First Position by Melody Grace Page A

the crowd.
    I pause, turning the coin over in my hand. Wishing for happiness ...
I give a wry smile. The woman has clearly never met a ballerina. We
could never waste a wish on that, not with a lifetime of hard
sacrifice behind us, training for hours every day, dancing until our
toes bleed and our limbs ache.
    We don’t dance to be happy. We dance because we have to. That
instinct driving us on.
    I flip the coin into the air, watching as the sunlight reflects on
metal: a dazzling beam in the bright afternoon.
    Please let me win the solo. Please let me be good enough. Please
let me make her proud.
    The coin slips into the water with a ripple, lost in the bed of other
coins, other hopeful wishes.
    I just pray that mine comes true.

Two.
     
     
    “Is it just me, or are these ancient Roman guys kind of on the
small side?” My roommate, Karla, scrolls through her photos as
we wait in line to board the tour bus. She’s the closest thing
I have to a friend in the company, a street-smart girl from Chicago
who danced her way into a full scholarship for school, and then
straight into the Company.
    “You can’t say that!” I laugh. “Those things
are religious relics.”
    “So?” Karla grins. “Look at him.” She zooms
in on a statue from the Trevi Fountain, a gorgeous sculpture of a man
wrestling with a wild horse. “You would have thought he’d
slip the sculptor a fifty to make sure he was, you know, immortalized
the way he’d want.”
    “Maybe he slept with the artist’s wife or something, and
this is the revenge,” I giggle.
    Karla smirks. “Or maybe the ancient Romans were growers, not
showers—”
    “Ladies.” She’s interrupted by someone clearing her
throat. Our chaperone, Mademoiselle Ninette, appears behind us, so
fast I jump. “Everything good, ladies?” she demands in
her thick French accent.
    “Yes, Mademoiselle.” Karla gives her best innocent smile.
“We were admiring the statue. The work is magnificent.”
    Mademoiselle doesn’t look like she believes us. “Don’t
hold up the line,” she barks. “We have a tight schedule.”
She moves to herd up some stragglers, her trademark silk scarf
fluttering in the air behind her.
    “Karla!” I break down in giggles the moment she’s
gone. “You know she heard everything.”
    “Oh relax.” Karla grins, climbing on board. “I’ve
seen her, perving over the male dancers in their tights.”
    “Eww!” I cry, following her down the aisle. “I do
not need that image in my head.”
    “And you know what they say about dancers, even the old ones.
That flexibility never goes away!” Karla gives me a wicked
grin. “Just ask your mother.”
    “Double eww!” I cry, pushing her down into a spare seat
and sliding in next to her. “Never talk about my mother and ... that . Just, never!”
    Karla laughs, settling in her seat and pulling out her tour guide to
Rome. “What’s next?” she asks, flipping through the
book.
    “The Colosseum,” another voice speaks up. Rosalie, our
third roommate, pops her head over from the seat behind. She’s
clutching a clipboard and map, her long copper braid already
unraveling in the autumn heat. “Then the Spanish Steps, the
Forum, and St. Peter’s.”
    “In one day?” I exclaim. Rosalie just named every major
tourist spot in the whole city. “I thought we’d get some
time to wander, you know, really explore.”
    Rosalie shrugs. “I don’t make the rules, I just wrestle
with the copy machine until I’ve got ink permanently tattooed
on my hands.” She shows us the marks, smudged halfway up her
arms. Although she’s nineteen, like us, and part of the group,
Rosalie hasn’t danced an arabesque in her life. She’s
here as Mademoiselle’s long-suffering assistant, running after
her every minute of the day.
    “I’ve got some Oxyclean back in the room,” I offer.
“It got those smudges off my pointe shoes, so it might be worth
a try.”
    “Or your skin will peel off,” Karla adds. “Either
way,