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Sophie bent and swayed, humming, feeling the warmth seep into her muscles. The abandoned studio around her dissolved away, replaced with the floor polish smell and soft music of Miss Clara’s big classroom.
The movement of her body grew quicker. She spun, arms up in a graceful arc. The names all came back to her as she moved, ron de jambe, eleve, plie, pirouette. Step, step, spin. Her lungs expanded and contracted. Dust tickled the back of her throat as tingles of warmth moved along nerve endings.
Here she had felt young and beautiful and free and full of joy. The ghosts of those things swirled around her as she executed a soft leap, toe pointed, sweeping her leg. A fine sheen of sweat broke out on her forehead, between her shoulderblades. The fabric of her pants tightened around her thighs as she lifted her leg. Developpe.
Sophie’s tendons stretched as she imagined Miss Clara’s voice in her ear.
“Listen to the music. Let it flow through you. Ballet is the lyrical expression of human movement, Sophie. You are the music. Relax your fingers. Good!”
It had been good. She’d left Body In Motion every other day after school feeling like she’d been reborn. Back then, dancing had never failed to put a smile on her face. She felt it now, hovering around her lips. Her scalp prickled with sweat in the slightly stuffy room, cheeks flushed with heat. Her chest rose and fell with each deep breath. The muscles in her thighs and calves tingled and burned.
Not painfully, the sweet burn of exercise. As just like she remembered, there was the hushed sound of her shoes sliding over the hardwood floor. Sacred, like the clack of rosary beads. Rhythmic, like a prayer. Places like this were Sophie’s church.
Inside these walls, there had been no missed questions on a pop quiz, or teenage fights with her parents. The bad stuff, the stressful things of everyday life, got tucked into the cubby hole with her jacket and backpack. She did it now, tucking Christian and Henry and the media and Nicole and the cancellations all into a cubby in the front room.
She focused on her feet. Pas de bourree, pas de chat. Her heart echoed the leap, soaring in her chest. Sophie landed lightly on the balls of her feet, breath rushing out of her, arms to her sides.
Phantom clapping, the three, hard, curt claps that Miss Clara gave at the end of a routine done well, seemed to echo through the room. Sophie stared at the wall where the mirrors should be. What did she look like now, she wondered? Wisps of light hair stuck to her sweaty cheeks and neck, face flushed, panting.
A silly woman in slacks and a t-shirt dancing in an abandoned studio. Sophie relaxed, breath whooshing out of her, and dropped her arms. There was no going back. Only forward. Or standing still. And she knew what Miss Clara would say about that.
“A body at rest...” she murmured into the stillness of the dusty room. She palmed sweat from her forehead and picked her way gingerly back toward the rear door. However full of joy her past was, she wasn’t going to be one of those people who wallowed there. She was no Miss Havisham, wandering around in her old wedding dress. She wouldn’t be bitter.
That’s what this trip was about, wasn’t it? Putting all the craziness of the last few weeks behind her. Moving on. “A body in motion tends to stay in motion,” she quoted Newton, via Miss Clara. And Sophie intended to keep moving.
The air smelled fresh after the close confines of the old studio. Sophie took a deep breath, tilting her face up to the sky and briefly enjoying the warmth of the sun on his skin. She shoved the door back into place, leaning hard against it to pop the crooked hinge. She covered it with the leaning wood again, and brushed her hands free of dust.
The rasp of a lighter’s ignition wheel made her jump a little. She turned toward the small patch of back lawn behind the florist. A woman stood there, her back to Sophie, dark hair tied up in a messy bun. She wore a green apron tied around her waist, and p
uffed on one of those tiny, slim cigarettes that were marketed just to women.
“Excuse me?” Sophie asked, stepping further away from the back of the decrepit building. The woman turned slowly, puffing on her smoke. Her face was lined, she was older than Sophie had first thought, but she smiled kindly enough.
“Well, you don’t look old enough to be one of the ruffian’s mothers. Sister?”
Sophie stared at the older woman for a moment, uncomprehending. Then she shook her head and smiled. “Oh. No. I’m not looking for anyone. I was just wondering... I used to come here as a kid, you see. Do you know what happened to it? I mean... the woman who owned it...” She bit her lip, suddenly not sure if she wanted to know what had happened to Miss Clara.
“The lady who owned it retired down to Florida. Still there as far as I know, but the kids are in charge of her assets. They just let the place sit.” She shrugged, sucking on her cigarette.
“I didn’t realize Miss Clara had any kids.” But then, she’d been young and awfully absorbed in her dancing.
“Don’t think the relationship is real close. At least, that’s the impression I get.” She picked a flake of tobacco off her tongue. “But hey, if you’re interested in the place, I can get you in touch with them.”
“Oh, I —”
“I’d move fast if I were you. I know it doesn’t look like much, but you’re the second person to come look at it in the last few weeks. I guess the market’s heating up. I’ve got that contact info back in the shop if you want it.” She jerked her head back toward the florist.
Sophie swallowed her protest. Maybe this was her way forward? Here, at home? “Someone else was looking at it?”
The lady nodded, waving her hand and drawing elaborate figures in the smoke that wafted up from her cigarette. “Yeah. She was an odd duck, I’ll tell you. She wanted to know the building’s whole history. Asked if there were any records left, photos, that kind of thing. Then she wanted to know how long I’d lived here. When I told her it was only the last couple of years, she said she needed someone who’d lived here for at least twenty years. Someone who could tell her about one of the students. Guess someone famous went here once?”
Sophie opened her mouth, but her voice caught in her chest. She tried again, clearing her throat first. A knot of suspicion began to tighten in her stomach. Whoever had been poking around here had been asking about her. Twenty years ago was when she’d been here. And while she wouldn’t call herself famous, she was well known in the dance world. Had a reporter come sneaking around, drawn here by the stories about her and Henry? Or worse…
“What’d she look like? The woman who was interested in the place?”
“Tall, leggy, blonde. Fancy clothes. Way too fancy for poking around abandoned buildings. Ice blue eyes. She had the narrowest nose I’ve ever seen. I’d bet a million dollars she had work done on it. Why? She from a rival company or something?”
Sophie swallowed, hard. She knew a tall, leggy blonde with ice blue eyes and a too narrow nose. One who’d recently had more information about Sophie’s past than she should have. Bile burned in the back of her throat.
