Dance of Shadows (21 page)

“Maybe you shouldn’t be eating,” Anna said with finality. “Maybe you should be practicing.”

The other girls stared down at their plates, ignoring Vanessa as if she didn’t exist. She searched the room, hoping to see
Zep stand up for her, but no luck. Maybe this was how it started, she realized, taking a weary step backward. She didn’t want to go back to her friends and eat dinner and explain what had happened. Instead, she wanted to chuck her tray and run back to her darkened room until everyone forgot about her. Until she really did disappear.

Vanessa’s shoes tapped softly against the stairs. One, two, three flights, the voices of the girls from dinner still echoing in her head. She walked down the corridor until she reached the door at the far end of the hall. To her surprise, it was identical to her own, the dark wood smooth and worn.

Vanessa touched the brass knob, imagining that the cool metal was Zep’s hand, but recoiled when she heard an echo of voices down the hall. A group of seniors piled into the corridor, barely noticing her as they filtered into their rooms, laughing. To Vanessa’s relief, none of them were from the table of princesses.

When their voices faded, Vanessa held up her fist, letting her shirt sleeve fall back until she could see a purpling bruise shaped like Josef’s thumb on the inside of her arm. Taking a breath, she knocked.

Nothing. She listened for movement within. “Zep?” She stared at the grain of the wood, waiting for his deep voice. “Are you there?”

She took a step back and fished through her bag until she found her cell phone. Typing quickly, she wrote him a text.

I’m sorry I let you down.

She held her fingers over the keys, trying to decide if she should say anything more, when she heard Anna’s voice floating up from the stairwell. She pressed send, and slipped into the darkness of the back stairwell, hoping that no one except Zep would know she had ever been there in the first place.

Vanessa waited for a response, but a day passed and she hadn’t heard from Zep. He didn’t come to her room or surprise her in the library. She’d seen him only briefly in the dining hall, his metallic eyes gazing at her through the crowd. They seemed to be apologizing, looking past her as if distracted, though before she could go to him, her friends surrounded her, chattering about class. She took out her cell phone only to see a text from him pop up.

Sorry I’ve been distant. So busy. It’s not about you.

She read it again, confused. Why hadn’t he just told her in person?

His absence was the most pronounced in rehearsal.

“I’m afraid Zeppelin is sick,” Josef announced on the second day, and turned to Justin, who had been warming up on the barre. “I trust you know the steps for the prince?”

Sick? Vanessa’s face fell. Why hadn’t he told her?

Justin wiped the sweat from his brow. “By heart,” he said, glancing at Vanessa.

“Act one, then,” Josef said with a clap.

Vanessa took her position, trying to avoid Justin’s eye, and on Josef’s count, they began to dance. To Vanessa’s dismay, Justin was actually good, his footwork bringing the prince to life before her eyes, as if, through some cruel twist of fate, he had always been meant to replace Zep.

After two days passed with no other sign of Zep, though, Vanessa began to worry. She stopped by his room every night to see if he was okay, and when he didn’t answer, she texted him, asking how he was, but he never responded. Was he really sick, or was he just avoiding her? Maybe he was in the hospital.

Those were the thoughts that tormented her during morning rehearsal, when the entire cast filed into the studio except Zep.

At nine o’clock, Josef closed the door and clapped his hands. Justin was stretching by the barre with the other understudies. Realizing Zep wasn’t going to show, he stood and was about to take the place of the prince for the third day in a row, when Josef raised a hand.

“Zeppelin will not be here again today, but instead of practicing the normal
Firebird
scenes, I would like to work on
La Danse du Feu
.”

A few of the dancers groaned but then went quiet when Josef narrowed his eyes. “I know we normally only work on
that in the afternoon rehearsals, but the scene needs far more practice than the others.”

Vanessa’s chest seemed to cave in on itself. Just the thought of working on the strange dance twice in one day exhausted her.

“Halfway through,” Josef continued, “the prince fades off-stage and the finale focuses on Vanessa, the Firebird.” He let his eyes rest on her. “And the thirteen princesses around her.” He turned to Justin. “We will not be needing you today, as we will be focusing on the second half of the dance. If you could just observe, that would be
excellente
.”

Justin froze, his face betraying a slight hint of embarrassment before he sat back down. He avoided Vanessa’s gaze while Josef pointed Vanessa and the thirteen princesses into position. Vanessa kept one eye on the door as Josef began clapping. She had memorized the steps to the final scene by now, and her body moved automatically, landing each step perfectly. A smile spread across Josef’s face. “Yes!” he shouted. “Yes!”

When the dance was finished, she lowered her leg to the floor and let her body fall out of character. Josef began clapping. “Spectacular,” he said, his eyes traveling over Vanessa’s body, now damp with sweat. “Just spectacular.”

Anna rolled her eyes and walked behind him toward the corner of the room. “Luck,” she whispered as she passed Vanessa. The other twelve princesses followed her.

Too startled to think of a retort, all Vanessa could do was stand there stupidly in the center of the studio.

“Don’t worry about her,” Josef whispered in her ear.

Vanessa jumped, not expecting him to be standing so close to her.

He followed her gaze as Anna slipped out the door. “If you can do what you did just now in our afternoon rehearsal,” he said, “no one will be able to stop you.”

