“Eeek! Ember! A little Birdie told me you might drop by today. But you’re so late, you missed practice. You look amaaaazing with your hair like that—I saw you the other day in the hall and totally meant to tell you.” Did Hannah speak like that on purpose? Or did her fake sweetness sound okay in her own ears? “You’ve been such a stranger here! We were all starting to feel offended! But I guess you keep away because you miss it so much. It’s incredibly brave of you to come by and show some support.”
I gave Hannah’s boobs a quick smile. “I always think of you as having plenty of support.”
Hannah pulled her shrug across her chest and raised her eyebrows. I wasn’t usually bitchy, and I was annoyed that I’d sunk to her level, but of course now Hannah had her claws out. “Well, if it’s any consolation, it’s been hugely competitive this year. So it would have been really hard to make the cut.”
“Then I guess it was pretty smart of me to stage that debilitating car accident.”
Hannah looked only slightly embarrassed. “Oh, Emb, I’m obviously not trying to be—I mean, I feel incredibly sorry for you. For what happened, I mean. We all feel bad.” Her smile was awkward—she wasn’t being fake now, but her sincerity didn’t come easy, either. “You used to put in so much time here. Jeez, I feel like after one thousand or so hours, we should each get to tag the J studio wall, you know?” As she pretended to shake a can of paint and spray. “Like, ‘Hannah was here!’ ” She snorted. “ ‘Ember was here!’ ”
“Right…”
Just then Birdie swept through the door. Her eyes lit brightly on me. “Ember, oh good. I thought I saw you come in!” When she hugged me, the buttons on her long-underwear thermal shirt met the buttons of my long-underwear thermal shirt in a compatible click. “Wow.” She smiled as she pulled away. “As I live and breathe. Okay, come on upstairs with me.”
“See ya, Emb.” As Hannah shot off, I stood to follow Birdie out of the studio and then up a flight of stairs to her cramped dormer office, the site of many late afternoons for some of us, after dance practice.
It still seemed that the room hadn’t received the spring cleaning Birdie had been threatening to give it since I’d made my very first visit. It could never be termed a hangout office, but I’d spent a few afternoons here with Birdie and other kids, sardine-packed on Birdie’s shabby brown velvet sofa, where we’d all gossip and watch Dirty Dancing or Footloose on her ancient TV while eating burnt microwave popcorn.
Ember was here. Hannah’s thought, now planted, was never going to uproot.
“You had something to show me?”
“Behind here. Come closer.” Birdie’s computer screen was glowing. She dragged a straight-back chair—thinly cushioned, thank God—over for me. As I sat, she flopped in her own swivel chair next to mine and then gathered herself up in it, propping her chin on her knees. “Can you guess what this is?”
“Nope.” I had no idea.
“It’s your audition for Chicago.”
My whole body prickled. “Oh.”
“We taped everyone, so that the dance and drama departments could watch together, later. I think it might help you set the record straight. All year, I’m sure, you’ve had people feeling bad for you. Assuming that this accident had derailed your dreams. And I imagine it’s been a difficult adjustment. But…” Her hand hovered above the cursor arrow, as if waiting for permission. “This is from December.”
“Yes. I’d like to see.” Although I wasn’t sure, exactly, if I was ready. But I nodded, swallowed, braced.
She pressed play, and there I was. Full screen.
Was it only a year ago? But I was so much younger! Unformed and soft in a way that I knew I wasn’t anymore. In that thin pink terrycloth sweatshirt that I’d just donated last week to Grace Church. My legs looked too thin for my baby-blue leggings.
“Do you remember this?” Birdie murmured at my side.
“I’m…not sure.”
My audition was standard, an All That Jazz dance sequence. I was prepared for anything, but mostly for failure.
Except I was good. I was great, really. Campy, sparkly, I was selling it, but I owned it, too. My voice was trained and suited the role, but my dancing was a cut above. Each move I made was clean and punctuated, and as I watched, I could feel my muscles remembering it—the swivel, the jump and land. I knew this routine. I’d been in such amazing shape. So limber and confident, and almost naive in my innocence. I thought I’d be in control of that body forever.
I watched that girl, the girl I had been. I watched her hit every line, every mark.
And then she/I stopped. A second later, the music stopped, too, in an abrupt and discordant break.
Off camera, Birdie asked me what was wrong. If I wanted to start again. There was an echoing moment. The cameraperson sensed that a drama was unfolding before her, and the lens-angle view jumped over to Martha Cutts, who was Lafayette’s pinch-hit piano player and Mr. Cutts’s wife. She was watching me, clearly puzzled, and then with eyebrows firmly raised, she began the piece again.
The camera jiggled back to me. Thirty-two beats, and when I stopped for the second time, Birdie leapt on camera. I watched her, compact yet sleek, as she picked up the routine, performing as if we were in it together, a duet.
“Come on, Ember, you know this cold!” Now the camera zoomed somewhat mischievously, I thought, into a close-up on Birdie’s face. She looked strained. As if urging me to get into the spirit of it. She really wanted me to get the part.
I watched the muscular cut of Birdie’s arm and the spin of her body as she took up the routine. The capable flex of her hard calf muscle as she landed a jump. She embodied Roxie fully and thrillingly.
Then the camera swiped another look at me. Next came a quick camera pan of me watching Birdie. And now I was speaking. The camera swiveled and closed in on me like a predator. It shocked me a little bit. There I was. My forehead was clear of its scar, my hair loose and Rapunzel-long, and my voice was soft and strangely girlish. “…because I don’t, I just don’t want Roxie. I don’t want to be trying out for her if I can’t commit to all of this work.”
Birdie’s profile was impassive as she answered. I picked up the general gist of it—something about trying out again, tomorrow, maybe. When I was more up to it.