River: A Novel (17 page)

  The lights
were on in the expansive space. Bright and airy, it was the nicest studio I’d
ever seen. Dan started and then stopped walking. I followed his wide-eyed gaze
to the far left—not daring to speak. In a corner of the large room, Petra stood
motionless as a startled doe, leaning on a dry mop.

 My bag fell
out of my slick palms, and I quickly covered my mouth. When I felt my legs
point in the direction of Petra, hands clamped down on my shoulders. I stalled
mid-step, my whole body pulling me toward my friend. She looked exactly the
same. Tall and willowy, she had a perfect dancer’s body: high in-step, short
torso with long legs, and unbelievable turnout. It wasn’t a wonder she was on
her way to fame in the dance world. However, that was before. The reality of
this place surged into the room with the force of a dense wall of smoke; clouding
up what used to be. As I squinted from near-sightedness, Petra came into better
focus. She
did
look the same, but slightly off. Her uniform was an ill
fitted green jumper. It was a costume diluting her beauty into something
washed-out. It was the first time I had ever seen Petra look anything close to
frumpy—it was unnatural.

 Petra did
not acknowledge our presence. Instead, she packed up her cart of cleaning
supplies, avoided eye contact with either of us, and limped with the help of a
cane through a door at the opposite end of the room. I stared toward the closed
door for a long time, as if suspended in the second of starting after her. Finally
blinking, I turned to Dan and watched obvious hurt settle over him.

 Inwardly, I
knew the situation had nothing to do with me, and everything to do with what had
happened between Petra and River Elodie. I wasn’t involved. Instead, I was left
wishing I could tell her the truth about our friendship. How none of the deceit
and requisite pain had happened, but that was impossible. Being paralyzed by
someone else’s past was really messing up my present. I barely comprehended what
Dan was signing to me, quickly and with little emotion.

 
Petra
was ordered not to be within fifty feet
of you and banned from
coding. I’m not sure when you saw her last, but you attempted to visit when
she was recovering
.
  

 After he
knew I understood most of the specifics, or more precisely about half, Dan slipped
out the door, a pained expression behind his guarded countenance. I may have
understood why Petra had acted the way she did, but I still wanted to set the
records straight, and maybe get Petra out of River, too. My face fell. There no
way that she was happy here. No longer able to dance and ostracized, she had obviously
been demoted by the Speakers to humiliate her. I didn’t know the reasons behind
her betrayal. Maybe someone had come to her with lies, and she was too afraid
to ask about it, fearing for herself to be party to any crime. 

 The dark truths
lurking in River hit me all of a sudden. I’d been hiding the last six days from
this world; naïve to the dualities between it and my world, the one I could not
forget—no matter what happened to me here. I refused to lose faith that I would
wake up one day in my borrowed bed at Danny’s chaotic apartment. He would be
singing badly done opera in the shower, and I couldn’t wait to roll my eyes
when his high notes coincided with bursts of cold water spurting out of the ancient
pipes. Seeing Petra had solidified my outlook of this place. It was antiquated
in the laws—people were mutilated and tortured on a regular basis, and someone as
innately kind as Petra not only had her voice stolen from her, but her ability
to dance as well. As jaded and melodramatic as my first life had been, I longed
for it now. At least it hadn’t been a nightmare.

 Petra’s
finite dismissal, even though court ordered, convinced me that coming here was
ultimately a bad move, so I was just preparing to run for it when Nanette
opened the door. She broke out an elated grin, which I returned with a wooden
smile. Nanette at the Studio had never smiled, exactly; she’d donned a
well-honed smirk containing the wisdom of a crone. I pulled my shoulders down
and stood up straight, resolute to solving the dilemma with Petra later. It was
show time.

 I had taken
off my glasses earlier, just before we’d left for the theater. Dan insisted
that we had to come up with a better story than
they’d just materialized
on my face one day. Suddenly, I was extremely annoyed with the probable-alien forces
that had deposited me in River with a new knee, and had overlooked the fact
that River Elodie apparently was blessed with perfect vision. The intergalactic
jokesters could’ve helped me out and taken care of my need to wear glasses, at
the very least. Pulled from my grouchy daydream, I stiffened as Nanette reached
out for a hug, returning it while she patted my shoulder, light and quick.

