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“You’ll see.” There’s a small smirk at the edge of Mikhail’s mouth that makes me nervous, but I do my best to ignore it as he drives, forcing down the pit of fear in my stomach that seems to reside there permanently these days. I don’t trust it not to be some sort of trap, and it’s all I can do not to anxiously go over and over the horrible possibilities that I can conjure up.
When he pulls up in front of a store in a neighborhood I recognize, I stare at the building in front of us, confused.This can’t be real. This has to be some kind of a joke.
It’s the dance store where I bought my shoes and other dance gear when I was in school, and for the Moscow ballet. The familiarity of it sends a wave of aching nostalgia over me, and I swallow back tears as Mikhail comes around and opens the door for me, urging me out with a hand on my elbow.
“What are we doing here?” The words come out faintly choked, and I see that same smirk at the corners of his mouth.He’s enjoying this. He’s enjoying how confused and upset I am.
It’s enough to stiffen my backbone, just a little. I tip my chin up, looking narrowly at him as I try to summon what strength I have left to challenge him. “Why are you bringing me here, if you think I’m Natalia? You know all the girls shop here, right? From the ballet? They would know her. We’re likely to run into someone who knows her, who would recognize her–”
“--and I’m sure you’ll come up with a satisfactory story,” Mikhail says smoothly, wrapping my arm around his waist. “And if you do, I’ll know the truth, now won’t I?” It’s meant to look as if I’m touching him affectionately, but the moment my arm presses against the small of his back, I know the true purpose.
I can feel the heavy weight of a gun at his back, tucked into the waist of his jeans, and I recognize it for the threat it is–both the gun, and his words.
It feels as if the world has closed in around me. There’s no escaping now, no story I can tell if someone sees me. I might have been able to try to play the fool with Mikhail, to insist he had the wrong person, but not with someone I worked closely with. They’d think I was insane, and it would make it obvious that I’ve been lying.
Is that why he brought me here? To blow my lies apart? Was this a last resort to make sure I give him what he wants?
I can feel the cold press of the gun against my arm, and I feel sick. I know that Mikhail is a smart enough man not to start shooting in public if he can help it, but I also know that he isn’t going to let me go easily. I can’t underestimate how he could make someone go away, if he felt he needed to, or what lengths he might go to. The threat is clear–if I try to signal for help, or tell the truth about who he is or why I’m with him, whoever I speak to is in danger.
I nod wordlessly to let him know I understand. Anything I could say feels as if it sticks in my throat, and he looks at me once more, his gaze cold and hard, before he tucks his arm through mine and leads me to the front door of the dance store.
The smell hits me as we walk in, powder and wax and fabric, and I breathe in, feeling an aching longing sweep over me that’s almost painful. Everything that made up my life is here in this store, the tools of my trade, the thing I devoted myself wholeheartedly to. Ballet had been my life, my love, my passion–and my salvation. It had kept me out of a marriage I didn’t want, had kept my father from arranging another, had given me joy and freedom I would never have had otherwise. When I’d needed it, it had given me skills that had kept me alive these past months, dancing at the club.
I miss it more than I miss anything else–more than I miss my old luxurious apartment, or fine restaurants, or drinks out with friends. I miss it more than I miss having money of my own. More than anything else, I want to dance again–not on a pole, but on a ballet stage.
I want to feel as if my body is my own again, mine to command. I want to fly again.
I look across the room of racks with leotards and tulle skirts and ballet costumes, shelves of tights and pointe shoes and dance bags–and my heart stops.
I’d known from the moment we pulled up in front of the store that there was a high chance we’d run into someone I knew. But that someone is standing two feet from me–a tall, thin, auburn-haired girl that I wasn’t close friends with, but spent enough time with to know her a little. We all knew each other at least as close acquaintances, if not friends. With so much time spent practicing and rehearsing and performing, not to mention events we were required to be at for the corps, it was impossible not to.
She turns, and my heart leaps into my throat. The moment her eyes go wide and she steps towards me, I start wracking my brain for a story, something to keep us both safe. Some way to preserve the lies I’ve told. Something to keep Mikhail happy and calm. Something to make it so that I have some shield against the truth of who I am.
“Natalia!” she gasps, and I feel it all dissolving around me.
I smile weakly at her as she rushes towards me, and I know it’s hopeless. I can’t pretend to be Ekaterina. I can’t try to manipulate this woman, who I’ve known for years, into thinking I’m someone else. I was a ballerina, not an actress, and even if I was, I can’t think of any convincing way to make it seem as if I’m not who she thinks I am. The dyed hair would have been enough to fool those who didn’t know me well from far away, and combined with living and working in places Natalia Obelensky would never have gone, would be enough to sow seeds of doubt even in someone looking for me who did know me. That had been the entire point.
But now I’m back in an old haunt, in a place where I belong, in front of a woman who has seen me day in and day out, after long practice hours, in ballet costumes and street clothes and changing in dressing rooms, in class and at galas and after-performance get-togethers. Dyed hair isn’t enough.
And then it hits me. I remember what Mikhail said earlier this morning, at the house, what I’d missed in my fury over him taking my money.
Your old passport is gone, too.
He’d seen it. He knows. There’s no pretending any longer.
I feel the moment I give up, the moment I understand that there is no more hiding who I am. I can almost feel Mikhail’s self-satisfied smile resting on me, his gambit having paid off.
All that will be left is to find out what he plans to do with me, once we get back to the house.
“Hi, Elina,” I say weakly, feeling my pulse beat harder in my throat. “I didn’t expect to run into you here.”
“Neither did I!” she says in surprise, her gaze still focused entirely on me. She hasn’t noticed Mikhail yet, which is a relief–it gives me more time to think of a reasonable story to explain his presence. “I haven’t seen you in so long! You just–disappeared from the ballet, it seems like, and no one had an explanation. I heard your father died, so we all thought bereavement, but then when you didn’t come back–”
My mind feels blank. I scramble for some explanation, anything that isn’tI helped the man who killed my father get to him, went on the run, and then got into a massive fight with the only person who could help me, so I had to come back to Moscow and hide, and now I’m a captive of an insane–but ridiculously hot–stalker.
I’m well aware of howthatparticular explanation would sound.
Instead, what comes out of my mouth feels equally ludicrous.
