Dancing in Red Shoes Will Kill You (2 page)

I
struggled as I slipped my arms through the straps of my third heavy-duty, all-purpose sports bra and pulled it down over the other two. Then I hiked up my camisole leotard with the reinforced straps over that. I took a deep breath to make sure I still could, given the contraptions I was forced to wear in order to keep my upper body from looking like two giant Jell-O molds.

I liked getting to the dressing room before everyone else so I could put my leotard and tights on in private, without everyone gawking at me. Apparently my breasts are so freakish that even straight girls feel comfortable enough to stare.

Despite the extra time it took to get ready, the smell
of the dressing room was always comforting—the mingled odors of feet, sweat, leather dance bags, and the occasional scent of elastic from a new pair of tights, fresh out of the plastic bag.

I did a few ballet steps in the mirror and checked the relative motion of my breasts. Just as I finished my third
jeté
, I heard the voice.

“Hang on everyone. This one's a seven point five on the Richter scale.”

Melissa Edwards. Her voice, and everything else about her, had been haunting me since kindergarten.

My first instinct was to hurl a can of hairspray at her, but I reminded myself that in a little over a year I'd be free of her forever. I faced her and squeezed out a fake smile.

She dropped her dance bag on the wooden bench. “Big audition week, huh, KC?”

Melissa had this annoying habit of calling everyone by their initials. I was pretty sure she did it so she could use her own initials all the time. It was like she had a license to write ME, ME, ME, all over everything—notebooks, pointe shoes, dance bags, everything.

My relationship with Melissa was based on our mutual love for ballet, as well as our mutual mistrust of each other. It all started when we were in our first ballet class together at Miss Penny's School of Dance. We were
in the same recital number, a rendition of that great classical ballet
Little Miss Muffet
. Our costumes consisted of red tutus and red spray-painted ballet shoes. We were each given a tuffet, or more accurately a little white wooden stool, designed to distract the audience from noticing we didn't know much actual ballet. We were supposed to dance around the tuffets and every once in a while return to them in a cute pose. The dance was to end with one final extravaganza in which we spun with our arms over our heads and ran back to our tuffets as a large cardboard spider dropped from the rafters.

No one was ever really sure what happened, but somehow Melissa and I ran for the same tuffet, turning the final tableau into one big game of musical chairs. Being a bit larger in the buttocks area than Melissa, I succeeded in knocking her off the stool and onto the stage floor, at which time she began screaming words that an auditorium of parents were unaccustomed to hearing from a five-year-old. I, on the other hand, held my pose with a big smile as the curtain raced shut in front of us.

The official videotape captured it all, except for who was at fault. The camera guy apparently thought we were so cute, he zoomed in to get a close-up of our dueling derrières. We never found out if the empty tuffet was to the right or the left.

After the show Melissa's mother promised my parents she'd “get to the bottom of it.” Later my mother, who wasn't much of a stage mother even then, laughed about the whole thing. She said she pictured Melissa and her parents watching the video over and over in slow motion, freeze-framing it in certain places like CIA agents trying to catch the real assassin.

That was the first sign of Melissa's competitive nature. What began as a mere kindergarten scuffle evolved into a full-fledged rivalry once Melissa realized I could match her leap for leap and extension for extension. From then on, fueled by a pushy mother and a mean streak the length of a hundred pointe shoes lying toe to heel, Melissa has tried to sabotage every good thing that's come my way.

Case in point: second grade. A Valentine sent to me by Richie Cruz is mysteriously intercepted. Later it's passed around the room for everyone to laugh at, sending a red-faced Richie to the rest room and thus ending the short, happy life of my first romance.

Third grade. Miss Penny's recital, Hawaiian Holiday. The pin holding my grass skirt to the back of my leotard becomes unfastened just as I'm about to go onstage. After swaying my hips a few times, the grass skirt ends up bunched between my legs. Guess whose hula hands were behind me when I was waiting in the wings?

