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Three easy credits. That’s what her advisor said when he signed Tasha up for Dance 101 at the beginning of the semester. Beginning ballet. She’s a former dancer, right? It should be simple; she needs the elective, and the easy A wouldn’t hurt. In fact, her GPA is in dire need of a boost if she’s going to keep her scholarship. So Tasha throws on a leo and tights under her ratty t-shirts and shuffles into the dance gym twice a week. She’ll squeak by under the radar if she stays sober enough and skinny enough. As long as there are no pointe shoes, there should be no problem.
The teacher notices her the second week. Tasha puts just a touch too much enthusiasm into her renversé , unwilling to leave it hanging in the air half-assed, and a second later his hand is on her shoulder in that too-close-for-comfort choreographer’s kind of way.
“You have training?” the man asks in an accented voice.
“Sure,” Tasha replies. Only a dozen years’ worth, give or take. She remembers the temporary foster mommy holding her six-year-old self’s hand and steering her into a glossy, echoing studio. Go. Make some friends.
Only that’s not what stuck. The rhythm of it intrigued her, and the aching stretch of her muscles fed the masochist already under development inside Tasha’s skin. She felt anointed in the sweat, and later in the bloody toe pads she peeled off post pas de deux.
She probably could’ve made a career of it if she’d been committed enough. Her lack of grand prix appearances or summer intensive tours would’ve made her a dark horse at any cattle call audition, but Tasha had talent. Has talent. Or she would if she, say, ate enough to stay the semi-permanent tremor in her core.
“Sure. I guess.” Tasha shrugs.
“Repertory Ballet Theater. Downtown. Tonight at seven.” The teacher winked.
Tasha felt nauseous. “Look,” she started, glancing around at her decidedly less graceful classmates, for once wishing she was the galumphing fat girl arguing her foot into a passé over in the corner. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but--” What is she going to say? No? Stop making a pass at me, you disgusting older man?
“No.” The teacher says, beating her to it. He makes a calm down motion, as if that’s going to help. “It’s a job. You know, work for pay?”
“Yeah,” Tasha replies. “And that’s illegal.”
“Oh, no, sweetheart.” The teacher scrubs his hand over his beard and squeezes his eyes shut. “No. Nothing like that. It’s community dance theater, and I have a piece in the spring showcase. Someone got injured. I need a body. That’s all.”
It’s almost soothing, the way he’s objectifying her. It isn’t her body he wants specifically, just someone to fill the space. He’s seeing her talent, recognizing it, and giving the kudos she’s lacked during all the in-between years when she was the only kid at recital without a bouquet of flowers. Tasha can’t decide if she wants to take the compliment.
“Um, think about it?” she mutters, tombé -ing away to perform the combination of steps again. It seems more challenging now. Tasha cares more about what she looks like, the position of her standing leg, the angle of the working one.
The teacher bobs his head and gives a single chuckle as he smiles.
Evening comes, and Tasha means to blow him off, but then a text from James asks what she’s doing tonight, and she suddenly has good reason to be busy. Sorry, can’t , she types back before he can even finish extending the invitation to whatever it is he and Steve are up to this time.
Tasha sticks one hand over the side of the unlabeled box in the top of the closet and finds a pair of barely worn Grishkos. The teacher hadn’t specified, but somehow Tasha knows she’ll need pointe shoes. They’re poorly fitted now after a couple years’ down time, but going up is like riding a bicycle. No one really forgets how, and the worst you can do is fall over.
Algebra homework and a poorly timed nap make Tasha half an hour late, but she throws back a tiny bottle of vodka on the studio’s front stoop and then pops her head in.
The teacher is Aleks now, not Professor. “And this is nothing indecorous, ok?” he says, giving Tasha a little push toward a chorus of girls in legwarmers and wrap skirts. The fact that he’d choose a word like that speaks to the purity of his intentions. Tasha rolls her eyes, but not in the direction Aleks will be able to see.
After a few minutes of watching and catching the other dancers’ glares, Tasha takes her place. It’s a demi-soloist part, or at least it would be if the company ranked their dancers, but operations of this miniature scale don’t work that way. Tasha immediately senses animosity, though. Aleks has sinned, bringing in an outsider instead of promoting from within. What he’s done is better, though, letting the group hate him instead of each other. Tasha’s medicated enough to let the open stares of animosity glance off her shiny coating.
