Calore Dance Academy// Red Queen AU

Chapter 37

Announcements!

1: Follow me @Natthefantastic for important updates regarding Calore Dance Academy!

2: If you haven't taken it already or simply want to take my survey again--asking about scenes you'd like to see in Calore Dance Academy--access this link! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf41ZIjowXLeUqXXeTBdxUquGSUZSx6wZm8c8PopVDFzAtL3Q/viewform?usp=sf_link

3: I am a very organized writer who deeply enjoys keeping track of things. I have made a map that shows all of the locations Mare has travelled to so far in NYC! https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1HUqlwOST6RdX2eclH6ZN2LWVhdZT0IM3&usp=sharing

4: As always, enjoy! CDA is definitely heating up and will not be cooling down.

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With her foundation-smooth skin, thick mascara, golden eyeshadow, and wine lipstick, the girl who returns my stare doesn't look much like me. Her newly-cut hair, washed and sprayed by something that shimmers, is braided into a complicated crown that weaves around her head. Loose from the braid, brown strands that match her eyes hang over her ears, and those eyes, for some reason, look vivid for once. She looks elegant and regal and certainly nothing like the seventeen-year-old she is.

I'm used to the pageantry of dance competitions, the perfect makeup and hairstyles and costumes we're all supposed to have. But I haven't put on a drop of makeup in two months, and even then, what I wore to the Academy's ceremony was light.

This is not light. Not for me, anyway.

I sit in a black salon chair, faced with a mirror as tall as me, one in a line of ten. It's framed with more black, matching the dark tiles at my feet—my bare feet, where cotton balls have been sandwiched between my toes. To match the dress that I'll soon put on, navy blue polish dries on my toenails, along with my fingernails.

The inside of the Midtown beauty salon that Iris made me an appointment for is nearly all-black, with its tiles and pillars and chairs and light fixtures. The walls are constructed of carob brick, and the lights are bright to illuminate every detail of my face. The stench of hair spray permeates the air, coming from my head and the heads of other women in the salon.

I'm bracing myself to find out how much a haircut, a hair styling, a manicure and pedicure, and getting my makeup done all adds up to. They've had me walking around this place for two hours, from one room to the next, where they fix me a little bit more each time.

It's left me to my thoughts.

The week went by quickly, ballet a blur, as always. But I've nearly perfected my memory of the choreography for Giselle, and the next several weeks leading up to performances will be all about perfecting the choreography itself. Then there's Cal and his lessons, another of which I had on Wednesday, where we finished with lifts. He told me that I wasn't getting off the hook today, a Saturday, and that we're having a lesson tomorrow night. An actual, real contemporary lesson.

I came up with a decent question for him on Wednesday, asking Cal what he wanted that money couldn't buy him. He spent a while thinking about it before proceeding to share an elaborate, scheming plan that involved him becoming the choreographer for the Super Bowl Halftime Show. I'll never so much as attempt to explain it to anybody.

He asked me what my taste in music was. I still remember the bored shrug that I gave him, and the head tilt that he gave me. I told him that despite my profession, I don't have a particular taste in music and that I don't really listen to music in my free time. Safe to say Cal was disappointed in me, considering he made me give him my phone number—which isn't a week old, by the way—so that he could send me a six-hour playlist tilted Cal's Epic Playlist. I haven't so much as looked at it since.