Girl Through Glass by Sari Wilson

Author:Sari Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-10-26T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 24

LATE SUMMER, 1978

On the morning of the SAB auditions, Mira wakes early to a city that spits and shines like jewels. Outside her window, the sky is bright with early white light.

She pulls on her favorite pair of tights—Capezios, three washings—and a black tank top leotard. Then she pulls off the tank leotard and puts on a new spaghetti strap one that Judy had bought for her just for the audition.

It’s a warm day, late summer. She pulls on a cotton dress and packs her dance bag. She looks around. Her room feels smaller. She sits in the squat brown living room chair that smells of shampoo, waiting. She can hear her father snoring through his half-closed door.

Leaving her father sleeping, she gets up from the chair and lets herself out of the apartment.

Outside the city explodes with light. She sinks into the light, not running from awning to awning for the shade but taking the middle of the sidewalk.

She walks to the Lincoln Center fountain, bright, parched concrete. Maurice is waiting by the fountain. He wears the same black cape and a black top hat, which he removes when she arrives. Girls in buns with their mothers file by. He says, “Remember the Russian Tea Room when we saw Mr. Balanchine?”

How could she forget? The blood soup that tasted like dirt, the pale woman with the glittering ears, the golden clock that churned in the middle of the room.

“The Russians are scientists of the body. They have studied these things. The legs must not be too short, the head not too big, the instep pliant. It has taken them a hundred years to get the proportions right. I hear they do X-rays in the Soviet Union, but here parents wouldn’t like that. But why not? It’s better to know before serious training begins. Otherwise, it’s a waste of everyone’s time.

“Aside from this, they will be looking for one thing: that you know the steps. Don’t worry about holding your pretty arabesques, just be quick, and clever, and to the point.”

She looks at him. Her face grows hot as the morning sun. She imagines him kissing her the way that Christopher was kissed by the jester, smothering her, taking all of the anger out of her, draining her of everything.

She nods. Her blood in her ears. She understands.

The SAB hallways are packed, filled with hive-like activity. Girls in leotards and tights, mothers stiff-backed, like generals before a march, sitting on benches. Each girl wears a number pinned to the front of her leotard.

She passes a plumpish girl. A girl who smells of a strong flower perfume. A girl whose mother is straightening the seams on her tights, a girl who wears her bun high on her head like a geisha, one girl, an older girl, Robin’s age—where is Robin?—whose feet poke out of her cut tights showing reddened, calloused, and bent toes, another older girl whose spine is so bony that you could play the xylophone on it. She

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