Page 10 of Our Strange Duet

“Quiet!”

Tears welled in my eyes. I wasn’t trying to take Carlotta’s role. The thought had never once even crossed my mind.

Had it?

It was true she had everything I’d furtively longed for. The soprano lead in every opera we performed, a besotted audience and a dazzling wardrobe, dozens of suitors lining up at the stage door each night to profess their adoration. And her voice…

Though it wasn’t what it once had been, it still was commanding. Much more than I ever could claim. To have an entire auditorium focused upon your every breath, gasping as you hit notes as high as the angels above. To become one with the music itself. I fell asleep each night dreaming such dizzying desires.

But still…

I could no sooner take on her role than I could the president of France.

“If you don’t want to be thrown out of the company, I need you to stop drawing attention to yourself. I need you to give me a reason to keep you. Show me something. Show me you’re worth all this,” Monsieur Lefèvre snapped, then charged off into the wings, shouting for Joseph Buquet.

I’m not sure how I made it offstage. My limbs no longer felt within my control, and I trembled all over. Tears blurred my vision, and I had the strong desire to lash out and strike something. Anything.

It was all so painfully unfair.

I knew I wasn’t the best dancer in the corps, but I certainly wasn’t the worst. I’d worked so hard all season long. My only fault was that I’d been caught by the gimlet eye of Carlotta Giudicelli.

My livelihood, my ability to support myself, my entire life, hung in the balance, all because this one woman had decided she didn’t like me.

I pushed the back of my hand over my face, wiping my wet eyes and runny nose. I felt like a disastrous mess and knew I looked it. Several of the crew gave me worried glances as I passed by, wandering down the long maze of corridors to my dressing room.

I didn’t want to go inside.

I didn’t want to be alone.

Outside my door, I stopped and took in deep breaths, pressing a hand to my stomach as I tried to rein in my racing heart. Knowing all too well how quickly this panic could spiral into all-out terror, I willed myself to focus on better things. Smaller things. Little, tiny crumbs of positivity that could help pull me out of impending despair.

I still had a job.

Monsieur Lefèvre hadn’t fired me.

Yet.

And he’d given me concrete instructions on what I needed to do to keep my job.

Show me something. Show me you’re worth all this.

I’d gone nearly an entire season without Carlotta noticing my presence. I needed to slip back into the anonymity of the corps. Once she realized how utterly unremarkable I was, I could go back to being just another ballerina, faceless in a crowd, and undeserving of attention.

My worth was not in my singularity. My worth was in my ability to disappear into a roomful of dancers, taking a girl with dreams and wants and longings—me—and turning her into just another body onstage, moving in time with all the other bodies. A tiny piece of color in an enormous mosaic whose whole was far greater than any of its individual pieces.

I felt my chest lighten. Breaths came easier now. My heartbeat began to calm. There was a plan. I would keep my head down. I would do what I was meant to do and dance.

As I entered the dressing room, I could tell that there was something different. The space didn’t feel the way an empty room was meant to. The air stirred, as if it had just slid over another form, another body, another presence.

Someone had been in here while I was gone.

I pulled my reticule from the little drawer I’d stashed it in. A quick check of its contents showed it had not been touched. Whoever had come in did not have thievery in their heart.

In fact…

I turned, my gaze sweeping over the room, and saw that the intruder had instead left something behind. There, on the upright piano, was a Faust score, spread open and ribboned, as if inviting me to sit down and begin at the selected passage.

I took a hesitant step closer, squinting to see what the music was, then froze.