Dance of Shadows (5 page)

“Take off your shoes. All of you.”

Everyone around Vanessa began slipping off their shoes, but Vanessa gave Steffie a dubious look.

Steffie shrugged. “Don’t worry,” she said, sniffing the red fluid caked on the sides of her shoes. “It’s not blood. Smells like … ketchup.”

One of the upperclassmen must have heard her, because a voice bellowed across the room, “You. Step forward.”

Another boy emerged from the line of upperclassmen, wearing a charred-looking gray mask. He pointed at Steffie. “You will be the first to make your mark.”

A hush fell over the room. The boy in the gray mask removed a thin scalpel from his pocket, the blade glinting in the candlelight. “Come forth.”

Everyone turned to Steffie, but if she was scared, she didn’t show it.

“Don’t do it,” Vanessa said under her breath, but Steffie had already kicked off her shoes.

Her chin raised in the air, Steffie strode forward. “What do you want me to do?”

The masked boy held out the scalpel. “Cut the ball of your foot until you bleed. Then make your mark by dragging your foot across the back of the stage.” The boy moved aside and gestured to a row of unvarnished floorboards behind him.

Leaning forward, Vanessa could see a long line of dark-brown streaks—at least a hundred of them, laddering from center stage to the right edge.

“But that’ll hurt!” someone blurted out. Vanessa recognized TJ’s voice. “This is messed up. We won’t be able to dance.”

Other freshmen chimed in. “Auditions are in a month,” a boy said. “This will ruin our chances—”

“Silence!”

It was the boy in the gray mask. “You will bleed for us,” he commanded, and the room fell quiet. “Ballet requires the bond of sacrifice. Now take this and do it swiftly, or there
will
be consequences.”

Without saying a word, Steffie took the scalpel. She raised her right foot to her knee as if practicing
en barre
, her silhouette long and arched. She glanced over at Vanessa and winked.

No
, Vanessa mouthed, too late, as Steffie plunged the knife into her foot. One of the freshmen next to Vanessa gasped. Without flinching, Steffie pulled it out as quickly as it went in, a bead of blood on its tip.

The masked upperclassmen closed in around her; they chanted something too soft for Vanessa to hear as Steffie crossed to the space where the floor met the wall. There, she dragged her foot across the wooden boards until she’d left behind her own thin smudge.

She stepped back, and the boy in the white mask approached her. He held out a wad of gauze and a roll of tape.
Zep
, Vanessa thought, hoping he’d glance at her again. Instead, he leaned forward and spoke something in Steffie’s ear. Vanessa felt a twinge of jealousy as she watched him kneel and take Steffie’s wounded foot in his hands, his fingers gentle as he bandaged it.

Vanessa watched as Elly, Blaine, and five others performed
the ritual, the boy in the white mask wiping the blade with an alcohol-soaked cloth in between each cut. When they were through, the boy in the gray mask turned to her. “Come forth,” he said in a raspy voice, and held out the scalpel.

Barefoot, Vanessa stepped toward him. The upperclassmen closed in around her, chanting,
You’re not good enough. You’re not worthy
. The words came out hot and muggy through their masks.
You will never be a dancer
.

They’re right
, Vanessa thought, searching their hollow faces. The candlelight bounced off the masks, making it look like they were smiling.

Vanessa gripped the knife. Now she would know how Margaret had once felt. Whispering her sister’s name, Vanessa raised her toe to her knee in a graceful passé, and slashed the ball of her foot.

A flash of red. A quick, sharp pain. And then a lull as she walked across the room and placed her foot on the unvarnished floorboards but accidentally slid it over an old mark.

The chanting grew louder, louder, until the words pounded through Vanessa’s head.

S’enfuir. Fuir pour sauver votre vie. Sauver votre âme
.

“What?” Vanessa said, whipping around. But the voice wasn’t coming from the upperclassmen.

It grew louder, the voice murmuring the deep, thick French words. Vanessa pressed her palms to her temples. Her long hair cascaded over her face. “Stop!” she screamed. “Stop!”

The boy in the gray mask pushed her foot away from the streaks on the floorboard and wiped up the blood that she
had smeared over the old mark. “Come on, clumsy,” he muttered.

Immediately, the voices stopped.

