Dancing in Red Shoes Will Kill You Page 2

  My relationship with Melissa was based on our mutual love for ballet, as well as our mutual mistrust of each other. It all started when we were in our first ballet class together at Miss Penny’s School of Dance. We were in the same recital number, a rendition of that great classical ballet Little Miss Muffet. Our costumes consisted of red tutus and red spray-painted ballet shoes. We were each given a tuffet, or more accurately a little white wooden stool, designed to distract the audience from noticing we didn’t know much actual ballet. We were supposed to dance around the tuffets and every once in a while return to them in a cute pose. The dance was to end with one final extravaganza in which we spun with our arms over our heads and ran back to our tuffets as a large cardboard spider dropped from the rafters.

  No one was ever really sure what happened, but somehow Melissa and I ran for the same tuffet, turning the final tableau into one big game of musical chairs. Being a bit larger in the buttocks area than Melissa, I succeeded in knocking her off the stool and onto the stage floor, at which time she began screaming words that an auditorium of parents were unaccustomed to hearing from a five-year-old. I, on the other hand, held my pose with a big smile as the curtain raced shut in front of us.

  The official videotape captured it all, except for who was at fault. The camera guy apparently thought we were so cute, he zoomed in to get a close-up of our dueling derrières. We never found out if the empty tuffet was to the right or the left.

  After the show Melissa’s mother promised my parents she’d “get to the bottom of it.” Later my mother, who wasn’t much of a stage mother even then, laughed about the whole thing. She said she pictured Melissa and her parents watching the video over and over in slow motion, freeze-framing it in certain places like CIA agents trying to catch the real assassin.

  That was the first sign of Melissa’s competitive nature. What began as a mere kindergarten scuffle evolved into a full-fledged rivalry once Melissa realized I could match her leap for leap and extension for extension. From then on, fueled by a pushy mother and a mean streak the length of a hundred pointe shoes lying toe to heel, Melissa has tried to sabotage every good thing that’s come my way.

  Case in point: second grade. A Valentine sent to me by Richie Cruz is mysteriously intercepted. Later it’s passed around the room for everyone to laugh at, sending a red-faced Richie to the rest room and thus ending the short, happy life of my first romance.

  Third grade. Miss Penny’s recital, Hawaiian Holiday. The pin holding my grass skirt to the back of my leotard becomes unfastened just as I’m about to go onstage. After swaying my hips a few times, the grass skirt ends up bunched between my legs. Guess whose hula hands were behind me when I was waiting in the wings?

  For several years every recital held a new surprise. Torn tights. Missing headpieces. As I got older, I learned how to lock up my stuff and keep it away from Melissa. But even now I’m cautious of her—always waiting for the other pointe shoe to drop.

  I zipped my dance bag and threw it in my locker. Before Melissa had a chance to crack any more stupid boob jokes, the rest of the girls in Miss Alicia’s sixth-period ballet class began pouring in. Half were chattering about the upcoming auditions for Cinderella, while the other half seemed equally excited about someone named Gray.

  “Oh my God, did you see how cute he was?” Ivy Thompson said, dropping her dance bag in a locker next to mine.

  “Who?” I said.

  “The new guy who transferred here from somewhere up north this semester. He’s got the cutest eyebrows.”

  Ivy has a thing for eyebrows and it is the first feature she notices on everyone, including me, which is pretty amazing. Mine, by the way, are okay with her, but could be a little thinner.

  “Where did you see him?” I said.

  Melissa looked away from the mirror where she had been studying her sideways silhouette, so thin and flat it was almost nonexistent. “He just started working in the school store. I needed new pointe shoes, and he waited on me.”

  Yeah, sure, I thought. Melissa had a bag full of pointe shoes that were in great condition.

  “I got the whole story,” she said. “His mom’s poet-in-residence at the university this semester. She’ll be doing some public readings and, being the lover of poetry that I am, I told him I’d go.”

  “Oh,” I said, “and who is your favorite poet again—Mater Goose?”

