Chapter One
Ivy
My ears catch the muted rhythm of pointe shoes caressing the stage, the echo resounding in my ears, each delicate whisper a familiar sound, a perfect sound. It’s a sound that keeps my dreams of the ballet alive, though it also keeps me awake at night just as often. I’ll feel that sound in my bones for the rest of my life because each beat has meant moving forward rather than going backward . . . until now.
Waiting offstage for my cue, I close my eyes, the reverberation of the live orchestra working its way through my frame, murmuring that soon it will be my turn to move from the wings of this stage and emerge in the spotlights that burn with the heat of what feels like a thousand bonfires. The lights are both blinding and comforting, revealing all of me to the audience and yet hiding me from myself. I’ll admit that they’ve been a good distraction from the voice within my head, echoing that I’m not worth holding. Not worth loving. Maybe I’m worthy as a dance partner, but clearly—if my past relationships have anything to say about it—not in life.
This voice is always accompanied by another—a murmur of perfectionism that tells me that if I can just alter one more thing in my life, fix one more flaw, then I’ll be more worthy of love. Buteven as I shift, the end goal keeps shifting too, so achieving the dream version of myself feels impossible.
If I can’t find peace within myself, how will anyone find it beside me?
Glancing at Dmitri, who’s working through his preperformance ritual like he’s never chasséd over my heart in three-quarter time, I’d say he’s enough reason to forget why I wanted to dance on this stage in the first place.When you have a run-in with heartache, people have a strange way of tainting what we love and making it a shadow of the wholeness that we knew before the betrayal. This, I feel strongly. Something that should be lovely becomes unfamiliar.
And now, it’s been a long three months of rehearsals and performances with my dance partner for this show. I’m tired.
For the last six years, I’ve been a principal dancer with a world-renowned ballet company in New York City, The SoHo Ballet. After a brief stint in a summer intensive in Boston, I was recruited to the city after they saw a performance that someone recorded, which then went viral—well, viral in the ballet world, at least. It opened a handful of opportunities, one of them being a relocation to NYC.
As a young, optimistic ballerina, I was transported from my small hometown of Birch Borough to the hustle and bustle of the city—a place that inevitably sifts you into either quicksand or rock. The move was exhilarating and felt like the most gorgeous transition, the perfect storyline: small-town girl makes it in the big city and doesn’t look back. It’s an adventure that’s proved to be a dream and yet also a nightmare. Funny how that works.
I haven’t looked back, though. While I’ve missed Grey, my best friend in the whole world, and my family and dear friends back home, such as Sparrow and Lily, I’ve been driven to make something of myself outside of the tiny New England town that I used to call home. Now, I have connections across the world,know what it is to dance on a stage that legendary dancers have graced, and have learned how to time my steps to a live orchestra. To be fair, I learned that skill when the local band played jazz in the gazebo back in Birch Borough each summer, and I danced under the starlit sky to the nostalgic tunes. My love for music, especially of the classical kind, has carried me through not only my career but my life as well. It has touched on the love, the loss, and the deepest parts of me that process emotion through music.
And soon, I’ll return to my hometown for Christmas break. To say I’ve been counting the beats until I get to leave would be underselling my enthusiasm to go home.
After a grueling performance schedule, in just a few hours, I won’t need to have my hair in a bun so tight it gives me a headache or smell the scent of hairspray so strong I know I’m at a higher risk of flammability, especially when I’m near the stage lights. For now, I stay still, doing my best to avoid bumping into the stage crew and the other dancers moving between the wings backstage, my mind preoccupied with wondering which French pastry I’ll treat myself to first from Sparrow’s Beret when I’m back in Birch Borough.
Dmitri appears beside me, knocking me out of thoughts of warm croissants. My shoulders stiffen at his proximity, his presence a signal I stand at attention, waiting for the performance of a lifetime to unfold at this matinee showing of The Nutcracker, also known as the Super Bowl of ballet. While I should be elated, I’m ready to get this over with. I’m ready for this to be the last afternoon that I have to feel the man’s hands around my waist. It’ll be the last time I’m encouraged to smile toward him and pretend everything is okay.
