Page 52 of Eat. Prey. Love.
EmoBatman: There is no favor too big, Dolly. Tell me what I can do.
BabyGirl: I need you to dance with me for my project. We came in late and all the people have partners for the big jury projects and I don’t…
EmoBatman: Perfectement, mon amour. I would love to accompany you.
BabyGirl: Can you come to my studio to work with me now? Or are you busy?
EmoBatman: I shall wing my way to you shortly. Remember to use the code words.
My body sags in relief. If Rennie really can keep up, that will give me time to write up my proposal before my meeting with my sour-assed Jury Coordinator, Professor Ste Jean. I had diddly squat todiscuss with her Tuesday and she read me the riot act about my lack of preparation—despite my lack of knowledge about this system until a day prior. Professors atl’Academieseem dead set against me or neutral at best, so I have to start pulling my weight quickly.
I plug my Pods in, using my notebook to sketch the dance playing in my head as I listen to the music. There’s precedent for the dance—it’s been around for almost one hundred and fifty years—but I want to give it my own spin. Squinting, I imagine a fusion of the haunting movement of the music mixed with a modern twist. My lips curve up and I continue using my choreography shorthand to mark the beats and moves.
Once I finish, I grin wickedly and sketch the costumes I’ll need for it, leaving a lot to my sparkly bear’s imagination. Cori will be able to bounce off this with little trouble, and I have no doubt her vision will match what I’m going to use the mixing software to achieve for my accompaniment. I may tap Aubrey for his opinion on that, and I know he’s going to both love andhatethis plan.
Suddenly, the world seems like it’s full of possibilities again, and I shake my head. Focusing on the bad shit doesn’t help anything and immersing myself in my passions makes it better every time. I leap to my feet, placing the phone on the charging pad on the table and connecting it to the bluetooth speakers.
The song I want is on loop, so I start by re-stretching my feet and limbs, getting my frame warm again after sitting for so long. By the time I’m ready, the music has played three times and I can feel it in my bones, taste it in my mouth, and see it in the air. Allowing myself to sink into the emotions surrounding me, I whirl and jump across the floor, following the movements in my sketches slowly to find transitions and highlights.
“You started without me,ma petite.”
I grin as I hear the gargoyle speaking outside the door, skidding to a stop in front of it to clear my throat. “Code word, please.”
“To blave. It means to bet,” he replies with a chuckle.
Pushing the button for the door, I grin as it opens to reveal my gargoyle in all black sweats, looking graceful as hell as he slinks into the room. “Entrez-vous,pouty boy.”
Once he’s sure the door is closed behind him, Renard listens to the music in the background and gives me a shrewd expression. “You’re making a big gamble by asking me to dance one of the hardestpas de deuxin ballet,ma petite.”
I shrug, holding my hand out to him. “I believe in you, Rennie. Plus, you know… you’re French, right? This is your people.”
His bark of laughter startles me as he takes my hand. “Tchaikovsky was Russian. That’s your scary relatives, if I’m not mistaken.”
I can’t argue that.
“Then we need to make them proud, Mr. Ooh-la-la. Let’s get moving.”
One down, a million more to go…
People I Love
Rennie was soexcited I couldn’t help but smile; that alone made me want to reward Snacksize for asking him to help her with her project. However, by the next morning, that changed when her best friends showed up to invade our space withcameras.The badger is filming some sort of avant garde documentary of daily life of arts students forhisfinal project and he’s using the giggly bear and our girl as his stars.
Ra, help me keep my dragon in check as he flits around filming for the next eight weeks.
“Dollybear,tell us about your jury for ballet. Since we’ve been left to our own devices as transfers, we all have to ‘figure it out.’ In layman’s terms, that means completing year-long assignments that require partners despite all our fellow students being committed since the Fall. Correct?”
I arch a brow, not looking up from my tablet as I eat. That question is loaded, and it will be viewed by a hell of a lot of people, so I’m curious to hear what she says. When she started at Apex, she would have been politic to keep it from getting to her shitty parents. But now…?
“It’s disgraceful, Rufus. None of the transfers had an option the first semester after Apex was destroyed, nor did they have one coming here this semester. We’ve been uprooted twice for ‘security reasons,’ yet we are being made to feel like intruders and set up to fail.”
I’ll be damned; listen to our girl go.
Cori nods, her rainbow curls bouncing as she holds up a pattern she’s working on. “No one was sent to this hoity-toity arts school that didn’t qualify for their majors, but the staff and students act as though we cheated to get a place. I find it both ridiculous and demeaning, especially for those of us who were attendingthemost elite college in the world previously.”
My lips curve up as she sniffs, her affect completely different from her normal, down-to-earth persona. Rufus explained that he’s filming this in bursts, creating small stories that seem like they’re not related until the larger plot line ties together at the end. He wants to make it flow like that human crime movie, and while I think the idea has merit, ‘Eleven Short Films Aboutl’Academie des crocs y griffes’is probably going to ruffle feathers.
“Cut!” The badger pulls the camera back, looking gleefully wicked as he blows a kiss to the girls. “Perfect, my darlings. We’re going to make those idiotssquirmwith this docu-drama. Fromexposé bits to pulling back the curtain, I’m sure it will get into indie festivals without a second thought.”