Dance, Sugarplum

3. Lyla

CHAPTER 3

LYLA

INTRODUCTION

It’s been four years since the last time I was genuinely proud of myself. It was a production of Swan Lake in my last company, and I danced so perfectly that I left the stage knowing I’d never be able to do it again.

If I close my eyes, I can still feel my muscles exhausted in the way only an impeccably danced routine can provide. The ghost of my smile hangs in my cheeks, a tightness made of exquisite pain, and the trickle of sweat racing down my chest.

But now, I avoid closing my eyes, afraid the tears will run if I do. My skin feels too tight, stretched over my bones, and my jaw hurts from clenching it. My steps land heavy like my body can’t balance my weight—as if I’m an alien to myself.

I didn’t do well, and the desire to be my own cheerleader can’t change the facts. I could lie and say I did my best, but not even the mirror would believe me.

My best isn’t a hypothetical I’ve yet to achieve. Hundreds of people witnessed my best, and now each step is a disappointment.

I don’t want to be right about my depressing future. I’m only twenty-three, so the best years of my life should be in front of me, not behind. I never got to fully enjoy the stardom. For the longest time, I was next—the next star, the next prima ballerina. I was potential bursting at the seams. Every company wanted me because I was full of promise—the face of tomorrow’s ballet.

My stepfather is a marketing genius, and he made sure of that image, cultivated it from the raw material of my skill, and then just as surely, he made me nothing.

I lost my father young, and that hole in my heart left me wanting a man to care about me. A stepfather to truly love me seemed perfect, but that was never what my mother’s husband planned. I only learned that when she died, and he tried to sleep with me.

My heart died with my mother, and then my soul when Carter kicked me out of his company and told everyone it was because I was trying to sleep with him rather than I rejected him.

It took a little over two years for my small inheritance to run out, enough time to lose the definition in my muscles and the strength I’d worked so hard for. A tear rolls down my cheek as I leave the stage, and I know I should have stayed hidden. Let them speculate and whisper my name while telling sordid tales. I should have gotten a job and done what anyone else in the world does.

But ballet is who I am, and I’m worse than dead without it. Carter took everything from me—from my childhood home to the empty promises of stardom.

I’ve spent a lot more time with the faded promise than I did the dream, and I’ve been nothing ever since.

That nothingness has stayed with me like a shadow stuck to my skin, like an inescapable whisper. This is only my fourth audition since I decided to come back, and for a normal ballerina, that wouldn’t be much, but for Lyla Moore? What a disgrace.

My shame is bigger than me now; it carries me. I’m a sack of bones being dragged and pushed forward, seeking humiliation. Am I trying to save my ego or destroy it in its entirety? I went from star to joke at the snap of my fingers.

When I enter the dressing room, it’s empty. Every dancer has been cued backstage or is sitting in the audience watching the rest of the auditions. I breathe in a sigh of deep relief and quickly peel off my sticky leotard and tights. I’ll find out how the audition went one way or another, so there’s no point in waiting around for another blow.

I’m packed up, wearing my sweats, with my bag over my shoulder a couple of minutes later, but my hopes of escaping unnoticed are dashed as I step into the hallway.

“Lyla, right?”

My head whips around, and I’m looking at a smiley redhead who was definitely called to audition after me. Without meaning to, my eyes go over her shoulder to the cluster of people standing about ten feet back and whispering.

“Yes.” Admitting my own name burns.

She smiles even bigger. “I watched you back at Swan Lake . You took my breath away.” She wriggles her hands together, looking uncertain. “I’m a big fan.”

I wince, but her face is open, and I fear she’s sincere. That’s even worse than her making fun of me in terms of the stab to my gut. I dig deep for something to say, but before I have a chance, someone from the group in the back snorts.

“Yes, Lyla. We’re all big fans,” a long-legged brunette says, her mouth curving on a mean smile. It takes me a second to realize I know her, but the last time I saw her, she looked more like a gangly teen than a bombshell. She’s been dancing just as long as I’ve been, and we bumped into each other in auditions, but she never dared to speak to me.

