Soft rain fell from thick, low clouds, kissing the multitudes of green in every single shade that covered the natural landscapes as well as the sprawling man-made concrete jungle of Seattle, Washington.
With the Puget Sound and the Kitsap and the Olympic peninsulas to the west coast of the city, and the Cascade mountain range rising high to the east of it, Seattle was a massive community nestled into some of the most beautiful and dramatic areas of the Pacific Northwest.
It was a wild and rugged place, with mild winters and cool summers, domed with blue skies or rain, and surrounded thickly by evergreens and unending blue waterways. Islands dotted every bit of water from the Puget Sound to the Salish Sea, where resident orcas hunted in the saltwater and bald eagles flew overhead.
Rainforests abounded throughout the land, as did Native American reservations and cities both big and small. Some of the countless hills and valleys were left wild as national and state parks, and some were shorn of their natural bounty and paved with roads and buildings, rising and falling with the land.
Snow capped mountains stood sentinel over it all, like royalty gazing out over their kingdoms, from the cities and hills to the pine trees that grew all the way to the expansive shorelines, and then disappeared into the lapping blue waves of the Pacific.
Seattle was the largest of any of the cities in Washington, and it was home to not only a multitude of residents, but also to tech companies; giants in the industries, including Microsoft and Amazon. The tech industry there was as prolific as the evergreens, and it continued to grow daily as the world evolved further into the age of electronics and technology.
The most easily recognizable and famous icon of Seattle was the Space Needle that had been created and built for the 1962 World’s Fair, but it was far and away not the only icon of the city. There was also the EMP museum, housing memorabilia from decades of Rock and Roll legends and rotating science fiction exhibits, the Pike’s Place Market which was famous for fish mongers flinging fresh fish about with abandon, as well as the first and original Starbucks café.
Just north of the Belltown neighborhood where all of those things were, one could do a little exploring and discover the notorious Fremont Street Troll beneath a bridge, which began as an artistic installation and soon became a tourism mecca within the city.
Not far from the Fremont Street Troll, which was anchored in a tidy residential neighborhood lined with middle class houses and small businesses such as pubs and restaurants, bookstores and cafés, there was a good sized ballet studio where a woman who had once danced with American Ballet Theatre in New York City taught ballet to young dancers from four or five years old to dancers in their twenties and beyond.
Her name was Maria, and on one particular morning, she was instructing a group of girls and boys aged seven to ten. Among them was a nine year old girl, dressed in the requisite petal pink leotard and tights, and on her feet she wore soft leather ballet slippers, though she had graduated to hard pointe shoes and practiced in them regularly to better her beloved craft.
The girl was tall for her age, and thin, giving her an ideal form for a ballerina. Her skin was milk-chocolate, and her hair was black and curly when it was loose, falling to her shoulders, but when she was taking class, it was always pulled up in a little ballerina bun. She had big brown eyes and long eyelashes. Her smile was wide and bright, and her laugh was infectious.
She was standing in a line along with the other dancers in her class, both boys and girls, each of them with their hand on the barre, some looking in the mirror to their left, some looking straight ahead, and some, like the girl, were glancing at their teacher as she spoke out the movements to them.
While the young girl was focused on her dancing, a woman in her mid-twenties was focused on her. The woman had darker skin than the girl; almost like dark chocolate with a golden honey glow to it. She had short cropped hair in a pixie haircut, and large dark eyes. She too was slender, but with feminine curves that gave her tall frame an elegant air about it. Her face looked almost as if it had been delicately carved by a master artisan; high cheekbones and an angled jawline. Her nose was rounded at the tip and her lips were very full. She smiled at the girl, loving seeing her in what was truly her natural element.
The little girl had been dancing since she was three, when her mother had seen how much the girl loved to dance every time music came on anywhere around her. The girl had taken to ballet like a duck to water, and she had risen quickly through the ranks amongst her other classmates. She was one of the best dancers at her school, and she endeavored to be a professional ballerina when she grew up. It was the dearest wish of her heart.
As the woman sat there watching, her heart hurt a little that the little girl’s mother was not there to see her, to see the progress that her baby had made, to see the way that her feet arched so perfectly or her legs and arms extended just as they should, to see the pure bliss on the girl’s face, to be there dancing and learning, and getting better all the time.
