Various Positions (16 page)

“What?” I sat up, startled. “What are you talking about?”

“Tell her what you told Roderick in class today. He was so pleased with you, remember?”

I looked away. I’d hated saying it the first time and it was too mean to repeat. I tried to laugh. “What’s the point when we’ve already heard it?”

“The point is that Chantal doesn’t get it. You were so honest in front of Roderick so you should be able to say it here.”

“Come on, Veronica,” I mumbled. “Can’t we just hang out like normal people and finish our coffees?”

She looked at me meanly now, caught the smiles of Molly and Anushka, and they all started to laugh.

“Maybe you want to go talk to those guys instead,” she said.

My heart beat harder. “What’s the point of that?”

“I don’t know. It sounds like maybe it’d be good for you.”

“Yeah,” said Anushka, “Georgia should go first and warm them up.”

It was unthinkable. I wished Sixty would help me but she was focused on her coffee cup. Was it really a big deal to repeat something that’d already been said? It couldn’t hurt Chantal any more the second time.

“Roderick said your legs were big,” I said with my eyes on the table. “He basically said your legs were too big for classical ballet.”

Veronica clapped her hands once, twice, with exaggerated slowness. I waited for Chantal to lift her head and face me, but she didn’t move, just kept staring into her coffee.

“Your other problem is much easier to fix, Chantal,” Veronica continued. “Just go over there and do what those guys tell you and you’ll prove that you can take it at school.” She looked around at all of us. “Who thinks she should?”

The others said they did. When I hesitated, Veronica glared at me.

“What do you think, Georgia?”

“Yeah,” I mumbled. “She should.”

Chantal slouched down in her seat and pulled her hands farther inside her sleeves. “Okay.” Her voice was barely audible.

We decided she needed to be fixed up a bit so that the guys would take her seriously. Veronica and Molly grabbed their shoulder bags and pulled Chantal into the washroom at the back of the shop.

“Do you really think she should do it?” I whispered to Sixty.

Sixty looked worried. I thought she was going to say no, but then she nodded. “We can’t run the risk of her crying again.”

I sat back in my chair, watched the guys as they elbowed one another and talked. The thought of approaching them left a dead weight on my heart. When Chantal came back from the bathroom, she looked like a kid dressed up as a punk for Halloween. They’d put her hair in a side ponytail and tied the bottom of her shirt into a knot. Her lips had the same outer-space sparkle as Veronica’s.

“All right,” Veronica said. “Good luck.”

Chantal stood there, not moving. Her gaze was more faraway than ever and all the blood had left her face. She glanced over at our table, as though searching for someone to intervene. I looked at the floor. When I lifted my head, she was already walking toward the guys’ table. I couldn’t believe she was doing it. When she was halfway across the room, the guy with the pinstriped blazer noticed her. He nudged his friend and they watched her approach. Chantal stopped a couple of feet in front of them. I became aware of the radio playing in the background, a woman’s voice warning about a collision on the 401, and the clutter of other people talking. I watched the boys’ faces. They were vacant, angled up toward Chantal, and then in an instant they were laughing. Their mouths contorted in horrible shapes and they slapped one another’s arms, laughed harder. Something in the sound was too nasty and I wanted to cover my ears. The next thing I knew, Chantal was running out the door.

NINE

Sixty was standing on the front steps of the academy when I got to school on Monday morning. There were leaves on the ground now, clusters of them ringed around the sewers. She should’ve been wearing a jacket, but had a big sweater thrown over her ballet clothes instead. I could even see the pinch of her blue leotard, the skin of her chest exposed above it. When she saw me, she flapped her hand in the air.

“It’s starting,” she whispered when I reached her.

“What?” I asked.

She took my hand, weaved her fingers between my fingers. I knew her skin was cold because it was the same temperature as mine. I wondered how long she’d been waiting outside. She led me through the side door and down the steps to the first-floor hallway. I inhaled a smell I was getting used to, something sweet to do with the heating system, like cafeteria cookies had been crumbled inside the vents. We got to the main lobby and she pulled me around to the bulletin board. There was a piece of paper thumbtacked to its center. Sixty let go of my hand and wrapped her arm around my middle, her hand pressing into the zipper of my parka. She pulled me so that I was standing right beneath the sheet.

