Page 86 of Swallow Your Sorries

“Are you doing a frappe or stomping grapes for a new merlot?”

“The box kind,” Rin had sniggered.

“Bend those knees when you land from a jump or I will bend them for you!” WHACK!

Not even midway into the class and I’m already a whole litany of things and none of them are good. The more Mistress draws attention to me, the more I get inside my head. My anxiety’s bubbling so severely, it physically cripples me, and my silly mistakes quadruple.

Beaussip’s words spring to the front of my mind, “a mediocre delulu dancer”. Everything else the article said hadn’t bothered me, but ballet is my haven, my calm, my peace. I’m in my element when I dance. At my old school, it was the one thing I was good at. Here, it’s obvious that I’m the worst in the class, at least a level below everyone else.

Even Aria, a figure skater, outperforms me, and she and Étienne only take ballet to help with their flexibility, grace, and posture on the ice. For the second time in less than three hours, Aria takes pity on me again, mumbling some corrections under her breath before Mistress can call them out or Rin and her cackling crew can squawk.

Not that I could ever snigger back. Rin’s one of the best female dancers in the class, light on her feet and technically superior to almost everyone else. Her beauty only aids in her performance and I’m not the only one to notice. Across the room, Bae’s eyes haven’t left her form once.

My annoyance at her gracefulness only doubles when I remember how close I’d been to catching her the other night. But catching her doing what is the question?

As the class tortuously drones on, more questions bombard me. How had I been delusional enough to think that I could get into Beaulieu without some sort of intervention? Did I really think those pointers Gant gave me two years ago and all those YouTube instructional videos sufficed between my public classes?

Suddenly my hatred toward Gant for ‘tricking’ me diminishes by half. I’m the one that tricked me.

“Eloisa, a word,” Madame Errard says as the students file out of the studio nearly two hours later.

Panting and sweaty, I approach her near the sound equipment, not even remotely surprised by the callout.

“Look,” she says, lowering her voice and taking off her sleek glasses. I’d never had an instructor lower their voice for me before. Normally, they were only too happy to have the entire class overhear my berating. But Mistress seems a brush softer now that it’s just her and I. “Like everyone else, I’ve heard the rumours surrounding your entrance into Beaulieu too.”

That’s the last thing I expect her to say.

Didn’t teachers have an unspoken rule of pretending the inner conflicts of the students simply didn’t exist while knowing about them full well?

I can’t meet her eyes. Instead, I stare at the skinny black cane she’d swatted at the back of my knees because what am I supposed to say to that?

I knew I didn’t belong ever since my cheap loafers set foot on campus. Now I know from one dance class that Ireallydon’t belong. It hurt more than getting food dumped on me, and wreaking of garlic for days. It stabbed at my heart more than the chants of ‘murderer’ every time I walked down corridors. Heck, it even hurt more than my lungs filling with water.

Don’t they say the pathway to hell is painted with good intentions?

I’d say it’s delusions. Delusions that have propelled me halfway there. To hell. Because this must be what it feels like.

So what does Mistress want? Does she want me to acknowledge that I’m a giant fraud? Isn’t it enough that we both already know that?

“But even if I hadn’t,” she goes on. “I still remember your audition tape vividly.”

My eyes fly to hers, then in shock. “Y-you do?”

She must’ve watched thousands of tapes.

“All three of them. You applied every year.”

She… remembered me? And not just one audition, but all three???

“I saw your considerable progress each time, but more than that, I could see your heart.”

“My heart?” The dead organ in my chest thuds back to life.

“To dance ballet beautifully, it takes far more than just technique, which you lack. It also needs your heart and soul. It needs a certain amount of expressiveness that only comes from within. When you danced in your audition tapes, no instructor could deny how passionately you performed.”

My brows crease in confusion. Given her earlier critique, I assumed I danced like an injured pigeon trying to take flight.

“But passion cannot trump technique. Although I’ll say it’s better.”

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