The girl’s mother had been the woman’s best friend, and four years earlier, when the girl was just five years old, her mother had been killed in an accident by a drunk driver. The girl had been in kindergarten and her mother had never come home. The girl had no other family as her father was incarcerated, and so Callie Forrester had petitioned the judge to take over care of the little girl, and the judge saw that Callie had been best friends with Amanda David since they were ten years old, and Callie had been there when Amanda had her baby girl. Callie had been around the girl her whole life, and so the judge agreed to the arrangement, with check ins to see how things were going.
That was how little Jenny David came to live with Callie Forrester and her mother, Noel. Callie had plans to move out of her mother’s house and go to college. She wanted to work in the technology industry in Seattle or Silicon Valley in southern California where technology changed by leaps and bounds every day, but when Amanda died and she took on the care of her best friend’s daughter, her dreams and aspirations, her goals and her plans changed.
She said more than once that she never would have done it any differently, and she knew in her heart that if the roles were reversed and it had been her child and she had passed away, Amanda would have taken her baby in a second as well. She didn’t regret it, but it did put a bit of a delay on her goals; her hopes and dreams, and she was working hard to get to them, but having the responsibility of a child put her on a very different path than she had anticipated, so that she could reach her dreams.
The teacher called the class to close, and raised her hands. When Maria spoke, everyone listened.
“Class!” She grinned at them and they all rushed to gather around her, their small faces looking up to her, their child’s eyes adoring her and drinking in every word that fell from her.
“You all did so wonderfully today! Congratulations! And now I want to tell you something very exciting!” Her students were rapt with anticipation. “Our dance academy will soon be performing a production of The Sleeping Beauty. The music is by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, so you should go home and listen to that and learn it.” There were gasps and squeals among the children, but they continued to listen to her.
“We will be holding tryouts for the roles to make sure that everyone has a fair chance to audition for the parts that they want to dance. When you leave today, you’ll find a list of the roles and the parts that go with them on a sheet of paper by the door. If you would like to audition for this production and be a part of it, then pick up your page as you leave, and then come for the audition next week. Good luck, everyone! Have a good day!” She beamed at them all and waved her hands, giving many of them hugs before they left.
Jenny ran to Callie with huge eyes. “Did you hear? Did you hear what Miss Maria said! The Sleeping Beauty! Oh gosh! I want to dance Aurora! I want that role so much!” Jenny was swooning and brimming with pure excitement. “May I please try out for it? Oh please?” She begged in earnest.
Callie grinned and nodded. “Of course you can! I’m sure you’ll have a very good chance of getting the role! I’ll make sure that you get to the auditions, and hopefully you’ll get to be Aurora.” She stood up and Jenny bounced and twirled in a circle, unable to contain her absolute delight.
“Let’s get going. We have to get home to have dinner and do homework.” Callie reminded her kindly. Jenny nodded and hurried to get her ballet bag packed. When she had changed her shoes, she went to Miss Maria and hugged her.
“Callie says that I can audition for The Sleeping Beauty! I want to be Aurora! Do you think that I can do it?” she asked with intense hope. Miss Maria nodded encouragingly.
“I’m sure that you would make a fine Aurora, and you’re certainly good enough to do it, so come to the audition and do your best, and we’ll see!” Miss Maria hugged her once more and then Jenny and Callie headed for the door where Jenny picked up one of the production information pages.
All the way home in the car, Jenny read the page and talked about it, and Callie listened intently to everything that she said; everything that she was hoping for. “Well, we’ll get you ready and we’ll do our best to help you as much as we can, but in the end it’s all up to you to do as good a job as you can at the audition and wow the pointe slippers off of your teachers. I think you can do it.” Callie gave her a wink.
They went down one hill and up another, around that hill and down again. At last Callie pulled the car up to the driveway of a modest home with a dark roof and sea blue siding. There was a white picket fence around the small yard where grass grew and trees hung heavy with leaves. There was a carport big enough for two cars, and one car was already parked beneath it when Callie pulled her car in next to it.
She flipped the windshield wipers off and they gathered there things to go in. “Can I tell Noel, please?” Jenny asked excitedly. Callie nodded and laughed softly.
“Yes, you can.” She smiled. “Go ahead and tell her. I’m going to check the mail.”
They went their separate ways and by the time Callie got into the house, Noel was clapping her hands and crying out with excitement as well. “I see she didn’t waste any time telling you!” Callie said happily as she set the mail and her bag down.
“She didn’t even say hello! It was straight to the great news!” Noel laughed as she waddled into the kitchen. “I better make that baby a snack so she can get started on her homework, and you can get started on dinner.”
