Calore Dance Academy// Red Queen AU

Chapter 10

I halt my walking along the planks, stopping not far from where Cal stands, twenty-five, maybe thirty feet below. The red-hot anger I feel for Cal, for myself, negates any fear of heights I possessed. I grip a nearby dangling rope for stability, one of the many arranged throughout the rafters as part of the rigging system.

The young man wears nice tap shoes, a black T-shirt, and Adidas training pants rolled at the ankle.

What was he doing, loitering outside of a disgusting East Harlem bar? He wasn't inside of it, preferring to stand at its edge, practically asking for trouble. No, he didn't score a brutal thug to pick a fight with, but rather a foolish, pickpocketing teenage girl. And instead of sending me to the cops, he gave me two-hundred dollars and somebody to rant to.

If luck is real, because it's surely against me, then fate might be as well. Whatever twisted, mutilated, comical fate this is.

Ann, up in the rafters with me, helping the stagehand with the light, revealed the cleaning staff was full, but one of the higher-ups suggested acquiring a new maid or two. I all but invited Cal into my apartment. He knows where I live, and after I bled my soul to him on our walk, he returned to East Harlem, sticking an advertising poster on Will's store window for a maid job at the Manhattan Dance Academy.

Better known as the Calore Dance Academy, dubbed after his billionaire family. I don't know why its name evaded my memory, but sure enough, below on the stage platform and further past the female and Cal, the name is inscribed on the stage, a near black on the dark wood. I was all-too entranced with the dancers to acknowledge it before, but now it's striking: the lettering's bold, almost looking like it was branded or burned onto the stage like a scar.

Albeit a gorgeous scar.

Details about the family I learned years ago come flooding back, and I feel so, so stupid for not putting the pieces together. Cal's a nickname, and his father is the proprietor of one of the most successful dance companies in history to date. Dancers from around the world come to train under his family's leadership, have been since the Roaring Twenties.

Everybody's heard of the Calores. I don't know how I forgot the name. I've known it for a decade, especially fascinated with it as a little kid when it was my dream to dance at a place like this. I suppose it's just another part of my old passion I've forgotten, all those extra details falling away with time. Though I've never forgotten how insanely rich these people are.

I resume my crouch, craning my head for the best angle between the beams' spaces.

"It's fine, Cal," the unseen man in the audience who asked the dancers their names says. "You haven't missed much, and your brother scored in your place."

Cal nods, faintly frowning at the silver-haired woman also on stage. "Best of luck, Evangeline," he says, but doesn't quite mean it, the wish monotone and bland. Not trying to hide his disinterest.

Evangeline. The girl who spoke with her mother in the hall while I hid in a guest room. Her mom painted herself as a nightmare, but with Evangeline in the flesh, her infernal smirking . . . the girl takes after her.

"Thanks, partner," she returns, and my suspicions are confirmed. She and her mom spoke about Cal yesterday, and Evangeline seemed awful confident in her ability to attain him as a partner. Until her mom broke the news—that her father wouldn't be bribing anyone for the honor.

"Not yet," Cal mumbles and walks towards the front of the stage. My view of him cuts off, and his shoes indicate a descent of steps.

Based on the scant interaction I've had with Cal, he isn't the cruel type. For my sanity, I'll assume he put that poster up on Will's storefront for good reason, not as some wicked joke. He would've understood what it would mean to me to see the Academy, salt to a wound that I doubt will ever fully heal. On the other hand, a job, any kind of job, would stop me from terrorizing innocents, give me an income to provide my family with. And it offered me the chance to see what could've been.