Variation: A Novel

ReeseOnToe: OMG, she’s the best. I’m watching her dance Giselle tonight and I can’t wait!

Ten years later

My finger hesitated over my favorite playlist. Tonight wasn’t the night to take chances, so I tapped the routine selection below it before setting my phone beside me on the blanket. Picking up the needle and thread, I got to work.

Stab. Push. Pull. Stab. Push. Pull.

Adolphe Adam’s Giselle played in my earbuds, the familiar music drowning out every thought besides the performance to come. I’d been a second late on the diagonal hops during the first act’s variation last night, and that couldn’t happen again. Muscle memory guided my hands as I stitched the bottom of my tights to one of the pointe shoes I’d prepared for opening night.

It should have been Lina here, not me. She’d been perfect for this role, as our mother had no trouble reminding me over the last three months of rehearsal.

Stab. Push. Pull. I stitched as if the thread could hold closed the decade-old wound of grief that never quite healed.

Bad ankle be damned, everything tonight had to be perfect.

Mom was coming, and the flaws would be all she remembered from the performance. My hand trembled, and the needle poked through the fabric and bit the tip of my finger. I swore at the sharp sting, whipped the digit to my mouth on instinct, then checked for damage. Thankfully, the skin was insulted but not broken.

Everything in my life had led up to this moment. Every hour at the barre. Every broken toenail—and toe, every month of rehab after the accident, even the tendinitis that never seemed to actually heal. For this role on this stage with this company, I’d sacrificed my body, my time, my mental health, and any semblance of a normal relationship with the very woman I was desperate to make proud tonight.

I’d sacrificed him. A familiar ache pulsed in time with my heartbeat, far more painful than the needle’s bite. Or had he sacrificed me? My hand paused.

“You all right over there?”

The music muffled Eva’s question, so I popped out an earbud and looked over my shoulder at where she sat perched on the only chair in my dressing room. My little sister’s sharp brown eyes locked with mine in the vanity mirror as she lifted her lip liner mid-application.

“Allie?” She arched a painted eyebrow. Eva may have looked like the sweetest of us with her heart-shaped face, dainty features, and round eyes that could feign innocence with startling plausibility, but she was the quickest of the Rousseau sisters to strike when wounded . . . or just inconvenienced.

It was only fitting that she looked the most like our mother, seeing as Mom had a talent for drawing first blood.

“I’m fine.” I presented a polished smile. Fixating on Mom right now wasn’t an option. If I did, my heart would race, my breathing would falter, and my throat would close up like . . .

Crap. Arching my neck, I swallowed the growing knot in my throat.

Like that. I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth to dispel the knot and quell the rising tide of nausea that always gripped my stomach before performances. It felt like a tsunami tonight.

Eva’s eyes narrowed slightly in the mirror. “Why don’t I believe you?”

Like hell was I giving her any reason to worry about me, not during her first performance as a company dancer. I knew of at least four other pairs of sisters who danced in the same companies across the United States, but we were definitely the only ones in the Metropolitan Ballet Company.

But there should have been three of us.

“Nothing to stress about.” I turned my attention back to my shoe, leaving the left earbud beside me on the soft gray blanket as the orchestra moved into the variation in the right. Push. Pull. Focusing on the methodical movement of needle and thread, I went over the variation’s choreography in my head. It was one of my all-time favorites—not that favoritism made it any easier to perform.

There. That was the instant adrenaline had stopped masking the pain in my ankle last night during dress rehearsal, causing me to hesitate and lose rhythm. I was pushing too hard, but the role demanded it.

“How’s the Achilles?” Eva asked like she could read my mind.

“Fine.” Any other answer would have Eva running to Vasily within seconds, in the name of sisterly concern.

“Liar,” she muttered, rustling through her makeup bag, her movements becoming increasingly agitated. “Where is it?”

Pull. With one ear open, I could hear the music blending with the soft click of Eva’s makeup brushes on the counter, the rustle of my warm-up pants as I shifted positions slightly, and the hum of the space heater in the corner of my dressing room, which warded off the late-January chill that had taken up residence backstage at the Metropolitan Opera House.

“Where the hell is my lucky lipstick?” Eva’s voice pitched toward the roof.

“Check my bag.”

“You don’t wear Ruthless Red!” That bordered on shrill.

“No, but you do.” I glanced back at her. “And I love you.”

Her shoulders dipped. “And you knew I’d lose mine.” She let go of her makeup bag and reached for mine, a corner of her mouth rising.