Noel was heavy bodied, but her heart was the biggest part of her. Her black hair had long ago turned white, her brown eyes were warm, her smile wide and welcoming. She was as smart and wise as she was kind and loving. She had loved her twins Jackson and Callie more than anyone in the world, and when Callie’s best friend Amanda, who had practically grown up in the house with them, died in the car accident, it was like losing a second daughter to her. When Callie told her mother that she wanted to raise Amanda’s baby girl, rather than seeing her go off into the foster care system, Noel hadn’t hesitated a bit, and instead had gone to court with Callie to petition the judge for guardianship of Jenny. Since the day they brought her home, they raised her as if she was their own, and they remained a family of choice and love.
Callie prepared a dinner of roast chicken, green salad and long grain brown rice for them, with real lemonade, while Noel helped Jenny with her homework. They ate their healthy meal at the table together and talked about the upcoming ballet production that the academy was hosting, then they talked about school and Jenny’s friends, as well as what she was learning in class.
When the meal was over, Jenny read a book with Noel while Callie got ready for work. At eight that evening, she tucked Jenny into bed with a kiss.
“You can dream all night about being Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty,” Callie told her with a grin. “Every single night from now until the audition. Dream all you want to, and perhaps that dream will come true.”
Jenny beamed back at her sleepily. “I will! Thank you so much.” Jenny kissed her and fell asleep. Callie left her room and went out to the kitchen to get her purse and her keys. Her mother gave her a hug.
“I want to tell you something, Callie. I think that Amanda would be so proud of you and the job you’re doing with her daughter. You two were such close friends that you might as well have been sisters. Now it feels like you really were, especially watching you raise her. Amanda would love this if she could see you two now.” Noel said kindly, giving her daughter’s hand a squeeze.
“Thank you Mama,” Callie felt tears stinging her eyes as she remembered her best friend, “it means everything to me to do right by Amanda and take care of her baby girl. I appreciate you saying what you have. I try so hard, and this wasn’t what I was going to do with my life, but here I am and I wouldn’t trade it. I couldn’t do it without you, though. I hope you know that. Thank you so much for all that you do.”
“I love you baby, and I loved Amanda, and I love Jenny. She’s a granddaughter to me, and she would be anyway even if Amanda was still alive, so it’s almost the same.” She offered Callie a gentle smile.
Callie sighed and wiped away a few of the tears that couldn’t be held back. “It’s not really the same. Amanda should be here. She should be seeing her baby girl grow up. She should be the one still taking her to ballet class and going to her recitals and sharing all of these precious moments with her. It was stolen away from her. It was stolen away from Jenny and sometimes it just makes me so angry!
Her whole life stolen, Jenny’s whole life changed and her mother gone forever, our lives totally changed too, and why? Because some jerk had too much to drink at the bar one night and got behind the wheel of his truck, thinking that he was sober enough to drive home, or not caring. I don’t know. It just infuriates me that he lived, and he’s going to spend the rest of his life in jail for involuntary manslaughter, but he never should have done it.
I mean, I just think sometimes, what if she had left one minute earlier or later, or what if she had hit a red stoplight on the way and not been there. What if, what if, what if, and it always comes back to the same thing. It never should have happened.” More tears fell and she wiped them away and swallowed her emotion.
“Damn it. My makeup was good tonight too.” She sighed irritably. Her mother hugged her shoulders.
“Now baby, don’t you fret. Your makeup still looks amazing. You look beautiful. Don’t you think on that awful night too much. You’re right, it never should have happened, but it did and here we are. It’s always going to hurt, and you’re always going to hold on to the memory of her, so just hold on to the good times and let the bad things go. No good can come of them, so there isn’t any reason to hold on to them.
Just be here now, and do the best thing that you ever could for your best friend. You look after her baby girl, and give her all the love and care that her mama would have given to her if she’d had the chance. And honey, that’s just what you’re doing. You just keep on doing it, and you’ll do right by her, and you’ll do right by Jenny. That little girl is in the best place she could be right now because you were so good and so selfless to take her in. Nobody but you could love her as much as her mama did. Things have worked out in the face of adversity. Just you mind that. It’s a different road than we all thought we’d be on, but we’re on it together, and we have each other, and that’s the main thing.” She gave Callie a wide smile and a kiss on the cheek.
Callie nodded and wiped her cheeks and eyes dry. “You’re right, Mama. Thank you. You always have such wise words for me. I appreciate it.”
Noel gave her a pat on the back. “Now, you go off to work and be careful tonight, do you hear me?”
