Read Online Up to This Pointe by Jennifer Longo - Free Book Online Page A

Prix. And Lindsay is sort of right; all of Simone’s students—maybe even secretly Kate and I—would die to go. But students must be sponsored by and represent their school, their instructor—and Simone refuses. She balks at any competition.
Ballet is perfection of an art. It is not a competition.
    The YAGP prizes, though, are not only medals and trophies. Directors from companies all over the world judge a ton of age groups for scholarships to schools and for apprentice spots, even company positions. For some people, it is the only chance they’ll have to be seen. The auditions happen in cities all over the world; the finals for the scholarships and jobs are held in New York. Every year, girls beg Simone to take them, and the answer they get is her yearly lecture about love and truth and scaring the crap out of us.
    “A true dancer auditions for the company they most love, the company they will make better and be made better by. This is not a football draft; this is dance, and you had better love who you are dancing for, because you’ll give your entire youth and a good portion of your life and health for a very few short years of this love. It had better mean something.”
    Kate and I were ten the first time we heard this speech and had reveled in the feeling that we’d had it right all along. We’d always known this truth; Simone’s confirmation only intensified our devotion to The Plan. To the San Francisco Ballet. And to her.
    “We know what we’re doing,” I say. “Right, Kate?” Her forehead is resting on her knees. “Kate.”
    “Yeah. Sorry, what?”
    “Nothing.” I smile. “Get your stuff,” I tell Willa, “and we’ll hit the road.”
    Lindsay and Willa hobble to the dressing room together, Saturday sore. It’s like Simone’s out to get the weekend for being frivolous, so she puts us through more than just our paces. I love it.
    Kate stands. “Slumber party tonight?”
    “Soon as Hannah gets back. I’ll be home by, like, five?”
    “Perfect. I can sneak in a nap.” We gather our junk from the dressing room, say goodbye to Simone and Lindsay, and zip our hoodies for the misty walk home.
    I try not to be jealous of Kate’s nap schedule, do my best to convince myself that an afternoon of making crafts with Willa from empty toilet paper rolls and pipe cleaners and white glue mixed with glitter will be just as restful as sleeping.
    I am a terrible liar. Especially to myself.
    - - -
    “Honey, I’m home!” Kate calls from the kitchen door.
    “Bedroom!” I yell back, home from babysitting and just out of a wash-the-day-off-me shower.
    I hear Kate take the stairs two at a time.
    “What is
up,
Mary Poppins?” She flops on the bed beside me. “No one home?”
    “Mom and Dad are at dinner with some biology department people. Luke’s spending the night at a friend’s.”
    “Ohhhh, an
Owen
friend?”
    “Hey. Addendum thirteen.”
    “Yeah, yeah.”
    I pull on sweats, and Kate pulls the pins from her class bun and unwinds the hairnet, releasing a shining cascade of swinging auburn waves, silky and thick, perfect hair for ballet. Or shampoo commercials. She grabs a brush from my nightstand and works it through the waves, off her flawless, porcelain face.
    “Your mom out tonight?” I ask.
    “In,” Kate sighs. “With a dude.”
    “Sorry.”
    She shrugs. “Eh.”
    Kate’s parents divorced forever ago. It’s hard to remember, even for Kate, because her dad was never home even when he and her mom were married. He’s an international airline pilot with no imagination who decided to have affairs with flight attendants, which Kate says her mom sort of knew but pretended not to. And she was never home much herself; she’s a corporate attorney in an office in Twin Peaks. But when it turned out that Kate’s dad had an entire other family in Seattle (“He couldn’t keep it on another continent?” Kate sometimes complains. “How about ‘Don’t shit where you eat’?”), her mom