  Melissa went back to basking in her own reflection. “I never even heard of him,” she said.

  I could always count on Melissa being so self-absorbed that she didn’t even get it when the joke was on her.

  She pulled out her American lit book and pointed to the cover. “This is my favorite poet. It’s Gray’s, too.”

  “Walt Whitman?”

  “Gray’s favorite poem is ‘Song of Myself,’ Melissa said, adding, “It’s my favorite too.”

  I adjusted my leotard strap one more time. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  “You know,” Melissa said, “if I weren’t a dancer, I think I’d probably be a poet.”

  I snapped my locker shut and spun the dial. “Excuse me while I go barf.”

  Ivy, who was adjusting the elastic on her ballet shoes, leaned over and looked at the cover of Melissa’s English book. “Hmm, Walt Whitman—he’s got some nice eyebrows.”

  It was a relief to finally get to the barre and start class. Miss Alicia dragged a chair to the middle of the room and rested her hand on the back of it. While she demonstrated a plié combination, I crossed my eyes at Joey in the mirror. It was a secret sign we devised when we were in elementary school. The eyes are the only part of the body you can signal with and not get into trouble in ballet class.

  Miss Alicia was nearly fifty years old and married with two children, but we still called her Miss, along with her first name. It’s one of those ballet studio traditions, like dancing on your toes or turning your feet out like a duck. No one messes with it. It had been a long time since she’d danced professionally. Now she was about ten pounds overweight, twenty-five if you’re talking ballet pounds.

  Miss Alicia started the music and sat with her legs in second position. While she rested her hands on each knee and held her elbows to the sides, her head moved up and down as we lowered ourselves into grande pliés and then straightened up again.

  I looked at myself in the mirror as we held the final relevé. My eyes traveled from the floor up, doing the ritual inventory: heels high, knees straight, hips turned out, back straight, stomach in, shoulders down. Everything was perfect except you know what, where I looked like a hard-boiled egg that had been cooked too long and the white stuff was bulging out in great big poofs, beyond the boundaries of the shell.

  Ivy was in front of me and Melissa was in front of her. They both had perfect ballet bodies. Melissa didn’t even have to wear a bra with her leotard, and Ivy was fine with a flimsy thing from Victoria’s Secret. It felt like I’d skipped that phase entirely, going from the stretchy training bra with the pink bow in the middle straight to the steel underwire and two-inch straps. I’d even grown another full cup size the summer before junior year, bringing my bra size up to a double D.

  “Tight fifth position, tight, tight, tight,” Miss Alicia said. “Hold…hold…and down.”

  She changed the music and demonstrated the next combination with her arms and hands. I watched the big blue ring on her right index finger as she pretended her hand was a foot, pointing and lifting to the staccato piano notes. She often pantomimed the steps she wanted us to do, but every once in a while she would use her legs and feet in such a spectacular way that we were all reminded of her former greatness. I couldn’t imagine how it felt not to dance onstage anymore.

  Once we finished at the barre, Miss Alicia broke from the usual class schedule and asked us to sit in the center of the room.

  “I have some announcements.” She turned the chair around and sat with her arms resting on the back. “As you all know, at the end of the week we will have auditions fo
r Cinderella.”

  Murmurs swept across the studio.

  “The good news is that there will be parts for everyone. Of course, some parts are not as large as others, but every part is important to the overall ballet.”

  Knowing chuckles mixed in with the murmurs. Someone sitting a few rows behind me whispered in a Spanish accent, mimicking Miss Alicia, “There are no small parts, just small ballet dancers.” Another voice answered, “Yeah, small ballet dancers with fat asses.” Another voice, which I immediately recognized, chimed in, “Or gigantic boobs.”

  I pretended not to hear Melissa’s comment, even though I could see her face in the mirror.

  Miss Alicia frowned at the class for a few seconds and then continued. “In some versions of Cinderella, the stepmother and stepsisters are played by men for comic effect. Because we have a lack of male dancers, the only female part played by a man will be the part of the stepmother.”

