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Audrey

I stared at him, sure that I hadn’t heard him correctly or that he was just trying to scare me and that he would laugh soon. Not that he was that kind of man. Of course, he didn’t laugh, and I faced the chilling truth of things, that he was really planning on sending me on a six-month leave.

In silence, he continued to watch me for a reaction.

“You can’t do that,” I finally said. He raised an eyebrow at me. “I mean, of course you can do that. But I don’t need six months.”

Suddenly, the end of the season seemed minor in relation to everything else. Six months would mean that I would miss out on casting for the fall’s roles and all of the training and everything else.

It would put me behind, to a point where I might never come back, no matter how much I wanted to. “Just give me a month off,” I pleaded. “And then I’ll see the academy’s physician to make sure that everything is all right.”

The director shook his head. “Six months,” he said levelly. “You know injuries can’t heal overnight. You need time off to rest it, and then you’ll need time to train yourself back up to your full strength. That’s the way it goes. I think six months gives you enough time that you won’t have to rush anything.” He was quiet for a moment. “Go home and see your family. It’s been a long time.”

I frowned. The thing about the Global Traveling Dance Academy of Performing Arts was that there were no secrets. It was what I had been worrying about with the injury in general. I didn’t think that I had ever had an in-depth conversation with the director of the academy about my home, but everyone knew that I hadn’t been home in a while and that I didn’t have any desire to go home anytime soon.

Now, it seemed like I didn’t have any choice.

“We’ll reimburse you for your flight,” the director said. “And you don’t have to go home. That’s just a suggestion. But you won’t be able to live in the academy dorms during your leave. You have until the next show to leave.”

I stared at him, shocked beyond comprehension. “Five days?” I finally asked, my voice faint. “I’ve lived here for two years, and you’re giving me five days to move out? Why, so that someone else can take my place?”

“No one else is going to take your place,” he said firmly. The way he said it gave me a little bit of hope, but all the same, I was scared.

“I don’t need six months,” I repeated again.

“I want you to take six months,” he said, his voice gentle. “Audrey, you know that I love how important this position is for you, but I like well-rounded dancers on my crew. People who can bring their other experiences and their other passions to everything that they can do. People who can bring their emotions to this academy.”

I stared at him. “You don’t think that I’m good enough?” I asked, my voice nearly a whisper.

“I never said that,” he said impatiently. “But what I want you to spend the next months doing is exploring your other interests and passions. I want you to come back here ready to push the envelope even more. I know that there are hidden depths to you that we have yet to reach.” He smiled at me. “Call it research if you prefer.”

I swallowed hard. The idea that I was doing this to make my dancing better didn’t make the six months of leave feel any better, but what choice did I have?

I nodded and stood abruptly, heading out of there. I called Mom when I was halfway home. She sounded surprised to hear from me. “What’s up, twinkle toes?” she asked, using the nickname she’d given me when I was younger.

“Could I come home for a little while?” I asked, even though I was sure that I knew the answer. Mom had been asking for me to come home for a while now. And each time, it seemed that something came up. Often by design.

I couldn’t imagine going back to Aberdeen, North Carolina now. I would be bored to tears after two years of living in Paris. Bored to tears and lonely.

I would miss all my friends here, the amazing women that I’d trained with, that I had spent nearly every day with over the past two years. And anyway, Mom had been good about coming to see me abroad as often as she could. It wasn’t like we didn’t see one another.

I didn’t exactly want to go home now, but I could at least go home for a couple of weeks, maybe a month, until I figured out what else to do. I couldn’t really afford to joyride around the world for the next six months. I had to figure out some sort of plan to support myself when I wasn’t dancing.

I remembered what the director had said about using this as if it were research. What exactly did he think I was going to find back in the small towns and fields of North Carolina anyway?

“Of course you can come home!” Mom said excitedly, and I could tell that she was beaming. “When will you be here?”

“I’ll send you all the flight details,” I said, trying not to sigh too heavily.

I got off the phone and booked my flight for two days later, going so far as to book it in business class. If the Academy was going to reimburse me, then they could bite the cost. The director didn’t even blink when I went in to his office the next day and showed him the details. Instead, he just nodded and filled out the paperwork for me to have the cost reimbursed as part of my next paycheck.

My final paycheck. Possibly forever. I tried not to think about that.

Instead, for the next two days, I thought about everything that would be different when I got home. I’d seen my younger sister a few times since I’d left for the conservatory, but in the back of my head, I still thought of her as fifteen. We hadn’t chatted in a while, and I barely knew what she was doing with her life, except that she was still wasting time living at home.

Would she and I still get along like we always had before? And what about my mother’s new boyfriend? What was he like? Ugh, I didn’t want to think about him. From what Mom had told me about him already, he sounded like a total tool. The fact that he was already living with her after they’d only been dating for a matter of months said all that I needed to know about him.

I was going to have to be in the same house with all of them, at least until I figured out what I was going to do next.

Maybe if I took it easy for the first month and then trained hard after I recovered, I’d be able to get the director to reassess that whole six-month thing. I could only hope so.