Rehearsals run every night this week, culminating with a tech, a dress, and a Saturday night opener. It’s hardly worth calling it that, since the show only runs once, but, hell, old habits die hard. Old toe shoes do, too, and Tasha finds herself borderline gleeful at the lines of abrasions wrapping around her tender white feet. She wants to curse herself for going soft, but at the same time, she’s grateful for the opportunity to feel the pain so organically, literally from the ground up.
James has blown up her phone with texts and voicemails, so Tasha has no choice but to call him as she walks back home, alone, kicking leaves out of the gutter at nearly ten-thirty. “You’ll never believe this,” she prefaces, already cringing in preparation for his reaction. “I’m dancing. Like, really.”
The conversation progresses predictably, and after the conscriptive where the hell are you’ s and don’t you know what time it is’ s, James asks when and where the performance will be.
“Saturday,” Tasha tells him. “Assuming I live that long.”
And she does, though it’s no easy feat. Three days’ rehearsal is cutting it close, even for her. Tasha’s glad the piece is only eight minutes. Any longer spent with the corps de ballet boring their jealous holes into the back of her head and she just might explode. Not at them, for wanting to be her, but at herself for taking up the spotlight.
Finally Saturday comes, and everything that goes wrong does. Tasha wakes with blocked sinuses, maybe a touch of fever. She’s late getting to the theater, again, and even so, the stage is still covered in ladders and mop buckets when she shows up.
“Bad dress, good show, eh?” Aleks says cheerfully, though dress was last night and it was fine. Tasha still needed a handful of shots to cool her nerves afterward, and now she’s nursing half a hangover along with her stuffy nose as somebody’s grandmother fiddles with her costume. She should be warming up, not standing here in the wings while this white-haired bitch takes issue with a centimeter worth of bloat. But then again, maybe she shouldn’t be; Tasha’s head is wanging, and her shoes are hardly more than rosin and mush.
Her attention lapses, and she sways on her feet. Unfortunately, Aleks sees, and he jumps up from the orchestra pit, brows raised and hands extended. “Sit.”
He forces Tasha onto the stage hand’s folding chair and makes a show of offering her a Twizzler wrapped in crinkly plastic, much to the granny’s chagrin. “Yvette, stop. She’s fine.” He squats beside Tasha and addresses her directly. “You’re fine, right?”
“Yeah.” Tasha almost coughs. “Completely.”
“Bullshit,” Aleks replies, though he leaves it at that and a second piece of candy.
Tasha snarfs down the sugar, feeling it mix badly with mucous and nerves at the pit of her stomach. She doesn’t care, though. She needs the boost. Tasha glances down at her phone and dismisses James’s good luck text with a swipe of her finger. She knows better than to look for him in the audience, so this will be the last she sees of him until after the show. Assuming, of course, she makes it that long.
It feels like a close-cut deal. Tasha squeaks into the toilet stall at the corner of the dressing room an instant before her stomach revolts. There’s no time to categorize the ache under her ribs as real or psychosomatic before she has to blink away stars and pat her lipstick with a tissue, then run out onto the stage.
The actual dancing is surreal. Tasha fudges the finish on her first pirouette into a tombé, but beyond that, it’s unremarkable. There are things she’d like to improve, and she’s not sure she smiled one lick, but she survives the underwater feeling of the open stage, gasping back to safety in the wings as the audience erupts in applause.
Maybe this isn’t so bad, Tasha thinks. There are plenty of tiny studio companies around here; she could swing a class here and a rehearsal there, maybe make a little pocket money and work out a little frustration.
“Fuck.” Tasha closes her eyes before she’s clear of the last boom, and both she and it tumble toward the ground. There’s a crash, though nothing breaks except Tasha’s thoughts. No, she decides. She isn’t cut out for this after all.
The stage hand is more concerned with the light than with her, so Tasha peels herself up off the floor and limps from the smooth marley to the rougher floor of the wing. Luckily Aleks is across the stage on the opposite side, so nobody comes rushing to her aid.
