Page 11 of Nemesis

The soft words wrap around my ribs in an unfamiliar way, tightening until I’m forced to take a thick breath.

“I’m not the lead anymore. You don’t have to bring me flowers.”

Her head tilts on her delicate neck. “I know.”

The girl is already turning away to let me warm up when I catch her arm. “What’s your real name, Bambi?”

“You know, I’ve never had a nickname before.” She laughs, and dimples form on either cheek. “My name is Stella, but I’d rather you didn’t use it.”

Something happens to my lips. The top one twitches into an expression I haven’t used in a really long time. It’s curious…and dangerous. I can’t afford attachments like this.

“Anyway, I reserved a seat on the upper deck, so I’ll be able to see you just fine.”

What?

“There’s nothing to see,” I mutter in confusion. “I’m practically in the wings tonight.” Irina took the director seriously when he said he wanted me repositioned to the very back of the stage.

“I don’t care. I like the way your dancing makes me feel.”

I snort. “How’s that?”

“Powerful.” She tilts her head with the word. “Watching you makes all the bad parts feel worth it. Like it all leads to somewhere in the end.”

I keep spinning the rose in my grip as she walks away, whispering her name into my mind. Stella. It suits her. Soft. Feminine. Too naive for the nasty world she’s navigating.

My finger seeks out a thorn on the stem. I press the thin pad of my thumb into the point until a red bead of blood rolls down to my knuckle, hot and thick.

Some misguided, protective part of my heart wants to grab that girl’s shoulders and shake. To convince her to find anything else to be good at. To leave this career that hoards more money into the pockets of ugly, rich men and leaves its women eulogized by aged black-and-white photographs hanging in the studio lobby.

She’s ridiculous if she thinks I have an ounce of power in this world. The thought follows me through my final warm-up and all the way to the stage.

Sweat slips down my powdered brow as the world spins in a kaleidoscope of color. With every rotation, the dark pit of the audience blurs in my vision. There on one beat, gone on the next. Searing pain leaps up my thigh with each relevé to the tip of my toe.

Pain and darkness. Blinding and throbbing.

The orchestra rises into a triumphant symphony of sound, marking the last eighth of music. I never remember this part of the show afterward. It’s too easily lost in the crashing of cymbals and gasping breaths. The other corps dancers are a blur in my peripheral vision, spinning on their own axes. Under the hot stage lights, pain is disguised as adrenaline. The crowd almost feels like camaraderie.

Twelve turns into fifteen.

More sweat pours down my face.

With one final push of my shrieking calf, I pull my arms in, whipping around faster through the air. I flip my head around, spotting the audience until the final note blasts through the air, and I finally come down, sliding back into my final pose.

For a moment, the entire theater is silent.

The applause starts small, a single clap like the first drop of rain before the downpour. I blink, and the circumstances shift. The massive theater roars in applause. Hundreds of people rise, clap, shriek, and holler.

I taste iron in every inhale.

This.

This is why I do it, I remember, gazing past all the girls in front of me to see the black pit of the audience jump up from their seats. This is why I can’t leave. It’s a toxic relationship built on the rickety foundation of narcissism and pride. My head dips in time with the other dancers, taking a modest bow that no one sees before the curtains sweep closed.

“Thank God that’s over. I’m starving…”

“That last turn section almost did me in⁠—”

The spell snaps. Miserable reality flickers back in.