“And I knew you’d lose yours.” I nodded.

“Thank you.” Her relief was almost palpable.

Lacey knocked gently on the doorframe, clutching her favorite clipboard, and I took out my other earbud, losing the music entirely.

“Thirty minutes to places,” Lacey informed us. “Oh, and your sister is—”

“Right here,” Anne interrupted, leaning into the open doorway with the wide, easy smile she’d inherited from our dad, along with his hazel eyes and the golden brown curls she’d pinned into a sophisticated updo. Eva and I favored our mother in the hair department, with strands darker than any espresso I’d ever seen brewed, and while Eva’s were pin straight, my waves could only be tamed by a bagful of products and regular maintenance at the salon. Anne’s curls always seemed so effortlessly perfect.

The pressure in my chest immediately eased, and my mouth curved to mirror hers, widening into a grin. In our ocean-loving family, Anne was the palm tree—she swayed in the hurricane, but never broke.

“Anne!” Eva jolted out of the chair and threw her arms around our older sister.

“Whoa!” Anne laughed and wrapped her arms around Eva, the diamonds in her wedding band glittering in the bright lights.

“Thank you, Lacey. We’ve got her,” I said, and the stage manager nodded in return before moving on.

“You look great!” Anne pulled back from Eva and gave her a quick once-over, her eyes softening. “Costume fits perfectly. I can’t wait to see you up there.”

“I’m just in the corps.” Eva shrugged and stepped aside. “It’s Alessandra who’s the real star. Right, Allie?”

“Only for tonight.” I tied off the row of stitches, then flexed my foot a few times to make sure it held.

“Every night, in my book.” Anne knelt beside me despite her stylish black dress and hugged me gently, careful not to smudge my stage makeup.

I leaned into the embrace, closing my arms around her tightly, needle grasped between thumb and forefinger so I wouldn’t prick her. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

Anne had a way of making everything all right. Dad away on business? No problem, Anne knew the schedule. Mom lighting into one of us about our turnout? Anne stepped in to distract. She was the living embodiment of a warm hug. Lina may have been the firstborn of the four of us, but Anne had always been the one with the oldest-sister vibe.

“Me too,” she whispered before withdrawing just enough to give me the same appraisal she had given Eva. “Beautiful as always. You’re going to do great.”

“I just want it to be perfect for her,” I replied as she swept her knees to the side and sat on the blanket.

“As if you have any other setting but perfect,” Eva muttered.

Anne shot her a reproachful look, and I brought my right foot into my lap, wincing slightly at the tenacious burn along my Achilles. “Are you hurting?”

Leave it to Anne to miss nothing.

“I’m—” I started.

“If you so much as say the word fine . . . ,” she warned, her astute gaze locking on my ankle.

“She had a cortisone shot yesterday,” Eva said, leaning in toward the mirror to check her eyeliner.

Anne’s eyebrows jumped. “Does Kenna know?”

“As my best friend or as the Company’s doctor? Because the answer is yes to both,” I countered. “And you’re twenty-five years old, Eva.” I gathered my tights to my other shoe and started stitching. “At some point you have to stop tattling on me, right?”

“At some point you have to learn when to take it easy,” Anne chastised.

“Tomorrow,” I replied, sewing quickly.

Tomorrow, the set would be changed from Giselle to Romeo and Juliet, and while Eva would be dancing in the corps for that show as well, I would officially be off for the next couple of weeks, at least for performances. I’d give myself a day or two to rest the ankle, like Kenna suggested, and then test it out with Isaac.

“It’s always tomorrow with you.” Anne sighed. “If Mom knew you were dancing injured . . .”

“Who do you think we learned it from?” Eva quipped.

A corner of my mouth tugged upward. She wasn’t wrong. Performing through pain was the first lesson Mom taught us, both on and off the stage. Sadly, that made us a family of not just professional dancers, but professional liars too. “I’m fine. It’s just been a hard couple of weeks, between rehearsals, performances, and working with Isaac.”

“Isaac?” Anne looked up at Eva as my fingers ghosted across the silver scar along my Achilles tendon.

The sound of breaking glass skittered through my mind, but I cut off the memory before it could take hold. Not tonight. Tonight I would dance for Mom, because Lina had never gotten the chance.

“Isaac Burdan,” Eva answered.

“Ah, the next Balanchine,” Anne said, rising to her feet and dusting off her knees. “Don’t look at me like that, Eva. Just because I don’t dance anymore doesn’t mean I’m not up on what’s happening in the scene. I do read.”