“Jesus,” she mutters, testing her weight on the ankle that’s suddenly all pins and needles. It’s not badly injured, she knows that much, but something is wrong. A tweak or a twinge or some other nebulous word her teachers used to use when they acknowledged her pain but wanted Tasha to keep going anyway.
“Hey, you alright?” Tasha’s about to deck the stupid stage hand for his delayed reaction, but then she sees, or more accurately, smells , the doobie he’s rolling between his fingers. She’s staunchly between him and the door to the back alley, and it’s clear that he’s more invested in his smoke than he probably is in the whole production.
“Yeah,” Tasha says snappily, hopping on one foot as she yanks on her pointe shoe ribbons. “Fine.”
“You can come outside too, if you want,” the stagehand murmurs, “But I gotta finish this before I have to run curtain again.” He bounces a meaningful look between Tasha’s face and the exit sign above her head.
“Um.” She shoots a glance across the stage, looking for Aleks in the opposite wing, but he’s gone. Probably crossing behind the scrim to come around and check on her again. Tasha suddenly feels hot and sick to her stomach again. Maybe a jaunt outdoors is just what she needs.
“Just a sec.” She nips into the dressing room long enough to divest herself of her tutu and throw on an oversized t-shirt over her nude briefs. Tasha gathers up her bag and hurries back to the wing, still in her shoes and tight bun. “Ok,” she says, catching back up with the stagehand and as good as shoving him out the door.
“Alright,” the young man says. “Alright, baby.” He sounds like he’s trying the word on for size, not like he really means anything by it. He’s Tasha’s age, maybe a year or two younger, so she decides not to hold it against him much.
“Stop it,” Tasha hisses, throwing a backhanded strike that whistles past the kid’s nose.
“Ok, ok,” he says with shaky bravado. “I was only kidding. Just chill a little.”
“Fuck you.” Tasha decides she’s earned the first hit on the joint, so she helps herself to the rolled cigarette and pulls out her own lighter. The stagehand seems to have learned his lesson; he doesn’t protest.
The smoke stings Tasha’s raw throat as she inhales, igniting a high-pitched moucousy cough that tastes like cannabis and sickness. She leans against the brick wall and surveys the alley. It’s not a bad hiding place, all things considered. Maybe a hair too skinny for vehicle traffic, but not overpopulated with dumpsters and wooden pallets.
“I thought you hurt yourself,” the stagehand says as he takes back the doobie. “But, uh, you’re sick?”
Tasha shrugs and rummages in her bag for one of her little bottles. “Born this way,” she says in a rough whisper. “Baby.”
“Hey, I said I was sorry,” the kid tells her, though he’s fibbing. He never actually said the words, even if he meant them. “I just, I don’t want to annoy you, but, like,” he waffles, “You ok?’
“Hmph.” Tasha throws back a mouthful of vodka, feeling it sting along her gums and deep in her throat. She enjoys the burn, swishing it between her teeth as she slowly sinks into a sitting position against the wall. It’s a warm spring night, but goosebumps still rise on her arms and legs.
Tasha’s phone chirps, and she digs it out of her bag, glad for the distraction so she can quit talking to the stagehand who’s beginning to feel sleazier by the minute.
It’s a text from James, the latest in a string of complimentary messages. You were great! Tasha dismisses. Do you want to meet in the lobby? Are you allowed to come watch the rest? It’s intermission, she gathers, and James has gone full older brother protective, worrying about the trouble she can get into when she’s out of his sight.
The concern isn’t misplaced, Tasha concedes, accepting the joint back from the stagehand who’s now slumped against the wall a solid two feet away. It’s just annoying. She puffs on the smoke, then finally finishes freeing her bad foot from the cage of her pointe shoe. The ankle joint is the slightest bit swollen, and it hurts when she pokes at it, but there are no other marks. Another phantom injury, some invisible thing wrong with her that no one can prove and no one wants to take her word about. A grunt of pain escapes her as Tasha rearranges her foot over top of her lap.
The stagehand starts to say something again, but now Tasha’s phone is ringing, blaring some nameless 80s electronica tune James chose specifically for its annoyingness.