Four names were printed down the margin.

VERONICA ORR

ANUSHKA SAINI

MOLLY DAVIES

CHANTAL ARCHER

Beside each name was a time, and at the bottom of the page it said: “Please report to Mr. Allen’s office at the indicated hour.”

“This is it.” Sixty had brought her lips close to my ear. “The Rodomization.”

I turned around and met her eye. I nodded slowly.

The day passed strangely. I walked by faces in the hall and it seemed as if everyone knew about the list but was trying to look like they didn’t. I felt like I had a headache without actually having one. I had already spent the whole weekend feeling bad about what had happened at Coffee Time. The rest of us had sat at our table for a while, expecting Chantal to come back to get her raincoat. When she hadn’t, I’d stuffed it in my knapsack and left it in my locker over the weekend.

My bad feeling got worse in math class. I looked at the parabolas Ms. McGuinness had drawn on the blackboard and felt my stomach loop up and down with their curves. Veronica sat two seats in front of me. Her posture was very straight and she kept tossing her head back in small waves, the way someone would in a shampoo commercial. Chantal sat down the row from me, three girls away. Everything about her body rolled inward, her shoulders tucked toward her chest. I brought my fingers to the bridge of my nose and pinched the tiny pads of cartilage on either side. Sixty was beside me and she gave me a strange look. I could see the opened page of her notebook on her desk, and instead of parabolas she’d drawn seven or eight palm trees.

Our afternoon timetables were adjusted to accommodate the appointments with Roderick. Repertoire class was canceled and appointments were slotted into the freed time, things like pointe shoe fittings and physiotherapy. I hadn’t been scheduled for anything, and at four o’clock I found myself with nothing to do. I walked along the winding corridor from the lobby to the change room, thinking about the list. The more I thought about it, the worse I felt. All the girls on it had been involved in what had happened at Coffee Time. I couldn’t help but suspect that this was more than a coincidence. It was like Roderick knew what those girls were up to. They came into the studio, leotards snug on their bodies, and flaunted the sex that was taking over their insides. They had boobs, and you could tell they were proud of them, didn’t care who knew. Roderick hated it. It was an insult to ballet. It turned the line of an extended leg into something impure, made pervs out of everyone.

I peeled off my ballet clothes and put on my bra and underwear. I pulled on my baggy T-shirt, then my corduroys. I moved to the mirrors over the row of sinks, gave my reflection a cold reckoning. What if Roderick knew that I’d been involved at Coffee Time too? My stomach twisted with shame. I punched my fist into the ceramic edge of the sink and the pain burned up through my knuckles into my wrist. I needed to be so much more careful about my behavior. I had to focus all my energies on being the kind of dancer that Roderick respected. And I had to do more than that too. I had to make sure that he noticed.

I scrutinized my eyes and nose and mouth. The last thing I had to worry about was prettiness. I pulled sideways on my cheeks. My nose flattened and my nostrils stretched. Now my reflection was defensive, like a living, breathing hockey mask. I seized the bun at the back of my head with my whole hand, made sure it was firmly in position.

I took Chantal’s raincoat from my locker, put it back in my knapsack, and went to the lobby to check the schedule. Chantal’s appointment with Roderick had started fifteen minutes ago. I climbed the stairs slowly to the third floor. I could catch Chantal as she left Roderick’s office and maybe I’d run into him too. That way he would know that I wasn’t running around with those other girls. I walked down the empty hallway toward the office. My running shoes made a squeaky sound on the floor that I didn’t like. I passed the academic classrooms that hosted math, geography, and French, before coming to the cluster of administrative rooms. Roderick’s door was shut. I moved to the bulletin board beside it, pretending to be interested in whatever happened to be posted there.

