Chapter 7: The Alley

The studio was silent.

Forty dancers, the director, the stage manager and two board members sat along the mirror.

Every one of them looked at me.

I held the cut ribbon in my hand.

I could have cried.

I could have asked for a break, and I could have let Lena see me bleed.

Instead I looked her in the eye and began to unwind the ruined ribbon from my ankle.

"Roxy," I said, without turning my head.

Roxy was already across the floor, with a spool of satin ribbon from her tool belt and a needle in her teeth.

"Give me ninety seconds," she said around the needle.

"You have sixty."

"You're a monster."

"I'm a soloist."

She dropped to her knees and sewed.

It took less than a minute.

I rose onto both toes and tested the knot with my full weight.

The ribbon held.

I walked back to my mark in front of the whole company.

"From the top of the mad scene," I said to the pianist.

The director leaned forward and nodded.

The piano began.

In the mad scene, Giselle learns that the man she loves has lied to her.

She tears her hair down and dances herself to death.

I had practiced it in the shower, in my kitchen and in the stairwell at the Marlowe.

It had always been a performance for an audience that wasn't there.

That afternoon, I danced it as though someone had cut something of mine.

My hair came down on the first turn.

I did not stop to fix it.

I did not look at Lena once, but I could feel her at the edge of the room.

When the final chord fell, I was kneeling on the floor with my chest heaving.

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