Page 7 of Barre Fight
“You’re a ballet dancer.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Um, I’m not. I mean, not anymore. I mean, I was. How did you know?”
The other girl made an amused sound, then looked Ivy up and down. “Triangular traps. Bulging calves. Impeccable posture and not a hair out of place? Dead giveaway. You are a ballet dancer.”
“Was.”
“Well, I’m in the campus dance company and basically noone showed up to audition this year. We’re desperate for bodies. Could you be a ballet dancer again? Ideally by tomorrow at 4:30pm?”
Ivy’s eyebrows rose. “‘Desperate for bodies,’ wow, I’m flattered.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. We need dancers, and you don’t exactly look like the bottom of the barrel. Where did you train?”
Ivy told the girl the name of the school, and her eyes went wide. “Shit, you guys are, like, elite.”
“Some of us were,” Ivy said, shifting uncomfortably. Most of her classmates at that elite school had gone off to live her dream, and here she was being asked to try out a campus dance company simply because she had a pulse. It was a far cry from the life she’d imagined for so many years.
But she enjoyed her uni classes, and she liked this new life she was building for herself here, where no one knew her as Ivy the Ballerina. She was taking a class about the history of newspapers and learning how to edit audio stories. She was moving on. A little bit of ballet coaching here and there was one thing, but she wasn’t going to start dancing again herself, no matter how desperate this girl was.
“Please just come to one rehearsal. If you hate it, you never have to come back,” the other girl insisted, her eyes wide. She actually clasped her hands and shook them a little, like Ivy had been taught to do when she was miming begging onstage.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t dance anymore.”
“Why not?” the stranger pressed.
“I—I just—it’s complicated, okay?” Ivy said, unable to keep a little heat out of her voice. What was this girl’s problem?
The girl crossed her arms and propped her weight on one hip. “Well, of course it’s complicated. Ballet’s complicated. The culture’s totally broken, and no one seems to want to fix it. Half the girls in my class had eating disorders, includingme, and then my school got shut down because my teacher sexually abused one of the students. And then he moved to another state and started teaching again because apparently that’s totally legal. Complicated? Ballet’s a fucking nightmare. But I love it, okay, and I’m trying to keep this dance company from dying a sad, whimpering death, and I reckon you’re really, really good, so will you please,please, just come tomorrow?”
She stopped and took a deep breath, and Ivy stared at her, realizing that at some point during this rant, she’d taken a step backwards, putting some space between herself and the unsettling information coming out of the other girl’s mouth. The stranger screwed up her face, perhaps realizing she’d revealed a bit too much to someone she’d just met.
“I’m sorry, who are you?” Ivy asked cautiously.
“I’m Em. Em Watkins. And you are?”
“Ivy Page,” she replied, faintly. “And I’m not a dancer anymore.”
“I know, I heard you. But will you come to rehearsal anyway? Please? You can be anything you want, just please say you’ll be there.”
Ivy paused, wondering what Opa would tell her to do. She pictured his twinkling eyes, which hid his steel and stubbornness. There was no one on the planet as pushy as her grandfather when he thought he knew what was best for you. But he’d been right to push her back towards dancing last time, hadn’t he? After a moment, she nodded decisively. “You’ll be there.”
“I—what?” Em frowned.
“You said, ‘Say you’ll be there.’”
Em stared for a second, then cackled. “Oh my God, you’re not a dancer, you’re adork!”
“Ex dancer, current dork.” Ivy shrugged, with a grin. Her heart gave an excited little squeeze. She didn’t know who this girl was or where she’d come from, but she wanted to trust her.So she showed up at the campus dance studios the next day at 4:30pm. And she showed up three times a week, every week after for the rest of uni. Because of Em’s insistence, she started to love dancing again. Because of Em’s firm opinions about ballet, she started to think a little more critically about the world she’d spent her childhood in. And because of Em’s fierce loyalty, she now had a best friend who she could trust to push her a little, and tell her the truth even when it was uncomfortable.
Ivy lay on the couch, body still but brain whirring. Before she could think better of it, she picked up her phone, swiped it open, and pulled up Peter’s email. It was a job. A chance to leave journalism before it kicked her out. She should have done that with ballet, should have walked away before ballet broke her heart and left her to rebuild from nothing. Here was a lifeline—unexpected, and definitely not a dream job, but something more stable than the news industry, which had been lurching from slow-motion decline to high-speed collapse for the last two decades.
She’d still get to write. She’d still get to be around the arts—and not just any art,ballet.She’d still get to live in this apartment she loved, and she wouldn’t have to feel like a failure again. Ivy shuddered as she imagined once again sliding into the dark, yawning hole that had nearly swallowed her when she was seventeen, devastated and despairing.
She would not go there again.
She glanced over at the bookshelf, at the last photo she’d taken with her opa. He was wearing his trademark three-piece suit, and she wore a little black dress with her billowing graduation gown over the top. He’d been frail by then, in his early nineties, and they all knew he didn’t have much time. But he’d insisted on joining her parents at Ivy’s uni graduation ceremony, to watch his only granddaughter do what he’d never managed to do. He’d been so proud of her ambition to be a journalist.Anoble tradition, he’d called it, in his thick Austrian accent.
Leaving journalism had always looked like selling out to her. Journalism held power to account, and it was vital to a functioning democracy. But now, she kind of got it. What if she found another journalism gig, only to be right back here in a year or two, just as hungover but having lost two years she could have spent developing some new career? What if she stayed and failed again, just like she’d failed at ballet?
