Two Of Us

Chapter One // BEFORE

Before.

"Mon amour, je sais que tu m'aimes aussi

Tu as besoin de moi dans ta vie

Tu ne peux pas plus vivre sans moi

Et je mourrais sans toi

Je tuerais pour toi"

-Lana Del Rey, "Carmen"

If I were to start at the beginning, I would have to start in my sixth grade Elite Protégé dance class filled with twelve moody pubescent girls, scantily clad in sports bras and spandex short shorts, staring themselves down in the mirror. It was a scene that would have made Nabokov flush with embarrassment and disbelief but a familiar situation for almost anyone who had been a competitive dancer at some point in their childhood.

The twelve of us knew one another all too well at this point. There was me. I was short and pale blonde as I always had been, keenly aware of my surroundings and the old Russian grouch of a ballet teacher I'd had since I was two and a half. She seemed to peer into my soul every time my eyes averted away from my own reflection in the dirty mirror of our dance studio and wandered off to find her, standing there in a business suit and high heels. Her thin lips were painted a sickly pink.

Then there was Laramie. Laramie becomes important with the longest, darkest hair I'd ever seen and the most captivating and confusing bottle-green eyes. Freckles dotted her face like constellations in the clear night sky. Laramie didn't allow her eyes to wander like mine did, because she was so dead-set on herself. She stared herself down as if she were the only person in the room, as if she'd had a passionate love affair with her own reflection her entire life, as if her soul was old enough to inhabit a body taller than that of only five foot two at the time. (She'd spring up and get much, much taller than me come about seventh grade – I'd perpetually stand at five foot one, she'd reach about five foot eight. It made hugs awkward but otherwise we managed.)

There were others, certainly – Astrid, whose long line of Norwegian ancestry manifested itself in her enviable face and bobbed blonde mane. There was Erica, a mixed-race girl with curly locks and big lips who laughed louder than anyone in the class and made Oksana grimace. There seemed to be so many of us, but the room almost felt empty. It was so silent.

Finally, there was a click of Oksana's pointed black high heeled shoe on the hardwood floors. There was an audible gulp from Astrid next to me. "I want you girls to understand what is important for a professional dancer to be able to attain. You can have all of the talent in the world, but if you do not have the look, they simply will not want you." With this she cast a sneering glower over Erica, who didn't seem to notice as she'd been whispering to her neighbor just seconds prior. "This may seem harsh and your parents may not like it but as from now on you all will be seeing a dietician. You will be asked to keep food logs of what you eat from here until you graduate from this studio. It's about now that you all start putting on the pounds and unless you do the work to make it go away, it's never going to."

Something inside of me wilted. I stared at myself once more. I wasn't the most attractive thing at age twelve. I required glasses for my horrendous eyesight and I'd become a bit pudgier than my peers, even though I danced as much if not more. My weight had started to gather in areas of my body where it did not occupy Laramie's. I drew in a deep sigh and knew that Oksana had meant this all specifically for me. It had all been my fault. My heart began to pound with the knowledge that to her, no matter my weight, I wasn't good enough to be on the most prestigious team in Southeast Idaho for our age group.