She lowers her voice slightly. “He didn’t come.”
She doesn’t know everything but she knows enough.
I stare down at my pointe shoes. “He wasn’t supposed to,” I say.
She stands. “Eight o’clock,” she repeats. “You’re coming.”
I sit there for another minute, waiting for the shaking to stop. It doesn’t. So I do what I have always done. I wipe my face, straighten up, and methodically begin to dismantle the girl everyone was just clapping for. I start pulling the pins out of my hair, letting the performance fall away strand by strand. Each one feels like a small defeat, a quiet surrender to the fact that I’ll have to build her all over again tomorrow.
I always thought this was what I wanted—the applause, the spotlight. But now I get it. All these eyes on me don’t mean a thing, not when the only person who ever actually saw me isn’t here to share it with.
* * *
The restaurant is all glass, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a river that runs beside it like a quiet ribbon of silver, nothing like the thick black water back home. There are no rustedrailings here, no flickering streetlights, no stench of oil in the air, just soft music and low conversation.
We take up half a long table near the windows and someone orders champagne before I can object, the cork popping as everyone cheers like we’ve just won something. We haven’t. The Midseason Showcase isn’t a competition. It’s just a chance to spend months preparing a piece, perform it for faculty, donors, and visiting directors, then wait for a panel of experts to tell you everything they think you did wrong.
Marabeth throws an arm around my shoulders. “To Sisk,” she declares. “For terrifying everyone tonight.”
This place still feels like a borrowed coat that fits but I know isn’t mine to keep. Across the table, laughter rises easily with stories about rehearsal mishaps—someone nearly falling out of a lift, someone’s pointe shoe snapping mid-variation. They bring up summer intensives across the world and a faculty member who might be recommending two of us for a winter company audition.
It all sounds so normal, so possible, so positive, and I realize that back home, ambition sounded like survival but here, it sounds like travel plans.
A server refills my glass without being asked, and I notice that nobody is looking over their shoulder, a habit I didn’t realize I’d picked up so much back home.
Lucas slides into the empty seat beside me, smelling like expensive cologne, his blazer folded neatly over the back of his chair, his hair still damp from a shower.
“You were incredible,” he says quietly, not loud enough for the others to hear.
“Thank you.”
“I mean it. That last section? I couldn't stop watching.”
I shrug. “It’s supposed to look intense.”
He smiles slightly. “Not that kind of intense.”
I look down at my glass.
The river outside moves calmly under the bridge as boats drift past. Sometimes I even forget Tar City exists, that is until I close my eyes. There, I still see black tar bubbling, still hear the wind in The Cut.
Lucas leans closer. “We’re going down to the water after this. A few of us, you should come.”
I almost say no. I’ve said no for months. He’s been patient about it, always asking, never pushing. I don’t want him, but tonight I need someone to keep me upright, so I nod. “Okay.”
He smiles, surprised, and I force a small smile back. This is what normal looks like. This is what leaving was supposed to give me: a clean world, a quiet and safe future.So why does it feel like I’m burying myself alive?
Lucas pays, like he always does, not in a showy way, just steady with a card down and a small nod to the server.
I let him. I don’t feel guilty about it; every bit of money I don’t spend is money I can send home. And the chance that Millie has to take on extra work for those scums she continues to deal with gets smaller.
The scholarship covers my tuition, sure, but it doesn’t cover my family. It doesn’t cover the stack of medical bills that keep coming. That’s what’s really been pushing me, the engine under all the numbness. My life might feel like a blank canvas, but my family needs this. They need me to succeed here, even if it feels like I’m disappearing.
We cross the street toward the café terrace lining the water, where small round tables sit under strings of lights overhead. A live band is set up near the railing. It’s the kind of place people fall in love on purpose.
Someone passes selling flowers and Lucas waves him over.
“You don’t have to—” I start.
