Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 137433 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 550(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137433 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 550(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
“Not flexible enough.”
“Not enough energy.”
“Isn’t she Melody Followhill’s daughter? Figures. I remember her mother. Wasn’t the brightest star in the sky. If you ask me, she was lucky to break that leg. Got a cushy marriage out of it. Followhill Jr. is better but still no Anna Pavlova.”
That was after I managed to convince them to let me retake the test, go onstage again so I could pass the semester. There’s no way I, Bailey Followhill, brainiac extraordinaire, am going to fail my freshman year of college.
I grab my phone, scroll down my contacts, my thumb hovering over one name. Payden Rhys. The chisel-jawed ballerino from Indiana who got a lead role in La Sylphide without even breaking a sweat. He makes his pocket money selling Vicodin, Xanax, and other party favors. Shadier than a cowboy hat and a man I despise with all my heart, but somehow I find myself increasingly spending more and more time with.
There are only a couple months left before the semester ends, and my grades outside the dance studio are flawless. I can’t go home early. Can’t show the world that my best isn’t the best. Besides, I just need to retake this test, get a good grade, then I’ll have the entire winter break to allow my injuries to heal and ditch my very recent, very manageable drug habit. I text Payden.
Bailey: Wanna party?
He knows exactly what I mean by that.
Payden: How hard?
Translation: How many do you need?
Bailey: Spring break hard.
As many as you got.
Payden: Be there in five.
I plaster my back against the door and slide to the floor, nestling my head between my knees, sobbing noiselessly. I hate that my body is not keeping up with my ambition, with my drive, with my academic grades. And I hate that it gives someone like Payden power over me.
Sometimes I want to unfurl like the satin ribbons of my pointe shoes. To spin rapidly, the layers of my self-consciousness and anxiety uncurling, loosening, until I am left bare. I secretly resent my older sister, Daria. It’s easy to be her because the expectations placed upon her are slim to none. She embraces her imperfections. Wears them proudly like battle scars. She showed her husband, her friends, our parents, the worst sides of her, and impossibly—implausibly—that only made them love her harder.
That’s not an option for me. I’m Bailey Followhill, the perfect little ballerina. No mountain is too high, no test is too difficult.
Got a problem? Ask Bailey. She knows everything.
Well, spoiler alert: I have no idea what I’m doing right now.
Three minutes later, there’s a knock on the door and Payden is standing in my room, a mischievous spark in his brown eyes. He greets me by helping me up to my feet and slapping my ass, leaving a punishing sting. There’s a casual maliciousness to him that always sets me on edge.
“Damn, Bails. I love a good thigh gap, but this is too much, even for me.” And he is a body-negative prick who prides himself on making people feel bad about themselves. Word around is he landed in hot water with his professors last year for telling his dancing partner she was too heavy for him to ballroom lift. She was less than a hundred pounds and he used the F-bomb.
“You look like a mess.” He pulls up his pant leg and tugs a Ziploc bag from his holey sock. Inside it are smaller individual bags with pills. “You been crying?”
“No. Just the stupid injuries bugging me,” I lie, pulling my sleeves over my fists and rubbing at my nose. I want him to leave. I hate him. But he’s the only person who ever sold me benzo that passed my chemical tests and carries genuine Vicodin.
“Those fine legs giving you trouble again, Followhill?” He flicks a small bag full of Vicodin with his thumb and forefinger, a cigarette clenched between his lips. “Well, the offer to wrap them ’round my neck still stands. I’ll be your best painkiller.”
“Been there, done that,” I mutter, trying to suppress the lackluster memory of us together. “You’re no Vicodin, Pay. Barely half an Advil.”
“Oof.” He laughs. “If I gave half a fuck what some spoiled little princess from Todos Santos thinks, I’d take offense.”
“You were the one who wanted in my pants,” I remind him.
“Can you blame me? Fucking a virgin had always been on my bucket list.”
I glare at the Vicodin dispassionately, wondering if it’ll do the trick. I took two Motrin before my audition today and still messed up the choreography. My tibias feel like they’re about to snap.
“Got anything stronger?” I honestly don’t recognize myself in this conversation. I graduated from high school without even trying pot. Lev once had to pick me up from a party because I thought I got too high on the fumes when other people were smoking it.