“Yes ma’am. I’m always careful.” She managed to give her mother a smile and then she kissed her cheek and headed out of the door. Her thoughts stayed on her friend as she drove her old car to work. They would all be on very different paths if one man had less to drink, or had called a taxi or a friend, or had been delayed even one minute. But life turns on a dime, she thought to herself. It’s crazy how things happen, simple little things that change everything.
Callie pulled up to the strip club and parked her car in the back, giving the back door a dark look. She hated stripping, but she needed the money badly and there was nothing else that she could do while going to college, raising Jenny with her mother, and needing a good income. Callie was a very beautiful woman; everyone told her so, and when she had received guardianship of Jenny, she was just starting out as a college student with no money. She had no idea how she was going to come up with the money to raise a little girl until one of her friends told her that she could strip.
At first the idea was repulsive to her and she wouldn’t consider it, but she knew that the cost of herself and five-year old Jenny living with her mother was too great a financial burden, but they had nowhere else to go, so she found a strip club that would hire her without any experience. Two of the seasoned dancers there took her in and showed her how to dance.
It wasn’t more than a few nights before she had gotten it down enough that she started making more money than she ever had in her life. She couldn’t believe how much money men would pay for the temptation of sex with a beautiful woman they couldn’t have.
She told herself that she was only going to do it for a few months, but then the months turned into years, and she became one of the seasoned dancers there. She made enough money that she, Noel, and Jenny were able to not only live comfortably and have no real need, but it also allowed her to do extra things for Jenny like the ballet classes and it helped to pay for Callie to keep going to school without having to get student loans. She promised herself that one day she would never have to take her clothes off for a man unless she wanted to, and she promised herself that that day would be sometime in the near future.
Locking her car, she went into the empty club and waved hello to the bartender as she walked up to him. Max was handsome with wavy black hair and bright blue eyes. He was always behind the bar unless someone got unruly, and then he was out from behind it quicker than a flash. There were bouncers, but if Max came out, everyone knew that the trouble would be done immediately. He took good care of the girls there, and he wound up marrying one of them, though after they were married, he insisted that she stop dancing.
Callie went to him and gave him a hug in greeting and leaned up to kiss his cheek. “Hey, Max.” She smiled at him. He had been there longer than anyone, and he had seen a lot of people come and go, but he always treated everyone with respect.
“Hey Callie. How are things going for you?” He gave her a smile and the dimple in his chin deepened.
“Good, I think. Pretty good. Jenny is going to audition for the lead role in The Sleeping Beauty production that her ballet academy is doing.” She gave him a smile as she told him, thinking about it.
He grinned. “I bet she’s excited about that! You tell her good luck from me, or break a leg, or whatever they say.”
Callie lowered one brow and leaned in close to him. “Actually, they say merde.”
Max looked confused. “What’s that?”
“It’s literally French for crap. It’s the ballet world’s version of break a leg, which is saying the opposite of what you want to happen, I guess, but it’s what they say.” Callie shrugged.
His expression shifted to surprise. “You let Jenny say crap?”
Callie sighed and smirked disapprovingly. “Well… they all say it, it’s tradition, and it’s in another language, so it’s not as vulgar, I guess. It’s part of the package, I think. There’s not really a way of getting around it.”
He shrugged too.“Well, if that’s the tradition.” He laughed. “I think I might start saying that around here. Merde. No one will know what I’m saying.” Chuckling to himself he went back to wiping glasses clean. “Merde tonight on your dancing.” He teased her.
Callie nodded and gave him a wink. “That’s it!”
She walked back to the dressing room and saw two other women in the room getting ready for their own dancing that night. One was a pale redhead with bright blue eyes. Callie went to her and hugged her warmly, kissing her on the cheek. “Hey Trixie.” She smiled, and Trixie grinned back at her.
Callie hugged the other woman next; a dark haired Mexican beauty who was feisty and fun. “Hey Felicity.” Felicity gave her big hug in return as well.
“How are you?” Trixie asked with a smile.
“Good. Wishing I wasn’t here tonight, but here I am.” Callie set her bags down on the floor and counter at her prep station. “Who’s on first?”
Trixie stood up. “I’ll go first and warm the boys up for you two tonight. It’s my turn, right?” She winked at them both and they laughed a little. A bell chimed and Trixie gave them a grin. “Well, that’s me. Sounds like Max has opened the doors. I’ll see you two in three songs.”
