If I didn’t look like a pig before, I certainly did now.
Desperate to get out of here before word made its way up to Bianca that I was considering trying out, I grabbed onto Olivia and pulled her from the crowd. We made our way back to the school side of the building, the door shutting with a resounding thud.
“Man, those girls,” Olivia muttered under her breath. “It was like I’d suggested you blow up the school or something.” She glanced over at me with a sympathetic smile and that just made me feel worse.
I shrugged as I reached up and began pulling my hair into a ponytail on the top of my head. What did I care what those girls thought?
Sure, they were my peers. And yes, they knew just as much about dancing as I did. And maybe they did have a sliver of realism when they looked at me and gave me thatare you jokinglook.
I knew dancers. I knew what they had to do to maintain their perfect figure. A lot of them had given up cake and cookies. I bet most hadn’t had a milkshake in a decade. Some of them had been on hard-core diets foras long as they could remember.
All of them had spent a lifetime training and working and compromising and making sacrifices, in some form or another.
So they knew what it was like. And they knew the cut-throat competition that would take place now that something as big as Juilliard was coming to our small academy.
For me to stand there, in my size, daydreaming about trying out and worse, imagining that I could even win? Well, I would stare at me too.
I sighed as I shrugged and threaded my arm through Olivia’s. “Let’s not talk about it anymore.”
Olivia and I began walking down the hallway to the chem lab. The bell was about to ring and there was no way I wanted to be late. If I couldn’t have Juilliard, then I needed the grades if I hoped to get into a good college.
Olivia was quiet for a few seconds before I felt her take in a deep breath. I braced myself for her response. But, nothing came. Instead, I felt her relax as we both walked into chem just as the bell rang.
I blew out my breath as soon as I dropped onto my seat. I took a second to calm my racing mind. My heart was pounding, even if I didn’t want to admit it.
There was a part of me that wished, deep, deep down, that I had the courage to try out. That maybe, just maybe, I might have a chance. That I might proveto my mom and the whole ballet community that I was good enough to dance.
That if they looked past their preconceived notionsabout what beauty and grace were, they just might find the talent that resided in me.
Maybe for the rest of the day, I was going to tell myself that I would try out. That I would be brave. Thinking about it wasn’t going to harm anyone, and when I thought those things, I felt happy.
And was it so wrong to feel happy? Just for a couple of hours. And then I would return to reality. I would return to my future.
A bleak, depressing, ballet-less future.
But until then, I was going to live my dream. Besides, who would it hurt?
Maybe me.
But I was okay with that.
I was used to being hurt.
SEVEN
ETHAN
I was standing in the same studio as last night, but it couldn’t have felt more different. Rather than just me and Collette standing here in relative silence, the room was now filled with unhappy football players on one end and miserable-looking ballerinas at the other.
We were all doing leg stretches on the floor as we waited for Collette’s mom to show up and lead this class. Well, everyone else was waiting for Ms. Boucher.
I was waiting for Collette.
I knew she wasn’t in this class, but that didn’t keep me from looking for her. Every time the door opened, my head snapped up to see who it was. It was stupid, but I kept expecting her to walk in the door and give me crap for how inflexible I was or how I ought to be stretching more in my off hours. But mainly, I was waiting for her to tell me yes or no.
“Dude, are you even listening to me?”
I looked over to see Ryan watching me oddly and I realized he’d been talking for a while and I hadn’t heard a single word. “Sorry,” I said. “What did you say?”
