“I’m so sorry. I slept like a log. Honestly, if it weren’t so loud this morning in the hall, I would have totally overslept. I didn’t even hear my alarm clock. But it was definitely worth it.” Mae laughs. She laughs a lot. I noticed that last night, and a part of me envies the ease with which she’s made her fresh start, while I... well, haven’t.
“It was worth it,” I confirm. We danced with the others on the terrace until almost midnight. No choreography, no pressure. Just having fun.
I tried not to dwell on the moment when Jase left right before I started my improvisation.
“I would definitely have woken you up if you hadn’t shown up on your own,” I add a little belatedly.
“You would have had to notice that I was missing first.”
“I would have noticed that. There are only nineteen of us, so if one of us is missing, it’s obvious.”
“Probably. Speaking of which, which classes are you taking?” She rummages in her backpack and pulls out a very rumpled timetable, spreading it out on the table in front of her. The sight of the tattered paper irks me a little. I follow her lead and take my Bullet Journal out of my bag and open it. It’s pink. It may be a total cliché, but I don’t care; I love pink.
I’ve written my schedule tidily on one of the first pages. This new beginning was also an occasion for a new Bullet Journal.
Mae sighs, and I look up at her. There’s a wistful expression on her face.
“What?”
She sighs again. “You’re one ofthose.”
“One of what?” My eyebrows go up.
“I have a theory about dancers: We’re either absolute perfectionists or totally chaotic.”
“Doesn’t that apply to everyone?” I ask with a smile.
“Basically, yes, but in ballet, one tends to be a perfectionist anyway. You either transfer that to the rest of your life, or you go completely in the opposite direction. I bet you always got good grades in school.”
I sense the blood rushing to my cheeks and feel like I’ve been caught red-handed. “Okay, that’s true. I do tend to be a perfectionist. In everything.”
Mae points her spoon at me triumphantly. “That’s what Ithought. Come on, show it to me.” She reaches out her free hand for my Bullet Journal. I hand it to her. She glances quickly at my timetable and breaks into a wide smile. “Looks like we have all our classes together.”
“Really?” I reach for her schedule and have to smile too. She’s right. Every morning, we begin with classical ballet, followed by pointe. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, we have pas de deux up next, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays, contemporary dance and lyrical jazz. After lunch, we have the theory classes: music theory, art of performing, choreography, and two other subjects.
“Looks like you’re stuck with me,” Mae says with a grin.
“Or you’re stuck withme,” I say. All at once, I’m grateful that Mae’s suitcase gave up the ghost yesterday.
“I think it’s going to be pretty cool. Katie told me yesterday that all the technique classes are mixed with students from other years, aside from classical ballet and pointe. Maybe we’ll even have some classes with her, Susannah, and Lia.”
“Yes, maybe. That would be—” I stop abruptly as another thought occurs to me. If the technique classes are for all levels together, then... there’s a chance that I might end up in a class with Jase. My palms start to sweat.
“What?” Mae asks, looking at me curiously.
I shake my head and actively repress every thought of Jase. I’ve already spent far too much time thinking about him over the last twenty-four hours. “Nothing. I think we should get going, shouldn’t we? We still have to warm up before the first lesson.”
“Exactly. But at least take a bite of your sandwich first.” She firmly pushes the plate in my direction. “You can’t dance on an empty stomach.”
I sigh and do it for her. She’s right; I have to eat something. I manage to get down two or three bites before I give up, and we clear the table.
We’ve brought our bags with us so we can go directly from breakfast to the practice building. We fall into a crowd of dozens of students on their way to the studios, just like us. The high school students are headed to the classrooms instead. Apparently, they’ve got theory lessons first. A tall boy with thick, dark hair smiles and holds the door open for us as we reach our destination.
There are ballet studios on all three floors of the building, separated from the corridor by glass walls. A few have curtains drawn across, but this morning, most of them are open. We go up to the second floor to the last studio on the right, where most of the other first-semester students are already standing at the barres or sitting on the floor, warming up.
In comparison to the others, our class is relatively small. Nine girls and ten boys, none of us older than nineteen. Five of them—Raffael, Lucien, Georgia, Kelly, and Julie—have been here for four years already and got their high school diplomas before the summer. The others are just as new as us. Kaya just recently moved here from Japan, and Anthony and Jessica are from Boston, like me. The other ten have come from all over the country to be here.
We take off our sneakers in the corridor because we’re not allowed to walk on the studio floors with street shoes. Then we throw our bags in a corner and start to prepare for the first lesson. My hips crack in protest as I start my warm-up, and Mae sits on the floor, getting her ballet slippers ready.