  “That part’s for Joey,” yelled Devin Demanne, the only other male dancer in the advanced class.

  “I wouldn’t think of robbing you of your greatest role,” Joey deadpanned back.

  Miss Alicia clapped three times. “Enough, enough,” she said. “There will be none of that. The choosing of parts will be very objective. A choreographer from Ballet on the Beach has agreed to stage the ballet and will be completely in charge of auditions. If you want a principal role, I suggest you begin working on the extension of your legs rather than your mouths.”

  Immediately everyone began stretching in some way or another. Legs sprang open and arms reached forward until chests were lying flat on the ground. Other legs stretched to the ceiling as knees tried to meet foreheads. Great extensions were one way to stand out at the audition. And to get great extensions, you needed the stretch as well as the strength.

  “I see you’ve gotten my message,” Miss Alicia said. “From now until the auditions, don’t waste any of your time.” She clapped three times again. “Now stand for the center work.”

  Once she had taught us the combination of steps, we danced in small groups. When it was my turn to rest against the barre and watch, I surveyed the competition. There were several worthy contenders: Melissa, Ivy, Lourdes—a senior who, like Joey, planned to postpone college and go straight to a ballet company after graduation—and a couple of others who weren’t consistently excellent but could appeal to someone who hadn’t seen them dance day after day.

  Getting a lead part was definitely going to be tough.

  After class I waited for Joey in front of the girl’s dressing room. As he approached, Devin trailed behind him. “Don’t think the gay guy always gets the girl,” he said. “In this ballet it’ll be different.”

  “I don’t always get the girl,” Joey said, putting his arm around me. “Just the one you want.”

  “Shut up, you fa—,” Devin shouted, stopping himself as the band director walked by.

  Ever since freshman year, Devin had resented Joey and me—me, for not going out with him, and Joey, for being his biggest ballet competitor. He tried to use the gay thing against Joey, but it always backfired—no one listened to his stupid jokes.

  Joey laughed as Devin stormed off. “Let’s go find Paterson,” he said.

  Aside from the dance studio, the art room was my favorite place in the school. Artwork hung on every available wall space, and wherever you turned you could find something beautiful to stare at. Paterson was working on a sketch of Lourdes, who had modeled for the figure-drawing class. “I can’t get this ribbon right,” she muttered before she even knew we were there.

  “What are you talking about?” Joey said. “It’s great.”

  “No, it’s not right,” Paterson said. She took the eraser and removed the whole pointe shoe. Lourdes sat with a stump at the end of her leg.

  I surveyed the other work surrounding Paterson’s easel. “Hey, where’s the picture of Joey?”

  “I’m saving that one,” Paterson said.

  “For what?” Joey asked, affecting a scholarly inflection. “New York’s famed Metropolitan Museum of Art?”

  “I wish,” Paterson said. “I’m waiting till everything’s finished to turn in the whole portfolio.” She picked up her sketch pencil. “Can you guys occupy yourselves for a while before I drive us home…please?”

  Joey and I looked at each other. We were always waiting for Paterson to finish something, but it was better than taking the bus.

  “C’mon,” Joey said, “let’s go to the school store and check out the new guy.”

  “Not you too?” I said. “Melissa and Ivy are already in love. What did you hear?”

  “Just that his sexual persuasion wasn’t immediately identifiable.”

  “And you learned this how?” Paterson asked.

  Joey looked at the floor. “I admit it wasn’t a very good source…. It was Devin.”

  Paterson groaned. “Mr. Homophobe himself. I’d be a little skeptical of anything Devin had to say.”

  “Don’t you remember?” I said. “After I refused to go out with him, he tried to spread a rumor that I had implants.”

  “Well, if one of us doesn’t get a date soon,” Joey said, “there’ll be even more rumors.” He turned toward me. “Maybe you can go out with the new guy and get some fresh blood into this triumvirate.”

  “Okay, we’ll check him out,” I said. If there was someone at Farts worth dating, I definitely wanted to see it for myself. I turned to Paterson, who was trying to reconstruct Lourdes’s left foot. “Fifteen minutes, okay?”

