Page 88 of Barre Fight
“Are you okay?” Ivy asked. “It’s not too late to cancel. We can… I don’t know, tell them there was a ballet emergency.”
A small smile curved Justin’s mouth, despite himself. “A ballet emergency?”
“Yeah.” Ivy shrugged.
“What would that even be?”
“I don’t know… a spandex shortage. Tariffs on tulle. All the foam rollers got recalled.”
“Don’t joke about that,” he warned.
“Right, that’d be a real emergency,” Ivy smiled.
“Unlike, say, bird flu,” he mused.
Ivy cocked her head. “Why would bird flu be a ballet emergency?”
“Because of all the swans.”
She chuckle-groaned and shook her head. “I think we could do better than that. But seriously, if you’re not ready for this, I can turn around right now and we’ll tell the mayor… something.” She glanced across the car at him, then turned her attention back to the road, which was leading them inexorably into the blackened heart of what remained of Hillstone.
He reached across the console to where her hand rested on her thigh and, just as they had half a dozen times on this drive, they twined their fingers together and held on tight.
“I’m okay,” he said. “And the church is right up there on the left.” He gestured with his free hand, and she flipped her turn signal and slowed the car.
Justin swallowed as Ivy pulled up in front of the church. Its large rectangular sandstone bricks were scarred with streaks of black, but it was still standing. Around it, where there had once been a glossy green lawn, he saw nothing but scorched earth and the debris of a cluster of smaller buildings that had beenmade of the same timber and corrugated iron as the hall. He’d forgotten about them, he realized, but now that he was here, he remembered. An old outhouse, maybe, that had been converted into a storage shed for folding chairs and music stands, and a few other small structures. In Justin’s memories, there was only the church and the hall, and since his mother and Shane weren’t religious, he rarely set foot inside the church itself. To him, the hall had been the only building that mattered. Now, looking at the charred debris, he let out a long, slow breath and leaned back in his seat. He’d know this would be hard, but seeing it with his own eyes was a punch in the gut he couldn’t have braced for.
Ivy squeezed his hand, then released it to put the car in park and turn off the engine. A second later, though, her fingers wrapped around his again.
“Tell me about it,” she said quietly, and he couldn’t help but think of all the times she’d pressed him for answers he didn’t want to give her. Now, he wanted to tell her everything. He knew she would hold everything he told her gently and carefully.
He closed his eyes and breathed in through his nose. “It smelled like dust. Dust and rosin. And sweat. No air conditioning, just a dinky ceiling fan that hardly did anything, and a little standing fan that Miss Mary would break out if we begged for it.”
Ivy let out a low chuckle. “Ballet teachers.”
“I know. Ruthless.”
“What else?”
“Wood floor. I didn’t even know what I was looking at the first time I walked into a studio with a dance mat. The floor here needed a fresh coat of varnish every year or else you’d end up with splinters in the balls of your feet.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah.” He opened one eye and looked over at her. “So what I’m saying is, I can relate to the pain of pointe shoes.”
She scoffed, like he’d known she would. “You’ll never know that pain,” she said darkly.
He smiled to himself and sighed. “It was just like any other dance studio. Rosin box and lost-and-found in the corner. Mirrors along one wall, scratched up but always spotless. Miss Mary didn’t tolerate students touching the mirrors, and if you did she’d hand you a bottle of Windex and a pile of old newspapers and put you to work after class. We learned pretty quick that it wasn’t a rule worth breaking.”
“Did you ever get in trouble with her?”
He shook his head. “I was always on my best behaviour here. I know a lot of boys in ballet can’t say that, but it’s true. I needed this place. I’d run here from school so fast I once got bruises on my shoulders from my backpack. I’d be all sweaty, even before class started.”
“Warmed up, though.”
“I guess.” You got pretty warm when you were running away from bullies and from the silent complicity of all your classmates and teachers. The back of his neck prickled as he thought about it, and he fidgeted with the hem of his shorts. “I just wanted to get here as soon as I could. I knew what was expected of me here, and I knew I could do all of it. I knew how tobehere.”
“It was home,” Ivy said simply.
