Chapter 7: Floor-Off

On Friday I brought my shoes in my hands.

I carried them through the lobby, past the donor wall and up the stairs.

I had bought the pair myself, new, the night before, with the last of my tip money.

Nobody was going to get near them.

The whole company sat along the walls.

Philippa had a chair at the front, her cane across her knees.

Wallace stood by the door with his arms folded and an unreadable face.

I realized with a jolt that my mother had asked him to come.

Sutton stood in the center in a black leotard, hair knotted tight, ankle taped.

Our eyes met once.

She looked away first.

"Miss Fenner dances first," Philippa said. "Miss Maddox after. The same sequence, the same lead."

I put on my shoes.

I flexed each shank between my thumbs, hard, in front of everybody.

They held.

"Paranoid," Lydia said from the wall.

"Careful," I said. "It's a long career."

The music started, the ocean pulling back over stones.

I walked toward Sutton from the far corner and she walked toward me.

At the center she took my hands.

Her palms were damp.

I could feel her pulse through her fingers, as fast as mine.

The first lift came on the downbeat, and I went up over her head and stayed.

My whole life was in her hands.

I thought of the basement, and her thumb on my wrist, and her mouth on the back of my neck against the car.

I let all of it into my body.

I had never danced like that.

I fell into the water and Sutton caught me.

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