fall
by Julia
The one that was going was saying, the one that was glowing, the one that was going was saying then, I am content, you are not content, I am content you are not content, I am content, you are not content, you are content, I am content.
Gertrude Stein, from “Storyette, H.M.” 1914
iii.
backwards and forwards.
Stretching before dance was a combination of pain and relaxation. Aside from the complete lack of modesty required by the dressing rooms, it was also one of the more intimate experiences dancing in the show entailed. Sprawling on the dusty wooden floor sparsely clad with thirty of your peers was a truly humbling experience.
It was, on the other hand, a rare fraction of the world in which she knew she could exercise control. Her legs spread to a near-split, she rolled her hips slowly to one side, arms gracefully pointed towards the shadowy curtains. Stage right. Rows upon rows of boys and girls with scarred feet and muscled arms and legs. The principals in the musical would practice separately for the most part, this the most strenuous of rehearsals unnecessary for the vocal gymnastics on which they focussed their attention. Although two years of slaving in the chorus had finally paid off with a role her mother would finally approve of, Britney knew she had to return to this place.
Release, and then respond. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. A turn of the waist, then another careful shift of the hips and her perspective changed. Stage left. She was hard pressed to restrain her smirk upon noticing Joe’s open-mouthed, glazed-over stare at all the sculpted bodies before him. The man could dance, she knew from experience, but predictably, he’d rather watch than stretch. Joe was no frat rat, he’d spent the majority of the time since school started working on the production. He was earning credit for this project and a good outcome could do even more for his pride in his work than for his professional reputation. There were just some things he did not do, and apparently stretching was one of them.
Britney stood up, feeling the strain in her thigh as she pulled her leg behind her one last time. If he wasn’t going to stretch, he might as well teach her the next segment of the choreography.
***
Walking through the hallways was different this year. Justin didn’t care how loudly the soles of his shoes smacked the dusty floors. As his strides lengthened approaching the stage door, he let his fingers drag along the metallic cold of the lockers lining the walls. He was on the edge of something, he could feel it. Maybe he’d get a recruitment letter. Maybe he’d start singing again. Maybe he could forget the stitch of distance he felt growing between himself and Britney.
Maybe not.
He knew he
should be feeling something but there, in front of the goddamn wide open stage
door, was only empty shock and stupor. The adrenalin he had felt walking
through the halls of the school was somewhere around his knees at this point.
Yeah, there. Making them shake.
He’d seen Joe around but never around her. Her in the arms of another, dancing close, and perhaps there was a part of him that knew that maybe this was just for the sake of the performance.
But his eyes were painfully glued to the places where their skin touched, his arm thick and bare against her slender one. He didn’t blink when she glanced up, a laugh in her eyes as he whispered something he couldn’t hear right next to her ear. And then came the bubble of a real laugh, as Joe picked Britney up at the waist and set her a safe distance away from him. A laugh Justin might have heard had he not already been running towards the school’s back door. He fell into his normal rhythm, at first emphasized on every third step by the gentle thud of dozens of feet moving to synchronized choreography on the stage.
He could still hear them, even as he ran on the pavement outside, then on crisp pine needles that absorbed each footfall. He didn’t know which direction he was going.
