I’d mentioned to him once that I wanted to do what he did one day. He’d been a dancer first, then a choreographer when he aged out of his prime, and then a director. It wasn’t an uncommon career progression, but a company needed alotmore dancers than choreographers, so it wasn’t exactly an easy job to get. When he’d told me I could doThe Nutcracker, I’d taken it as a favor.
The fact that I hadn’t been paid for it—and he had—didn’t bother me at the time. It was valuable experience.
The fact that I hadn’t gottencredit…
“Asshole,” Amelia repeated. My lips twitched. Piotr had a rule about swearing during training and rehearsals—he said ballet dancers were meant to be classier than that—so I’d never actually heard Amelia swear before.
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Yeah you do,” Amelia said. “I watched that Nutcracker. Took my nieces, in fact, and you know what they said to me after?”
I raised a brow, waiting.
“They said,I want to be a ballerina.”
Oh.
I licked crumbs off my lips, taking that in. They were Amelia’s nieces, so they’d probably had a thought like that before, but…
The idea of making someone want to do what I did? Because of how I’d shown someone else to do it?
That was going to take a little processing. I shoved the last bite of blondie into my mouth to give myself a moment to think, savoring it as I licked the crumbs off my fingers and made happy noises I might have been embarrassed about if they’d been in front of anyone else. Anyone still in the company.
“Listen, I’m good at what I do. I’m a good teacher,” Amelia said. “I’m patient and I can guide people through bending their bodies to their will. I have 72-year-olds doing jetés and arabesques like they were born in a leotard. But I don’t have what you have.”
“Which is?” I asked. I wasn’t sure I had much of anything.
Amelia shrugged. “No idea, but you’ve got it. Vision, I guess,” she said, holding her hands up. “I know you’re interested in experimental stuff, and that’s the point of this competition—experimental, contemporary, fresh. They’re calling it Next Gen, which isn’t the most inventive name, but the whole point is to do things that’renew. You do new. It’s all very innovative, groupcompetition instead of individual so it’s lower pressure for the kids. You remember what the pressure was like.”
I did. My first competition had been when I was eight years old—and I’d won, but at the cost of waking up screaming in the night for weeks beforeandafter. I’d spent the entire morning beforehand throwing up. Not that I was any kind of expert on child development, but I didn’t think that could have been all that good for me.
“And, y’know, it’d help you out, too,” Amelia continued. “I know you always wanted to go into choreography. It’s a small competition but that’s because it’s exclusive, I practically had to sell a kidney to some of my contacts to get in. There are a lot of up-and-coming eyes on it, lots of interest from people about to really break out. If we win, and you’re named as the studio’s choreographer and you can add that to your resume alongside a major company…”
I nodded slowly. Yeah, it’d be…
Something.
And I wouldn’t have to figure out who I was without dance, if I could get a gig with a company that needed a choreographer. If my leg would hold up to that.
I dug the heel of my hand into the scar again, rubbing it hard as I thought. Amelia glanced at it, worry in her eyes, but didn’t say anything. Wouldn’t, I thought. She knew what life-changing injuries felt like. My last memory of her before today was her lying flat on the floor trying to hold in screams of pain, unable to move. Something had slipped or cracked or something in her lower back. I didn’t know the details, but I remembered the sound of her falling.
I figured that was why the studio was calledRising Up. Because that was what she’d done.
Now, she was offering me a hand to do the same. It was better than anyone else had.
“Okay,” I said. “Yeah, okay. I’m in.”
4
COOPER
My heart sankas I saw familiar faces leaving the dance studio—kids and their parents, holding hands, laughing and talking.
I was late. Again.
I wove my way around the crowd, fighting to get to the studio door. Amelia had a strict policy of not letting kids out of the studio until a responsible adult had come to pick them up. With the number of times I’d been late, I was grateful that Benji hadn’t been left to stand outside on his own.
It was just that, as I rushed past all the other responsible adults picking their kids up, still covered in grease and shop floor grit, all their eyes seemed to be on me.
