Kisses and Croissants
Anne-Sophie Jouhanneau
To Scott
I RUN THROUGH the airport in shapeless tracksuit pants, my hair flying behind me. A screaming toddler stands in my way, and I leap over him in a somewhat graceful grand jeté before pirouetting past a man who’s struggling to carry his giant suitcase.
“Faites attention!” a woman yells at me after I almost step on her foot. Be careful!
The thing is, I can be careful or I can be late, and being late is not an option right now. This American girl needs to get to the other side of Paris tout de suite.
“Sorry,” I say as I race through the Charles de Gaulle terminal, my backpack banging into my shoulder.
The reason I’m late is that there was a crazy storm in New York last night, and my flight was delayed by four hours, then six. I stopped counting after that so I wouldn’t pass out from the idea of missing my first day of school. Well, not school, exactly. School is a piece of cake compared to what’s waiting for me here.
I bump into a group of children straddling the entire width of the terminal hallway and almost fall flat on my face, but I manage to turn it into a pas de basque. Thank you, muscle memory from approximately a million years of ballet classes.
I’ll admit, this is not how I imagined my first hours in Paris. I had a picture-perfect vision of what was supposed to happen: I would get off the plane on a warm, sunny morning, my wavy brown hair bouncing and shiny, even after the seven-hour flight. I’d swing my tied-up pointe shoes over my shoulder and declare something cute in French with a perfect accent—the result of months of practice—before strutting elegantly toward the best summer of my life: an intensive ballet program at the prestigious Institut de l’Opéra de Paris. Le dream, non?
Instead, I “gently” shove past a few people to snatch my suitcase off the luggage carousel, then search the signs above my head for the word taxi. That’s when something truly wild happens.
“Mia?”
Um, what? How does someone in Paris know who I am?
“Mia? Is that you?”
It takes me a second to recognize that voice. I turn around, and there she is, my nemesis. Or she would be, if I believed in nemeses.
“Whoa, Audrey! What are you doing here?” I realize it’s a stupid question only after the words come out of my mouth.
“The same thing as you, I guess,” she answers, looking surprised. When I booked my ticket, I was surprised by how many flights there are to Paris every day. I guess we were on different ones, both delayed by the storm. In any case, I can practically hear her wondering, How did Mia get accepted into one of the most exclusive summer ballet programs in the world?
’Cause I worked my buns off, I want to say.
I’m not going to lie: Audrey is one of the best ballet dancers our age in the tristate area, but, hey, so am I. I know because we’ve competed against each other in every major event in the dance circuit since we were basically babies. I live in Westchester, which is outside of New York City, and Audrey lives in Connecticut, so we don’t go to the same ballet school （thankfully!）， but several times a year, I watch Audrey snatch roles, receive accolades, and almost always come out just ahead of me.
“You got into the Institut de l’Opéra de Paris?” Audrey asks with a perfect accent, one eyebrow raised in suspicion. I can tell she regrets her question, because she adds right away, “I mean, what level did you get in?”
I clear my throat, buying some time. There are five levels in the program, and students from around the world get placed according to the skills they demonstrated in their application video.
“Four,” I say, holding her gaze.
Four is great. I was so excited to get level four. Honestly, I was happy to just get in, especially after being rejected from the American Ballet Theatre’s summer program in New York. I’ve worked my entire life to get into a program like this. Ballet has run in my family for generations—or so the legend goes—and I know my grandmother would have been pretty sad if I didn’t get into any school, though nowhere near my own major disappointment.
“That’s great,” Audrey says. Her hand tightens around the handle of her suitcase, the only sign that betrays her true reaction. Yep, I’m good enough for level four.
“And you’re in…？” I begin, even though I can guess the answer.
“Five,” she answers coolly.
I nod. Force a smile. Of course she is. It’s fine, really. Audrey’s technique is flawless; even I can admit that.