I count the turns in my head. After her twentieth turn, she drops, just disappears out of my sightlines. Half her body has fallen through one of the trapdoors in the stage. Her arms flail overhead, grabbing hold of the edges of the stage, and she’s shrieking. I leap up and run toward her.
“Betttttte!”
Her arms and head are the only things above the floor. I try to tug her up, but she yelps in pain, so I let go. I’m trying to pull her forward again, more gently this time, when I hear heavy boots on the hardwood. The janitor appears.
He clomps over. “Wait— Is she hurt? Don’t move her. You could make it worse.” He’s leaning in now, with his flashlight, letting the beam spill on her legs, her torso, her face as she blocks the sharp light. She’s whimpering now, her face white with fear and pain.
“Hold on, we’re going to get you right out of there.” His voice soothing and warm. He pulls up his walkie-talkie and talks fast, requesting help and an ambulance. “They’re on the way.” He turns to me. “Did you see what happened?”
My voice is shaky when I finally manage to speak. “I—she was doing the coda, the fouettés. But the trapdoor—”
“Wasn’t supposed to be open. Nobody’s down there this time of morning.”
The door was shut tight before. It was just the two of us—Adele and me. No one else.
The EMTs come rushing through, dragging sleet across the stage and leaving wet stains on the hardwood. A tall dark-haired one in a blue uniform carefully lowers himself down into the trapdoor space, as others carry a gurney over, prepping it for Adele. He gingerly lifts her up to the stage, and I see her face explode with pain. That’s when the tears come. Hers and mine.
“I was supposed to be dancing,” I say aloud.
“What’s that?” one of the EMTs responds.
“That was supposed to happen to me.”
“You feeling okay?” The EMT reaches for my arm. “You should sit.”
I follow her directions. She checks my blood pressure while they strap Adele onto the gurney. Nobody would ever want to hurt Adele.
Me.
Someone would want to hurt me.
Adele cries out.
“Shhhh,” the EMT whispers, dabbing her forehead with a cloth.
Another EMT fires some questions our way. “What happened? How did she fall?” Then he asks Adele: “Can you move your foot? Your leg?” She whimpers in response.
“Are you related?” the first EMT asks me. I nod. “How old is she? How old are you? We need to call your parents.”
It’s all rushing back, the sirens and chaos of that night Gigi nearly died. This feels so familiar. But the real question is: Who did it this time?
30.
June
“E-JUN KIM?” THE LADY BEHIND the registration desk riffles through the stack of papers for a third time. “Are you sure you’re slotted for today?”
I nod my head again, and the flush creeps up my neck to my cheeks. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, I remind myself. It’s just a clerical mistake. But so far, the whole trip to San Francisco has been one huge mistake.
It’s Valentine’s Day. I should be at home with Jayhe, celebrating with kisses and even coconut cake. But we haven’t talked since that night at his little cousin’s birthday party. Now here I am, almost three thousand miles away, and everything’s gone wrong. When I got here, the hotel gave me a hard time checking in, since my name wasn’t on my mom’s credit card and I didn’t have a note with her signature. Then I couldn’t figure out which trolley to take here this morning, so I took a cab, which cost me fifty bucks. Now they can’t find me on the audition roster.
It must be a sign. I can’t move to San Francisco. It’s the last place I should be. Besides, everything here reminds me of Gigi—I feel like she’ll be on the next trolley or in the diner down the street from the hotel or here at the dance company, where she’d fit right in, and I feel so out of place.
“Oh, E-Jun Kim.” The woman’s dimples swallow her face. “We have you under June. Sorry. I don’t know where my head is today. You’re in batch B—which goes on in half an hour. I’d warm up now if I were you.”
I try not to roll my eyes. Does she think I’m new at this? This is the fifth audition I’ve done in the last month. But the others—DC, LA, Salt Lake, and Miami—all came to New York for castings. So I just walked to midtown, instead of going cross-country. I don’t know if I’m cut out for California, but I’m here, so I’ll give it my all. I have to.
She hands me a number—44. The number four is bad luck in Korean culture, at least according to my mother, which means I’m already off to a terrible start. I try not to freak out. “Any chance I can get a different number?” I ask.
“Next,” she calls, ignoring me completely.
“It’s just a silly superstition,” I tell myself as I walk to the ladies’ changing room, where I pull on my tights, leotards, and ballet slippers, and put my stuff into a locker. I’ll have to deal. I check my phone again, hoping for a call from my mom or, really, a text from Jayhe saying break a leg, or thinking about you. I miss those. I ponder texting him, just for a second, but part of me knows it’s pointless. I don’t think he wants to hear from me again.
I look around the studio. It’s all glass and metal, not unlike ABC. These companies, they’re all the same, but different.
I follow a numbered crowd into a warm-up studio, which is sweltering with the heat of too many bodies. The barre is filled with dancers of every shape and stripe—statuesque blondes that remind me of Bette, willowy Asian girls like me. But as much as I keep thinking I’ll see her any second, no one looks like Gigi in this room. She’d stand out, even here.
I plop down on the floor and spread my legs into a V, determined to warm up despite the thick crowd. I lean forward and touch my toes, letting my torso drop between my legs. The stretch shoots down my thighs and into my calves until it reaches my toes. I point and flex, point and flex. Then I lie down like a dead frog, knees apart, flat to the ground, opening up my hips and getting them ready to turn out.
I look for a space at a barre. That’s when I see Sei-Jin, in the far corner. She’s not facing me, but I recognize the long black hair, pulled taut in a bun, the mole that sits on her neck adjacent to her right ear. I recognize the familiar way her arms move up and over and down, but the fingers curl, never quite extending enough no matter how many times Morkie corrects her. I remember telling her it would hold her back, when we were still friends.
I back away from the barre, hoping to make it out of there without her seeing me. What happened to Princeton and Yale and Brown? I thought she’d given up on ballet. But, I realize with a start, maybe people think the same thing about me.
“Batch B,” the lady with a clipboard announces, “you’re up.”
I rush to follow her out the door, but I can sense Sei-Jin not far behind me. She hasn’t noticed me yet, but she will in a minute. The last thing I need here is a scene.
“You five first. Line up,” the clipboard lady announces. She points to me and four other girls—including Sei-Jin, today dubbed number thirty-nine. She’s magically by my side, her mauve mouth smirking at me, an eyebrow rising when she sees my unlucky number. She does a little wave.