Vanessa paused, trying to understand what had just happened. Regaining her balance, she pointed the ball of her foot at a clean space on the wood and drew a shaky line.

Just as she turned to go back to her place, a boy called out to her. “Wait.”

Vanessa froze as the boy in the white mask approached and knelt down beside her. Zep? She searched the dark holes of his eyes but couldn’t see anything.

“Are you okay?” His fingers grazed the back of her thigh. “Lift.”

Vanessa swallowed and nodded, her skin tightening beneath his touch as he took her foot in his palm and began to wrap it with gauze. He was so close that she could smell his aftershave.
Look at me again
, her mind begged while she watched his shoulders shift beneath his shirt.

As if he heard her, he tilted his head up. “Thank you,” she said, so softly that she wasn’t even sure he had heard her.

Taking her place in line, she turned to Steffie while the next boy was called forth. “What was the French they screamed?”

“What are you talking about?” Steffie said, raising an eyebrow. “No one was speaking French.”

“Yes they were,” Vanessa insisted. “They kept saying
S—S’enfoor
?”

“S’enfuir?”
Steffie said in perfect French. Vanessa raised an eyebrow. “My mom speaks French,” Steffie said. “Don’t judge. What else did you hear?”

Vanessa thought for a moment. “
Fuir pour sa—sa—sauver votre vie. Sauver votre aim?”

“Votre âme?”
Steffie repeated.

When Vanessa nodded again, Steffie gave her a scrutinizing look. “Are you playing with me?”

Vanessa shook her head, confused. “No. I don’t even speak French.”

Steffie’s eyes darted to the upperclassmen. They were huddled around another freshman, chanting. She lowered her voice. “I’m pretty sure that means:
Run away. Flee for your life. Save your soul
.”

Someone wanted Vanessa to leave. Or at least that was Steffie’s theory.

“But why?” Elly asked. “Classes haven’t even started yet. No one knows you.”

The four of them were sprawled out in Steffie and Elly’s room, half of which was decorated in muted shades of tan and black, while the other half looked like a frosted cupcake, draped in ruffles and bows. Elly’s comforter and pillows were pink, and she’d replaced the curtains that had come with the dorm room with pink ones from Bed Bath & Beyond. The only thing that wasn’t pink was the carpet.

“I don’t know,” Vanessa said, picking up a shag pillow. “Maybe they think I’m somebody I’m not.”

“Speaking of somebody I’m not, I feel like freakin’
Strawberry Shortcake in here,” TJ said to Elly. “What’s the matter with blue? Or yellow?”

Elly smiled. “Maybe a little pink will do you some good.” She pointed to a row of pink nail polishes lined up on her dresser. “I could paint your nails?”

“Touch me with a pink brush and I’ll drop a brick on your toes,” TJ said fiercely.

“Ladies!” Steffie said, laughing. “There is no need for violence.”

The window was open, letting the warm Saturday-morning breeze into the room. Vanessa let her thoughts drift. Her dreams had been haunted by the boy in the white mask, his raspy voice hot against her neck as he ran his hand down her ankle. His hollow face was the last thing she remembered before waking, damp with sweat.

“But no one else heard any French, right?” Steffie said, bringing the conversation back to the secret orientation.

TJ shook her head, her mess of brown curls going every which way. She was sitting on the carpet with Blaine, who was flipping through a stack of glossy magazines they had bought at a bodega after breakfast.

“Blaine? What do you think?” Steffie asked.

“I didn’t hear any French.” He flipped a page. “Only super-creepy chanting. It sorta reminded me of gym class back in Texas, right before everyone would throw dodge balls directly at my head.”

“If no one else heard French,” Steffie said, “then one of the upperclassmen specifically told Vanessa to leave.”

“Not just to leave,” Vanessa murmured. “To
flee
. To save my
soul
.”

TJ rolled her eyes. “Way too dramatic, if you ask me. If I were going to threaten someone, I’d choose a better word than ‘flee.’ And I’d probably say it in English.”

“I know,” Vanessa said. “It feels old-timey.”

“I like it,” Elly said. “Flee. It feels romantic. Like something a man would say to a woman he wanted to elope with.”

Blaine groaned, and TJ fluttered her eyes as if she were in a daydream. “Elly’s just jealous that someone else is living out her freaky domination fantasy.”

