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“Some of us,” Laney says, “got here based entirely on our abilities, not on how appealing our face was or how well we could sway our hips.”
It’s one of the few times where they’ve been released early enough from practice that the sun is still visible on the horizon, though they’ll likely have to wake up early tomorrow to make up the time. Their group’s decided that they want to grab dinner together, and the witch is grateful enough that they hadn’t thought to leave anyone (her) behind that she doesn’t say anything more.
Marianne knows full well when she’s being insulted, even if the one doing the insulting wasn’t looking directly at her with a challenging stare.
“The selection process is as fair as it gets,” she says, biting down the urge to strike back in a more explosive fashion, to say how dare you insinuate that I don’t work as hard as you do. Modern dance is all the rage these days, and the witch worked every bit as much as anyone else to have a chance to study here.“Everybody here got in because they were capable of doing so.” She can feel the collective gaze of the rest of the girls, and all she knows is that she doesn’t want to look weak or thin-skinned in front of them. Katrina is watching her silently from her corner, and that thought is enough to egg her on.
The only thing Laney does in response is snort. “Everybody here got in for a reason, yes.”
---
It doesn’t take the witch long to realize that she can’t go on dancing in the streets forever, had long since left behind twirling in the rain or chasing after the leaves. Her decision to leave home for a school that can make her a real dancer is only half thought out and even more poorly executed.
Still, if she hadn’t come here she would never have met Katrina.
The plaguebearer is one of the girls who has been here the longest, barely anything but ambition in her bones and bitterness on her tongue. She’s the earliest to arrive in the practice room and one of the last to leave, shadowed by a deathly white ghost with a blackened lips and limp black hair that hangs over sallow cheeks. It’s something straight out of silent horror flicks, and Marianne catches herself staring at the way the tendrils of plague ooze out more often than not.
The other girls had whispered in her ear (back when they could still stand her) about her, about some accident that almost ruined her vocal cords completely. She could’ve had it all, was going to be the next biggest star with her golden voice and sweetheart smile, but somewhere along the way things just didn’t work out and she was left behind to try to pick the pieces up. And nobody can admire her stubbornness and focus more than Marianne can.
One can almost tell that the plaguebearer used to be a singer from her voice alone, from her careful enunciation and the particular rich quality of her voice. It doesn’t even sound shrill when she raises it in a half-snarl (when her disdain for the company she’s forced to keep is at an all time high), fills up the slower moments after practice with a softness that can’t be found anywhere else.
In the rare moments that they can lay on their beds and not fall asleep instantly, Katrina talks about dance. Talks about the future. She’s not so bad in those instances, where they can have a genuine heartfelt discussion without sniping at each other, playfully or otherwise.
Marianne wishes they could talk about the unimportant stuff as well. Her favorite color. Favorite book. The style of music she prefers. All those things that would matter to two people trying to get to know each other, wanting to get to know each other. But she’ll lean in and listen to Katrina talk, for as long as she can enjoy the other’s warmth.
“Are you even listening to me?” she asks, and Marianne nods and grins as she shifts herself even closer.
“Of course.”
---
Their class size is almost guaranteed to get smaller every month. Hattie is the first to leave. Laney follows soon afterwards without a word. Packs her bags and bundles away her terribly styled clothes and forgets to even close the door behind her all the way. Nobody is really surprised.
(Laney’s ghost is pale yellow and blue in the unnaturally bright lights of the city, a slender imitation of its real life counterpart.)
“Good riddance,” Katrina says, “at least there will be more space in the dorm."
If Marianne has a ghost, she can’t see it. Maybe it’s a dark green, like her favorite color, or saturated blue. Perhaps it’s dotted with stars, the blanket of the limitless universe. She would like that.
---
They’ll stay late afterwards in the studio until even their instructor has left, Marianne trying to force her limbs to bend and stretch the way they were meant to and Katrina presses deeper into her, with her mouth, her breath, her fingers, unravels her insides for an audience that consists only of their reflections in the surrounding mirrors. She spreads them out with careful hands, in the way one might unroll a map, takes note of the geography and landscape of her body. Their breath fogs against the mirror, in those moments, and Marianne finds herself wishing that she could see Katrina’s face in the mirror instead of her back, so she wouldn’t have to lie awake at night trying to puzzle out what the other wants.
Marianne catches glimpses of herself in the mirror. The expression on her face is completely foreign and uncomfortably vulnerable.
(“Shut up,” the plaguebearer hisses in her ear at night. “Or they’ll hear you.” There’s four (three now) other girls in the adjacent rooms and any one of them could wander into the kitchen at night for a drink of water. Katrina is deadly careful about these sorts of things, locking doors and closing shutters, sneaking around with an ease that makes her wonder how many other lovers she’d brought to all the hidden corners of this school.
Marianne swallows down a gasp, biting at the plaguebearer’s shoulder harder than probably necessary. “Noted.” )
They’ll pull each other into closets and bathroom stalls; Katrina leaving red scorching marks from long beautiful nails raked across her skin, reached through her chest and clawing at the soft insides. Once or twice there are footsteps outside the door and they huddle together in the dark with their fingers crossed, but somehow neither of them think to stop.
