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More men approached Sean, and soon, he was in deep conversation with them, with talk that changed from sports to the stock market and golf, depending on the people he was talking to.
I looked around and saw people looking at Sean Tassater with interest, eager to approach once Ron Gellinger made his exit. This was a gala that was exclusive to the elite, I realized, since the aim was to raise five million dollars to fund art programs in public schools. An opportunity to give back to the community while encouraging local talent. Sean was popular among this crowd.
As I observed the guests, I couldn’t help but overhear snippets of their conversations. Their concerns and interests were worlds apart from my own. Exotic vacations, luxury cars, and high-end fashion brands—topics that seemed entirelyforeign to me. In the middle of a conversation about an older man’s yacht party near Barbados, I got distracted by the tunes of a once-familiar song. A click-clack of heels followed this tune, and I turned around to find the source of that sound.
I walked a few feet away, and there, off to one side, away from the adults, was a group of girls. They were in intense concentration as one girl demonstrated her ballet dance steps and the others watched. I recognized the steps—a plié and a pirouette.
I stared at these girls from a distance, a faint memory stirring in my heart. I’d loved dancing so much as a child. I’d forgotten this want in the recent past. I hadn’t been around younger kids or girls or women with an interest in dancing lately.
“I don’t know what comes after this,” said the girl who was dancing, extending her hands up. “We learned it yesterday.”
“Saut de basque,” I whispered, and the girls turned around in surprise, unaware that they were being watched. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Don’t worry; I won’t watch you anymore,” I said and turned around.
“She’s right,” I heard a girl tell the others. “It wassaut de basque,” she said.
I snuck a glance over my shoulder.
“It’s okay; you can watch,” the same girl told me before she did the complex jump with a sideways twist.
She landed gracefully on the left foot, completing the turn and maintaining the cross-legged position, and I couldn’t help but applaud with exhilaration. It hit me then—a dream I’d once had. A dream of dancing with the New York City Ballet one day, and it was as though someone had bowled over with a substantial punch to my gut.
I’d forgotten my own dreams.
I knew of people who couldn’t chase their dreams, of people who had outlandish dreams, but how could someone completely forget the presence of a dream they’d once had?
“I wanted to be a ballet dancer,” I confessed to the girls. If no one else, at least some ten-year-old girls in the universe knew about my dreams.
“Why aren’t you one today?” one asked confidently.
I began to explain, a trivial justification for my life today, but then I remembered a memory from my high school days. I had left for a dance performance in my local ballet school.
“I had gone to my dance performance against my father’s wishes,” I began in a hollow voice as they crowded around me. “He didn’t want to encourage me to pursue a career he believed wasn’t lucrative. Instead, he told me I was supposed to pick up my brother, Henry, from his friend’s home and stay home. I refused, wanting to take part in my show. I was the lead performer after all, and what did it matter that Dad didn’t understand or didn’t want to see it? I sure wasn’t going to miss the show I was headlining to pick up Henry.”
They nodded.
“Duh,” the brown-haired one with a tiara on her head emphatically said.
I could see it in her eyes—the drive to be the best dancer ever.
“Henry understood. He said he’d wait for me at his friend’s place, that I could get him after my performance.”
I remembered that night. I’d gotten my first and only standing ovation. When I got out, much later than I was supposed to because someone from The Juilliard School had spoken to me about applying for dance school, my head was in the clouds. It was bitterly cold when I stepped out, and I got into the first bus that came along, nervous and shivering with excitement. It didn’t matter that we were poor, of limited means. I had a future and hopes and dreams and stars in my eyes.
I had gone straight to Henry’s friend’s house, and we were walking home together. I’d been so lost in my own world that by the time I noticed the car, it was too late. Henry had been alert, and he’d protected me. Weeks later, when he’d come home, he was in a wheelchair. Indirectly or not, I was responsible.
I stared back at the eager, open faces of the young girls, unable to articulate my thoughts, when Sean came to my side.
“Lucas is missing,” he said, his voice rough.
23
CHLOE
Complete and utter silence followed Sean’s statement as he continued to tower over me. I turned and ran closer to where Lucas had been sitting, my heart hammering against my chest.
He wasn’t there anymore.
Damn.