I can see their dumb eyes watching me, their fingers tickling their batons at their waists.
Toward evening, the silence takes on an air of menace. The curfew in Bedlam is eight P.M., with the only exceptions for emergencies and city workers. Occasionally a person wrapped in a coat will scuttle by Fleet Tower at night, eyes downcast, before disappearing into the shadows.
I’m glad to be heading to rehearsal. We’re supposed to perform The Four Seasons in less than six weeks—it’s something to focus on. My body craves movement, and I’m certainly not getting much of it sitting at home with my mother.
As I move down Hemlock Avenue, I spot a huge graffiti eye, maybe five feet high by ten feet wide, placid, unblinking, and totally realistic, so much so that it seems to follow me as I walk. It’s painted in black and white on the brick wall behind the Bank of Bedlam. THE INVISIBLE ARE WATCHING , it says underneath it in purple letters. I reach out a shaking hand to touch the iris. The paint is still wet.
I yank my hand away and hurry toward the ballet studio, gritting my teeth in frustration. Whoever did this was just here . And yet I’m still so far from finding them. I spent hours this morning looking at their video transmissions, but so far nothing has clicked from the few scant details on the walls behind the desk. It could be anywhere.
Each of the twelve dancers in Level Six is off her game. Constance is all over the place, her limbs flailing. Liv’s fouett é s look like she’s doing them in slo-mo. Jessie is so wildly off the count that Madame makes her do the routine twice by herself while we all watch.
For the first couple of hours, I manage to hold it together and rein in my hummingbird-fast heart and my new abilities. I focus on keeping my mind here in the mirrored room of Seven Swans and not off in the clouds with Ford or in Martha’s bedroom or out on the silent streets where the Invisible are no doubt painting additional all-seeing eyes all over town.
But as rehearsal stretches into the third hour, I start to lose focus.
And pretty soon I catch myself hovering a second too long in the air. I quickly readjust, hoping Madame hasn’t noticed the extra beat it takes me to come down. It doesn’t look fully human—even I can see that, in the studio mirror.
I flick my eyes to Madame, and I’m relieved to find her focused on critiquing Constance’s form at the moment.
Concentrate, I order myself. Move like an ordinary human being .
From then on, I put eighty percent of my focus in class on keeping myself in line with the others. We keep doing the same chass é -jambe sequence again and again. It requires symmetry and control, and I’ve got it down. At least the first ten times, I’m on the count. Matching the speed of the others.
But on the eleventh or twelfth go-round of the same section of the dance, my mind drifts again, pulling me back to the sidewalk outside The Scrambled Yolk. Back to Ford. My feet kick out too far. I jump too high. Hover in the air a beat or two too long.
“Anthem!” Madame shouts in exasperation, breaking me out of my thoughts just as I land my grande jet é. “We do not need pyrotechnics!”
The other girls glare at me when Madame says stuff like this. I shrug it off, but make a point of doubling my efforts to focus on keeping in line with gravity.
I pick one of the weaker dancers, a small, dark-haired junior with heavy eyebrows named Tish Tanger, and tell myself not to go any higher than her. I peg myself to her movements.
All the while as I watch myself dance with my fellow Level Sixers in the studio mirrors, the back of my mind is working, always working, on the question of Invisible’s identity.
Over the past two days, I’ve spent hours watching the last two transmissions on repeat, slowing them down to isolate them frame by frame and look for clues. In one of the shots of the most recent video where the masked man says he’s looking for the New Hope, there
Toward evening, the silence takes on an air of menace. The curfew in Bedlam is eight P.M., with the only exceptions for emergencies and city workers. Occasionally a person wrapped in a coat will scuttle by Fleet Tower at night, eyes downcast, before disappearing into the shadows.
I’m glad to be heading to rehearsal. We’re supposed to perform The Four Seasons in less than six weeks—it’s something to focus on. My body craves movement, and I’m certainly not getting much of it sitting at home with my mother.
As I move down Hemlock Avenue, I spot a huge graffiti eye, maybe five feet high by ten feet wide, placid, unblinking, and totally realistic, so much so that it seems to follow me as I walk. It’s painted in black and white on the brick wall behind the Bank of Bedlam. THE INVISIBLE ARE WATCHING , it says underneath it in purple letters. I reach out a shaking hand to touch the iris. The paint is still wet.
I yank my hand away and hurry toward the ballet studio, gritting my teeth in frustration. Whoever did this was just here . And yet I’m still so far from finding them. I spent hours this morning looking at their video transmissions, but so far nothing has clicked from the few scant details on the walls behind the desk. It could be anywhere.
Each of the twelve dancers in Level Six is off her game. Constance is all over the place, her limbs flailing. Liv’s fouett é s look like she’s doing them in slo-mo. Jessie is so wildly off the count that Madame makes her do the routine twice by herself while we all watch.
For the first couple of hours, I manage to hold it together and rein in my hummingbird-fast heart and my new abilities. I focus on keeping my mind here in the mirrored room of Seven Swans and not off in the clouds with Ford or in Martha’s bedroom or out on the silent streets where the Invisible are no doubt painting additional all-seeing eyes all over town.
But as rehearsal stretches into the third hour, I start to lose focus.
And pretty soon I catch myself hovering a second too long in the air. I quickly readjust, hoping Madame hasn’t noticed the extra beat it takes me to come down. It doesn’t look fully human—even I can see that, in the studio mirror.
I flick my eyes to Madame, and I’m relieved to find her focused on critiquing Constance’s form at the moment.
Concentrate, I order myself. Move like an ordinary human being .
From then on, I put eighty percent of my focus in class on keeping myself in line with the others. We keep doing the same chass é -jambe sequence again and again. It requires symmetry and control, and I’ve got it down. At least the first ten times, I’m on the count. Matching the speed of the others.
But on the eleventh or twelfth go-round of the same section of the dance, my mind drifts again, pulling me back to the sidewalk outside The Scrambled Yolk. Back to Ford. My feet kick out too far. I jump too high. Hover in the air a beat or two too long.
“Anthem!” Madame shouts in exasperation, breaking me out of my thoughts just as I land my grande jet é. “We do not need pyrotechnics!”
The other girls glare at me when Madame says stuff like this. I shrug it off, but make a point of doubling my efforts to focus on keeping in line with gravity.
I pick one of the weaker dancers, a small, dark-haired junior with heavy eyebrows named Tish Tanger, and tell myself not to go any higher than her. I peg myself to her movements.
All the while as I watch myself dance with my fellow Level Sixers in the studio mirrors, the back of my mind is working, always working, on the question of Invisible’s identity.
Over the past two days, I’ve spent hours watching the last two transmissions on repeat, slowing them down to isolate them frame by frame and look for clues. In one of the shots of the most recent video where the masked man says he’s looking for the New Hope, there
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