Dust covered the pictures in the room. The corners of their cheap plastic frames had cracked, and some of them hung crooked on the nails. Underneath the glass were photos from the fairy-tale lands of New York City, Paris, and Moscow. Most of them had been printed in black and white, featuring a graceful brunette in rhinestones and starched tulle. In the colored snapshots, she smiled in black leotards, arms around Alessandra Ferri or Mikhail Baryshnikov.
Kayla shifted from one foot to the other as she squinted at the photographs. Her fingers twitched against the sides of her thighs while she waited. Ms. Duvay was talking on the telephone and tapping at her computer, checking some Paleolithic tax return or electric bill for the owner. She pushed her glasses up on her nose as she searched. Kayla thought Ms. Duvay looked odd with glasses. She was prettier in the pictures.
Ms. Duvay dropped the phone back into its carriage and turned to Kayla.
“What do you need?”
“A brochure for the ballet camp in New York this fall. I’m old enough to apply.”
Kayla stared at her slippers, shifting from one foot to the other. She heard the hollow sound of doors opening and closing as Ms. Duvay bent to retrieve the pamphlet. Her eyes swept up and down the photos on the front, considering before she handed it into Kayla’s outstretched palm.
“This camp is intensive, you know. They dance six hours a day, and then three hours of theory, history, and lecture.”
“I know.”
“They only accept two hundred applicants.”
“I’ve been practicing at home. And I have most of the summer to rehearse before auditions.”
Ms. Duvay’s fingernails drummed on the veneer countertop.
“You’ll miss part of your fall semester. You might have to get a tutor.”
“I’m dropping a few classes. I figure I can take summer school for the rest.”
“Talk to your parents about it. They’ll help you decide what’s best.”
“Thank you.”
Kayla left, twisting the paper between her fingers. Once the door closed, Ms. Duvay pulled another leaflet from her desk drawer. The paper was coarse and yellowed with age. On the front, dancers smiled in elegant costumes, a class executed a synchronized grand jete, and several tiny, bone-thin girls waved, clutching books with pictures of tiny, bone-thin girls on the cover.
Ms. Duvay sighed and looked at the new brochure, nearly identical, except that the photographers no longer forced the girls to smile. On the back was a list of internationally acclaimed dancers and instructors who would lecture over the course of the two-month program.
Ms. Duvay also knew the statistics the pamphlet wouldn’t print: that three girls had collapsed her year and been hospitalized, that ten more had gone straight to rehab for eating disorders after the camp’s completion. That thirty percent of the girls who enrolled left in the first two weeks.
She remembered the lessons that weren’t listed on the curriculum: how to wrap bloody blisters so that they still fit into toe shoes, which mouthwash to use to hide the scent of vomit, and when to learn whether you had it, or you didn’t.
That night, Kayla sat between her parents at the kitchen table. She stared over the platter of casserole at the empty chair across from her and sighed. Her parents chewed while she pushed food around her plate and licked the tips of her fork. Kayla’s mother had learned to accept this habit years ago, and as long as some of the noodles made it to her mouth, she kept quiet. Kayla’s father didn’t notice.
“How was school today?”
“Fine.”
“And your test, how did that go?”
“It’s tomorrow.”
“Well, how was your presentation? It’s in history, right?”
“Fine. And it was in Spanish.”
The refrigerator hummed and forks scraped across the white china. Kayla looked at the calendar pinned over the sink, trying to imagine how many weeks were left until summer.
“How are Natasha and Cheryl?”
“Okay.”
Kayla picked up her plate and scraped the shredded noodles and decimated cheese crumbles into the garbage disposal. Then she turned to her parents.
“May I be excused?”
They nodded. Kayla left the brochure on the table.
Kayla walked up the stairs and turned to her bedroom, the last door on the right. She turned on the radio and got out her easel and canvas. She squeezed tubes of dark oil paints onto her palette and sat down on the three-legged stool.
Kayla’s brush was frayed around the ends, with hairs that got stuck in the paint and old colors that wouldn’t wash out if they soaked for days. Her palette and smock were splotched with dots of rainbow and half-dried linseed oil. The paints swept back and forth across the canvas in bright yellows and greens, swerving in colorful zigzags. Minutes passed, then an hour. Kayla painted.
When she had finished, Kayla sipped a glass of Coke and smiled at her canvas. She dipped her brush in black and signed the bottom right corner in curling letters. The painting showed an empty New York subway station, plastered with scratched plastic billboards and torn posters. Old white gum and face-up pennies lay abandoned on the grimy platform, and benches were littered with empty wrappers and grocery bags, an arm’s length from half-full trash cans. No train was in sight.
Kayla dropped her brushes in the bucket, covered her palette, and hands in the sink. She hung her smock on a peg and folded up her easel, laying the dripping canvas on her desk to dry. Then she crawled into her bed and, grinning, fell into sleep.
Kayla’s next lesson was three days later, on a Thursday at four in the afternoon. The ballet studio was bright with spotlights that reflected off the shiny wooden floor and the long mirrors. Girls twirled in pink tights and stretchy black leotards, hair pulled into neat, tight buns. Ms. Duvay walked between the spinning rows, squinting at Sharlene’s arabesque and Ashton’s glissade.
Kayla twirled in a lovely pirouette, except that her knee was braced rather than straight. Ms. Duvay stood behind her left shoulder, watching.
“Straighten your supporting knee. When it’s braced like that it can make your joints lock. That’s how ballerinas faint onstage.”
Kayla tried again. And again. The knee never changed.
“Try to relax it. Bracing can make your joints stiff, and that makes the movement more choppy.”
Again. And again. The knee bent until she was wobbling to stay en pointe.
“Now less. You’re starting to lose your balance… That’s good… Tilt your neck… I said tilt your neck, Kayla!”
She bent the neck quickly, so that her weight shifted and the pirouette dipped slightly off its circle.
“One more time.”
Kayla completed a pirouette, both knee and neck in line.
Ms. Duvay moved on to the next student.
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