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“Jesus fuck, Mary, where’s your eyeliner?”
“Didn’t do it.”
“Well, when are you going to do it?”
“Now, hopefully.”
“Chill out, Lils, she has time.“
“She’s literally on stage in half-an-hour-”
“That’s time!”
“Christ, Marlene, we’re phenomenally fucked, well, Mary’s phenomenally fucked-“
“What’s with all the religious imagery lately?”
“Huh?”
It’s a different type of peace, surrounded by sweat and the clean scent of powder and the drowsy lights humming on the mirror. Lily’s scooted up on the edge of the cold, hard marble, leaning slightly forward as Mary hastily shoves a felt-tip pen into Lily’s hand and lets her face be cradled. Lily purses her lips and traces the outline of Mary’s eye, going under her waterline. She tilts Mary’s head back, a blown out lightbulb from above casting shadows on her face. As the pen scratches at the corner where flesh meets cornea, Mary stares unblinkingly into Lily’s eyes.It’s all entirely more sensual than it should be, but Lily’s been in love with Mary forever. So.
Mary’s tutu - which she hasn’t put on yet - sits on the fold-up chair in the corner, also decorated with bags full of ballet shoes, toe pads, and water. Marlene blasts music from her phone on her earpods, the song bleeding out into the air, while she goes through choreography, eyes closed, limbs tense as she wills muscle memory to carry her through it all.
Marlene’s a snowflake and part of the marzipans, Lily’s hot chocolate lead, and Mary, of course, is a candycane, a Russian dancer. In Lily’s opinion, it’s one of the harder dances in the entire show. So why Mary isn’t nervously preparing for it, and instead cutting time down to the wire in their discrepantly lit dressing room is a mystery only God knows. Yet, Lily continues to love her, despite her most reasonable trains of logic. Continues to love everything about Mary. Even if their director doesn’t.
Alice’s head comes peeking through the door, which is covered with some weird brown stain. Her normally sharp bob is pinned back with bobby pins.
“Act 2’s going to start, hurry up.”
Mary whisper-shouts “Sorry!” while Lily helps her tie up her tutu.
“I’m so scared,” Marlene says nervously.
Mary responds, “Shut up, Marlene, ” and instantly screws up her face in guilt.“Sorry, I didn’t mean to - gods I’m scared too, you know.”
“You should be,” Lily snorts as she opens the door and the girls squint under the bright lights of the hallway, pointe shoes padding on the linoleum floor. “You barely made it on time. But Marlene, honey, you’re going to be fine.”
Marlene puts her face hovering near hands. Hovering near it, not in it, because she doesn’t want to mess up her makeup. “I don’t think I put enough setting spray,” she says miserably. After over six minutes of dancing in Act 1, strands of Marlene’s hair are frizzing up out of her bun. Gel has never been able to hold for an entire performance.
Mary darts ahead of them. Where the stress of performance gives Marlene anxiety and Lily some type of civic duty to manage everybody, it simply seems to energize Mary. Makes her move faster, vibrate beyond their frequency. Any other person would be done for, tripping and stumbling, if they came as late as Mary. But Mary, who has natural talent, who has never had to work for her roles, just had to be, will never fall. Long, lithe legs, muscular without being clunkily big, the right amount of skinny, the right amount of strong. A perfect ballerina. The old director loved her. The choreographer loves her. The current director puts up with her much longer than she would with any other normal person. And god, dancing with Mary, spinning on stage, controlling and phasing your limbs, with Mary doing the same thing next to you, feeling like you’re in symbiosis with a spirit, is another experience.
Lily’s never been the perfect ballerina. She’s reminded of this constantly. Her thighs are too thick, she takes up too much space. Weight that would be better off staved off. Dance - it’s crushed her and ascended her. It’s a complicated relationship. She’s cried about this to Marlene, in a public bathroom after a performance two cities away. Sitting on the cold tiled floor of a washroom, hoping that no one comes in, but Marlene kicks the door open with bravado, the way she is when she’s not on the verge of throwing up from panic. Noticing Lily and rushing over, holding her and saying what’s wrong what’s wrong. All Lily can see is the floor and her fingers - which are too big, too big. And things keep pouring out of Lily. What the director said, what she did.
You don’t have the right body, Lily.
You’re dedicated, that’s great.
But you need to lose some weight.
Wraps a hand around Lily’s forearm.
