Dance of Shadows by Yelena Black

Maybe he hadn’t been the same year as Margaret. Maybe he’d made everything up.

    By late afternoon the rain had slowed, and the sky was a rolling gray. Steffie caught up with Vanessa as she walked toward the exit. “That was intense,” she said, pulling on an oversized sweatshirt.
    “Yeah,” Vanessa replied. “I guess Hilda isn’t as timid as she seems.”
    “I meant
you
. You were staring straight ahead the entire time.”
    “Oh,” Vanessa said. “I was just … lost in my thoughts, I guess.”
    “Must have been a pretty gripping daydream,” Steffie said. “Are you going to observe the class with Josef?”
    Vanessa opened her mouth to answer when Justin pushed past them, brushing Vanessa’s arm.
    “Pardon.” His eyes met Vanessa’s for a moment before he lowered his head and ran up the stairs, two at a time. She had to admit—he would have been handsome if it weren’t for the arrogant expression that seemed permanently embedded on his face.
    Steffie grabbed Vanessa’s elbow. “What was that about? He looked like he wanted to kill you. Or throw you against a wall and make out with you.” She paused. “Or both.”
    “Justin. He said he knew my sister. That they were the same year,” Vanessa said.
    “So why is he in our morning class?” Steffie asked.
    “I don’t know,” Vanessa murmured. “I thought maybe he was lying about being a senior, but now I think Justin might have been the boy in the white mask.”
    “No way,” Steffie said. “The boy in the white mask was nice. This guy—
Justin
—seems like a prick.”
    “I recognize his aftershave. It’s the same.”
    “It’s probably a brand that everyone has,” Steffie said. “Eau de … handsome-yet-questionably-gay-teenage-male-dancer. Come on, we’re going to be late.”

    The dance floor was still empty when they slipped into the rehearsal studio. It was so quiet that it took a second look for Vanessa to realize that the rows of chairs in the back of the room were already filled with students.
    “Remember,” Steffie whispered. “No speaking. Josef’s rules.”
    Vanessa scanned the crowd until she spotted TJ. She was nibbling on a packet of Junior Mints and whispering something to Blaine and Elly, her face flushed with excitement. When she saw Vanessa and Steffie, she waved, and the girls squeezed through the throng and wedged themselves in next to them.
    Noiselessly, the twelve senior girls in Josef’s class filed out onto the floor. Taking their positions, they raised their chins to the light and held steady. Zep, the only boy onstage, stoodin the center, his arms outstretched. Vanessa held her breath, transfixed.
    “One and two and three and four.”
    Josef paced in front of them holding a long stick, which he tapped on the wooden floor to keep the beat.
    Zep’s shadow trembled as he curled his arms inward. He glided across the floor, the light shifting over the contours of his body like the sun rising and falling over an extraordinary landscape. Why couldn’t she look away? Something about his dark, steady gaze demanded her attention.
    The other dancers arched their backs and braided themselves around him, slowly at first, then faster, like a flock of birds flying in formation. Josef had stopped counting and was now gesticulating wildly, swooping to the left, then low to the right, the dancers following, as if manipulated by his hands.
    Vanessa leaned forward. Zep’s face shifted in and out of the shadows while he danced alone, without a partner, the role of the Firebird still not cast. Vanessa tried to imagine what it would feel like to lean into his sinewy arms, to feel his hands grip her waist and lift her like a feather into the air; but the only face she could imagine onstage was Margaret’s.
    A scream interrupted her thoughts.
    One of the dancers stumbled midstep, and the others froze. The entire audience turned in Vanessa’s direction. Could it possibly have come from her? she wondered, her heart