Calore Dance Academy// Red Queen AU

Chapter 19

Your schedule is as follows:

9:00 - 11:30 A.M—Ballet Technique

12:00 - 2:00 P.M—Corps de Ballet

2:30 - 4:00—Tap

4:30 - 7:00—Jazz and Hip Hop Combination

Time between classes should be spent warming up.

As the year progresses, schedules will shift as ballet rehearsals and performances take over and your minor focuses of dance are shed. By early September, this change will occur, and you will be dancing ballet from 9 to 7 six days per week.

With a half-eaten apple between the thumb and middle finger of my left hand, I clutch the paper Elara handed to me on Saturday evening in my right.

I read over my schedule again as I walk down a corridor faster than I'd like to for my first day of class, though I know the times as well as the palm of my hand.

It's only 8:45. You're fine, I think to myself and slow into a less embarrassing pace, readjusting the bag that's nearly fallen off my shoulder during the rushed journey from my room to Blonos's studio. It carries nothing of importance, really, besides my pointe shoes. A grey leotard, black tights, and ballet slippers are already on me, covered by a long-sleeved shirt and warm-up pants. I wrangled my hair into a fresh bun while I was back in my room. The bag's otherwise filled with useless things, like an old sweatshirt, legwarmers—which I hate by the way—and . . . I'm rambling.

I've tried to calm my mind. I woke up at six so I wouldn't feel rushed, but the extra minutes awake did no good—only offered time for me to make up wild scenarios of humiliation and terror in my head.

Yes, technically class doesn't start until nine. But written in between the lines of my schedule are highly recommended arrival and warm-up times, just as Elara wrote how time before class should be spent. Every decent dancer knows that. And particularly on the first day of class, I don't want to be an exception that knowledge.

Alongside each row of my schedule is a room number meaning next to nothing to me and a name. A teacher. Someone to criticize and judge me, a kind of person I haven't had in so long in terms of dance. Like the scorching lights of the stage, I do my best to welcome the thought of instructors calling me out and making me better.

You're not perfect, that voice tells me. Not that I ever said I was. I'm not Evangeline, who would probably die before admitting anything less. I need critiques, I need practice under the guidance of people who actually know what they're doing. This past six months . . . my teachers have been my memory and the occasional how-to video. So I'll take it. Every whispered comment, every yell from across the room when I'm doing something so blatantly wrong.

You're far from perfect, in fact.

Blonos's studio—or one of them, I mean to say—is situated on the third floor along with the other ballet classrooms. Far away from the tappers, who have the entire ninth floor to themselves. There's an almost certain chance one of those studios is right under my room, meaning those who tap full time will be keeping me up at night.

Stay on track, darling.

I've been on the third floor for a minute or two, winding my way through the hallways. I should've scoped things out last night, when I had time and still, unshaking fingers. Now I'm fairly sure I took a wrong turn at one point or another and question if I've lapped myself on this floor or not.

You haven't. You've been reading the numbers next to the doors. You're fine.

The voice of logic speaks yet again just as a thronging of women appear from the hallway coming up. They wear tight long sleeve shirts, the same baggy pants I wear made from some glossy material meant to contain heat, those ridiculous legwarmers, and ballet flats. Without a glance at me, they quickly disappear through the doorway at the end of my hall.