Mackenzie is jumpy all week, figuring that she’ll be the next girl voted off, but nothing else happens. We’re all worked half to death in every class, so maybe Melissa and the other girls just haven’t had the energy for their usual games.
And finally, Thursday—audition day—arrives.
The auditions are being held at a dance studio downtown. It’s a bit of a zoo when we first arrive, because the youngest kids are just leaving. There are dozens of them, cute little munchkins, maybe six or seven years old, all chattering nonstop as their parents herd them up and usher them out the door. I watch their excited faces and wonder which ones will end up onstage—they’ll be the mice, I guess, and they’ll never forget it.
We gather in a wide hallway, and someone hands out our numbers. I get number thirteen—which is fine, as I’ve never been superstitious. I pin it to my leotard and look around to see who got number one. Not Melissa, anyway—she’s got seventeen pinned to her chest.
“They’re just auditioning the party girls now,” Diana says. “It’ll be half an hour or so before they start calling you in, so try to relax. Do some stretching, get ready, don’t stress. And keep the volume down, please!”
The floor is littered with shoes, water bottles, bits of lamb’s wool, and I can hear faint piano music drifting from the closed studio door. I find a spot to sit and stretch. Cam sinks down into the splits beside me. “Nervous?”
“Yeah.” I’m looking around, checking out the competition. Clusters of girls—all slim, longlimbed, smooth-haired—stand around talking, stretching, fixing their hair, adjusting their numbers. They all seem disturbingly confident, like they’ve done this a hundred times before. A handful of adults is bustling about, making sure each girl is numbered and counted and where she should be. “There sure are a lot of people trying out, aren’t there?” I say quietly.
“No kidding.” Cam leans forward, chin almost to the floor. “I’d sort of forgotten that there are so many other ballet schools here.”
“Odds are, Clara won’t even be someone from our school,” I say.
Cam sits up. “Not all the schools are as good as the academy.”
“I’m going to try not to think about it,” I say. “It makes me nervous. I’m just going to dance, and what happens, happens.” I slip on my pointe shoes and kneel to lace them, the way Peter taught me. If you kneel on one leg while you lace the other shoe, it’s easier to get the tension around your ankle just right.
“You’ll do fine,” Cam says.
Mackenzie comes and sits down beside us, her back against the wall. “I think I’m going to throw up.”
“I know,” I say. “Me too.”
“Maybe we should both throw up,” Mackenzie says glumly. “Gross everyone out so much that they can’t dance. Then you and me could get the part.”
I laugh. “The Puking Claras. Sounds like a really bad band name.”
She laughs, then turns serious. “I don’t have a shot anyway.”
“Sure you do,” I say. “I think you have a better shot than most of us.”
“How many black Claras do you think there have been?”
I’m stunned into silence for a moment. It had never occurred to me to wonder. I want to reassure her that of course it doesn’t matter—but I have no idea if this is true. I mean, it shouldn’t matter. But that doesn’t mean anything. “I don’t know,” I say at last.
“I’ve seen The Nutcracker about a dozen times,” she says. “And Clara is always white. Always.”
“Well, maybe not this time,” I say. “You’d be an awesome Clara.”
“Thanks.” She sighs, then laughs. “I wish we could tell Andrew Kingsley that Melissa is an evil cow who doesn’t deserve an audition, let alone a part in The Nutcracker.”
“I have to beat her,” I say. “And Edie too. I have to.”
She stops laughing. “Yeah, you do. You really do.”
“I will,” I say. And I have a sudden rush of confidence. I can do this. I know I can. “Come on,” I say. “Let’s get warmed up.”
* * *
A few minutes later, the studio door opens, hordes of nine- and ten-year-olds—the party girls, I guess—come pouring out and we are called in.
A four-person panel is sitting at the front of the room. One of them—a tall lean man—stands up and introduces himself as Andrew Kingsley. He explains the audition process and tells us what he is looking for. “Clara should be playful,” he says. “Lighthearted, smiling—can you do that?”
We all nod. I glance at my reflection in the mirror and realize my expression is the opposite of lighthearted. More like life or death. I fix a smile on my lips and see the other girls doing the same—which makes me smile for real.
