I sighed. “Nora, you are pretty and smart and nice too. Why wouldn’t he like you?”
“You know. Those girls. The ones that are always so put together. Supermodels types. Like the ones in my dance class.”
Dance class?
Her hand stopped mid-tail, and her eyes looked sideways at me. Yeah, I had caught her in her own trap.
“I thought we talked about that,” I said. “No dance class. Stick to the sciences. Math. That whole Academic Decathlon thing. I thought that was your elective?”
“Seriously? It’s a club, Haley, not an elective.”
The sass on that girl was impressive. Where did she learn it from? I crossed my arms. “You don’t want to dance.”
“You don’t want me to dance,” she said. She crossed her arms too. “We went to a ballroom class in Sage City and that’s how I met Chance. In a dancing class.”
Reasoning with a teenager was like trying to convince my younger self that this was all for the best. When I was about her age, I had to convince myself that accelerated courses were better because then I could work more hours at the Dahlia District to pay for Nora’s tuition. It didn’t matter that I had to quit all of my extracurriculars that I had no idea how much Mama was paying for, or that I had to miss prom and my senior trip. When you’re forced to grow up at sixteen and you don’t get to argue with your parents about what you want to do with your life, it makes arguing with your little sister about her life extremely difficult.
It was easier to talk about boys. Back to Chance and the dance. It wasn't a defeat. It was… avoidance. For now.
“Will you and Chance be doing ballroom dancing at the ball?” I asked.
“Well, I mean, I guess we would if we found the right song and nobody made fun of us. Maybe if some of the other—” she paused and her jaw dropped. “You mean?!”
I chewed another bite of the muffin. “Don’t get pregnant. Use a condom. Always trust your instincts.”
“Of course! Of course!” she squealed and hugged me. “Can I wear Mama’s dress? You know, that one she used to call her princess gown?”
The dress she was speaking of was covered in rhinestones, like the fabric itself was dripping with diamond icicles. Mama had worn it a few times at the Dahlia District, when she worked as a janitor before Dahlia put an end to that, reminding her that she had lost her privilege as an entertainer. But Mama still took pictures in it to show Nora and promised that it was hers. All she had to do was zip it up.
“I think it might be tattered,” I said. Some of the rhinestones had fallen off, and the straps were thin. While Mama hadn’t worn the dress much, the damn thing was so heavy that it seemed like the rest of it barely held up.
“Can we fix it?” Nora’s light brown eyes pleaded. “Please, Haley.”
I was a sucker. Any time I think about why Mama spent this much money on us, digging herself and me into overwhelming debt, all I have to do is look at Nora, and I understood why. How could you not give her everything in the world?
“I’ll bring it over soon. But I’m telling you, we have to take it to a repair shop. A cheap one.”
“It’ll be so worth it. Thank you!”
From the corner of my eye, where the buildings parted and gave way to the parking lot, a man dressed in black sat on the front of a white van. He was too far away to see any details in his face, but he wasn’t the typical person at the academy. And he was definitely looking at us.
Nora wrapped her arms around me, resting her head on my shoulder, and the surprise contact made me squish the rest of the muffin. I nuzzled my nose into her hair and sighed. I forgot about the person watching us.
***
This time, I was doing a short routine with aerial silks. Dahlia preferred that we all performed slightly different acts each night. Before I had even stepped onto the main stage, that man, Lucas, was sitting in the back row, his arms stretched wide across the back of his seat. A glass of whiskey rested on a table next to him. His eyes completely focused on me.
While some of the other servers approached him, he politely dismissed them, then fixated on me. Me. I guess aerial dance was alluring when you weren’t around the Dahlia District much, or if you had never been to a cirque show. And though what I was doing was a seemingly easy routine, anyone who had tried silks would tell you that simply climbing up the length of the fabrics was a work of pure strength.
Still, even if it was easy and I had done this particular performance a million times before, he distracted me. My timing was off. I accidentally burned my thighs on the fabric. And it wasn’t even like he was fascinated with the way I moved in and out of the silks. It was more like he was trying to figure something out. Observing me. Studying me. Getting into my head. Why I, the specimen, moved the way I did.
The song ended, and I clothed myself in a skimpy pink and burgundy robe. My hair was tucked into rope braids draped along each side before connecting in a loose bun. A few of the regular members gave me their praises. They liked my performances. They got better each year. It was hard to believe that I had been there for seven years now. I was only twenty-three.
Lucas waited in his seat, still watching me the entire time as I talked with each of the men. Mostly, it was them talking to each other about me. It was a men’s club, after all, so socializing with the servers was part of it, but the camaraderie they got with each other was another prominent aspect. I listened, but my gaze kept wandering back to Lucas. Why was he still watching me? If he wanted to pay for my time in a private room, he might as well take me to the Terrariums and get it over with.
I walked towards the lounge, about to go past his seat, when he put out an arm to stop me.
His hand on my thigh. My stomach clenched at the contact.
