Pirouette by Robyn Bavati Page B

How many people could literally change places with somebody else?
    She glanced at Hannah, who looked worried that she might actually change her mind. “It’s okay,” Simone said softly, reaching out to touch her shoulder. “Let’s stick to our plan.”
    The taxi pulled up, the driver loaded the luggage into the trunk, and the girls climbed wordlessly into the back of the car. They clasped hands all the way to the airport as the taxi sped silently through the warm Canberra night.
    After Hannah checked in, they sat at a table in a small airport café and sipped cappuccinos as once again they went over the important details of each other’s lives.
    Then it was time. Time for goodbyes. Time for Hannah to board the plane.
    The girls flung their arms around each other for one final embrace.
    A moment later, Hannah was gone and Simone was alone. She wheeled Hannah’s suitcase to the Qantas check-in. And there was nothing else to do but lift the suitcase onto the conveyor belt and collect her boarding pass, because now it really was too late to change her mind.

    On board flight QF483, Hannah was too excited to mind being trapped between an elderly lady wearing cloying perfume and a middle-aged man with horrid BO. Candance had been the best experience of her life, and it was just the beginning. Had she been going straight home to her old life, right now she’d be trying to stifle her disappointment that Candance had ended. The high of performing was always followed by a sense of anticlimax that lasted for days. This time, there was no chance of that. She was about to embark on a whole new adventure.
    She thought with affection of her family back home and wondered whether she would have behaved any differently, the last time she saw them, if she’d known that she wouldn’t be sure when she’d see them again.
    At Candance, with a full schedule of classes and every spare minute spent with Simone, there’d been no time to miss the family and friends who’d been such an important part of her life. Now, alone on the plane, she experienced a pang of nostalgia. But if Hannah had any reservations about what she was doing, she did not want to admit them, even to herself. That would be a sign of weakness.
    She’d loved every moment of the summer school, and knew she’d developed as a dancer. Now she was ready—ready to fool the staff at the VSD into thinking she was in fact the very accomplished Simone. If she could pull it off, she would have earned her place there. And when her parents finally knew the truth, they would have to believe she’d been born to dance.
    The elderly lady with the cloying perfume had fallen asleep, her head bouncing gently up and down on Hannah’s shoulder, and the man with the horrid BO was drinking beer, so that bad breath combined with BO wafted her way. But Hannah would put up with far worse if it meant she could dance at the VSD.
    The plane touched down at Melbourne Airport. Hannah was jittery. She wished the queue to the exit would move faster because she couldn’t wait to disembark.
    The airport was crowded, and some of the passengers who’d been on her flight were in the midst of emotional reunions with family or friends. There were a number of middle-aged women who more or less fit the description of Simone’s mum, and Hannah wondered which of them was Harriet. Simone hadn’t been able to show her any photos of her mum—she didn’t have any in her Facebook albums, and Harriet wasn’t on Facebook herself.
    â€œHow will I recognize her?” Hannah had asked. “What if I can’t figure out which one she is?”
    â€œYou won’t have a problem,” Simone had assured her. “She’ll be the one calling my name so loudly that everyone will think you’re deaf.”
    â€œSimone! Simone!” A woman in a pale blue, short-sleeved dress buttoned to the collar was waving a hand above