 Are
you feeling better?
Nanette signed to me in a kind way. Maternal. I couldn’t help
but feel warm and relieved that someone besides Dan may possibly be on my side.

 I
am happy to be back
,
I replied, trying to relax my arms
while hoping the response was flawless. My hours spent practicing seemed to fly
around me in fragments; signs were askew in my mind, mixing together with my
own spoken language. I waited for something off in her expression that would
give me away.

 She only
smiled. I must have been at least close, but I was unnerved by her stillness. As
I silently panicked and devised an exit strategy, the door opened again behind
me and three girls entered. They burst into grins when they saw me and then froze
as a unit. All at once, they pattered over to greet me with more hugs. I was
feeling less than confident again, if not a little awkward with more hugging than
I’d received in a lifetime, when I was thrown for a loop by one of the girls
signing. Having no idea what she was conversing, I just nodded and smiled. She
looked at me with confusion. Trying to cover up my ignorance, I did what I
would have done before: I complimented her on her hair and make-up. To my
astonishment, it worked. My faults were forgotten as I put the other girl in
the spotlight. Figuratively wiping my brow, I cursed inwardly as four more
dancers entered. Miraculously, my compliments only brought smiles to their
faces, taking the heat off me.

 Nanette
lightly clapped her hands together before looking directly at me. Her eyes were
full of questions and suspicions. Having already been here for five minutes, I
was not surprised. Five minutes was longer than I thought I’d last. The rest of
the girls put their things in a corner and prepared for the barre. I was
following to a spot in the middle when Nanette shanghaied me—hooking her elbow
through mine and pulling me to the front. 

  Uh-oh.
Was I supposed to lead the class in exercises?
I knocked my head as if to say,
Silly me, how could I have forgotten
EVERTHING?
Well, I’d done barre work a thousand times in my perceived existence.
I only had to fake the sequence.

 The music
started from speakers hidden in the walls. I couldn’t get the feeling out of my
bones that I was being watched, and not only by Nanette and a dozen others. I
glanced at the mirror that covered the wall facing my left, waiting for some
obscure movement behind it, before placing my feet into first position. Demi-
grand- demi –plié….

 Surprisingly,
the girls followed my lead. I had woken up with the feeling that there was no
way I would get through the day, and here I was leading them at barre. These
exercises had always been repetitive to me; I’d endured them in a daze most of
the time, just waiting to go to the floor where I could really
move
. I
did the same routine Nanette had had us do every day at the Studio, and no one
seemed to question it. Maybe I would make it through this day alive after all.

 When the
music faded, the rest of the girls curtseyed lightly and left for the floor. I
followed a beat late. Paranoid Nanette had noticed my hesitation, I tried to
cover up my slowness with acting: clutching my head and stomach while signing
that I needed a drink of water. As if on cue, Dan poked his head through the
door, and explained that he was dropping off a water bottle for me. Shuffling toward
him with the fake-sick look still on my face, I could see he was worried.

 Dan raised
one eyebrow at me as I took the water. I grinned slightly with a twist at the
end, and widened my eyes infinitesimally, indicating that I was barely okay. He
raised the other eyebrow. His nervous glance asked surreptitiously if I needed
help escaping. My reply was a cunning shake of the head, and I wasn’t sure he
understood at first. He then touched his temple with two fingers and bowed his
head. He got it. I had to stay if anyone was going to believe my cover. I
watched him leave with nothing but doubt in my heart. There was no way I could continually
pull this off, but I wasn’t about to bring him down with me.

 The floor
exercises went a little more smoothly. My ego was non-existent as the others danced
variations that took my breath away. I marveled at their musicality and
textbook technique: lithe entrechats into perfectly executed pas de chat, effortlessly
beautiful port de bras complementing a series of sissones. Add music and stand
in awe. When my time came to duplicate the routine, I stood in the back of the
last trio. Nanette was openly frowning in my direction. I couldn’t tell if I
was doing poorly or if she’d figured out, finally, that I did not belong. In a
group of perfectly controlled dancers, I was the inconstant and very imperfect
variable.