We start out by doing some floor exercises: tendus, pliés, jumps. I feel good—strong, steady, light on my feet. The pianist plays, and we do pirouettes, arabesques, changements. Then we all gather in one corner to do cross-floor exercises. Andrew explains what he wants us to do—one at a time, we are to cross the room diagonally, doing a series of movements. “This will allow us to get a better sense of your abilities,” he says. “So you’ll go one at a time, and we’ll watch each of you as an individual.”
This is it, I think. My chance to show the panel what I can do. I take a deep breath, trying to slow my racing heart and quiet the chatter in my mind, and listen to what Andrew is asking us to do: temps levé in arabesque, temps levé in retiré, chassé, pas de bourrée.
“Have a large step on the temps levé in arabesque,” he says. “Turn out your downstage foot on the chassé, and turn out your trailing foot on the pas de bourrée when you close it into fifth position.” Then he smiles. “And show me what the music sounds like,” he says. “Joyful. Playful. All right?”
I watch Danika go first, light and graceful, and then Edie. I can feel the music moving through me. Everything is coming together perfectly.
I can do this. I know I can. I step forward, ready to take my turn—then something hits my shoulder and spins me around, and I fall, twisting to one side, and land heavily, hitting the floor with my knee, chest, chin. White-hot pain explodes from my ankle and shoots up my leg, and I roll onto my side, clutching my foot between my hands. A wave of nausea rolls over me, and I gasp for breath.
“Oh my god! Are you okay?” Mackenzie’s face floats in front of me, wide-eyed and worried. “Can I help you up?”
I can hear myself groaning, making these awful grunting sounds, and I grit my teeth, trying to be quiet, trying not to cry. It hurts so much. Mackenzie reaches out and rubs my back, and I flinch, not wanting to be touched. “My ankle,” I say. My face is wet with tears.
“You sort of rolled sideways on it,” Mackenzie says. “It looked awful.”
Diana’s face appears beside hers. “Cassandra? What on earth happened?”
“It’s her ankle,” Mackenzie says.
“Can you get up?” Diana asks.
I look past her and see all the girls standing still, shocked looks on their faces. The pianist has stopped playing. Andrew Kingsley walks toward us, his forehead creased with concern. When he speaks, he’s all business. “Will she be able to continue with the audition?” I hear him ask Diana.
“Yes,” I say grimly, even though he wasn’t talking to me. “I’m not quitting.” With Mackenzie and Diana on either side of me, I try to stand. As soon as my left foot touches the ground, I gasp and clutch Mackenzie’s shoulder for support. The pain is excruciating.
Diana shakes her head. “I’m sorry, Cassandra. I think you’re going to have to take it easy. Mackenzie, help me get her to a chair.”
I hobble and hop to a wooden chair and collapse on it. “May I look?” Diana says.
“Yeah, but don’t touch it—” It’s all I can do to keep from screaming as she gently unlaces my shoe.
“It’s already swelling,” she says, her voice low. “You’re staying with the Harrisons, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.” I feel like everything is crashing down around me. I won’t be Clara. Worse—what if I’ve broken my ankle? What if it doesn’t heal well enough for me to be a dancer? It’s too much—the pain, the disappointment, the dread—and I can’t hold back my tears.
Diana turns to the other girls. “Edie, can you please run down to the office and ask the receptionist to call your mother? Cassandra’s going to need to get this ankle X-rayed.”
Edie’s eyes are huge, and her face is pale. She doesn’t move from the spot.
“Edie,” Diana says sharply. “Now, please.”
“Okay,” Edie says. She rushes out of the room, and I think she is crying. I can’t imagine why—I would have thought she’d be pleased to have me out of the running for Clara.
Maybe even out of the running for PTP. I shove the thought away and look down at my ankle. It’s weirdly puffy-looking. It doesn’t look like my ankle at all. Somehow that makes me cry even more.
* * *
Edie returns, bringing an ice pack and saying her mom is on her way. The audition goes on without me. Diana asks if I would prefer to wait in the office, but I say I’d rather watch. At least it’s a distraction from my ankle, which is throbbing and hurting so much it is making me nauseous.