Until now.

Flipping through options, I consider barking an insult or rolling my eyes and just letting it go. Either were fine options back when I was a real person. But now I’m a ghost, and no matter how I wish I had anything left in me to say, the words never leave my throat. The truth is stuck inside me, just like it was with my stepfather, and I don’t fight wrong with wrong.

The tears fight to escape once again, but it’s the last piece of control I have, and I refuse to be this pathetic.

“I loved dancing Swan Lake . I’m glad you were there to see it. Thank you for the compliment.” The words taste like cardboard, and they sound stiffer, but I manage to smile at her before I turn on my heel and get the hell out of Dodge.

The piece of garbage I call a car sits in a parking lot a block away. Fighting with the key in the lock warms me up some, and then I struggle to get it started.

I turn the key, but all the car does is whine. My mouth closes on a thin line, and I try again.

“Come on, come on...”

My hands shake from desperation rather than cold. A sob bubbles from my throat, and I hit the wheel as I scream, “Fuck!”

It’s getting snowy out there. My hands are freezing, and my knuckles are blotched white and red as I rub them together, trying to get some heat. I’m too skinny, but I don’t know what the hell I can afford to eat, and I’m too tired and stressed to think.

My voice is hoarse. I’ve been on the edge of a cold for weeks now. My life plays like a movie behind my eyelids, but the happy ending never comes.

I was talented, loved, and safe when I was little. I had a dad who took care of me, and even when he was gone, my mom tried so hard. I was set for a future doing what I loved. And then everything was taken from me.

Voices interrupt my wallowing, and I check my rearview to find a group of dancers talking and laughing. My cheeks redden before they even get a chance to see me.

“Shit.”

My desperation takes over. They can’t see me like this, not after today’s performance. They can’t know how bad things have gotten for me. If I’m the only one who knows, maybe it’s not real.

I try the car again, my hands shaking over the keys. Please cross the road. Go anywhere else.

I squeeze my eyes close and try again and again, but the car only whines, and the voices come closer and closer. My leg bounces with nervous energy, but I don’t give up. I keep waiting and praying for mercy that never comes.

Their group walks toward the car parked directly next to mine. Their thick coats rustle together as they approach. A jealous surge at how warm they must be mixes with my fear and self-hatred. I consider dropping down and trying to hide, but how pathetic can any one person get?

Their voices slash my skin, and the pain is so real I can almost smell my blood dripping.

The moment they see me digs that blade deeper, their eyes moving from where I’m sitting to the mess in the back seat. The windows are closed, so I can’t exactly hear what they say, but I see my name mouthed.

Lyla. Lyla Moore. Sleeping in her car.

“Oh shit,” one of them gasps.

I want them to make fun of me, to be cruel, but their expressions are full of pity, and something fragile inside my very being breaks.

They avert their eyes, unable to look at me a moment longer as they all climb into the car and pull away. I’m crying once again, feeling empty inside, and like a joke, when I turn the key this time, it works straight away. I snort, shaking my head. Pathetic . The car sputters and trips over itself as I pull away.

Everyone in this forsaken town will know I’m sleeping in my car tomorrow.

Everyone will know how much of a joke I am.

My stepfather will know, and God help me, I don’t know what to do if he comes back for me.

My jaw hurts from the pressure I’m putting on my teeth, and I wonder how I can ever reassemble the pieces of my life.

Something tells me I’m too broken to form any recognizable shape.

I don’t hope anymore. I’m too raw to ever let myself believe in things like Christmas miracles. I know who I am now, and I can’t keep hanging on to who I used to be.

I pull into a discount store and look for No Parking signs. This one is all clear. Turning off my car, I lock my doors. I can’t afford the gas it costs to run it for the night, and I pray once more I don’t die of hypothermia in my sleep.