Bunheads (2 page)

I could see them struggling with the idea as they chewed (though my dad may have been struggling with his dinner, too;
he’d never liked tofu). They understood that I’d be miserable if I stayed home in Weston, Massachusetts—that every day I’d wish I were at the academy, working toward a chance to be a part of the Manhattan Ballet, which was one of the best companies in the world.

After a few moments I saw my dad nod his head, ever so slightly. My mom turned to me, and her smile was happy and sad at the same time. “All right, then,” she whispered.

Today, five years later, I’m a senior corps member with the Manhattan Ballet. We perform three to four ballets a night to packed houses in New York City, and when we go on tour, our audience can fill five-thousand-seat amphitheaters.

I’m a ballet dancer, but I’m not a
ballerina
. And it’s the most amazing, wonderful, and crazy life I ever could have imagined.

“Monique’s dress was so busted,” Daisy says as she pulls her silky dark hair into a bun. “It would make Gisele Bündchen look like Susan Boyle.”

I laugh as I sip a venti drip. It’s nine forty-five in the morning, and I’m in the dressing room—my home away from home—listening to two of my three best friends in the company dissect the most recent episode of
Project Runway
. “Was it really that bad?” I ask.

“I mean, it was a total potato sack,” Daisy says. She leans toward the mirror with her mouth agape as she applies mascara.

“Well, you would know about potatoes,” I smirk, pulling on my black Repetto leotard.

Daisy rolls her eyes and sighs. “God, Hannah, for the last time, it’s
Idaho
that grows all the potatoes.”

I grin because of course I know that; I just like to tease Daisy
because at sixteen she’s the youngest in our dressing room and she’s been in the company for only six months. She’s a total bunhead: She lives and breathes ballet. “Idaho, Ohio, Iowa,” I say, waving my arm dismissively. “They don’t call it flyover country for nothing.”

“I’m from
Nebraska
,” she says, her dark eyes flashing. Even though she’s from the Midwest, Daisy looks olive-skinned and exotic because her mother is Jordanian. She’s five foot three, with tiny bones, knobby elbows, and a wide, infectious smile. “Nebraska is known for its corn.”

“Oh,
riiiight
,” I say, smiling. “My bad.”

She sticks out her tongue at me.

“I thought the dress was all right,” Bea says as she pulls her bright red hair into a high ponytail. “I mean, it was kind of baggy, but what she did with the pleating was interesting.”

“Oh, Bea,” I say, “it’s just like you to find something nice to say.”

Beatrice Hall—Bea—is from Maine. Like me, she’s nineteen, and she’s been my best friend since we roomed together at the Manhattan Ballet Academy. She was brought up ultrareligious (as in going to church all the time and praying before you eat and all that), and she’s the youngest of eight kids, so she had to learn patience and diplomacy early on. But Bea has a wicked sense of humor, too. She has huge, beautiful blue eyes and pale, freckled skin. Her ears stick out slightly, and she has incredible coltlike legs that seem to go all the way up to her armpits.

“My mother raised me right,” she says, nudging me with her toe.

I giggle and push it away. “Get your gnarly foot off of me.”

“
My
gnarly foot? Have you looked at your bunions lately?”

Then the door bursts open and Zoe Mortimer leans in the doorframe, a Diet Coke in her hand. She’s wearing her new cropped Prada blazer and skinny jeans. She looks haughty, as usual, but it’s not on purpose; it’s just the way her face is. She grew up on Park Avenue and is as rich as anyone I’ve ever met. That kind of privilege just shows.

She puts her hands on her narrow hips and grins, looking like the cat that ate the canary.

“What?” Bea demands as she braids her ponytail. “Are you going to tell us why you’re smiling like that?”

Zoe tosses her long blond hair and steps delicately over Bea’s clothes, which are scattered on the floor in piles of tights, leg warmers, sweatpants, and leotards. “Yes,” Zoe says. “Just a sec, I’ve got to get changed.” She slips off her jeans and very slowly roots around in her theater case for a fresh pair of tights.

“Take your time,” I say sarcastically. “Keep building the suspense.”

