Chapter 4
"Do these look alright?" Victoria whirled around to face Sheena, who was sitting on the floor of the dance supply store doing a math packet for summer homework. They'd gone to the studio to practice for an hour, and when Victoria nearly fell and twisted her ankle from her pointe shoes, Sheena had suggested for them to stop by the local dance store to try on a few pairs.
Back at the dance store, Victoria, wearing Russian pointe shoes, modeled for Sheena. Her best friend looked up and noted, "That looks kind of big for you. Not cool, dude."
Victoria looked down and saw that, as usual, Sheena was right. She took them off and put them back on the rack, which was cluttered with different colors, shapes, and sizes of pointe shoes. All of them were fresh and new with sparkling satin. "So what kind do you wear?"
Sheena reached into her bag and brought out her pink pointes. "Gaynor Mindens."
"Remember when we got our first pair?" Chuckling, Victoria sat down next to her friend and examined her shoes. "We were all like, 'These things are hard!'"
Sheena smiled, putting her packet away. "And then nobody knew how to tie them on except for us."
Back then, the two girls were in the same class. To be on pointe, you had to have your foot bones well developed and, in their case, have a certain amount of technique. Both of them had qualified.
A pointe shoe was pretty on the outside, but not exactly comfortable on the inside. Most people didn't know that the elegant-looking things were as hard as rocks. The two girls had once seen their classmate whack a boy's face with them, and his nose started gushing out blood nonstop. The outcome was even worse if your shoes were fresh and new, meaning that they hadn't been broken in and worn down yet, making them ridiculously hard. As you danced in the pointes, they became weaker and weaker until they couldn't support you anymore-- meaning that they were dead. Unless you wanted to destroy your foot bones, you would have to stop wearing them.
The girls were having a mighty fine time looking at the tutus and costumes when they heard a small tinkling come from the nearby front door and then, "Well, I didn't expect to see you two here!"
"Mrs. Fonteyn!" Victoria smiled. She noticed that Sheena said a polite hello, but didn't look half as thrilled as she did. Then she remembered that Sheena's parents were divorced. Having her family split apart didn't exactly help with Sheena's dancing, and asking for them to pay for another dance teacher was stretching it a bit too much. Victoria knew that Sheena's life was hard, especially since the divorce, but she still tried her best to make her as happy as she used to be.
"What are you girls doing? Just hanging out?" Mrs. Fonteyn grinned at the two students. Like them, a duffel bag was slung around her shoulder, and judging from the surprised look from Victoria's face, the sweatpants and t-shirt that she was wearing weren't exactly professional. Sheena, fingering a Swan Lake tutu, looked out the window and stifled a gasp. There...
She whipped her head around, her brain whirring. "Oh, we were just looking at pointe shoes since Victoria's are dead. Victoria! You've never had a fitting, right?"
Victoria turned her head around towards Sheena. What are you doing? she mouthed. The look on her face indicated that she thought Sheena was crazy. "Um... no, I haven't... I guess."
"Wouldn't it be awesome if Mrs. Fonteyn could give you a fitting? Could you, Mrs. Fonteyn?" Sheena asked with forced cheerfulness and casualty.