“I am not!” Elly said, clutching a frilly pillow to her chest. “And I don’t have any fantasies except to meet a nice boy, go steady with him for twenty-eight to thirty months, and then get married. We’ll move into a nice four-bedroom house, buy real hardwood furniture, and maybe I’ll start an herb garden. That’s it. No freaks involved. Or domination.”

There was a long pause as everyone exchanged looks of disbelief.

“Go steady?” Blaine said.

Elly frowned. “But I wasn’t trying to be funny—”

“Herb garden?” TJ chimed in, laughing. “It sounds like you want to marry my grandfather. He loves gardening and is too hard of hearing to care about the other stuff. Plus, he’s a minister. He’d say ‘flee’ and ‘save your soul’ to you all you like.”

“Really, though,” Steffie said as their laughter died down. “Why you?” She cocked her head at Vanessa. “Can you think of a reason why any of the upperclassmen would say that to you?”

Vanessa arched her foot, feeling the bandage stretch. No one here knew her yet, but maybe some of the older kids knew about her sister. Margaret had been cast as the lead ballerina in
The Firebird
when she was only a freshman. That alone would have been memorable enough, even without the disappearance, the canceled performance, and the long, fruitless search for her. And even though Vanessa, with her wild red hair and her rosy skin, didn’t resemble Margaret at first glance, they did have the same round, hazel eyes. The same heart-shaped lips.

Flee
, the voice had said. Which was exactly what Margaret had done.

But it seemed unlikely that anyone would have recognized her as Margaret’s sister.

Vanessa felt Steffie watching her. She was the only one in the room who knew that Vanessa even had a sister, and that was only because she was living in Margaret’s old room. The one they were sitting in now.

Vanessa glanced around at her new friends. “I used to have an older sister named Margaret,” she said softly. Keeping her eyes trained on the floor, she told them everything, starting with that fateful phone call and ending with her applying to NYBA. “My mother thinks she’s dead. She’s still grieving. But I don’t think so,” Vanessa said. “I think she’s out there somewhere.”

A somber silence hung in the room when she finished, her friends frozen in shock.

“I agree,” TJ finally said, giving Vanessa a hopeful smile.
“New York is a huge city, with tons of kids. She’s probably out there having the time of her life.”

Vanessa forced a laugh. “Yeah, well, if I end up running into her in a nightclub, I’m going to be pissed.”

“Nightclub?” Blaine said, perking up. “You know, I wouldn’t mind doing some reconnaissance work … if you want help.” He gave her a coy wink, making her smile, and then continued, his voice sincere. “Seriously, though. If you need anything, I’m here.”

“Me too,” said TJ. “Just let me know when you need someone to lead the charge. Especially if it involves nightclubs,” she said. “I’m tight with practically all of the bouncers.”

“Yeah right,” Steffie said with a laugh, and then added, “Me three.”

“Me four,” said Elly.

Vanessa felt herself blush. “Thanks. But do you think that’s why the voices told me to flee? Did it have something to do with Margaret?”

Steffie shook her head. “I don’t think anyone would joke about your sister. I bet it was just a prank.”

“It was probably just some horny senior guy trying to check you out,” said Blaine.

“Seeing red,” TJ teased, gazing at Vanessa’s fiery hair.

“Seeing red? They
were
red,” Blaine said, looking up. “Didn’t you see them in the dining hall?”

“Only the girls,” Steffie said. “And Zep.”

Blaine closed his eyes in a dreamy reverie. “I heard they all went on vacation to the Caribbean. Can you imagine that, being
surrounded by ballerinas, Zep, and a horde of bare-chested bar boys serving us bottomless margaritas and huge mounds of exotic fruit?”

TJ laughed so loud that she snorted.

Blaine continued. “What I would do to see Zep with his shirt off …”

The girls laughed.

Elly covered her face in embarrassment. “So was it a boy’s voice?”

Vanessa thought back to the previous night, which had already begun to feel like a strange, swirling dream. “Maybe. The thing is, it didn’t sound like it was coming from anyone. It was piercing, like a voice had entered my head.”

Elly frowned. “It had to come from someone. Voices don’t just pop into your head, unless you’re crazy.”

They
were
all still strangers to each other, Vanessa thought. She could be crazy. Any of them could be.