Calore Dance Academy// Red Queen AU

Chapter 77

Here's to another chapter after another long wait! I hope everybody is doing well. I had a great time this week being able to come home from school and just do a little writing here and there. I'm loving this chapter, and I hope y'all do too. 

Please leave me some stars and comments! As you've probably heard me say, they make my week!

<><><>

Done.

Sighing, I tap my keyboard one last time and tack a period onto my sentence.

I recline in my chair, tired eyes peering away from my screen and out through a window. Two-or-so miles north, the Empire State Building glistens in its dusky glory.

My second essay for Julian was on twentieth-century labor movements. I was supposed to look for parallels between different movements, address the connections between civil rights activism and labor rights, and explain the decline of unions in the latter half of the century.

My fingers shake.

Through my faux glasses, I regard the stack of books beside my laptop.

My AirPods rest in my ears, but no music plays. Cal's eighties rock was a bit too much for a five-page research paper. Hushed conversations, the turning of book pages, and the scribbling of pens reverberate around me. Behind me, tall panes of glass decorated with golden decal look out before ten floors of staircases and book stacks.

I regard the coffee that I walked out to buy God knows how long ago. The liquid sits at the bottom of my stomach now. Cal would be mad. I haven't eaten since he fed me.

My fingers shake.

The library room that I'm in is pretty, just how library rooms are supposed to be. The tables are made of deep mahogany wood, and big, elegant bookshelves with book spines of every color grace the edges of my vision. My wooden rolling chair dons a royal blue cushion. Reading lamps wear purple shades.

With nothing left to do or distract me, my fingers shake.

The motion of typing kept me away from the dark, sad parts of my head.

Dad threw me out of our apartment.

I pinch my lips together as I try to swallow back the flavor of lukewarm coffee on my tongue. Another glance at my watch tells me that I've long since missed technique class. Blonos must be livid. Elara and Anabel pulled me out of the Academy yesterday just to take me shopping, and now I'm missing a second day of class for no reason at all.

Nighttime has descended over Manhattan, and I still haven't called my boyfriend.

He called me twice. The first call came ten minutes before class was slated to start at one o'clock. The second call came at two-thirty. I haven't bothered opening the voicemails. A text followed later.

Just let me know you're okay.

I pinch my eyes shut. He's so sweet. So good to me.

But if I text him back, then he'll call me. And then I'll break down on the phone.

Dad threw me out of our apartment.

My skin prickles. My stomach feels hollow. My head feels heavy.

I told Gisa not to call me. She hasn't. Neither has anybody else in my family.

But Dad says they're not my family anymore.

I smile bitterly to myself.

Midtown beckons, pulling me back to the Academy. Back to the Calores.