Anne did more than read. She organized most of the Company’s events, including the entire Haven Cove Classic—which, thanks to our mother, had become one of the foremost summer competitions in the under-twenty division.

“Never said you didn’t.” Eva put her hands up like she was being arrested. “Just surprised you’re reading about Isaac being the next Balanchine.”

“Don’t say that in front of him.” I grinned, finishing the last few stitches before tying them off. “His ego won’t fit in the building.” Flexing, then pointing, I tested out the stitches, only standing once I trusted my handiwork.

“Did you read that Allie choreographed a ballet with him?” Eva’s tone pitched mischievously.

“Really?” Anne’s head swiveled my direction, her eyebrows jolting upward.

“It’s nothing. Maybe. He was the artist in residence before Nutcracker season, and it was more like he choreographed and I just showed him what would and wouldn’t work.” Thinking of late nights in the studio and early mornings in his bed made me grin. He wasn’t Mr. Right—that ship had long since sailed. But he was certainly Mr. For-Right-Now, and that was quite perfect.

“That’s huge!” Anne’s smile could have powered the building. “A ballet of your own—”

“We’ll see.” I kept my smile small, just like my expectations when it came to Isaac, and reached for my costume for act one.

I ran my fingers over the amethyst ring in my right pocket, then unzipped the worn, faded black hoodie with its fraying wrist cuffs and hung it on the back of the chair. Then I shucked off my warm-up pants and stepped into the costume.

“Must be nice to have a zipper,” Eva muttered as Anne reached for mine. “Corps still has hook closures for multiple wearers.”

I pulled my act-one hair out of the way when Anne reached for my zipper, and somehow managed to curb my tongue regarding Eva’s sulking.

“I’m sure you’ll have a zipper next year,” Anne assured her, patting my back once she’d finished with my costume. “Mom was thrilled to hear both of you will be onstage tonight.”

Cue another wave of nausea. The vegetable soup I’d choked down an hour ago threatened to make a reappearance.

“She’s in the family box?” No doubt with Anne’s husband. I scooped the blanket off the floor and tossed it on top of my bag.

“With Finn and Eloise.” Anne watched like a hawk as I rose en pointe a few times, testing my shoes and my arches.

“I thought Eloise was teaching at Vaganova.” I schooled my features as pain shot up my Achilles in protest.

“She just retired. And you have an understudy for a reason,” Anne finished in a whisper, her brow furrowing. “You put too much strain on that Achilles of yours and—”

“I just need the music to start,” I interrupted just as softly, my gaze darting to Eva’s back as she walked toward the hallway. “Any other role, and maybe I’d consider it, but Giselle . . .”

Anne’s eyes met mine, the light catching on a sheen she quickly blinked away before pressing her lips between her teeth and nodding.

“Shall we?” Eva asked over her shoulder as dancers walked by the open doorway, headed for the wings.

“Absolutely.” I plastered on a fake smile and nodded.

Anne hooked her arm through mine and kept her voice down. “You let her get dressed with you? Shouldn’t she be with the corps? Building camaraderie and all that?”

“For all her bluster, she gets nervous. She’s still the new girl to everyone but me.” I’d started dancing with the Company at eighteen, moving from apprentice to principal dancer by the time I blew out twenty-five candles, but Eva hadn’t been invited to try out for MBC until she’d spent several years in Boston, then Houston, working up the ranks. “Just trying to make things a little easier on her.”

“You got her the tryout and agreed to that ridiculous Seconds app account she loves so much,” Anne responded, squeezing my arm gently. “I think you’ve more than helped.”

We stepped into the hallway and found Eva waiting for us with Vasily Koslov, the Metropolitan Ballet Company’s artistic director. My chest tightened. Vasily had the power to make or break us. His silver hair was trimmed neatly as always, his three-piece suit pressed to perfection. It was hard to believe the tall man with the dancing blue eyes had seen the same sixty-four years as my mother.

They’d been in this very company at my age, but Vasily had eventually moved into choreography and marriage to our executive director, while Mom had reluctantly retired in her prime, to motherhood and eventual teaching.

“There she is.” Vasily smiled, reaching for my hand, and I gave it. He brushed a perfunctory kiss over my knuckles, as he’d done before every performance since I’d been promoted to principal. “Ready to dazzle us, Alessandra?”

“I’ll do my best to make you proud.” My stomach rolled.

Hold it together. You’re not going to puke in front of Vasily. He was the closest thing I had to a father since mine had passed.