She grins slyly at me but doesn’t say anything. Then, after she’s changed into a gray Lycra leotard and shell-pink tights, she turns to face us. “Adriana heard that Otto’s going to start rehearsing his new ballet.”

Otto Klein is the director of the Manhattan Ballet, the man who selects the ballets and decides who will dance them—in other words, the man who determines our futures.

“Whoop-de-do,” Bea says, sounding bored. She puts the finishing touches on her hairdo and opens one of Zoe’s old issues of
Vogue
magazine. “Does Gumby think that’s news?”

“Who’s Gumby?” Daisy wants to know.

Bea smiles. “Adriana! Because she’s freakishly flexible. Gumby—that green rubber guy who can bend… oh, never mind, you’re too young.”

I giggle. “Yeah, but we dance, like, forty different ballets a season. So what’s the big deal about this new one?” I yawn and twist my hair into a high bun.

Zoe raises an eyebrow as she continues. “Adriana said Otto wants to cast a corps girl in the lead, and that’s why he’s been watching class.”

Now,
this
is news. Daisy puts down her eyebrow pencil, and Bea closes the magazine and sits up a little straighter. I take another sip of coffee and wait for Zoe to continue. Now that she’s mentioned it, I realize that Otto has been around a lot more lately. Usually we see him only two or three times a week, but he’s been slipping into the studio during our center work nearly every day recently. He lingers at the back of the room, along the mirrored wall, his jaw clenched as he taps his fingers on his thigh.

“I saw him giving you the up-down in class yesterday, Hannah,” Bea says. “The day before, too. Maybe you’ve got a shot at it.”

“You think?” I ask, feeling a little shiver of excitement.

“I doubt it,” Zoe snorts under her breath. She leans toward the mirror, retouching the lip gloss on her full, pouty lips.

“Excuse me?” I say.

She turns to me and gives me one of her special Zoe smiles, the kind that’s only about 10 percent sincere. “No offense, Han,
but I wouldn’t get my hopes up,” she says. She carefully lines her lipsticks up in a neat row. “There are a lot of corps girls for him to choose from. He might have someone else in mind. Like Adriana herself, say. Or like…”

“Or like
you
?” I ask.

Zoe nods. “Yes, like me. I mean, I’m just trying to protect your feelings, Hannah.”

“Yeah, right,” I say, suddenly annoyed. “Of course, you’re only concerned about my feelings.”

“Absolutely!” Zoe replies. She blots the corner of her mouth with a tissue and then makes a kissing face at her reflection.

Daisy and Bea pretend to be absorbed in whatever they’re doing. They’ve learned to stay out of it when Zoe and I have one of our occasional spats.

I meet my gaze in the mirror. Staring back at me is a hazel-eyed teenager with high cheekbones and dark blond hair that sometimes, on rainy days, gets a bit frizzy. I set my jaw and straighten my shoulders. I can feel Zoe looking at me from across the room, but I ignore her. Each of us knows what the other is thinking:
That part is going to be mine.

Otto encourages competition between his dancers, as if there weren’t enough already. He likes to put Zoe and me together because we’re both blond and tall, and no doubt he’d get pleasure out of causing a rift between us over a new part. Otto’s of the Nietzschean “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” school.

“Anyway, I’m going out for a puff.” Zoe gets up and throws on a loose cable-knit sweater over her leotard. She’s headed up
to the roof, where the smokers like to gather. “Don’t miss me.” The door slams behind her.

“We won’t,” Bea mutters under her breath as she throws a pair of pointe shoes into her theater case. Bea has no patience for Zoe’s attitude; she tolerates her mostly out of loyalty to me. “God forbid someone suggest that Otto was looking at something other than Zoe’s bony behind,” she says when Zoe’s safely out of earshot. “Her ass is so concave, I could eat soup out of it!” She mimes ladling soup into her mouth, and Daisy succumbs to a fit of giggles.

I laugh so hard I nearly spit out my mouthful of coffee, but there’s a part of me that wonders what gets said about me when
I
leave the room.

“I don’t care what you say,” Daisy sighs, starry-eyed. “I would love to look like Zoe.”