For several years every recital held a new surprise. Torn tights. Missing headpieces. As I got older, I learned how to lock up my stuff and keep it away from Melissa. But even now I'm cautious of her—always waiting for the other pointe shoe to drop.

I zipped my dance bag and threw it in my locker. Before Melissa had a chance to crack any more stupid boob jokes, the rest of the girls in Miss Alicia's sixth-period ballet class began pouring in. Half were chattering about the upcoming auditions for
Cinderella
, while the other half seemed equally excited about someone named Gray.

“Oh my God, did you see how cute he was?” Ivy Thompson said, dropping her dance bag in a locker next to mine.

“Who?” I said.

“The new guy who transferred here from somewhere up north this semester. He's got the cutest eyebrows.”

Ivy has a thing for eyebrows and it is the first feature she notices on everyone, including me, which is pretty amazing. Mine, by the way, are okay with her, but could be a little thinner.

“Where did you see him?” I said.

Melissa looked away from the mirror where she had been studying her sideways silhouette, so thin and flat it was almost nonexistent. “He just started working in the
school store. I needed new pointe shoes, and he waited on me.”

Yeah, sure, I thought. Melissa had a bag full of pointe shoes that were in great condition.

“I got the whole story,” she said. “His mom's poet-in-residence at the university this semester. She'll be doing some public readings and, being the lover of poetry that I am, I told him I'd go.”

“Oh,” I said, “and who is your favorite poet again—Mater Goose?”

Melissa went back to basking in her own reflection. “I never even heard of him,” she said.

I could always count on Melissa being so self-absorbed that she didn't even get it when the joke was on her.

She pulled out her American lit book and pointed to the cover. “This is my favorite poet. It's Gray's, too.”

“Walt Whitman?”

“Gray's favorite poem is ‘Song of Myself,' Melissa said, adding, “It's my favorite too.”

I adjusted my leotard strap one more time. “Why doesn't that surprise me?”

“You know,” Melissa said, “if I weren't a dancer, I think I'd probably be a poet.”

I snapped my locker shut and spun the dial. “Excuse me while I go barf.”

Ivy, who was adjusting the elastic on her ballet shoes,
leaned over and looked at the cover of Melissa's English book. “Hmm, Walt Whitman—he's got some nice eyebrows.”

 

It was a relief to finally get to the barre and start class. Miss Alicia dragged a chair to the middle of the room and rested her hand on the back of it. While she demonstrated a
plié
combination, I crossed my eyes at Joey in the mirror. It was a secret sign we devised when we were in elementary school. The eyes are the only part of the body you can signal with and not get into trouble in ballet class.

Miss Alicia was nearly fifty years old and married with two children, but we still called her
Miss
, along with her first name. It's one of those ballet studio traditions, like dancing on your toes or turning your feet out like a duck. No one messes with it. It had been a long time since she'd danced professionally. Now she was about ten pounds overweight, twenty-five if you're talking ballet pounds.

Miss Alicia started the music and sat with her legs in second position. While she rested her hands on each knee and held her elbows to the sides, her head moved up and down as we lowered ourselves into
grande pliés
and then straightened up again.

I looked at myself in the mirror as we held the final
relevé
. My eyes traveled from the floor up, doing the ritual inventory: heels high, knees straight, hips turned out, back straight, stomach in, shoulders down. Everything was perfect except you know what, where I looked like a hard-boiled egg that had been cooked too long and the white stuff was bulging out in great big poofs, beyond the boundaries of the shell.

Ivy was in front of me and Melissa was in front of her. They both had perfect ballet bodies. Melissa didn't even have to wear a bra with her leotard, and Ivy was fine with a flimsy thing from Victoria's Secret. It felt like I'd skipped that phase entirely, going from the stretchy training bra with the pink bow in the middle straight to the steel underwire and two-inch straps. I'd even grown another full cup size the summer before junior year, bringing my bra size up to a double D.

“Tight fifth position, tight, tight, tight,” Miss Alicia said. “Hold…hold…and down.”