  Inside the school store, I didn’t see anyone who looked like the hot guy I’d been hearing about. I was surveying the lamb’s wool and various types of toe pads when Joey called me over. “Look at this,” he said, gesturing toward a poster on the wall next to the tights.

  Attention Dancers:

  The school store has many of your needs.

  Leg warmers, leotards

  toe shoes, tights

  ice packs, Ace bandages

  tape and gauze.

  But, we’re sorry to say,

  we’re all out of applause.

  “Very cute,” I said. “It makes us sound like a bunch of masochistic egotists.”

  “That wasn’t how I meant it.”

  Joey and I spun around. I stared into the eyes of the speaker and immediately knew he had to be Gray. My next thought was that the name Gray was all wrong for him. It was too bland, too flat, too insipid. His eyes looked at the poem and then back to me. With those eyes he should have been named Aquamarine, Cerulean, Indigo. Yes, that was it, Indigo.

  “I’m Gray Foster,” he said. “I didn’t mean to offend the dancers. It’s just a poem I put together while I was looking at the inventory list.”

  I laughed self-consciously. “I was just kidding,” I said. “I’m a big fan of poetry.” Ugh. I was just as bad as Melissa. The only poetry I’d read was in English class.

  While Joey introduced himself, I did my own inventory: dark wavy hair pulled back in a ponytail, good body (not as good as Joey’s, but good), and those eyes, whoa. I really hoped Devin was wrong.

  “Can I help you find something?” Gray said.

  “Uh…umm.” Suddenly I couldn’t remember what I was looking for.

  “Didn’t you want some lamb’s wool?” Joey said.

  “Yeah, lamb’s wool,” I said, “for my pointe shoes.” How stupid did that sound? Of course it was for my pointe shoes, or maybe I was going to make a sweater with it.

  Gray picked up a small plastic packet with some kind of gel inside it. “We just got these in,” he said. “Some of the dancers are using them instead of lamb’s wool or foam rubber pads.”

  Joey picked one up and squished it between his fingers. “They look like breast implants.”

  I shot him a look, the kind I usually reserved for Melissa. Then I quickly glanced at Gray to see if his eyes were on my breasts. Surprisingly, they weren’t. He was looking at my face. Was that a good sign?

  “I thin
k I’d rather stick to the lamb’s wool,” I said.

  Gray bent over to get a fresh box out of the cabinet. Joey and I took the opportunity to check out his butt.

  I was in a daze by the time I pulled out my wallet to pay for the lamb’s wool, captivated by Gray’s looks and charm. I could have forked over two week’s allowance and not even known it. By the time Joey and I got out of the store, Joey had invited Gray to watch the auditions for Cinderella and I’d professed a deep love for poetry as well as the desire to attend one of his mother’s readings.

  “So what did you two think about the new guy?” Paterson said as she steered her Jetta out of the parking lot.

  “I think Devin might have been right,” I said.

  “No way,” Joey answered.

  I turned toward the backseat. “I’m serious. He didn’t even look at my boobs when you made that crack about breast implants. And, by the way, what was that all about?”

  Joey shrugged. “I’m sorry. They looked like implants. It was the first thing that came to my mind.”

  “Where have you seen breast implants?” Paterson said.

  “On one of those TV specials where they show you things like liposuction and plastic surgery. They made little slits around the woman’s nipple and—”

  “Okay, that’s enough,” I said. “We believe you. Let’s get back to why you don’t think he’s gay.”

  “Oh, that,” Joey said. “He was checking you out like crazy when you weren’t looking. He’s a typical guy, just better at it than most. Too bad. He’s really good looking.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, secretly shouting hurray inside.

  “That’s okay,” Joey said. “I’ve got to focus on getting into a ballet company this year anyway. He’d just be a distraction.”

  I put my head back on the leopard print headrest and for a few minutes forgot about the next day’s auditions. I was definitely ready for a distraction like Gray Foster.