Page 4 of Kissing the Debutant
“Who?” Rose asked. “Jenna?”
“Ignore her,” Lola said. “She’s not into social media to begin with. The girl doesn’t even have an Instagram account.”
“Neither do I,” Layne said. “I’m just saying Jenna’s right about it being a distraction.”
“I definitely can’t afford distractions,” Lillian said under her breath.
“Neither can I,” Rose agreed. “None of us can if we hope to win.”
“And social media is the biggest distraction,” Layne concluded.
Lola scoffed. “Well, I love it. And it’s part of the competition now, so we might as well embrace it. Besides, social media might be a distraction, but it’s not worse than boys.”
Layne nodded. “Fair enough. Boys are more of a distraction, especially for you, Lola.”
Rose laughed. “So what, are we supposed to close down all our online accounts and stop dating? Should I enter a nunnery while I’m at it?”
Layne laughed. “You don’t have to stop dating, just be sure you don’t... I don’t know...”
“Fall in love,” Lola suggested.
Rose’s brows arched in surprise at the L-word. “That I can definitely promise not to do.”
“Me too,” Lillian said. “I don’t have time to sleep, let alone deal with boy drama.”
“Me three,” Lola added. “There’s just too many kissable boys in the world to fall for just one.”
They laughed at Lola’s comment, but there was one among them who’d been silent.
Layne blushed. “Oh, I don’t have anything to worry about there. My love life is non existent.”
“Then we don’t have anything standing between us and victory,” Rose said.
They’d stopped short of the desk where the organizers were collecting the forms and Jenna brushed past them, pushing Lola to the side as she beat them to the desk. “Word to the wise, ladies?” she called over her shoulder. “Keep your eye on the prize.”
1
Lillian
Ballet was a language completely foreign to the average observer, but Lillian Preston understood little else.
Arabesque, battement, echappé… these words made sense to her, they had meaning.
Friendships, motherly affection, love… not so much.
“Keep going,” Lillian’s dance teacher, Katrina, called from the front of the room. “I don’t want to see those heels touch the ground. Turn, use the strength of those calves.”
Around Lillian, kids her age whined about the pain. They groaned and grunted, not recognizing how this would make them better. She understood. It was why she couldn’t stop.
Lillian Preston had to be the best.
If she wasn’t the best, then who was she?
She dipped down toward the floor, brushing her fingertips against the pale wood while her left leg stretched out behind her, turned out, as she balanced on the ball of her right foot, also perfectly turned out.
None of this was hard if you put in the work. She didn’t understand why her classmates couldn’t see that, why they didn’t just quit if they weren’t good enough. Lillian had never met a task she couldn’t accomplish, a skill she couldn’t master with enough practice.
Whether it was bounding across the private dance studio at her home in Lexington, Kentucky or even the schoolwork at her exclusive boarding school in Southern Ohio, she never quit, never let good be good enough.