That’s not going to do, is it Lily?
You’re going to have to work on that.
I can’t guarantee a lead for you in the next production…
There’s more, of course. But these are the things Lily tells Marlene.
Marlene’s girlfriend wants to be a lawyer. Marlene’s girlfriend could do a lot of things. Can Marlene tell her girlfriend about this? Marlene wants to help Lily out. This is what she knows how to do. Sitting on the bathroom tiles, tears tracked down to her red cotton shirt thrown over a leotard, Lily shakes her head no. No, what can she do? What can anyone do? She needs to…lose it. So she cries and lets Marlene hold her. Marlene isn’t a particularly gentle person. She listens to heavy metal, runs a possibly-illegal piercing business in their private school’s girl restrooms, dyes her hair every month, much to her parent’s disapproval. But for Lily, she tries. Tries to say the comforting words, tries to be calm. That’s why she’s Lily’s best friend. Everyone else is looking for Lily to be gentle with them. But whose shoulder can Lily cry on? Only Marlene’s, it seems. It used to be Mary, too, but things have changed. She’s always loved Mary. But can she even like Mary anymore?
Marlene is convincing. Lily has always had a temper. In a few days, it returns in a rage of fire that makes her gut broil.
Mary doesn’t know why they have a new director. Svetlana is Russian and strict. She makes them do intensive exercises over the basics, which their old one preferred to skip. A whole row of students bracing their hands on the bar, groaning as she yells at them to take their warmups off. They have to run through every move until everyone’s perfected it. For weeks after starting with Svetlana, before getting used to it, every time Lily closed her eyes, she would see grey linoleum and a wall of mirror, smell rosin and hear the swivel of hip. Classes have become harder than ever. Lily has become used to her body soaked in sweat.
And yet, Lily loves Svetlana. Svetlana is a brilliant teacher. Svetlana believes in hard work and practice. Svetlana believes that anyone can become the greatest ballet dancer in the world. To put it simply, Svetlana is a good person.
It also helps that she’s finally getting good positions now. The old instructor preferred Mary. Gorgeous, perfect Mary. Lily could understand. But although Svetlana enjoys how easily Mary picks up choreography, how gracefully she moves, like a water nymph wading through a river, she’s getting tired of Mary’s attitude, and that causes some terrible seed of satisfaction to burst in Lily’s chest. She’s a horrible, horrible friend. But also, after having watched Mary scramble into her pointe shoes unforgivably late, there’s some merit to the thought that Mary needs to get her shit together.
She loves Mary. She hates Mary.
Her body hums into some nervous semblance of calm as she waits in the wings. Marlene’s quieted down too, but it’s taking a lot of effort for Mary to shut up. It’s brilliant, though, it is. To see Mary’s eyes shining in the dark backstage, stage lights hidden beyond curtains, the only things lighting them. Lily takes a deep, fortifying breath as she lines up in the wings. This is the last time her mind belongs to her body, her body to her mind. After this, she detaches. Let’s her muscles, tendons and sinew, do the thinking for her. Mutter corrections at herself, occasionally, as she balances on her calf and her cells burn, doused in lactic acid. But when she’s moving, she’s not thinking. She’s dancing.
Walking out is exhilarating. The adrenaline doing its final pumps through her body. Her legs are quivering, she’s praying that she doesn’t just completely fall down while walking out on the pitch-black right wing. She’s the first one to exit, before Mary gets her movement, and then Marlene.
-
The show’s over. It was the last night, and now the sky outside the theatre dips from a deep blue into black, pricks of light that definitely aren’t stars - maybe they’re satellites - glittering overhead. Smelling the crisp, fresh air, Lily tightens her grip on her bouquet of flowers, plastic crinkling around her fingers. The roses have long, tapered stems and slot seamlessly together in the arrangement, the soft, fleshy petals, like stretched out patches of skin, fluttering in the breeze. Lily sniffs the air, hoping to smell something, the sweet petrichor of rose perfume, but can only sense the dampness emanating from the sidewalk. She stands at the edge of the curb, having already waved goodbye to the other dancers. Alice and Frank are still inside cleaning up.Lily was helping them, but after her phone buzzed with confirmation her ride was almost here, she left.
