Sari Wilson - Girl Through Glass

“I can’t,” she says, and her voice catches. I turn and spiral up, still in the grip of the motion, and then I am facing her, she’s breathing hard, and her face is pale. “I—” she says, and she kisses me boldly, sloppily in a rush, and I don’t pull away. “Shit,” I say. She doesn’t move and neither do I. We’re both just breathing. Then she kisses me again with more confidence this time. It’s a strange sorrowful kiss, too old for her years, and it scares me.

Rehearsals for The Wounded Prince begin the first week of November. On Saturday morning, Mira has her first rehearsal with the boy who plays the prince. His name is Christopher, and he comes on loan from ABT, where they have whole classes full of boys. (At The Little Kirov, boys appear and quickly disappear from classes like supermarket circulars from apartment building vestibules.) The first time Mira saw Christopher walking down the hallway, she was eight, in just her first year of taking classes. In the dressing room, she heard mounting whispers. She listened. It seemed to have to do with a boy. The boy who played the Prince. He was coming to rehearse with the Flower Princess.

She ran out into the front hallway with the others. They practiced splits against the walls as they waited. For once Mr. Feltzer did not shoo them away. Every time the elevator door opened, they grew still. Finally, he arrived. He exited from the elevator wearing a green scarf, a black wool blazer, and a white untucked oxford. His hair was thick and honey-blond. She had never seen a boy so beautiful. Christopher’s hard blue eyes reflected back all their gazes.

Now here is Christopher, leaning in the doorway of the rehearsal studio. A year since Christopher has last been at The Little Kirov. A year is a long time. He wears a loose sweater over corduroys, no coat, even though it’s cold outside. His face is longer, his features more angular. Small red dots on his nose. There is something wrong with him. After all these years, this is the clearest thought she has coming face-to-face with the boy who plays the Prince.

Christopher puts on a smile that Mira has seen in kids who know how to act around grown-ups. He kisses Ms. Clement on both cheeks.

“Hey.” He nods at Mira, who is hanging back. “So you’re the new Flower Princess. How old are you?”

“Eleven. I’ll be twelve in April.”

Ms. Clement says, “Mira is quite good, if young. But, dear — you remember, you once were so young!”

“Ha-ha.” Christopher laughs a grown-up laugh.

Up close — she is within a few feet of him now — his neck is long and taut. As he laughs, he does so with a girl’s delicacy that makes her look down.

“Okay, dear, go and get changed. We have Mira for another half an hour. Then we can go over your part. You remember it, I hope?”

Christopher picks up his shoulder bag and moves toward the boys’ dressing room, in some dim corner of the studio. “I never forget it,” he says.

While Christopher changes, Mira and Ms. Clement go over the opening again. Ronde de jambe , port de bras, développ é. These are the movements from the beginning of The Wounded Prince, in which the prince comes upon a girl dancing in a forest clearing. She is supposed to be gathering food for her mother but has forgotten her errand. And Mira does feel someone watching her — from the studio doorway. She instinctually raises her chin and doubles her effort. When she finally peeks, she is surprised to see it is not Christopher, but a small man with a neat mustache leaning against the doorjamb. He clears his throat.

“Maurice! What a surprise!” says Ms. Clement.

“Please,” he says. He bows his head. “I heard there was a new Flower Princess. I had to come see her.”

“Well, meet Miss Mira Able. Mira, this is Maurice Dupont. . who is a very generous man.”

The three of them in the doorway: Mira, her teacher, and the man. His suit is charcoal-colored and he wears a red folded handkerchief in his breast pocket. Mira walks over and holds out her hand. He takes it in his tangle of bony fingers. He gives off an odor of talcum powder and spicy cologne. He stares at her with very black pupils. Her face feels like it is burning.

“I enjoyed watching you.”

“Thanks,” she says.

“You understand movement.”

Where has she seen this smile, these teeth, small and even, like little stones lined up on a ledge?

She remembers dimly, a face like this one. It comes back to her — the male dancer’s feline face and the ballerina’s sinewy arms. He was there that night at the ballet, when her father still lived with them. The cardboard shoulder that she leaned on, the pale face crossed with a black mustache, and the smell of something sweet and also something sour. Her mother had worn her hair long over a green dress. Her parents had held hands. That same night: holding this little man’s shoulder and shouting Bravo! He had brought her closer to the dancers than she had ever been before.

Ms. Clement is looking at them.

“You helped me see — at Giselle —onto a chair—”

“Did I? Was it that most amazing performance? Kirkland and Baryshnikov? Never another like that.”

Ms. Clement is watching Maurice.

“Well, of course, I like to be useful. To help the little ones.”

Mira has no idea what is happening. She just knows she wants the little man to look at her again in that way he just did, the way that makes her feel more visible than she ever has.

Just then, Christopher brushes past the man and comes into the studio. He’s in his rehearsal clothes — white T-shirt, black tights. His hair is carefully combed back off his face, and he wears a bandanna tied around his neck. In his dance clothes, he is more recognizable. As he makes his way into the studio, he stops. He says to the little man, “I’ve seen you at David Howard’s, right?”

“You may have. I’ve been helping David with outreach—”

“What?” says Ms. Clement.

“Well,” says the man. “I like to be useful. . ”

Christopher begins rehearsing his solo from Act Three. Ms. Clement claps her hands. “Come, Mira!” she says, moving to the center of the studio. Mira runs toward her teacher and Christopher. When she turns back, the little man is gone.

It is Act Two and the moody prince has taken to gazing out his window . He spies the girl dancing in the palace garden. It is the same peasant girl he saw dancing by the river, who had so transfixed him. Their illicit dance had led to the terrible curse upon the land — and his own lameness. They perform a duet that is supposed to be his reverie.

Ms. Clement and Christopher mime the first lift. When she puts her hands on Christopher’s shoulders to demonstrate, Ms. Clement lifts her chin high and her wrinkled lips pull back in a practiced stage smile.

Mira takes Ms. Clement’s place. “Try, children.” Ms. Clement steps away.

Christopher rests his hands on her waist; Mira pliés. Partnering lifts are brand-new to Mira; never in her life has she been so close to a boy. Up close, his face looks distorted — as if seen through a fish-eye lens — his eyes big and staring, his pale forehead a wide plain of white. His smell is deep, like old fruit or metal shavings. His hands grip her waist tighter and she jumps, but it’s too late. She’s not ready. The force of his hands moves up her torso, rubbing her ribs raw. She coughs. He releases his grip.

“Shit,” he says, rubbing his forehead with the end of the bandanna. “You okay?”

“Let’s break, children,” says Ms. Clement. “Let me speak to Christopher.”