My audition is at five-thirty. I turn up an hour earlier, thinking I might just find some empty acromat to roll around on, or at least I might gather some encouragement from Kite or Ruben.
Kite is there. He’s not training though, he’s lying on an acromat on his tummy and Lola is standing on him. She’s still in her floaty white outfit and she’s giggling and treading up his back. He’s making low moaning appreciative sounds, as if he’s really liking it. He can’t see me because his head is turned to the side. I immediately feel as if I should leave, as if I’m intruding, or as if that writhing jealous feeling might make itself so obvious that people will look at me and see a twisting red smoke flame out my nostrils. But as I turn around to begin my escape, Frankie yells out to me.
‘Hey, Cedar, I’m glad you’re back. Do you want me to show you some trapeze?’
Kite flips his head towards me, grins and puts his hands to the floor as if to push up. Lola stops giggling and flicks her head to stare at me. We lock eyes only for a second before I look away and reply to Frankie, who’s like an angel, swinging gently above us on her perch.
‘Okay. Thanks. I’d love to try some trapeze.’
‘She can’t do that Frank, she’s got her audition in a minute. She’ll get too tired. You’ll wreck her hands.’ Kite’s getting up off the floor and coming towards me. He nods at Lola and says, ‘Cedar, come and meet Lola.’
Lola by now is smiling and tilting her head to one side while stretching her arms behind her head, and she looks very elegant and almost as if someone has styled her for a photograph.
‘Hi,’ she says.
‘Hi,’ I say back. She keeps smiling, but releases her arms and begins slowly rolling her shoulders.
‘Lola was just giving me a back massage with her feet,’ says Kite. ‘You should try it, Cedar, it’s great.’
‘How did your rehearsal go?’ I say. (As if I want Lola walking on my back!)
‘Great. How was your day?’
‘Fine.’ I feel as if both Frankie, swinging above us, and Lola, who has elegantly sunk to the floor and is stretching out in a twist, are watching us. Frankie from above and Lola from below. It’s suddenly as if Kite and I hardly know each other and the air between us has stiffened like some freshly starched sheet that everyone can see. Frankie laughs and begins swinging vigorously.
‘Come on, Kite, let her try a little trapeze, I know she’ll love it.’
‘Yeah,’ says Lola, perching herself up on her delicate elbows. ‘Let her try. She’s only got to do a few cartwheels for the audition.’
Suddenly I feel as if the ground I was standing on just fell away and I’m paddling like a dog through a tide of opinions, and not sure where the snags are. Kite looks directly at me, anchors me with his soft brown eyes.
‘It’s up to Cedar. What do you want to do, Cedar?’
I stare wildly back at him as if he might have the answer. It’s as if I’m sensing something but I don’t know what it is. I feel like an animal that might be about to walk into a trap or a dangerous situation, and my nose is twitching. It’s not that I’m afraid of the trapeze, it’s something else; it’s just a sixth sense thing, a twilight zone moment in which I look suddenly at Lola.
‘Do you do trapeze?’
‘I do hoop.’
‘Lola doesn’t like heights,’ calls out Frankie as she unwinds herself and hops off.
‘Kite does, though.’ Frankie is looking at Kite and laughing again. Lola picks up a hoop and starts flicking it. I suddenly pipe up.
‘You know what? I think I’ll just warm up right now.’ I have to trust my one clear feeling, which is that I don’t want to be on show, I don’t want to enter the game. I’m not sure what the game is and who’s set up the rules, but one thing I do know: I don’t like games with strategies – I only like Snap. Whatever the thing is that I sense with Lola, Frankie, Kite and the trapeze, I don’t have to be in it. I can just quietly do what I know I’m here to do, and it isn’t to show anybody whether I can or can’t do trapeze; not Frankie, not Lola and not even Kite.
Frankie just nods, smiling, and Lola ignores me altogether. Although it seems to me that I’ve made some monumental decision, no one seems to be too affected by it, and no one pats me on the back and says,‘Well done,’ not even Kite.
I look up at the gently swinging trapeze almost longingly. Have I just missed my one chance to show them all what a flyer I could be? The trapeze says nothing, but continues to swing tauntingly, though this is what I hear it saying, ‘Cedar, if you want to fly you will fly your own way, not someone else’s way.’
I sigh because the trapeze is wise and it knows me well, and I think to myself, I must remember to tell Aunt Squeezy about this fine decision because it will give me a good score in my Buddhist training.
Sarah comes out of her office, claps her hands together and tells the others to go home and let me centre myself for five minutes. As they leave, Frankie yells out, ‘Good luck Cedar!’ and Kite just winks and says, ‘I’ll wait outside for you.’ Lola has managed to slip out with a small flick of her pigtails. Seems like a long five minutes that I’m alone on the acromat, and I lie there on my back and try to feel the ground holding me up. I close my eyes and try to focus my thoughts on the ground, but I can hear the gentle creak of the trapeze and it seems to be squeaking at me, and I think how whenever I’m on the ground it’s the air that draws me up, but once I’m in the air, it’s the ground that I need to return to. Maybe life is not about one or the other but the way you move between them. I like this thought, but just as I’m about to develop it, Sarah steps out onto the mat and says,
‘Shall we start warming you up? You ready?’