“She’ll be dancing for our mother tonight,” Eva added.

“Sophie is here?” His gaze jumped to Anne, two lines deepening between his brows as though trying to place her. “She never leaves that exclusive little school of hers except for the Classic. Will she be—”

“I’ll be sure to give her your best,” Anne interrupted, before he could ask to see her and we were forced to make excuses.

“Ah.” His brow furrowed. “Annelli, isn’t it? The daughter who doesn’t dance?”

“She also runs Company events, including the Classic.” My hackles rose in immediate defense of Anne, even though I knew Vasily didn’t mean any harm by it. He had a bad habit of only truly seeing people in his orbit.

“That’s me,” Anne answered with a practiced smile, then glanced at Eva and me. “I’ll meet up with you two afterwards. We have to talk about summer plans for the beach house.”

“I can’t—” Eva started.

“You can and you will.” Anne leveled a look on our little sister that meant business. “We’re not losing the house just because you won’t take a vacation.” She whipped those hazel eyes at me. “And that goes for you too. See you after.”

She left without another word, disappearing into an ocean of costumed dancers in the hallway.

“The house in Haven Cove?” Vasily asked me as we started toward the stage, dancers moving from his path like rushing creek water around a boulder.

“Mom put the house in a trust last summer and made a ridiculous condition that we have to sell it if all three of us don’t provide proof that we spend time there together every year,” Eva answered before I had the chance to.

“Doesn’t sound like Sophie.” Vasily blinked. “She hated that house, and the fact that your father made her take you girls there in the summer. So many missed opportunities for trainings at summer intensives, but at least the Classic came of it.” He glanced at his Rolex. “Oh, Alessandra, I spoke with Isaac. He wants to meet next week about including the new ballet he’s choreographed in the fall schedule.”

My heart leapt. “Equinox?”

“Is that what you’re calling it?” His mouth quirked into a bemused smile. “Lovely.” He clucked his tongue at a young corps de ballet member who’d scurried into the hallway, and the dancer immediately slowed at the rebuke.

“I’ll make myself available if you need to see any of it performed,” I promised, struggling to keep the excitement out of my voice. Vasily admired comportment above all else.

“I’d appreciate that.” He nodded as the hallway split into two, each path leading to a different side of the stage. “Make me proud, Alessandra. You, too, Eve. Ah, Maxim, there you are.” He headed down the other hallway toward his pain-in-the-ass choreographer of a son who looked like every picture I’d ever seen of Vasily at thirty years old.

“It’s Eva,” Eva hissed once he was out of earshot. “He’s completely oblivious to me. But I’m excited for you.” She wrapped her arm around my waist.

“Thank you.” I leaned the side of my head against my sister’s. “And he’ll know your name by next season. You shine brighter than any other corps dancer, and he’ll see that.” Years of discipline were all that kept me from shouting in absolute glee. If we put Equinox on the fall program, I’d have a role created just for me.

We walked into the welcoming dark of the wings for our preperformance ritual, and I felt the years evaporate with every step as we passed a dozen other dancers and a few stagehands. By the time we reached the very edge of the curtain, where a few precious inches of light separated us from the crowd, I was six again, peeking to see if Mom and Dad were in the audience.

Except there were two of us where there had been four.

“I see her,” Eva whispered, using her extra inches to look over the top of my five-foot-five frame.

“Me too.” Heat stung my palms and my heart started to race as I looked up at the family seats—right mezzanine, box seven—spotting Mom and her best friend, Eloise, immediately.

Damn it. She was already in a mood.

To the outside world, the legendary Sophie Langevin-Rousseau was Metropolitan Ballet Company royalty, the height of sophistication and elegance, but I saw a powder keg with a lit fuse. She sat with her shoulders straight, her chin lifted, her silver-streaked dark hair pinned into a flawless french twist, but it was her manicured fingertips drumming impatiently on the railing that gave her away as she peered down at the orchestra. She wasn’t watching, she was hunting imperfections. Sure enough, her perfectly painted lips pursed in disapproval as a flute player scurried in, obviously running late.

Anne reached the box, taking her seat beside her pinstripe-suited husband, and I could have sworn she shot a look our direction before opening her program.

“Eloise looks good,” Eva whispered. “So do the men she’s brought with her.”

“Eloise has always had impeccable taste,” I agreed, a cool breeze lifting the hair on the back of my neck as Eva backed away, leaving me alone at the curtain’s edge.

