Dance Your Troubles Away

Chapter Fifteen - Storme (Part One)

Author's Note:

You may have noticed that I just totally spammed your notifications by updating every single chapter of this story. I didn't actually do that - that was just Wattpad being weird. I really don't like the new Wattpad layout :P Anyway, here's a new update. Sorry for the wait and more to come! Does anyone know where @fanficsdancemoms went, by the way? We used to talk a lot and she was my best friend on here, but now her account and all her stories with their thousands of reads have disappeared?! If you know, comment!

Don't forget to vote if you want more chapters ;)

[One swear word in this chapter, just a warning because I know some people have a problem with that]

***

Chapter Fifteen

Storme

"That's the thing about pain. It demands to be felt." - John Green

Being at the studio is beyond awkward at the moment. I feel like the person that no one wants to talk to, or even be seen with. I spend quite a lot of my time helping with the junior class, choreographing short dances and spotting in acro. I learn my lines, we film, and then my friends and I go our separate ways. Filming is actually pretty easy. It comes naturally to me. I just jump right into character, and then I can do anything. If I'm not me, I can say and do whatever I want and not be embarrassed about it. And they don't want the footage to be totally airbrushed and perfect, so we hardly spend any time in hair and make up. There's a lot more filming of dancing than there is of speaking anyway. It's good - it's easy. I don't have to try.

The thing that's not easy is the actual dancing. The increased training is getting to me. It wasn't gradual - we were all thrown straight in at the deep end, from being at the studio twelve hours a week to twelve hours a day. There isn't a single moment when I'm not sore. My feet have basically been ripped to shreds on the bottom from floor burn, so I've taken to wearing footsies all the time, and my muscles are so tight at the beginning of classes that I have to take extra warm up time. My schoolwork is surviving, but barely. I feel completely out of control here. I wish more than ever that Lily was with me, but she's got her own problems, and her own friends now. Why would she even want to think about Atlas again?

The one good thing in all this is that the pain in my knees seems to have been a one off. It hasn't come back since that day at Starbucks, and I'm counting myself lucky. The last thing I need right now is to have an injury.

I wake up bright and early on Thursday morning. It's a cold November morning, and I shiver my way back under the duvet to delay the inevitable pain of having to get up. As my eyes adjust to the gloom of the bedroom, I notice that Lily isn't in her bed. For a moment I'm confused, and then I remember that she spent the night with her friends. I drag myself out of bed, bleary eyed, and make my way to the kitchen to grab breakfast. Sam's in there, sitting in a chair eating cereal - Mum isn't.

"Where's Mum?" I ask him, giving him a good morning kiss.

He shrugs, and then mumbles through a mouthful of cereal, "She's not in her bed. I checked."

My mouth goes dry, but then I realise that she was here when I went to bed last night, at about ten thirty, so she must just have gone out to buy milk. Or something else, I mentally add, noticing two full cartons of milk in the fridge as I open it to get the eggs out.

"She must have just gone out. Did you get up by yourself, Sammy?"

"Yep," he says indistinctly, finishing his Coco Pops.

"Want a fried egg?" I ask, my hand pausing as I reach for them.

"No thanks."

"Is Issy's mum taking you to nursery this morning?"