Pointe Shoes, Borrowed Cleats

Amélie looked at the floor, then at Lina’s bag. “Did Cal follow you?”

“No.”

“Marisol?”

“No.”

“Then who?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

Amélie’s expression tightened. “By asking questions?”

“Quietly.”

“That has never been your strength.”

Before Lina could answer, Tomas appeared at the end of the corridor with a clipboard tucked beneath one arm. His attention moved from their faces to the smear on the floor.

“Pike wants the senior dancers in the office after rehearsal,” he said. “Something about a sports clinic.”

Lina’s stomach dropped.

“What sports clinic?” she asked.

Tomas frowned. “The one across the street. They’re evaluating players for the championship.”

“Why would they want us?”

“They don’t. Pike received a call.”

“From whom?”

“Someone asking about a player.”

The corridor seemed to narrow.

Tomas glanced toward Studio B. “The caller used the name Mara Vale.”

Amélie turned to Lina.

Lina felt the old raw place beneath her toes open again, though she had not moved.

“What did they ask?” she said.

“Tomas,” Madame Varga called from inside. “We are not holding rehearsal in the hallway.”

He looked irritated by the interruption. “They asked whether Mara Vale had any connection to the company.”

The piano fell silent.

Lina’s hand closed around the strap of her dance bag.

“Who called?” she asked.

“Tomas,” Madame Varga said again, sharper now.

He lowered his voice. “Pike didn’t tell me. He said the clinic had notes from a scrimmage.”

“What notes?”

“Something about unusual movement.”

Amélie’s eyes sharpened. “Lina.”

“I need to go across the street.”

“You need to rehearse.”

“If someone is asking about Mara, I need to know why.”

“And if they recognize you?”

Lina looked at the red REVIEW notice on the corridor door. Beneath it, the company’s name had begun to peel from the painted glass.

“If I don’t find out, they’ll keep asking.”

Madame Varga stepped into the corridor. “Lina, back to the studio.”

“Give me ten minutes.”

“No.”

“Please.”

Madame Varga studied her. She had always been able to tell when Lina was injured, frightened, or lying. The director’s gaze dropped to the dance bag, then rose again.

“You have been late twice this week,” she said. “You are distracted during rehearsal. Now you want to leave because someone at a sports clinic made a telephone call.”

Lina’s throat tightened. “It concerns the company.”

“That is what everyone says before abandoning the work in front of them.”

The words struck cleanly. Lina saw Madame Varga’s face from the office, pale beneath the number written on the whiteboard. Two hundred thousand dollars. Eleven days. A company she had given her life to, asking for one more impossible performance.

“I’m not abandoning anything,” Lina said.

“Then prove it by staying.”

Lina looked toward the street-facing windows. Across the road, the sports complex stood beneath a gray morning sky. The clinic occupied its side wing, marked by a blue sign she had noticed only once before.

She needed the answer now. Not after rehearsal. Not after another question reached Adrian Pike. Not after someone compared Mara Vale’s movement to a dancer’s and decided to look closer.

“I’ll be back,” she said.

Madame Varga’s mouth hardened. “That was not permission.”

Lina moved anyway.

Amélie caught her wrist before she reached the stairs. “If you go, I’m coming.”

“No.”

“You don’t get to disappear into another building while people are already looking for you.”

“I need you here.”

“Why?”

“Because if Madame Varga asks where I went, someone has to keep her from calling Pike.”

Amélie searched her face. “You’re scared.”

“Yes.”

The honesty made Amélie release her.

“Ten minutes,” Amélie said. “Then I come after you.”

Lina nodded and hurried downstairs.

The sports center smelled of wet pavement and rubber mats. A whistle shrilled from the main court. At the reception desk, the same woman from the previous day looked up.

“Clinic?” Lina asked.

“Side entrance. Sign in first.”

“Who is being seen?”

The woman glanced at the clipboard. “Players from the championship.”

“Is there a doctor named - ”

She stopped herself. Asking for a name would make the question memorable.

The receptionist pointed toward a frosted door. “They’re taking people in one at a time.”

Lina signed the visitor sheet with a looping initial instead of her name and entered.

The waiting area held six plastic chairs, a water cooler, and a television showing a muted soccer match. The air smelled of antiseptic and mint gum. A boy with a wrapped ankle sat beneath a poster of a human knee. An older man in a team jacket filled out a medical form, his pen scratching loudly in the quiet.

A nurse behind the desk looked up. “Can I help you?”

“I’m here about the championship evaluations.”

“Player name?”

Lina hesitated.

“Mara Vale,” she said.

The nurse checked a tablet. “You’re not scheduled.”

“I was told there were notes from yesterday’s scrimmage.”

“By whom?”

“Tomas Bell.”

The lie came too quickly. She hated how easily his name had become useful.

The nurse’s attention sharpened. “Are you with the ballet company?”

Lina’s pulse stumbled. “Why would you ask that?”

“I didn’t. You did.”

“I’m asking about the notes.”

“Those are private.”

“I’m the player.”

The nurse looked at her face, then at the sign-in sheet. “Mara Vale?”

“Yes.”

“Identification?”

Lina had left her wallet in the dance bag. Of course she had. She reached for her phone, then remembered the registration form hidden beneath the green flyer, the legal name attached to the alias.

“I can bring it.”

“Then bring it.”

The nurse turned back to the tablet.

