She steps closer and turns my hand slightly toward the streetlight.
I don’t see it until she turns my hand.
|
/|\
Everyone in Tar City knows those four lines. They’re carved into the rusted sign at The Cut. They are spray-painted on brick.They’re stamped into old mining barriers no one bothered to tear down. They’re scratched into the fence that circles the Pit.
I stare at my hand. It’s the mark of The Cut—the original shaft from the first tunnels. The symbol my grandfather used to trace with his ring finger when he talked aboutlegacy.
It’s The St. Clair claim.
Fifty-Four
THEN | SISK
Iroll my shoulders back and let the swell of the violins pull me into the opening sequence. A cascade of precise movements. Count, turn, extend, hold—my body executes the choreography with an autonomy that bypasses thought entirely, the months of relentless repetition having seared the movements into muscle memory until they exist separate from consciousness.
The predawn practices and midnight sessions, the ice packs numbing throbbing joints, the blood staining the inside of my pointe shoes—all of it fades into the background where it belongs.
I drive into the first grand jeté with more force than is strictly required, and I hear a faint, sharp intake of breath from the sea of strangers beyond the lights. A current of grim satisfaction runs through me.
I deepen the cambré beyond the limits of rehearsal, allowing a fractional tremor to linger in my hand before it finds its placement, injecting something visceral and unrefined into the sterile beauty of the piece.
They’ve titled this balletAscension,and so I rise into a series of fouetté turns, my world condensing to the single,unwavering point I spot in the blackness. This is the moment where everything I have ever done either becomes worth it or it doesn’t. It’s a binary equation: the sum total of my life reduced to this spinning, breathless moment of potential triumph or catastrophic failure.
My knees tremble through the final sequence—not visibly, but I feel the vibration traveling through my bones as I push into one last extension, pulling breath from somewhere deep and bruised within me.
The music crashes to a halt. A moment of profound silence. Then, the applause erupts, a tidal wave of sound that breaks over the stage. I dip into a bow, arrange my features into a smile, and perform the final gestures of gratitude, my body still dancing even after the music has died.
When I straighten, I let my eyes sweep the crowd once. A sea of faces—parents, faculty, donors.Not a single one of them here for me.
I step back as the next dancer takes her place. I disappear into the wings, telling myself the hollow feeling is just exhaustion. I push through the other dancers, past the stage manager’s hushed instructions, the smile plastered on my face until the backstage door clicks shut behind me.
I’m halfway down the hall before I break into a run, making it to the dressing room just as the numbers on my locker start to blur. The first sob catches me by surprise. I slap both hands over my mouth.
The door bangs open. “Sisk!” Marabeth, still in costume with pink cheeks, rushes in. “You were incredible! The panel was literally on the edge of their seats!”
I turn away, but she’s already plopping down next to me.
“Hey—” she laughs softly. “Are you crying?”
I sob harder.
“Post-performance crash. You pour everything out and then it all just hits you.” She squeezes my shoulder. “You’ve been working your ass off for this. You finally let it out. It’s good.”
Right.
“That last turn?” she says. “Perfection.”
I make a noise that’s supposed to be a laugh.
“Come out with us tonight,” she says. “No hiding in your place. We’re celebrating. Rooftop on Mercer?”
I shake my head automatically. “I’m exhausted.”
“Exactly. You deserve it.”
