ass and I am nailing these moves and I am doing them free and big and me, I am sinking into them and spinning out of them and I’m stretched and long and beautiful. I’m not wearing the right clothes for this and I don’t care. I haven’t practiced being up on pointe again enough and I don’t care. I don’t care about anything because I am in New York and I am dancing at a ballet school and this, this is the dream, this was always the dream.
Except I stop, and that’s it.
The magic’s gone.
It was only here when I was moving.
He smiles and says, “You’re a fantastic dancer.”
“Thank you.”
There’s a but.
He thinks a long time before he says, “But—and by no means is this the final word, and you should absolutely audition—”
“Right.”
“I think you should think hard about if this is the right place for you.”
I don’t fit.
He says, “There’s not a thing wrong with you, my dear, but you don’t perform ballet like a ballerina. There’s a certain kind of poise, of control—”
Control.
“—a kind of discipline—”
Discipline.
“That I’m not sure I see in you. You’re a lovely ballet dancer, Etta. But I’m not sure right now that you’re a ballerina. But like I said, I’m far from the final word, and we’re not looking for perfect dancers. Just dancers who look like they want to be taught.”
“I don’t look like I want to be taught?”
He laughs, not altogether warmly this time. “You look like you’re already doing it how you want to be doing it.”
“Oh.”
He says, “No, I just . . . There’s a looseness about you, Etta. There’s a bit of unpredictability in the way you move. It isn’t bad, but it isn’t something that’s likely to make you a solid part of a company. You have to be able to hold certain positions stiffly, to execute moves with complete precision, and you seem to favor something a bit . . .”
More free.
I favor something a bit more free.
“Thank you,” I say. “Thank you for seeing me.”
I’m walking back to Brentwood, and I just finally put the fucking pieces together.
Rachel was wrong. I was wrong. Ballet was not the problem.
This, dancing, me, was never the problem.
It was these damn programs.
It was these damn rules.
It was everything that wasn’t my feet, the music, me.
It was all this stuff shoving me into a box that is too small.
It was all the shit I just do not need in my life anymore.
Back at Brentwood, I turn wild pirouettes that throw me into the trash cans in the hallways and people laugh and laugh and cheer me on. I am curves instead of lines, but that is still shapes. That is still dancing. I’m not wrong, and neither was the school, we just weren’t right for each other, but beautiful ballet can still be right for me.
I don’t know where all this perspective is coming from except from the part of me that really wants to logically justify how goddamn much I want to go to Brentwood, holy shit.
Who cares that they don’t have a good dance department.
I would be their dance department. I would be the fucking crap out of it.
• • •
I’m sitting outside the audition room between John Sable and Mila Tran. They’re not exactly chatty, but I can’t blame them because fuck if I am either. Every once in a while a real student walks by and wishes us luck and toggles their feet between our sneakers or whatever, like foot-flirting, and then they’re gone and I might as well not be in Brentwood, goddamn lovely Brentwood, anymore, because this is just a
ny audition which means I’m just scared out of my mind.
It’s not in an auditorium, which on one hand is good because holy shit don’t put me on a stage right now, please, but it’s also freaking scary because it’s just in this classroom and I don’t know what it looks like in there. I know we don’t get a piano. I know that I can hear just the blur of everyone’s voices in there and every single one of them sounds really good.
This isn’t like the first round and maybe even the second round where I could scrape by on being just okay. Being funny isn’t going to get me anywhere here. They don’t care about my personality, they care about my talent. And I don’t have enough.
scared shitless I text Bianca as John Sable goes in.
She responds almost immediately. She’s still at home. She has her inpatient check-in later today. I won’t be there.
just remember she says. beeeee yourself
Fucking Aladdin quote. This shouldn’t make me feel better. But it does.
Because you know what, screw it. I’m the girl who’s inspired by people telling her the damn cliché to be herself. I’m the girl who’s too loud and too much and too big for a lot of people. I’m the girl who got through two rounds of cutthroat auditions on her damn personality.
So what the hell, right? Let’s see this shit through.
I text just bee back, and then Sable comes out and it’s my turn.
There’s a whole group of people in the front, and I know it’s the board, and I don’t know why I was expecting a bunch of white guys in suits, I mean, this is musical theater. They’re half girls, a quarter minorities, which is obviously better than Nebraska so I’ll take it, and they’re definitely at least a third gay so that should be cool, but somehow that makes this all a hundred times scarier because eesh, these aren’t just clipboarded people I don’t know, these are grown-up versions of me, these are people who I actually want to like me.