“What?” Tasha barks, a bit more roughly than intended.
“Hey, where are you?” James’s voice demands. “I ran into your director at the concession stand, and he says he can’t find you either.”
Tasha tips her head back, her bun cushioning her from banging her skull against the wall. “Fuck,” she mutters. “I’m just… taking a smoke break, ok?”
“Tash, really?”
“I’m done with my piece! What does it matter what I’m doing now?”
“No final bow?” James asks. Tasha can almost hear his eyebrows knitting together.
“No,” Tasha coughs. “I’m not 12. This isn’t some lame recital.”
“No, it’s not,” James agrees. He pauses, and Tasha can hear Steve’s and Aleks’s voices in the background, along with the ambient noise of the theater lobby. “You feeling alright? You sound…”
“Smokey?” Tasha tries. Her voice cracks, though, and gives her away. A pang of nausea rises into her chest, and she feels ashamed for feeling sick. Maybe sick for feeling ashamed.
“I... “ James starts. “No. Just, where are you?”
“Out back. With…” Tasha looks the stagehand up and down. “Ted?” she decides to christen him.
“Actually, it’s Josh,” the kid corrects, giving her a sideways look.
“Josh, sorry,” Tasha shakes her head, reigniting the pain throbbing behind her forehead. “Ted was last night’s one night stand.” It’s a lie, though Josh doesn’t seem to know that.
“Uh, my mom will be home,” Josh whispers, going pink.
James says something else at the same time, and Tasha misses both. “Will you fucking shut up?” she says, not exactly into the phone.
“Is this Josh person harassing you?” James asks loudly.
“I… no,” Tasha says in what she hopes is a firm tone. Her voice feels reedy, as if her throat is full of bits of broken glass.
“I’m giving you one last try,” James commands. The timbre of the background noise changes. Tasha can tell he’s stepped outside. “Where are you? And what happened?”
“I’m fine.”
“Tasha…”
“I tweaked my foot a little bit, and I’ve got this lame cold--” She has to pause and cough again. Tasha would rather keel over and die right there.
“Ok, it’s ok,” James says automatically. “You said you’re out back?”
Steve’s voice mutters something, and Tasha’s sure she hears the words swing by and pick her up .
“Don’t, ok,” she croaks. “I’m really fine.” But the nausea picks that moment to triple in intensity, sending her struggling onto hands and knees to gag while trying to keep a grip on her phone.
“No, you’re not.” Josh hovers a hand a few inches off Tasha’s shoulder, clearly afraid of touching her, and perhaps more afraid of what will happen if he doesn’t. “You’re… Is that blood?”
It’s twizzler hanging, suspended in spit, from the corner of Tasha’s mouth. She’s too nauseated to enlighten anyone, so she just hocks and spits, then drags a shaky hand over her lips. She swallows a sick hiccup and tries to decide if the ache of suppressed fever or that of wayward concern hurts worse.
“God, Tash…” James says. “We’re in the car. We’re on our way.” There’s the sound of an ignition turning over. “Are you seriously puking blood?”
Tasha’s interrupted by the need to vomit again, otherwise she would have staunchly set him straight. She sputters and straightens up just as the red glow of tail lights appears at the mouth of the alley.
“Ok, I see you,” James says over the phone, though he opens his door and Tasha catches the top of his head peeking around the back of Steve’s civic. “Stop, babe, you’re close enough.”
Tasha protests. So does Steve, though less vociferously. He seems to be convinced he can back all the way up the alley, despite the fact that it’s clearly too narrow and Tasha can clearly walk, which she demonstrates by shoving herself backwards onto her mismatched feet and limping toward the car.
“The fuck are you thinking?” James mutters as he rushes up to her side, taking in Tasha’s too bedraggled to be sexy outfit, then stopping when he gets to her pale, tired face.
“I wasn’t?” Tasha tries, too exhausted to deal with anything but sympathy. And mild sympathy at that.
“Yeah, story of your life, right there.” James pulls her under one arm and awkwardly opens the door to the backseat for her. “But lucky you, tonight it’s gonna have a happy ending.”