I fought the impulse, but it won—it always did—and I glanced back at the very last row of the floor section. The seat in the center remained unoccupied, as my contract stipulated. That ache erupted in my chest again, just like it had every night this week.

The only time I’d ever truly nailed the variation, he’d been—

Stop it.

I did it once—danced the routine perfectly—and I would do it again tonight. Ripping my gaze from the empty seat, I headed back into the wings for my place.

A handful of minutes later, the curtain went up, the music started, and I watched Everett take the stage as Hilarion, then Daniel as Albrecht, both exuding the perfection expected at our level.

Adrenaline flooded my system the second I made my entrance to the applause of the audience, quickly conquering any protest my ankle thought about making. The lights and music consumed every thought, stealing the pain, the worry, even the lead weight of Mom’s gaze, until I wasn’t just dancing Giselle, I was Giselle.

Twenty minutes in, adrenaline waned, pain shimmering up the back of my leg every time I rose en pointe, and I noticed Eva slip for a heartbeat in the corps when she glanced up at the family box. It was the most minuscule of mistakes, but no doubt our mother would berate her for the rest of the night for it. I gave her a reassuring smile when my back was turned to the audience, but it didn’t lessen the pink flooding her cheeks beneath layers of stage makeup.

The music shifted into my variation, and I breathed deeply, lifting my arm in gesture to the only mother who mattered in this moment—the one onstage—and then to my would-be lover, Albrecht.

And then I danced.

I rose into the first arabesque en pointe, and pain exploded in my right ankle. Shit. My smile never slipped as I gritted my teeth.

The hurt was momentary, but that arabesque had been flawless, and that was all that mattered. As I moved across the floor, the ache lessened until I repeated the arabesque. Then it flared like a flame doused in lighter fluid. Again and again it rose and ebbed, higher and more painful as the variation continued, each movement testing the limits of my smile, my pain tolerance.

Anne was right. I had an understudy. But I wasn’t just dancing for myself. Tonight, I danced for Lina. I danced for Mom.

Just tonight, I promised my Achilles. I could rest tomorrow, turn the role over to my understudy for the next performance if it would get me through tonight. I couldn’t falter, not in front of her.

After a series of turns, my smile slipped into a grimace, and Eva’s eyes widened slightly from where she sat with the other peasant girls. I ripped my gaze from hers and turned my attention back to the audience, moving into a series of hops on my left foot diagonally across the stage, giving my right ankle enough of a reprieve for the pain to recede to a grating, nauseating, but manageable level.

I just had to make it through the piqué turns.

The music shifted, and I headed into the series of eighteen turns that would circumnavigate the stage.

Anything is doable for five minutes. His voice slipped through my mind, uninvited.

This was only fifteen seconds. I could do it.

Faces blurred as I spun en pointe, and I whipped my head to my chosen spotting points to keep balance, as flames of pain licked up my leg, burning through me in an agony so acute that I bit into my lip . . . and kept going. I reached stage left on turn eleven, glancing to the empty chair in the back row, the only place in the theater that anchored me.

Twelve. My arms faltered and my breath caught as I spotted the man occupying that seat. Impossible. Only one name could retrieve those tickets, and he hadn’t done so in ten years.

Thirteen. My head whipped around with the turn. The seat was vacant. Pain must have addled my brain.

Fourteen. Or was that a glimpse of sandy-brown hair, wind mussed and sun kissed?

Fifteen. The fire rose from my ankle, up through my chest at the memory of sea green eyes and the dimple in his left cheek when he smiled. Was he here?

Sixteen. That chair was empty. It had been for a decade, and it would be for as long as I made the Company hold it so, just like the cavernous pit in my chest where my heart had been, since the night the glass shattered, steel crumpled, and my ankle—Focus!

Seventeen. I became pain itself. My ankle screamed as I moved into the last two turns, straining the tendon beyond its limits.

In the silence between the last staccato beats from the orchestra, I heard it, like the snap of fingers underwater.

I fell to my right knee, the last position of the variation, and extended my arm to my onstage mother.

I did it, Lina. I did it.

Rousing applause sounded from the audience as I tried to stand, but gravity yanked me forward. My palms smacked into the polished surface of the stage, and I heard Eva gasp somewhere to my right.

It took a heartbeat, then another, to understand.

My foot.

It wasn’t responding, almost like it belonged on someone else’s body.

A nuclear blast of bone-rattling anguish washed through me, pushing into my veins like acid, burning away my very being, until it erupted from my mouth in a scream that silenced everyone in the theater.

My career was over.