Calore Dance Academy// Red Queen AU

Chapter 43

Woo-hoo! Another chapter is done! As always, please star and comment your thoughts and feelings. :)

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Cold sweat clings to my body when I wake. The sheets that I lie in and my T-shirt and shorts are damp with it, and the air surrounding me sings with humidity. Suddenly, it's the dead of summer again.

I've kicked back my purple bed covers. A noisy fan works away in the corner of the room, though it's not aimed towards me. It's never aimed towards me. I hear the murmurs of a city that never sleeps through a window that shouldn't be open, and through the door, I hear murmurs.

My sheets feel strange, and my pillow isn't as velvety as normal. Sweat beads at my brow and gathers at my neck.

I twist over myself for the water bottle that I keep at my—

"Morning."

I jolt out of the bed, blinking wildly.

Gisa sits on her side of our room. She's perched atop her bed, one of her design notebooks resting on her lap as she sketches away on it with a pencil. Her vivid hair is tangled as it always is in the mornings, though mine looks no better. She grins at me, forgetting about her designs as she relaxes back on both of her hands.

Her wrist is fine. She doesn't say anything when I stare at it in shock.

"You're going down to Times Square today, right? And then you were going to have lunch with Kilorn at that stupid restaurant where he works?"

I continue staring at her dainty little wrist, still half-dangling off my mattress.

"What?"

Gee looks at me like I'm stupid. "Pickpocketing, then lunch with Kilorn. Right?"

I blink some more. The summer sun of July shines brightly through our shabby, not-so-functional curtains, illuminating every detail of our room so that there's no denying where I am.

Panic floods through me.

No. That's not possible.

"I don't know why you bother keeping these," Gisa comments, holding up a pair of my pointe shoes by their silken ribbons. With a glance, I see that the bottom drawer of my dresser has been pulled out onto the floor, leaving my hiding place of ballet-related items for anyone to see. "It's not like you were ever going to become anything, anyway."

In spite of the heat, shivers rake down my bare legs, and my hands cling to my sheets if only to have something to hold.

"But what about the Academy—"

"The Calore Dance Academy?" a new voice asks with a breathy laugh. At the threshold of my now-open door stands Cal, in an old black-hooded sweatshirt and a pair of loose jeans. He's out of place in my room, too tall for it, too perfect for it, even in his ragged ensemble. Cal crosses one of his booted feet over the other, looking down at me in my tangle of sheets. His bronze eyes glimmer with some sort of regret, but a crooked grin spreads onto his lips. "If you had wanted to dance so badly, then you shouldn't have chosen them."

Behind Cal, Mom passes through the living room, saying something to Dad. She has her hair drawn up into a ponytail and a bag slung over her shoulder. She looks tired, but if she feels it, she doesn't complain. Bree and Tramy clunk away in the kitchen, perhaps deciding what they should have for breakfast. The TV plays quietly.

"Mom?" I ask, loud enough so that she should hear me.

Gisa scoffs. "She can't. You know, considering that you haven't been home in two months."