Mackenzie looks good. So does Melissa, unfortunately. There are a couple of girls I don’t know—older girls—who are amazing dancers. Edie, to my surprise, is dancing badly. Her face is flushed and blotchy, and there’s nothing playful or light about her dancing.
I can’t believe I’m sitting here, watching. Missing the audition. How could I have been so clumsy?
A few minutes later, Mrs. Harrison arrives.
“You poor thing,” she says. “We’ll make sure you get taken care of properly, don’t you worry.” She helps me to the car—I sit in the back so I can have my foot up on the seat—and heads to the hospital.
“Thanks for coming to get me,” I say.
“Well, of course,” she says. Now that I’m hurt, it’s like she’s forgotten how mad she was at me. “Hopefully they won’t make you wait for hours in the emergency room,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say. I can’t stop looking at my ankle. It’s fatter and lumpier than ever. It looks like someone else’s foot got attached to my leg. Gross. Through the thin pale-pink tights, the skin looks faintly bluish and bruised.
“What happened?” Mrs. Harrison says. “Did you just lose your balance?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I think someone bumped into me, but I didn’t really see.”
“No one else was hurt though?”
“I don’t think so,” I say. “Everyone kept dancing. And no one said anything.” I think back again, remembering. That sudden shove from behind, knocking me off balance, spinning me around…
Did someone push me?
* * *
At the hospital, Mrs. Harrison talks to a nurse and shows her my health-insurance information, and I am helped into a wheelchair. I feel silly, sitting in the emergency room in a ballet leotard, tights and one shoe. I unpin the number from my chest. Thirteen—so much for not being superstitious.
After a few minutes, a doctor looks at my ankle, flexes it a little, which makes me gasp, and asks me if I can curl my toes. “What were you doing, trying to fly?” he says. “Even ballerinas have their limitations.”
I don’t bother answering.
“Well, it looks to me like it’s probably a bad sprain, but we’ll take a few pictures and make sure there isn’t a fracture.” He’s short and plump and balding, and he pats my cheek in a way that reminds me a little of my grandfather. “And we’ll give you some painkillers. That should cheer you up a little.”
“Would a sprain swell up like that?” Mrs. Harrison asks.
“Sure. There’s probably some soft-tissue injury, which can cause a lot of swelling.” He looks at me. “No dancing for you for a while.”
“Even if it’s not broken?” I ask.
“A bad sprain can take weeks to heal,” he says. “But let’s get those X-rays done. If there’s a fracture, it could be considerably longer.”
My heart sinks. The Summer Intensive is only four weeks altogether, and we’re already two weeks into it.
If a few weeks is the best-case scenario, that’s it for me.
Game over.
And I’ve lost.
* * *
I’m wheeled to the X-ray department and helped onto a table, and a heavy lead apron is spread over my body. The technician makes me hold my leg one way and then another, and helps me back into my wheelchair afterward. Mrs. Harrison brings me a hot chocolate from the cafeteria, and we wait to see what the radiologist has to say.
It takes a while, but eventually a tall black woman arrives and introduces herself as Dr. Gentle, which makes me laugh.
“Good name for a doctor,” I say.
“Could be worse,” she agrees. “I used to work with someone called Dr. Payne.”
“Ouch.”
“Indeed.” She is wearing dark brownish-purple lipstick, and when she smiles, her teeth look startlingly white. “Well, I’ve got good news and good news. Which do you want first?”
“I’ll take the good news,” I say.
“Nothing’s broken,” she says.
“Okay.” I know this is good, but right now it is hard to feel happy about it.
“And the other good news?” Mrs. Harrison asks.
“We’ll bandage you up, give you some drugs and let you go home.” She pats my shoulder. “It’ll be pretty sore for a few days, but it should mend just fine. You’ll be back on your toes by the end of the summer.”
I nod, swallow, taste the salt of my tears on the back of my tongue. “Thanks,” I say.
No Clara. No PTP.
The end of the summer will be too late.