Page 6 of Barre Fight
“‘Yours, Peter McGregor, Artistic Director, Australian National Ballet.’”
“Oh, shit,” Em said. She hurried to set the glass down, then came and sat on the couch next to Ivy.
“I know.”
“That’s… unexpected.”
“Iknow. But it’s PR,” Ivy said flatly. Ivy had spent her career fielding pitches from PR people—that was why she had Connie Tsai’s contact info—and even the most competent of them had always struck her as vaguely… grimy. They didn’t want Ivy writing the whole story about their clients, just the most flattering possible version. When it didn’t look like she was willing to do that, they dodged her questions and avoided her calls, only to reach out a few weeks later with another “opportunity” to kiss another client’s ass in print. Connie had always been easy to work with, and it was thoughtful of Peter to offer her a lifeline, but Ivy couldn’t take a PR job. She was a journalist.
“Right. It’s PR,” Em agreed. She knew how seriously Ivy took the mission of journalism—to inform, to contextualize, to shine light into dark and forgotten corners, to tell the whole story even when, or especially when, it pissed off people in power. That was the kind of journalism she’d been trying to do at theMorning Sun, in her own way. And they’d kicked her to the curb, mission be damned.
“Although…” Ivy started. “It’s a job. I need a job.”
“You do,” Em said slowly. “But this isn’t a job you want. Right?”
“No.” Ivy shook her head. “It would be the end of my journalism career. You can’t go back to news once you’ve crossed over to the dark side.”
“Right,” Em agreed. “I really don’t think you’d enjoy PR. It’s just whitewashing and spin—trust me, our in-house team are wizards at it, and not the good kind. And you’ll find another journalism job. You don’t have to make any decisions tonight. You do need to drink that water, though.”
“I’m fine.” Ivy waved a hand in refusal.
“Drink. The. Water,” Em repeated. “We aren’t all blessed with a magic liver, and I don’t want to have to come over here and scrape you off this couch tomorrow morning.”
“Okay, okay, I’m drinking it.” Ivy made a show of reaching for the glass and took a few long gulps. Em nodded in satisfaction.
“Good. I’m gonna go, I’ve got an early bootcamp class,” Em said, standing and stretching her back.
“How? You just drank an entire bottle of wine,” Ivyobjected. She already knew she’d be spending all of tomorrow morning in bed with a giant mug of coffee and a bottle of ibuprofen. Working out was out of the question until Monday, at least. Magic liver, indeed.
“Bootcamp on the weekends is the only way to survive spending all week locked in a corporate law office,” Em said as she walked to the door and slipped on her shoes. Her tone was light, but Ivy could hear the sharpness just beneath the breezy words.
“Text me when you get home, okay?”
“I will,” Em assured her. “And you, finish that water. And promise me you won’t make any decisions tonight. Don’t cut off your hair, don’t answer any emails, don’t do anything except hydrate and go to sleep. You’re sad, you’re drunk, and anything important can wait until tomorrow. Okay?”
“Okay,” Ivy agreed.
Em gave her one last warning look, then let herself out the front door.
Ivy sat on the couch for a few moments after the door clicked shut, listening to the near-silence of her apartment. The low hum of the fridge in the kitchen behind her, and the rhythmic snick of the clock on her bedroom wall. She took a deep gulp of the water, then another and another until the glass was empty.There, Em,happy now?She could almost hear Em’s retort:I’m always happy when people acknowledge that I’m right.Bossy, her best friend was. But bossy for a good cause, Ivy liked to tell people. She’d been bossing Ivy around for her own good since the day they met, half-way through her first year of uni.
Ivy had started uni a year later than her high school classmates, and she didn’t know or even recognize anyone in her classes. After all those ballet companies had rejected her, she’d fallen into a deep depression and stopped dancing altogether.Some days she couldn’t even get out of bed. No one could cheer her up, not her parents, and not her two younger brothers, who usually found a way to coax her out of her bad moods. Not even her opa, who had moved in with them the previous year, and who always knew how to make her giggle.
She threw out all her leotards and peeled the fifth position-ripped leg warmers poster off her wall. Her parents had tried to convince her to take open dance classes, or even Zumba—anything just to move her body—but she couldn’t bear it. Stepping foot in a dance studio was too humiliating now. The mirrors showed her nothing but her own loathsome image, her short legs and shorter torso reflected back to her like a parody of her own stupidity.
She’d been so sure that some ballet company, somewhere, would look past her height and see her talent and her hard work. But she’d been an idiot. A silly, foolish kid who hadn’t understood how the world really worked. It was like being shoved headfirst into adulthood, stripped of all the hopes and beliefs that had shaped her childhood. As all her ballet classmates went off to their company contracts, and all her school classmates went off to uni, Ivy went back to bed. She stayed in her room for days on end, staring at the ceiling, unable to see any kind of future for herself.
After six months, her old dance teacher had called and asked for Ivy’s help. A young student was preparing for a prestigious competition where she’d be dancing a solo very similar to one Ivy had performed at her age. Miss Leslie thought Ivy might have some helpful tips for the girl. Ivy declined. She had nothing to teach anyone, unless it was how to get your heart broken by ballet. But her opa overheard her curt, decisive refusal, and when Ivy hung up and drifted back to her bedroom, he picked up the phone and called Miss Leslie right back, saying she’d do it after all. Ivy went, reluctantly, because she knew itwould please her beloved grandfather, even if it made her miserable. She found herself moving again as she helped the younger girl fine-tune her competition solo, and one day, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she demonstrated the subtleties of épaulement. She was surprised to realize that her reflection was smiling.
To her opa’s and parents’ relief, she started pulling out of her funk, and imagining a life without ballet, a life beyond her childhood dream. In the new year, she started a media and communications degree at the University of New South Wales, and though she was a year behind her high school friends, and a little lonely, she took to uni well enough.
And then Em found her. Actually, Em had shouted “hey, bunhead!” from across a crowded stretch of grass, and when Ivy and a handful of other people looked up in surprise, Ivy found a petite woman with auburn hair looking right at her.
The stranger stalked across the grass, ignoring the other students who were watching her.
“Hi,” she said brightly, when she reached Ivy. She was a little taller than Ivy, and had a lush, curvy build, with a pixie cut and pale blue eyes. She wore denim overall shorts over a cropped white T-shirt and bright red lipstick that matched her sneakers.
“Hi?” Ivy replied.
