Page 31 of Facing Off
“Ready?” asks Robert when it’s our turn.
I nod.
His hands settle on my hips. We begin.
“Straighten your foot,” barks Madame Kozlova at me. “Belly to your backbone,” she screeches at Robert. “Curve your neck!” she screams back at me.
We fix ourselves and go again. These aren’t beginner moves we’re performing. Legs and arms whip and unfurl, timed to a razor point of precision.
Then Robert pulls me to the center of the floor, preparing us for our grand allegro, tying together all the steps we’ve done so far.
He leaps. Gestures at me.
I run en pointe toward his arms.
For this scene I’m pretending to be rejected so my head ducks as if I’m forlorn. Then it’s my turn to leap. Smaller jumps at first. Once, twice, three times before the big one?—
And it happens.
Mid-air, I lose it. My sense of space erases in a blink of an eye. Instead of sliding through the air into one graceful leap, I’m bent forward too much. My knee drags too far behind.No, no, no!
Robert’s eyes go big. The timing is so wrong, but I’m already going down so fast that he can’t rearrange himself to avoid the collision.
An elbow clips my temple, and the ground races up to swallow my vision.
“Are you okay?” someone screeches.
I open my mouth but find I can’t answer. That’s okay. I’ll just get up. I make it halfway before toppling again. My eyes squeeze shut and I moan.
“Call an ambulance,” orders Madame Kozlova. “Now!”
“I’m not hurt,” I mumble.
“Didn’t she fall in front of Bob Pepita?” whispers Nina Hart.
Seriously?
I want to scream at her for reminding everyone, even though in her spot I might have done the same. She’s aiming to be the first East Asian ballerina promoted to principal. We’re each other’s biggest competition.
I make another attempt to get up, but Robert blocks me. “Rest,” he urges. “Better safe than sorry. Something could be wrong if you keep falling like this.”
When the ambulance comes, I’m strapped to a gurney and whisked away. My entire face flushes. How humiliating.
I can’t talk. I’m so embarrassed, answering the paramedics with one-word answers on the way to the hospital.
My shoulders don’t uncurl for hours.
“We ran a few tests,” the doctor finally says later.
Madame Kozlova perks up and so does Nina Hart, because for some reason, she’s also here. Actually, I know why Nina is here. To keep tabs on the competition, probably manifesting that I need to sit out Bob Pepita’s audition so she has the upper hand in winning a principal dancer spot.
“So…” I wrap the hospital blanket tighter around me. “What’s wrong with me?”
Becausesomethinghas to be wrong, and it’s going to cost me everything I’ve ever wanted if I don’t fix it. Still, I pretend that nothing’s the matter, so nobody catches on to the seriousness of it all.
What doesn’t help my forced Zen is the patient I’m sharing the room with. They don’t seem to believe in privacy. The curtain separating us is only half-closed, and the TV in their corner is blaring loudly.
It’s so much stimulation that I almost miss the doctor smiling at me.