I rest my head on my hands for a moment. Even though she’s kind of a brat, I never like fighting with Zoe. I still have ten minutes before company class, so I decide to go clear the air with her.

I take the elevator to the top floor and hurry up the stairs to the roof. The heavy metal door that says
EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY
groans as I push it open. There aren’t any windows in the theater—not in the studios or the dressing rooms or anywhere—so the bright September sun makes me squint.

I look around for Zoe, but for some reason she’s not up here. An empty Starbucks cup rolls toward me in the slight breeze. The building’s huge air-conditioning unit makes a loud humming noise and spews hot air over the flat black roof.

I walk to the edge and look down over the plaza. Below me
is the vast courtyard of Avery Center. There are clusters of tourists here and there, and I think I see Jonathan, late as usual, hobbling toward the theater because he pulled his ACL in rehearsal yesterday. Behind him the fountain at the center of the plaza sends up sparkling jets of water.

I close my eyes and breathe in, and all thoughts of Zoe vanish. The first autumn bite is in the air, and it marks the beginning of another year with the company.

Is Otto really looking for a corps girl to dance a new lead role? If so, then maybe he’s looking to promote one of us to soloist.

The life span of a fruit fly.
“What am I waiting for?” I ask aloud. “This is my year.” I look up at the sky, and the wispy clouds seem to dance overhead. “This year,” I tell them, “I’m going to be promoted.”

I walk to the other side of the roof and look out over the traffic on Broadway. Two taxis are having a honking war, and on the corner of Broadway and Sixty-Fifth, a man in jogging clothes is doing jumping jacks as he waits to cross the street. A yellow school bus disgorges a group of high school students on a field trip to Avery Center. I watch them walk single file up the steps to the plaza, their mouths open in awe at the grand architecture of the buildings.

I spend most of my waking hours in the building directly below my feet, but beyond that lies a whole bustling world. I think of all the neighborhood sights that I never actually
see
: the lights and crowds of Times Square, the restaurants and bars of Hell’s Kitchen, the galleries of Chelsea, the tree-lined streets of
the West Village, and the shops and rock clubs of the East Village. If I weren’t a professional dancer, maybe I’d feel more a part of New York City. But for now this theater is my entire world, and I don’t miss the outside one bit.

I turn and walk back toward the door, scattering a flock of pigeons that had settled on the roof. My pledge will be my secret. “You can do this,” I whisper.

“Hannah, you on next?” a low, gruff voice asks.

It’s Harry, one of the stagehands, lingering in the backstage area where I wait for my entrance. He’s about six foot three and probably weighs almost three hundred pounds, with kind eyes and no visible neck. Harry has worked at this theater longer than I’ve been alive. His grandfather and his father were stagehands, too. At this point in his career, Harry knows as much about ballet as anyone I can think of.

“Hey, you,” I say, rolling my neck to give the muscles a final stretch. “I’m on in a few minutes.”

“Break a leg.” Harry smiles. His nine-year-old daughter, Matilda, appears from out of nowhere, wearing a half-torn tutu and a battered pair of Nikes.

“Hannah!” she says breathlessly, her chubby cheeks bright pink with excitement.

Matilda doesn’t come around the theater often—backstage isn’t the best place for a kid—so I’m always surprised that she remembers my name and that she seems so excited to see me. I guess she’s what they call precocious.

“Hey,” I say, “I see you’ve got your tutu on. Are you dancing in one of the ballets tonight?”

She giggles. “I wish! But I have a recital coming up. Do you know the Delancey Dance Academy? That’s where I take lessons.” Her voice is proud, and her little chest puffs out.

Harry ruffles his daughter’s curly dark hair. “Mattie wants to be a ballerina, too, when she grows up.”

I look down at this smiling little girl in her pigtails and dirty tutu. Her face shines with delight. The theater must seem like a magical world to her—I know it did to me. When I first became an apprentice, I wanted to sleep on the stage, under the rows of lights that glittered like far-off planets. Sometimes when no one was around, I’d sit on the edge with my legs dangling into the orchestra pit and look out in awe at the vast, empty house with its carved, gilded ceiling and crystal chandeliers.