Beneath the Surface

Floating

"Well done, ladies," Miss Airington complimented us. "I'm very impressed with your progress so far. But there are a few corrections we still need to make. Ana, could you please work on your glissade? Thank you, dear. Oh, and Erin, I need your arabesque to be a bit straighter. Thank you." 

The two named girls grimaced, but there was understanding rather than annoyance. "The rest of you are doing well," Miss Airington added with a smile. "In fact, I do think our performance is going to be spectacular. Once we've tidied up the loose ends, I believe there isn't a school who won't be jealous."

"Well, so long as some people carry their weight," Ethel teased, and I grinned. 

"I can carry my weight just fine," I retorted. "It's all the extra baggage I have to drag along."

The other girls "ooh"ed at this sally, but it was all in good fun; Ethel was always the first to poke fun at herself for being slightly overweight, and we always knew not to make the first joke until Ethel had done so. 

"Alright, that's enough," Miss Airington chastised good-naturedly. "Now, off with you. I believe we're going to need a bit more time yet before we can truly call ourselves ready, so please, if you can practice at home whenever you can, that would be most helpful. I'll upload today's videos to the group chat, so please use those as a reference if you feel stuck. Dismissed."

We left in a chattering buzz, riding the high of yet another successful practice. "I think the other schools will be coming to us for tips," Celinda said, and we all laughed. 

"They won't be coming to me," Ellie said, pretending to be gloomy. "That's okay. I can bask in the reflected glow coming off the rest of you while I crash and burn in the back, all unnoticed until the cleaners come out and mop away the ash where I used to stand."

This time we almost collapsed in hysterics. Ellie had quite the dramatic flair, but somehow, while her performances were over the top, they were unbelievably hilarious, and left us in stitches. "Are you sure you didn't choose ballet by mistake?" I teased, as I wriggled out of my leotard. "You'd make a great actress."

"Pfft, get on with you," Ellie said, grinning. "You know as well as I do that I'd get stage fright and run screaming for the hills, never to be seen again until they discover my bones a hundred years later and declare my resting place a site of great historical significance." This time, I didn't laugh quite as heartily as the others; Ellie actually had horrible stage fright, and had only agreed to be in our performance for Swan Lake so long as she could be in the back and had no major parts. Miss Airington had been quite accomodating, much to Ellie's relief, and thus, we weren't short one cast member. 

But I pushed my sadness back. Ellie was still a good dancer, and my closest friend. We'd been friends since childhood, and we'd promised to always have each other's backs. And we'd needed to be there for each other more than once; Ellie came from an abusive household, and had only just managed to secure her father's consent to be in the performance. She'd confided in me that only a call to child protection had given her this chance, and since her father wanted to maintain a "fine, upstanding" image, he'd had no choice but to agree. It didn't matter in any case; Ellie was almost 16, and she'd told me in strictest confidence she planned to move in with some friends. Once she was out, she said, she planned on having a room set up for me, something for which I was more grateful than she'd ever know.

It wasn't as if I lived in an abusive household, though. My mum and uncle, and most of my cousins, were in fact the kindest and most loving people you could imagine. It was my cousin Sarah who presented a problem, her and her bitch friends, Faith and Charity. The three of them tormented me on a daily basis, and since they could be meek as spring lambs when they wanted to be, they got away with far more than they would have had they been more overt about their abuse. I'd learned early on to never get too attached to any possessions, be they living or inanimate; if Sarah wanted something of mine, she got it. And if manipulation didn't work, she took what she wanted by force. I was fortunate to still have a bed, a chest of drawers, a desk and chair, clothes and toiletries; everything else was fair game so far as Sarah was concerned. 

And that was just the tip of the iceberg. I'd be able to fill a whole book with the emotional and psychological abuse she and her friends dished out to me on a daily basis, but though their words cut right to the core of me, I held tight to one fact, and one fact alone. Uncle Ben was the Alpha. And even though he was largely ignorant to the abuses going on right under his nose (through no fault of his own), he had promised me after Dad died that he would protect me, love me, and care for me as another daughter, no matter what. That alone kept me from otherwise sinking into absolute despair, and I clung onto that as a man clings to a piece of driftwood in a flood. 

But it wasn't easy, and as we all parted ways, I felt the fog creep around me again. And with nothing and no one but my own resources to keep me going, I was counting down the days before I could finally make a break for it and run away. 

For I'd been born without the one thing which would protect me and give me more standing in Sarah's eyes. 

I had no wolf.