Lina stepped aside, pretending to read the poster. The words blurred. Ligaments. Rotational strain. Load distribution. She listened instead.

A door opened behind the desk.

“Dr. Sen,” the nurse said, “the Eastbank file is in the consult room.”

Lina turned.

A woman in navy scrubs carried a thin folder beneath one arm. She was perhaps forty, with silver threaded through her dark hair. She glanced at Lina, then at the sign-in sheet.

“Who is she?”

“Mara Vale,” the nurse said. “She says she’s here for the evaluation notes.”

Dr. Sen’s eyes rested on Lina’s legs. Not her face. Her stance.

“You’re the wide midfielder,” she said.

Lina forced herself not to shift. “Provisional.”

“You weren’t listed on the initial roster.”

“I replaced someone.”

“Nia?”

Lina nodded.

Dr. Sen opened the folder. “Then you should know the notes were not made about you.”

“Whose notes?”

“The evaluator’s.”

“Can I see them?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you aren’t scheduled, and because the notes contain information about other players.”

Lina heard the faint squeak of shoes on the court beyond the wall. Somewhere, a ball struck the floor and rolled away.

“What did the evaluator notice?” she asked.

Dr. Sen gave her a measured look. “You already know, don’t you?”

“No.”

“Your team’s captain described a player with unusual lateral control. Low center of gravity. Early weight transfer. Controlled rotation through the hips. The evaluator thought the movement looked trained.”

“Many athletes train.”

“Not like this.”

Lina felt heat rise beneath her collar. “What does it look like?”

Dr. Sen’s gaze dropped again to Lina’s feet.

“Ballet,” she said.

The word seemed to sound through the entire waiting room.

The boy with the wrapped ankle glanced over. The older man stopped writing.

Lina folded her arms. “That doesn’t identify anyone.”

“No. But it creates a direction.”

“What direction?”

“Dance schools. Performing companies. Athletic programs. Places where the body is taught to move before it is taught to react.”

Lina thought of the muddy print outside Studio B. Of the person who had watched her arrive. Of Tomas saying someone had asked whether Mara Vale was connected to the company.

“Who wrote the notes?” she asked.

Dr. Sen closed the folder. “A consultant.”

“Name?”

“That’s confidential.”

“You said the notes weren’t about me.”

“They aren’t.”

“Then why is someone cross-referencing my movement with a ballet company?”

The nurse looked up sharply.

Dr. Sen did not answer at once. She set the folder on the counter and tapped its edge against the desk until the pages aligned.

“Who told you that?”

Lina realized her mistake too late.

Dr. Sen’s expression changed. “You came here claiming to be Mara Vale. You ask about confidential notes. Then you mention a cross-reference no one in this room has mentioned.”

Lina’s mouth went dry.

“I heard it from the team.”

“Which team?”

“Eastbank.”

“From whom?”

Lina saw Marisol’s warning: You show up, listen, and play. You don’t tell them you need the prize. You don’t tell them you’re trying to save a ballet company.

She had already told them too much by trying to know less.

Dr. Sen reached for the folder.

Lina acted.

She stepped forward, caught the edge of the file, and pulled it toward her. The folder slipped from Dr. Sen’s hand. Papers fanned across the counter.

The nurse shouted, “Hey!”

Lina grabbed the top page.

Words leaped at her through the clinic’s hard white light.

Mara Vale - no confirmed athletic history. Movement pattern consistent with classical ballet training. Cross-reference requested: Saint-Cyr Ballet Company roster.

Below that, in blue ink, someone had written a name.

Amélie Laurent.

Lina stared at it.

The nurse seized her elbow. Lina twisted free, but not before the folder struck the floor. Papers scattered beneath the chairs.

Dr. Sen bent to collect them. “You need to leave.”

“Who requested the cross-reference?”

“Leave now.”

“Why is Amélie’s name there?”

Dr. Sen looked up.

That was answer enough.

Lina backed toward the door. Her fingers shook. Amélie had not been questioned by the clinic. Not yet. Someone had searched the company roster and selected her name from it. Someone knew enough about the ballet company to start with Lina’s closest friend.

The waiting room door opened.

Amélie stood there, breathless, one hand gripping the frame.

“Lina,” she said. “What did you do?”

Lina looked at the papers on the floor, at the blue-inked name visible beneath Dr. Sen’s hand.

“I found out who they’re looking at,” she said.

Amélie’s face lost its color. “Who?”

Lina could not make the name sound harmless.

“Us.”

Dr. Sen gathered the notes against her chest. “You need to understand something. Whoever requested this inquiry already knows Mara Vale is connected to Saint-Cyr.”

Lina’s skin prickled.

“Then who are they?” she asked.

Dr. Sen’s eyes moved to the sign-in sheet, where Lina’s false name sat above the looping initial she had meant to hide behind.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But they didn’t ask about Mara Vale first.”

She turned the top page over.

Beneath the clinic notes, a photocopied company roster showed a line circled in red.

Amélie Laurent.

Lina reached for it, but Dr. Sen pulled it away.

“You came looking for an answer,” the doctor said. “Now someone knows you came.”

Outside, a whistle cut through the sports center. Lina heard the sound of the ballet piano in memory, Madame Varga counting them back into position, the company’s future balanced on every hidden step.

She had wanted to know who was asking questions.

Now she knew the questions had already reached home.

End of chapter five. 5 more chapters in the full book.