Though it’s been a couple of years, I can’t forget the moment I found my current dance partner with Victoria, a soloist aspiring to become a principal, making use of an empty studioin ways that could’ve gotten them kicked out of the company. Through the tiny window in the door, I saw them holding each other. It was then that I turned myself around and decided that the time I’d spent pining for him, believing him when he looked at me like I was his world, trusting that he reserved a special grin only for me, and accepting when he said we should keep things professional until the season was over or he got a promotion, was real.
But it wasn’t.
And yet, the worst part of the whole hurtful situation happened in rehearsals a few weeks ago, when Dmitri and Victoria announced their engagement. Long ago, I stopped wanting to be a part of his life outside of the stage—and even dance has been tainted by his presence. But knowing that people who lead others on can find love while I’m still waiting for it doesn’t sit well on my heart.
“Ready, darling?” Dmitri approaches me with a smile, as if we’re not about to pretend to play house in an opera house.
“Oh, we both know that I’ve never been your darling,” I reply, grit entering my voice with unexpected huskiness. “Have I?”
His eyes widen, and he gives his shoulders a quick shake, his demeanor and stance changing just before I feel his arm wrap around my waist. The embrace isn’t romantic; it’s practical, as this is how we’ll enter stage right in about twenty seconds.
As the instruments hum and flow over our frames, I steal another glance at the man in whom I’ve invested so much of my time and energy. We met when I first arrived in the city, and Dmitri has been a constant in my life since I got here. There was once a time when he helped me learn the culture of the ballet company, showed me how to take the subway, and led me to invest myself in a future that proved never meant to be.
Sadly, Dmitri isn’t the first to break my heart. He’s not the first lesson I’ve had to learn in mistaking potential for a lack ofintegrity. But right now, I have a job to do. So as the music plays, and I remind myself to appear to be the perfect ballerina for the little ones in the audience who are dreaming of being like me one day, I also tell myself that it’s the last time I’m going to be an understudy and not the lead when it comes to love.
And later that night, when I’m on a plane to Boston and Birch Borough grows nearer minute by minute, I peek through the window at all of the lights below, their layout the grounded reversal of the night sky, and wish that, someday, instead of home being a place, my heart might find rest in a partner—not in dance but in life.
∞∞∞
As I walk toward the pavilion, the rush of the river roaring over the icy rocks and under the bridge sounds like the melody of growing up in my small town. I’ve been home for only a day, but I’m nearly sprinting to reach the temporary ice-skating rink set up in the middle of town like a beacon of Christmas cheer. The rink is small, one that our town constructs for a few weeks each year around the holidays. While there’s a full-sized rink in the next town, it wouldn’t be Birch Borough without creating its own unique way to celebrate the season.
My red coat is a blur over cobblestone streets and paved walkways as I speed toward the spot where Grey may already be waiting, doing my best to avoid the families distracted by their adorable little children.
First on tonight’s agenda is ice skating. Then I know a warm cup of hot chocolate is calling my name. If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to get one with extra whipped cream on top. The chocolate goodness might be enough to distract me from the quiet voicethat tells me—now that I’m back home—that I may not have the courage to go back to my life in the city.
But maybe it’s finally time for me to come home for good.
When I see the twinkle lights strung around a rectangle of people skating beneath the evening winter sky, I let myself really smile for the second time since I’ve returned. The first time was hugging my parents at the airport. Something about seeing people I’ve known throughout the years all around me feels like comfort and joy. As I reach the rink, I look for Grey, but I don’t see her yet. Pulling my skates from around my neck, I remove their guards and sit on a bench to lace up. My legs are humming with energy, and my nose is already tingling from the cold. It’s the perfect night.
Once I’m laced up, I stand and move toward one of the doors in the middle of the temporary rink, watching children whip past me. Classical music flows through speakers positioned around the ice. My face looks up to the sky as I glide onto the ice, lost in appreciating the illusion of warmth the twinkling lights above me bring to the frosty terrain. I take a deep breath of the chilly air, my heart reveling in the magic of the season, refusing to contemplate what happens after the new year.