Magazine clippings about the academy were scattered across the cork. One full-page spread had a photo of Roderick correcting a dancer’s position. She was standing sideways at the barre, a muscled leg stretched high in front of her. Roderick stood behind her, very close, as though his proximity were part of the correction. One of his hands was on her shoulder, pressing it down. His other hand wasn’t visible but I knew exactly where it was. Dancers in that position will throw their hips off balance, trying to get a few extra inches of height out of the extended leg. Roderick’s hand would be on her lower back, his fingers sinking into the muscles of her upper bum, trying to keep it level. I brought my fingers to my own lower back, pinched them into the same muscles. What would Roderick have felt touching this girl? I moved my hand around the way he would have moved his hand, putting pressure on the mound of round muscle curving under toward my thigh.

A door opened. I dropped my hand, pivoted toward the sound. Chantal stepped out of Roderick’s office. She looked right at me.

“Hi.” The word scraped up my throat, rough with embarrassment.

Chantal’s mouth was straight as a ruler and she didn’t say anything. Roderick stepped out into the hallway. “Hello,” he said.

I took a shallow breath. “Hello.”

He looked from me to his bulletin board and back to me again. I was supposed to explain myself.

“I was just—” I pointed at Chantal. “I was looking for Chantal.”

“Oh.” Roderick turned to Chantal now too, as though he had momentarily forgotten about her. He considered me again for a second and his focus dipped down my body. I hoped he noticed the looseness of my clothing, how it didn’t cling to me anywhere at all. “Well, that’s very thoughtful of you, Miss Slade.” The corner of his mouth pulled up toward his cheek, a smile that crept backward. “Why don’t you girls go have a little powwow. And have an easy night, okay? Give yourselves some time to rest.” He stepped back into his office and shut the door.

*   *   *

Chantal and I walked up Church Street to the subway without saying much. I didn’t ask her why she was walking to the subway instead of going up to the dorm room she shared with Sixty. I didn’t ask her if she was okay because it seemed pretty clear she wasn’t. Her breathing was heavy and disjointed, accumulating every ten seconds or so in that hiccup-sob medley that kids get in the wake of a temper tantrum.

She turned to me suddenly. “Why were you waiting for me?”

I pulled the raincoat out of my knapsack and handed it to her. She looked at me like she didn’t understand. Then she accepted it slowly, as though worried I’d whip it away. When she mumbled thank you, I tried to smile. I desperately wanted to apologize for what had happened at Coffee Time, but I didn’t know how. We walked into the station, went through the turnstiles and down the escalator without saying another word.

“I’m sorry,” I said at last. “I thought what happened … what they made you do … I thought it was gross. I shouldn’t have said that stuff.”

Chantal didn’t respond and I realized there was no way she’d forgive me. But as the subway pulled into the tunnel, she caught my hand between both of hers in a weird hand sandwich. Her palms were soft and the clumsiness of the gesture made them pawlike. She was instantly embarrassed and let go.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, once we were inside the subway car.

She glanced over her shoulder as though she was worried someone from school might be on the same car. “I’m on probation,” she whispered. “I could get kicked out.”

I couldn’t believe it. “Is that what Roderick told you?”

She nodded, dipped her small white chin into her turtleneck. Her mouth started to do something complicated, like invisible strings pulled it in different directions. She was fighting back tears. I took her hand and squeezed it.

“Is it because you cried in class?” I asked.

She shook her head and the tears started to flow. One skydived straight to the swell of her cheek. I fished into my ballet bag for Kleenex even though I never carried Kleenex. It seemed like the appropriate gesture and it gave me something to do.

“Then why?”

“Because,”
she mumbled, and grabbed her thigh to show me.

I shouldn’t have asked the question. I could see the suffering on her face and it made me feel awful. Chantal loved ballet more than anyone. I suddenly didn’t care what Veronica and Molly had said about her having no control over her emotions. Chantal had cried in class that time only because Roderick had basically called her fat. It would have made the steeliest dancer crumble. The only thing Chantal needed to learn how to control was her appetite.

“Don’t worry.” I tried to comfort her. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay! You don’t understand.”

“I think I do.” We locked eyes. I loved her sadness, the way it was so wrapped up in her devotion. “I think I can help you.”

“What do you mean?”

“With your
problem
.”

A dollop of hope rippled through her gloom. “How?”

“I can just—” I wasn’t sure how to explain it. “I’ll
help
you.”