 Before
rehearsal ended, she clapped her hands and announced silently that it was time
to watch solos. I looked around at the groups scattered in the far end of the
room, realizing slowly that all eyes were on me. Instantly, I clenched my hands
at my waist; my mouth in a pained twist. If forced to perform a solo, I would
definitely be found out. Waving off assistance, I wobbled to my water bottle,
throwing my hands to my head. Afraid of over-doing it, I signed quickly that I
had a cramp and was tired from being sick. My dire need of a flu-relapse was
pulled out as a last resort. The whole lot of them seemed to buy it, and Nanette’s
attention turned to a dark-haired girl executing pirouettes as if she were a
top, spinning indefinitely.

 Just as I
was about to escape the room after class, Nanette cornered me with worry lining
her face. I assured her as best I could that I just needed a little more recovery
before the big performance.
If I don’t run away from this science experiment
of a town first,
I added in my head.   

 She put an
arm around my shoulder, and I tried not to flinch. This touchy Nanette was hard
to comprehend. It was such a difference from no-nonsense, tough-love Nanette. Warm
and fuzzy had not been her method. I packed up my things quickly, nodding in a
maudlin way as she signed to me to feel better, and tried to remember where I
was supposed to meet Danny.

 Out in the
hall, I could feel base thumping lightly through the floor boards, escaping the
soundproof walls and dispersing rhythm underneath my feet. Following the
vibration, I found Dan’s name under a metallic sign punched with code:
SOUND-ENGINEER
.

 I knocked
lightly, tapping out my name. Dan opened the door. Having been substantially confident
in my powers of pretense, he grinned in a smug way. As I entered the room and realized
I was clamping down on the inside of my mouth, I released my jaw, forcing it to
relax. In trying to be mute retroactively, my mouth had become a bloody, sore
mess. I took a swig of water and concentrated on loosening the tension in my
body. It did not escape notice that my knee felt perfect after hours of strain. 

 Trying to
ignore the facts, I loped into Danny’s music studio and focused on the composition
coming from his equipment. It was beautiful. Complex and evocative, it immediately
had me transfixed.

 Wow,
I mouthed to Dan. He shrugged. It was
nothing for a musical genius, just a daily occurrence.

 He signed
to me that he was working on something special for the day after tomorrow, and I
began having one of many selective panic attacks, though the imminent
performance really wasn’t my top priority. I was saving that freak-out for just
before… assuming that I would still be alive and kicking in River. Today had luckily
not been a total disaster, but it certainly hadn’t been a fun-filled picnic. I
was feeling paranoid about Nanette, and Petra’s appearance had me wracked with
remorse and second-hand guilt.

 Dan had to
awaken me from reverie several times in the music studio. By nightfall, I had
become restless, and the music was making me want to dance, so I wandered back
to the rehearsal studio to work out some nerves. Dan emerged from his cave to
turn on the sound system for me, and then twirled me around while I stifled
laughter. It was good to see him smile. I didn’t think I could be truly happy
in this messed up land, but it was nice to feel a fleeting second of joy break
through its depressing walls.

 Slowly
testing out this new body of mine, I danced alone for about an hour. My knee
remained perfect, and I grudgingly admitted to myself that I felt a bit torn
about ending up in River.
Selfish
. My mind displaced the thought. I
could never feel good about River’s absolute oppression; no matter how healed
and flawless my body had become, except for the usual near-sightedness and unsettling
scars scoring my hands. And yet, all I remembered from just before I’d woken up
here was an unbearable need to dance and barely lumbering through movement. It had
been painful, before. Now there was not even an echo of that pain. I kept waiting
for it, only to be amazed by the joy of leaping in a double grand jeté and melting
into the floor with a supple plié. I just kept sighing and shaking my head.