The car pulls up - flagrantly red, the type that Lily’s mother likes to point out with a wistful tone out on the road. Lily rushes up and opens the door, taking a couple tries to get it right, the handle that’s level with the rest of the reflective door completely unintuitive. James’ newfangled electric car is annoying as hell, although environmentally conscious, so perhaps a morally correct decision, something that irritates Lily. James is a good person. But an annoying one.
When she manages to get the door open, tosses her bag in her footspace, in between empty paper bags and shoes and other knicknacks of James, twists around to put the rest of her stuff in the back, she’s greeted with James’ smile. It shows off his full row of white teeth, a bit of gum, the grin stretching as far it can go, his smiling muscles working, his zygomaticus minor and major, pushing up visibly, risorius in full action. The tendons grappling through Lily’s body move in strikes within James’ body too.
“Thanks for the candy cane," Lily says, “you didn’t have to.”
She says that but she’s smiling. Softer than James, looking directly ahead.
“Ah, I knew you loved it. And don’t thank me. You deserve it. I know how hard you worked for that performance.”
And he does. He really, really does. He picks up Lily after every Wednesday practice. Drives her to recitals. Watches in the audience, when he can, hooting and hollering in an unmistakably James Potter way. Sends her candy canes from the ad in the program, so a tired looking volunteer can pass out a red-and-white striped stick decorated with a tag adorned with James’ name, backstage. Some think it's weird for exes to be this close, to know what a person’s mouth tastes like, what the tips of the fingers feel like brushed on your inner elbow when there’s a hairbreadth of space between you, and stay friends. But it makes perfect sense to Lily. James Potter has her back. Lily Evans has his. Besides, James has much more erotic friendships. She has seriously questioned him about whether or not he’s dating Sirius, his best friend. Their relationship is undefinable, impossibly close, but not romantic, as she’s been told.
Isn’t it enough? Lily wonders, to have this? To have connection and some fantastical red string with all my people - with James, and Remus, and Marlene - isn’t it enough?
But when she closes her eyes, the sight of the road hurtling underneath them, their car traversing other hulking behemoths of metal, headlights blurring, it all fades away. On the grainy back of her eyelids, in between blobs of fluorescent light, she sees Mary. Mary, Mary, Mary. It’s never enough to just see her. She wants to be with her, in her, smooth her own skin over her bones, meld their flesh together. She wants to never know when one’s soul ends and the other’s begins.
One day it’ll get better, James tells her. James would know, she thinks. She sees how he looks at Regulus when he’s with Barty. Wanting hastily shoved away into the backs of his pupils, ever so noticeably dilated. Hands wringing together. Quick excuses to steal away.
They drive together, going just past the speed limit. The world flashes under their feet, as it does multiple times every day. Lily is at the precipice, a bubble of life begging to be swallowed, to fill her with jolty sparks of magic, to raise her toes a few inches in the air. She got accepted. If she wants, if she really, really wants, she could move to New York City next year. Graduate a year early? She has the credits. She has the acceptance. She could see herself there: walking through banks of snow, standing in a poorly lit subway tunnel. Lectures at Columbia. A world she used to file away in memory boxes, realities that would never truly be hers. If you dream it, it’ll never actually happen how you imagine it. Better to not think of it altogether.
That’s what she tells herself. Don’t think of Mary. Don’t think of the city. Don’t think of anything but the mirrors catching light in the studio and the blinking cursor on a screen as she sends an email to ask her teacher to update her grade and the feel of James’ arm around her back and Marlene’s face on her shoulder and Remus’ hands giving her a new book for her birthday. Don’t think about it, except Lily’s a liar, and that’s the only thing she’s thinking about.
Her foot slowly pushes around at the mess under her, and finds the edges of her old pointe shoes, still in James’ car for some reason. If she goes, she’d have to tell her mom and her dad, who are excited for their final year with Lily still in the nest. That’s not a fun conversation to have. If she goes, she’ll have to face the prideful wrath of Petunia, thinking of her as the prodigal son and scorning her as such. She will live in another city, where there is no Remus, or James, or Marlene, or Mary. Or, they will be there, but too far away, in an insuperable time gap, canyons and mountains and prairies separating them. Suburban Southern California is a long way from the East. Will there be ballet? Would such a dominant force in Lily’s life, the culmination of which has led to sweat and makeup Lily can still feel under her fingernails, be gone?
Ah- so many variables. But the truth is, Lily is capable of being joyous. And she, and she really does deserve it.