The Heiress

Chapter 1

The skies are kissing the daylight away as the moon and the stars together with its dark blue velvet blanket approach the earth’s zenith. The clock ticked seven o’clock. I was fixing my things here in the studio and preparing myself to go home. It was a long day.

“Nice performance, Veronica. It’s so sad that only the apprentices are to perform tomorrow.” Miss Kendall Gonzaga or Miss K as she prefers, praised me as I walked down the doorway, shoving my bag on my shoulder. Those thin apricot tinted lips embedded on her rosy white face, stretched into a smile.

“Thank you, Ma’am.” I smiled back. She’s our instructor and the founder of this organization. At first, you won’t even think that she’s already a wife and a mother of two when she’s wearing her full ballerina apparel because of her young-looking face and physique—slender arms and legs with a mannequin-like body and unblemished immaculate skin. Her hair is auburn and wavy like those of the hair commercials showing how bouncy hair can be if you used their crappy products and her dark brown eyes that can captivate you when you look at it, mirroring your reflection clearly. She’s already 32 but her beauty is divine and ageless.

“Take care. Drive safely, ok?” I nodded and bid her goodbye. I am a second year student at the Carnahan Collegiate Institute for the Arts and Sciences and a member of the school’s ballet circle, the Carnahan Prima Ballerinas, popularly known as Prims. It’s not the kind of groupies where in you put lipstick, tie your curly hair up so tight, wear a very short pleated skirt exhibiting the school colors, hold huge pompoms and act like a bitchy cheer captain who knows nothing but to seduce football jocks and enslave the nerds. No, we’re very far from that. We weren’t called ballerinas just for nothing. Of course, we do ballet and not those silly things that can mess up our flawless reputation.

Ballet has been my passion ever since I was young. I got inspired into this when I sneaked and watched the movie ‘Barbie and the 12 Dancing Princesses’ in my aunt’s personal computer. I don’t know why but she’s keeping movies with the same theme with her. Aren’t those for kids? I thought. I clicked the play button while my heart paced abnormally with all the nervousness of being caught in the act at the first few minutes of the movie but then I got lost with the dreamy fantasy that the movie shows me and forgot that I was doing something with my aunt’s computer. I finished the movie and luckily, I didn’t get caught.

I talked to my Mum about how I badly wanted to learn ballet. It even took me a lot of courage and time to tell it to her because we’re not close like the typical mother-and-daughter and she’s one of the busiest people in the family since she gets and handles all of the information of those ill-fated people rolled in my grandfather’s list. She has never become a mother to me at all except for the period of conception to my birth.

“It will only do you no good, Veronica. Stop talking non-sense.” She rolled her eyes then continued encoding things I don’t really know and understand into her laptop.

What more do I expect? If she’s not my biological mother, then I would’ve thought that she hates me a lot… or maybe, she really does. I’ve seen the way she treats James and Hector and it’s the same but I think they’re used to it.

I never went hopeless. I thought of all the possible things that I can do just to make this dream come into my senses. I attempted to tell my dream to my aunt who kept the movie, Tita Giselle. Of course, I have to admit the act I did, sneaking into her room and watching her one of her mostly kept videos. I was so afraid when I approached her. I’m afraid that she’s going to be furious and all that because it’s a natural response but ironically, she was even freaking delighted.

“You should’ve told me earlier that you wanted to be a ballerina.” She smiled widely.

“You’re not mad at me?”