All Grown Up

Audrey

I went through the line of stretches with the rest of the ballerinas, trying not to wince as the final stretch tugged my ankle in an uncomfortable way. It had been bothering me for a few weeks now, ever since I rolled it during one of our performances.

That had been so embarrassing. It had happened on stage, in full view of the audience. I’d stumbled and barely recovered in time to keep dancing.

All those years of practice paid off, though. No matter how much my ankle hurt, I was able to finish out the routine with everyone else. I was sure adrenaline had something to do with it because the moment I walked off stage, I nearly collapsed with pain.

I couldn’t let anyone know about it. We were coming up on the final show of the season, and if I could just make it until then, I could give it a rest, at least for a little while. Of course, I’d need to keep training and making myself stronger for the coming season, but I was sure that I could talk to a trainer and come up with a plan that would work.

If the director found out about my injury now, though, he would want me to sit out the final show, and that just wasn’t going to happen.

I had been working toward this my whole life. I had left North Carolina behind the moment I graduated high school, taking off for Philadelphia to train at a conservatory there. Then, I’d been lucky enough to land a series of dream jobs working on different shows. But here at the Global Traveling Dance Academy of Performing Arts in Paris? That was above and beyond anything that I could ever have hoped for.

It had been two long and grueling years of practice, but all those hours of training, showing up early, listening to the director, smiling, and everything had finally paid off. I had worked my way up through the crew and landed the role that I wanted for this show.

I wasn’t going to give that all up because of a stupid twisted ankle.

“Hey, Audrey, we’re going to go to that gallery opening tonight if you’d like to join us,” Sarah said as we wrapped up practice.

I slung my bag over my shoulder. A gallery opening meant plenty of standing around, and even though I could favor my uninjured ankle, I knew it would exhaust me. Better that I rest up, ice it, keep it elevated, and keep weight off it. I was disappointed because we’d been talking about this gallery opening for weeks now, but I wasn’t going to let my social life come between me and my career.

I faked a yawn. “Honestly, I’m pretty beat,” I said. “Think I’m just going to head home and go check things out another time. You ladies have fun, though.”

Sarah groaned. “You’re such a grandmother!” she said.

The other girls laughed, and I shrugged ruefully. Fortunately, Helene spoke up. “I am also a grandmother, I think,” she said, grinning at me. “Because Audrey is right. All I want tonight is a bubble bath!”

There were more giggles, and I was glad to hear that I wasn’t the only person who didn’t want to go out that night. Part of hiding my injury meant making sure that none of the girls knew what was going on either.

It wasn’t that I didn’t trust them or that I wasn’t good friends with all of them. To be honest, I had a feeling that they could all tell what was going on anyway. All of them had been dancing alongside me for over a year now, most of them for nearly two years. There wasn’t much turnover in this kind of crew.

But the fewer people who knew what was going on, the better. The fewer of them who had any details about what was wrong, the fewer people who could accidentally share something with the director.

If I had been the only person to opt out on tonight’s gallery opening, everyone would start to wonder if I was sick or what. And if they put two and two together and realized I was injured, well, that could be dangerous.

It seemed like the coast was clear for now, though.

Then the director himself pulled me into his office as I was on my way out of the building.

“Is everything all right?” I asked, trying to keep the cheer in my voice as he shut the door carefully behind us.

He sighed as he sat behind his desk. “Audrey,” he said in his cut the crap tone of voice, the one that he normally only used when someone gave him lame excuses for why they were late.

I wracked my brains for any other reason that he could have brought me in there. Surely, he didn’t realize that I was injured. I had done a good job of hiding it. Maybe he just wanted to talk to me about that performance. About the stumble.

If it had been embarrassing for me as a dancer, it must have been just as embarrassing for him as the director. He wanted a show that was flawless. Dancers, he liked to tell us, should look at all times as though they floated on water. Dancers, true dancers, weren’t supposed to stumble.

When I didn’t say anything, the director shook his head. “I know that you’re injured,” he finally said.

I felt my blood run cold, but I managed to pull out the response that I had prepared in case he ever caught on. I gave a small laugh. “You know how important my career is to me,” I told him. “If there was anything seriously wrong, you know that I’d go to the academy’s physician to get checked out.”

In actual fact, I’d done my best not to limp out of there the night that I was injured. I knew that it wasn’t broken, but I also knew that it hurt more than any injury that I’d ever had before. Not that I’d had many serious injuries. I’d been lucky, I’d been careful, and I made sure to do my stretches and my exercises even on my days off.

I knew that as soon as I got checked out by the academy’s physician, my season was probably going to be over. If nothing else, he was going to tell me that I needed to take a week or two off to let myself rest, to let sore muscles heal and all of that.

That would mean that someone would step into my place, though, and that I probably wouldn’t get to dance the final show of the season. And that meant that next year when they were assigning roles, they might give me something a little less “strenuous.”

So instead, I’d gone to one of my friends who happened to be a doctor.

“It’s not good,” he said, pursing his lips. “You shouldn’t dance on this.” He moved my ankle from side to side, and I tried not to wince.

“But I could dance on it?” I asked him.

“You shouldn’t,” he repeated. “It would be very painful, I think.”

“But would it make things any worse?” If it was just a matter of pain, I had spent my whole life dealing with the pain that came with dancing. Did he think that cramming my feet into ballet shoes was comfortable? Heck no! But at the end of the day, it was worth it, and I was sure that this would be as well.

The doctor pursed his lips. “I don’t think so,” he finally said. “You won’t make it better by dancing on it, but you won’t make it worse either, probably. But I wouldn’t recommend it.”

I flashed a smile at him. “That’s all I needed to know.” 

Back in the present, the director was giving me a look. “Audrey,” he said again. “I can tell that something must be wrong with it. It’s been weeks now, and you’re still favoring your left ankle. Why haven’t you gone to see the physician?”

I looked down at my hands, feeling ashamed. “I saw a doctor,” I admitted. “Not the academy one but another one. He said that it would be fine to dance on. That I probably won’t make it worse.”

The director shook his head. “That’s not good enough,” he said. “And quite frankly, I don’t like that you tried to hide this from me.” He paused. “I know that this dance troupe is important to you, but you know that your health and the health of all of my dancers is my priority over anything else. I won’t take responsibility for this injury sidelining you for the rest of your life. You’re too young for a career-ending injury.”

“This won’t be that,” I protested. “I really did have it checked out. It’s sore, but there’s nothing broken or torn. It’ll be fine soon. Really.”

“That’s not good enough,” the director repeated, shaking his head. “I’m sending you on a six-month recovery leave.”