Vanessa should have been happy, but she wasn’t. The only person she’d wanted to see hadn’t been there. Where was he? Why hadn’t he shown up? She wandered toward the door when someone called her name.

“Vanessa,” Justin said, beckoning her to the wall. “I wanted to tell you—”

But Vanessa didn’t have the energy. “I can’t, Justin. Not now,” she said before he could continue, and pushed past him into the hallway.

Her thoughts absorbed her for the rest of the afternoon, so by the time she met up with Steffie and TJ in the dining hall, it took her a moment to register what they were saying.

“Have you heard from Elly?” TJ balanced her tray by the salad bar, spooning a bit of lettuce onto her plate. “She still hasn’t responded to any of my messages.”

“Elly,” Vanessa murmured. She had actually been planning on sending her a letter, but had yet to write anything down.

“It’s like she’s a different person,” TJ said. “The Elly I knew would never have acted like this. She never would have just left us behind and asked us not to talk to her. It makes me want to go to her house and shake her. I just don’t get it.”

“I know what you mean,” Vanessa said. Her mind drifted to
Zep, who also seemed to have two personalities—one that Vanessa understood and one that was completely foreign and unpredictable. “You think you know someone, and then they just change. They stop showing up or telling you where they’re going, and you have no way of knowing why.”

“Exactly!” TJ said.

Vanessa’s words had come out more passionately than she had intended, and Steffie paused, confused. “Did I miss something here?”

“She’s upset because her boyfriend hasn’t been showing up for rehearsals,” Justin said from behind them.

Vanessa turned around, only to be met with a smug smile. “He’s not my boyfriend. And you’re just the understudy.”

“That doesn’t mean that I don’t know what’s going on in there,” Justin said.

“Oh, because it’s such a secret,” Vanessa said, her tone sarcastic.

Justin gave her a level look. “Maybe it is.”

Vanessa waited for him to laugh, but he didn’t. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said finally. She cocked her head at Steffie and TJ, and together they went to the register and swiped their IDs.

As they found a table and sat down, Justin stood near them, holding out his tray. Vanessa couldn’t help but look at the clean lines of the muscles on his arms as he pushed his hair from his face, his T-shirt lifting at the bottom, betraying a sliver of smooth skin. Quickly, she looked away. He leaned forward. “Exactly. That’s how secrets work.”

The basement studio was always exactly the same—wide and mirrorless, the walls scarred with burns and caked in thick black ash. Vanessa wanted to ask someone what it was from, but the other dancers still barely looked at her. Stenciled into the ash were the white shapes of ballerinas, the only spots where the original paint was still preserved. They lined the room like an accordion of paper cutouts, except each dancer was in a different pose.

That afternoon she was so distracted by them that she almost didn’t notice the boy standing by the edge of the room, his broad shoulders bent as he put on his shoes.

“Zep?”

He stood up, looming over her. She could see her silhouette in the reflection of his eyes. He looked almost guilty as he parted his lips to say something, but before he could speak, Josef’s voice sounded through the room. “Let us commence!”

The afternoon practices were small, intimate, with just the primary cast. On occasion, Josef asked Justin to show up, since he was the primary understudy, but more often than not, it was just Vanessa, the princesses, and Zep. Vanessa’s understudy was Anna Franko, who he sometimes asked to observe Vanessa, just in case. Now everyone in the room crowded around Zep, asking if he was all right before shuffling into position. Vanessa stood back, waiting. She had wanted to see him for days, but now that he was here, he didn’t look like he had been sick. He looked healthy.

“Vanessa.” Zep held out his hand to her cheek, but she flinched.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “Why didn’t you tell me you were sick? I tried knocking on your door but you never answered.”

“I was at the infirmary,” Zep said.

“Oh,” Vanessa said, feeling suddenly guilty. Here she had been imagining all of these awful things when really, he’d been sick. “Why didn’t you tell me? I was so worried.”

“I wasn’t myself,” Zep said, confused. “It wasn’t about you.”

It wasn’t about you
. His words, so similiar to his earlier text, made her wince as if she had been slapped. Something about the way he looked made her want to disappear, to run out into the crisp New York afternoon and not stop until she was so far away from NYBA that she wouldn’t be able to find her way back if she tried.

She looked away, not wanting to see the pity in Zep’s eyes, but when she glanced in the mirror, she was only met with Justin’s reflection. Caught in the act, he tried to pretend like he hadn’t been listening, but Vanessa could tell from the uncomfortable look on his face that he’d heard it all.

Vanessa let out an exasperated laugh. She couldn’t get away. Everywhere she turned, Justin or Anna or the rest of the princesses were looking at her, waiting for her to misstep.

“Positions!” Josef said, eyeing Vanessa and Zep.

Vanessa took her place at the center of the floor, just inches from the ashy scar. Zep stood behind her, so close she could feel his breath on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

Before she could respond, Josef raised his hand. “One and two and three and now—”

Following Josef’s commands, Vanessa arched her head up to the lights, raising her arm.

“I should have been more thoughtful. I was just so tired that I could barely open my door,” Zep said, his hand tickling the small of her back.

The dancing princesses circled them in a strange and erratic rhythm. All the while, Josef counted out the beat, which changed meter so capriciously that Vanessa could hardly keep up. She slid her leg outward on Josef’s command, and leaned back into Zep’s arms.

“Your door? But I thought you were in the infirmary?” Vanessa whispered, confused.