She changed the music and demonstrated the next combination with her arms and hands. I watched the big blue ring on her right index finger as she pretended her hand was a foot, pointing and lifting to the staccato piano notes. She often pantomimed the steps she wanted us to do, but every once in a while she would use her legs and feet in such a spectacular way that we were all reminded of her former greatness. I couldn't imagine
how it felt not to dance onstage anymore.

Once we finished at the barre, Miss Alicia broke from the usual class schedule and asked us to sit in the center of the room.

“I have some announcements.” She turned the chair around and sat with her arms resting on the back. “As you all know, at the end of the week we will have auditions for
Cinderella
.”

Murmurs swept across the studio.

“The good news is that there will be parts for everyone. Of course, some parts are not as large as others, but every part is important to the overall ballet.”

Knowing chuckles mixed in with the murmurs. Someone sitting a few rows behind me whispered in a Spanish accent, mimicking Miss Alicia, “There are no small parts, just small ballet dancers.” Another voice answered, “Yeah, small ballet dancers with fat asses.” Another voice, which I immediately recognized, chimed in, “Or gigantic boobs.”

I pretended not to hear Melissa's comment, even though I could see her face in the mirror.

Miss Alicia frowned at the class for a few seconds and then continued. “In some versions of
Cinderella
, the stepmother and stepsisters are played by men for comic effect. Because we have a lack of male dancers, the only female part played by a man will be the part of the stepmother.”

“That part's for Joey,” yelled Devin Demanne, the only other male dancer in the advanced class.

“I wouldn't think of robbing you of your greatest role,” Joey deadpanned back.

Miss Alicia clapped three times. “Enough, enough,” she said. “There will be none of that. The choosing of parts will be very objective. A choreographer from Ballet on the Beach has agreed to stage the ballet and will be completely in charge of auditions. If you want a principal role, I suggest you begin working on the extension of your legs rather than your mouths.”

Immediately everyone began stretching in some way or another. Legs sprang open and arms reached forward until chests were lying flat on the ground. Other legs stretched to the ceiling as knees tried to meet foreheads. Great extensions were one way to stand out at the audition. And to get great extensions, you needed the stretch as well as the strength.

“I see you've gotten my message,” Miss Alicia said. “From now until the auditions, don't waste any of your time.” She clapped three times again. “Now stand for the center work.”

Once she had taught us the combination of steps, we danced in small groups. When it was my turn to rest against the barre and watch, I surveyed the competition. There were several worthy contenders: Melissa, Ivy,
Lourdes—a senior who, like Joey, planned to postpone college and go straight to a ballet company after graduation—and a couple of others who weren't consistently excellent but could appeal to someone who hadn't seen them dance day after day.

Getting a lead part was definitely going to be tough.

 

After class I waited for Joey in front of the girl's dressing room. As he approached, Devin trailed behind him. “Don't think the gay guy always gets the girl,” he said. “In this ballet it'll be different.”

“I don't always get the girl,” Joey said, putting his arm around me. “Just the one you want.”

“Shut up, you fa—,” Devin shouted, stopping himself as the band director walked by.

Ever since freshman year, Devin had resented Joey and me—me, for not going out with him, and Joey, for being his biggest ballet competitor. He tried to use the gay thing against Joey, but it always backfired—no one listened to his stupid jokes.

Joey laughed as Devin stormed off. “Let's go find Paterson,” he said.

Aside from the dance studio, the art room was my favorite place in the school. Artwork hung on every available wall space, and wherever you turned you could find something beautiful to stare at. Paterson was work
ing on a sketch of Lourdes, who had modeled for the figure-drawing class. “I can't get this ribbon right,” she muttered before she even knew we were there.

“What are you talking about?” Joey said. “It's great.”

“No, it's not right,” Paterson said. She took the eraser and removed the whole pointe shoe. Lourdes sat with a stump at the end of her leg.

I surveyed the other work surrounding Paterson's easel. “Hey, where's the picture of Joey?”