I Used To Be

Chapter 9: Part 8

The rest of the week felt normal . . . –ish. Cash kept grinning at me and finding ways to walk beside me to class. Brandy kept acting like a child about the whole thing. And I stopped caring what the other girls thought about Isabelle and I being friends. Carrie didn't seem to care, which made me like her even more. We hadn't quite begun our friendship, like we still didn't call each other or hang out or anything, but I felt like she was a friendly face in class. The other girls weren't unfriendly, but they still hadn't even introduced themselves. I guess they weren't going to.

Saturday arrived too quickly. Two very unwanted things were happening on this day: Nutcracker auditions and the date with Cash, which I still hadn't told Isabelle about. But I needed to block all that out and focus. We were all performing the Sugar Plum solo variation. We had been practicing it in class all week. Everyone was pretty sure that either Carrie, Candy, or Isabelle was going to actually play the Sugar Plum Fairy, but I guess having this be the audition piece for everyone was supposed to give us all hope that maybe someday we would get the role ourselves, or maybe to make us feel like we were actually auditioning for it? Who knows. I knew I wasn't getting it, but I did like the variation, and as long as I could pull it together, I knew it didn't look too terrible on me.

I arrived early at the studio, both to warm up, and because I didn't really know what to expect, so I wanted to get my bearings before the audition. Breakfast = one hard-boiled egg. Sixty calories. It's not like I would be dancing for more than two or three minutes, so I figured that was plenty to get me through. My food plan for the rest of the day included a 100-calorie lunch spread out over three hours (one lite string cheese stick, one sugar free jello parfait, and one very small tangerine), and then a cup of steamed veggies for dinner (40) and more jello for dessert (5). This added up to 205 calories. I figured I didn't really need many more calories after the audition because it's not like I was going to get any more exercise, and even if I did, it would be the kind where I was just trying to burn calories, not perform well. I weighed 104 today. I also needed to save calories in case I would be forced to take a few bites of popcorn or candy or something at the movies tonight. The few times I had social things happening, I always had to save some calories for those just in case I needed to take some bites of food here and there to look normal.

The only two cars in the parking lot when I arrived at 11:00 were Isabelle's and the Monroes'. Good. It would be good to see Isabelle before the other girls arrived. I still felt like I had to monitor my behavior around her for some reason when there were other people around. I had no idea why, but as much as being alone with her sometimes made me nervous, being with her around other people was even worse. But my nervousness around her when we were alone was starting to dissipate. She hadn't done anything but make me feel safe and comfortable since fall season began. It was almost like the summer, the kiss, all of it, never happened. Would it ever happen again? That thought crossed my mind every once in a while, but I pushed it out. The only person I would probably be kissing anytime soon was Cash. Which is going to be comparatively terrible. No. Kissing Cash was what I had dreamed about for years. That it was finally an actual possibility was amazing and great. I was super excited. SUPER excited. Ha -- you wish you were excited about kissing a boy.

"Hey," I said to Isabelle's reflection in the mirror. She had her right leg pulled up beside her head.

"Oh hey Anna! You're here early."

"Yeah . . . I wanted to sort of get grounded here before this whole audition thing. I didn't know if anyone else would be here, or if I'd even be able to get into the studio yet. Are they actually making you audition too?" I assumed they would just hand her the role, and that the actual audition was for her understudy, or sometimes they split up the cast, so they would need a second Sugar Plum Fairy if they did it that way.