Prima - Alta Hensley Page 0,13
found an open stall along the outer wall, dropped my bag onto an unoccupied bench, and unzipped it to pull out my toiletries case. Setting it down, I quickly began to strip, modesty one of the first things a dancer learns wasn’t a luxury afforded when performances required quick costume changes. Hanging my towel on a hook, I grabbed the bottle of shampoo out of my bag, pulled back the rather flimsy curtain, and turned on the faucet.
Stepping beneath the hot spray, I tried to ignore the fact the accusations rang true. It had stung when Alek suggested someone younger could dance rings around me. But in all honesty, I’d not given the taunt another thought the moment I’d stepped onto the stage. I wasn’t sure what it said about me, but the second the music had started, I’d been lost in the magic of the dance, totally oblivious to those around me.
It was only as the last note sounded, when my feet landed without a sound on the oak floor that I returned to the real world. For the first time in years, the faces of the people around me weren’t showing expressions of derision at the poor pitiful dancer who’d fallen from the pedestal. Granted, I wasn’t seeing the exultation I’d grown accustomed to when I was the lead in one of the best companies in the world, but I did see awe mixed with envy in the eyes of my competitors.
Pouring a generous amount of shampoo on my palm, I began to work it into my hair. Having pulled back a bit from the spray, the water no longer muffled my ability to hear, and I became aware of a hushed whisper coming my way.
“Can you actually see Yuri allowing her in? After what she did? She’s a fucking cheat!”
Someone was clearly badmouthing me, which really should have been expected, but it hurt me regardless. I didn’t seem to matter that I had worked so incredibly hard to make myself a better person. No one ever seemed to see that. They saw me as the same person I was, way back then. I used to care what people thought. I’d thrived on positive attention. But I was used to the negative now. I’d moved past caring what others thought of me a long time ago. I’d had to in order to survive.
“She was the best dancer out there though.”
“That doesn’t matter! She’s a hot mess and will drag the rest of us down. This theater doesn’t need a bad rep.”
Ever so slowly, being hurt started to transform into something else. A burning-hot anger. How dare these people judge me when they didn’t even know me?
“She was so fucking jealous when she wasn’t chosen to be the lead she made sure the prima was injured—”
“That’s not really fair. They could never prove she actually did anything—” a third voice offered only to have the first cut off any defense of me.
“Get real. I don’t need proof. Everyone knows she did it or at the very least arranged for Lara’s so-called accident. You know who she was screwing, right?”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“Take off those rose-colored glasses,” the leader suggested in a voice that dripped derision. “What it means is all Miss Bitch had to do was whine to her mob-connected boyfriend, and what do you know? Lara’s legs are shattered, and we all know that’s as good as a death sentence for a prima ballerina. Clara Simyoneva would have been more merciful if she’d gone ahead and put the poor girl out of her misery as she never was able to dance again. Who does that shit? What would drive someone to that? She’s a fucking diva bitch—”
I was shaking so hard I had to press my palm against the tile to keep my knees from buckling. Their conversation brought back the months of whispers, the thousands of accusations I’d endured, the looks of pure hatred that still had the power to follow me into my nightmares. Granted, I’d not been permanently damaged like Lara, but that didn’t mean I’d not spent the past years in pain.
I’d had to make the choice to allow the dark to take me to the depths of hell or find the strength to claw my way out.
No one gave a damn I was innocent or that I’d walked away from an extremely lucrative career. I’d traded the spotlight on center stage for a bare bulb illuminating a cement garage floor.
And how did that work