The harsh, angry Katrina, as harsh and angry as the city itself, who takes and takes and doesn’t give back is Marianne’s alone to see, to touch, to experience. What the others get when the lights turn back on is a watered down version with all of the intensity and none of the real hardness to her edges.
But Marianne gets other parts of her too--the way she smiles, her approval, the way she tells Marianne that you’re fucking perfect--the witch lives for those, craves them more than almost anything else in the world, craves them all the more perhaps because of how starved she is for them.
(Sometimes if she lays awake long enough listening to her thoughts jostle around in her head, she acknowledges that even if Katrina had been the most selfless person in the world she would still never have enough.)
---
It occurs to Marianne that there might not really be anything here for her.
The instructor doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing anymore than they do, preferring to give them enough vague words of advice on appearance and stage presence before leaving them to their own devices. She’s starting to think they’re training for the circus, destined to be empty entertainment. Even the dull ache of her muscles after a long practice or the biting knots in her stomach aren’t enough to drown out the feeling of wasting away her life.
And Marianne’s hair has been dyed and charmed so many different colors for the sake of realism and experimentation, a spectrum of deep red and jet black and bruising purple that even she can’t remember the original shade of brown-blond-black that it was when she was eighteen. The plastic stage-approved smile sticks on her face more easily now and doesn’t always wash away with the rest of the stage makeup.
Marianne is almost twenty one by now and she doesn’t have a degree, is no closer to becoming a real dancer than she is to becoming a wind up toy doll that mimes and dances in perfect synchrony to the masses’ whim.
Katrina finds her on the rooftop with her legs dangling over the side shaving the concrete off with slow absent-minded movements and watching it crumble beneath her fingers and sits down next to her. Their legs swing together in smooth rhythmic motions, a steady tic-tock.
“I was looking for you,” she says.
Out beyond their solitary rooftop the city lights shine brightly, in gorgeous flickers of orange and red and yellow, and Marianne stares at them until long after they’ve been burned into the endless film reeling behind her closed eyes.
"Dinner?" Katrina asks, and Marianne readily agrees.
It’s late when they step out of the studio, though, and most places have already closed doors, so they end up settling for cheap fried chicken.
The two of them fight over the last piece, and Katrina slathers it all in the sauce she knows Marianne hates and claims it for herself. It rains before they make it back, so they sit under the awning together waiting for it to stop raining while Katrina leans in and kisses her with oily breath.
They end up walking back in the light rain, but by the time they close the door to their room both of them are drenched and shivering, any sign of laughter long fled. She doesn’t really think anything of it until she wakes up the next morning with her throat on fire and her head both impossibly heavy and light.
Marianne spends a day lying in a hospital bed, moving half in and out of the haze of fever-induced dreams. She thinks about a better offer, a better place, about the hastily scrawled get-well card written in an awkward hand and script and the exhaustion eating at her eyelids.
“Are you okay?” a little boy asks her on the way back. The bus is packed at this time, and he clutches his mother’s hand tighter as he stares up at her with big eyes filled with innocent concern. She realizes abruptly that there are tears on her cheeks, though whether that’s from the headache or something else she hardly knows.
---
I’ve been thinking is what Marianne means to say and maybe things just can’t work out.
“I’m going to be leaving this place soon,” is what she actually says. Her throat is still slightly dry from rehearsal and the cheap half see through mesh of her dress is digging into her back uncomfortably when she sees Katrina again in the practice room, breathing heavy from exertion, knuckles white as she grips the chair in front of her. “I--well, I’ve decided to try and find a place somewhere else.”
“I see” Katrina doesn’t even blink. “I’m happy for you.” She excuses herself to the bathroom, and Marianne lets her rush away without another word, wondering why the subdued reaction frustrates her so much.
---
The great western railway comes creaking to a halt in their little city of asphalt and concrete towers and bright red-orange lights, and that’s where they part ways. She’s on the cusp of twenty-two and has finally grown into the sharpness of a ladylike face, has perfected her winning stage smile and graceful, well-trained movements.
“It’s for the best,” Katrina says slowly, emphasizing each syllable.
In that moment Marianne thinks that if the other girl had asked her to stay, she would’ve said yes in a heartbeat. Would’ve tried to pick up the broken pieces and soothe the chafing spaces between them and tried again, would’ve waited for her long enough for them to leave this hellhole together.
But Katrina says nothing.
“Yeah, I think it is. Good luck back here,” she says and, unexpectedly, means it. “Maybe we’ll see each other again.”
The plaguebearer’s mouth twists into a bitter shape, and for a second the witch thinks she sees the phantom rotted gums and sunken in cheekbones that she’d seen long ago. “Perhaps not. But maybe.”
She thinks that maybe she hasn’t changed at all since she came here, wonders what the years--years--spent here were for, wonders why she’s leaving now.
Marianne thinks of the stubborn girl with an ambition as high as the city skyscrapers and wonders if that’s what it is, the ghost that shadows her steps, the ghost of broken dreams finally merging behind the other in the form of blackened lips and yellowed fingernails.
That ghost is what lingers in her memory even while the great western railway thunders through half of the country in a blur of blue and green.