Lucy and Anouk both snagged roles in the corps de ballet, so the mood at breakfast two days later is still higher than high. That is until Audrey Chapman comes storming into the dining room.
“We should go,” she tells me, like there’s no one else in the room. She’s carrying her dance bag on her shoulder, looking annoyed.
I check my watch, which confirms that class doesn’t start for another hour and a half, as evidenced by the fact that everyone here is still pouring themselves orange juice, buttering tartines, and deciding between apricot and strawberry jam to spread on top of said tartines （I’m Team Apricot, by the way）。
I tell Audrey just that, and she shakes her head in disapproval. “You’re not seriously thinking about getting to school on time, are you?”
I pause before answering what is obviously a trick question. On the one hand, I don’t want to go anywhere yet. Yesterday was a bit of a post-announcement blur, so Lucy and Anouk were just now filling me in on their weekend adventures. It turns out that while I was off chasing family legends with a cute French guy, my friends were off chasing…other cute French guys. Anouk invited Lucy to join her and her French friends for a picnic on Champ de Mars, the park in front of the Tour Eiffel. The girls had spent hours devouring delicious cheese and that incredible view, chatting and sunbathing. Lucy spent most of the afternoon ogling a boy named Charles, who is in Paris for the summer for an internship at an advertising agency.
“Aww,” I said, bummed that I missed it. I pictured the sun warming up my face as I admired the iron structure glistening in front of me, my head resting on Louis’s bent legs while he read poems aloud from a book. We would have stayed until sunset, lying on a gingham blanket and sipping rosé. Louis would have taught me French phrases, and I would have stared, mesmerized, at his beautiful lips making shapes and sounds and looking extremely kissable. The world around us would have ceased to exist. No one but Louis and me. Louis and me. Louis and me.
But there was no Louis and me at the Champ de Mars.
I was just about to ask how Lucy and Charles had left things—was there a date coming up? Did he kiss her? Did somebody at least get her dream French kiss?—when Audrey came in.
On the other hand, if Audrey thinks we both need to get there early, I don’t want to look like a slacker.
Audrey lets out a loud sigh. “I didn’t want to say this in front of everyone, but…” She sighs again. Then she adds, at a normal level, so that in fact everyone will hear her, “Your fouettés are just not good enough.”
Her tone is definitive. It’s more statement than criticism, something that can’t be argued. So I don’t. Even though I feel my cheeks grow hot and would prefer to hear the rest of Lucy’s story and lazily stroll to school, deep down, I know she’s right. I get up, wipe the bread crumbs off the sides of my mouth, mutter a “see you later” to the girls, and follow Audrey, ready to whip my legs into oblivion.
* * *
Once we arrive at the still-empty school, Audrey chooses a studio on the top floor, “to get the best natural light.” We immediately put on our pointe shoes and start to work. As we warm up—stretching calves, circling arms, rolling necks—I’m struck all over again by the beauty of the space. The soft, early morning glow shines through the long panes of glass that open like shutters to the cool summer air. Looking out onto a cluster of grayish-blue roofs lined with dormers fills me with glee. Paris is so full of heart and history; it’s no wonder artists thrive here. Even the air smells sweeter.
Here’s a fun fact about the Black Swan: she might only be onstage for a short amount of time, but hers is also the most technical part in the whole ballet. When, encouraged by her father, Von Rothbart, Odile tries to seduce Prince Siegfried in Act Three, she executes an elaborate and sensuous sequence that includes thirty-two fouettés, one of the most famous, and famously hard, turns of all time.
Fouetté is French for “whipped,” a circular movement done with one leg in the air while turning on the other, popping onto the tip of your pointe shoe in the exact same spot every time. It’s a struggle even for very experienced ballerinas, as it’s almost physically impossible to accomplish the turn flawlessly thirty-two times in a row. I’ve done fouettés before, obviously. But until now, I’ve felt really nervous about attempting the Black Swan sequence. I’m scared I won’t be able to do it perfectly, but time is ticking. I better get started.