They waved to her and she left them. Felicity went back to doing her makeup and fluffing her long, black hair. Callie changed into her stripper clothes and touched up her makeup and hair. One of the best parts about having a pixie cut was that she didn’t have to do much to it to get ready for her show. She set her headpiece on the countertop so that it would be ready for her show.
Callie pulled her laptop from her bag and opened it, setting it on the counter and turning it on. She rubbed her hands together and concentrated on the screen as it lit up and she began to type quickly, tapping away at the keyboard to log in to a website.
“What are you working on tonight?” Felicity asked lightly, glancing over at her for a moment while she was waiting for the glue to dry on her false eyelashes.
Callie took a deep breath and set her hands on the keyboard. “I’m taking a math test for my online class tonight.”
Felicity gave her a puzzled look. “I don’t know why you do that. Why do you even bother with it?”
Callie looked at her in surprise. “With what?”
“With online classes. I mean, who wants to take a math class in their twenties!” Felicity rolled her eyes.
Callie looked straight at her. “I do it because I don’t want to have to dance for the rest of my life or however long the body holds out. I don’t want to take my clothes off for strange men every night while they try to cop a feel and grope me. I don’t want to keep taking huge stacks of ones to the bank every day. I want to get a degree and have a real day job where I can do what I like to do, computer programming, and where I can have benefits, and paid vacations, and paid sick days, and some kind of respect from the people that I work for.
You think these men here respect us? Not even close. They never will. We’re just something for them to look at and lust after, to pay to touch and tease, and we don’t actually matter to any of them. What we do for them doesn’t matter, in the long run. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t do any good for society or help it along, it doesn’t leave a legacy behind, it doesn’t contribute to anything, it’s just for instant pleasure in the moment and then it’s gone. I’m worth more than that. My time and my life is worth more than that.”
She saw the vacant, uncertain expression on Felicity’s face. “Don’t you want to get out of here and do something with your life?” She asked with a quiet voice, staring at her friend.
Felicity shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I never thought about it. I like doing this. I like the men adoring me and giving me money and drinks, and sometimes dinner. Sometimes a solid good lay. I love all the attention. I’m beautiful and I love being told that I’m beautiful and I love the money. Maybe one day a rich man will come in and fall in love with me and decide to marry me.” She laughed and looked back into the mirror at her reflection.
Callie went back to looking at her laptop and there was silence between them for a long moment, but then Felicity turned slightly toward her, not really looking at her, and she spoke in a soft voice. “You know, I did used to want to open up a coffee shop. I thought that I would love to make coffees and bake every day and see the same people come in and out and talk with them, and play my favorite music all day long. Maybe have books around. Games. You know, a really good coffee shop… but that’s just a pipe dream now.” She sighed and looked back into the mirror.
Callie looked back at her intently. “If you work for it and you save, you could do it. You would be amazing at that. I hope you don’t give up on that dream. Sometimes dreams are all that gets us through.”
“Amen, sister.” Felicity said to her reflection as she touched up her lipstick.
Callie went back to her math test and a short while later Felicia left for the stage and Callie finished up her test. She saw immediately that she passed it and she grinned at the monitor. “Degree, you are one step closer to me. It’s going to happen.”
She reached for her headpiece and pinned it on, giving herself a last look in the mirror. The bell chimed and she left the dressing room and went to the stage. It was dark and she took her stance beside the pole.
Her music began and the lights slowly came upon her, leaving the rest of the room dark. She began to move and sway, turning this way and that, dancing in her high glittering heels to the edge of the stage here and there where she teased the wall of men around her. They hooted and called out to her, holding money up to her and waving it wildly, hoping to tempt her to come to them.
She moved all over, flipping around with acrobatics that drove the men wild, flying around the pole and offering them hints of a view at her curves, collecting their money here and there until she slowly peeled off one layer after another, making them all frenzied until she had an enormous take of cash, and she finally peeled off her last layer, exposing her breasts to them and wearing little more than a G string. The men went wild and roared with delight and pleasure, their eyes lustful and their hands reaching out for her, for even just one feel of her skin on their fingers.
When she’d gathered the last of the money, she left the stage and went to the back to redress for her second act, but the phone on the wall rang and she picked it up.
“This is Callie.”
“Callie, it’s Max up front. I need you to become cocktail waitress. Jan didn’t show up for her shift and it’s insanely busy out here. I’m sorry. I really need the help. Trixie is already back up on the stage and Felicity is going after her.” He sounded sorry, but Callie only smiled.
“Don’t you fret, Max. I’ll be right there. Besides, I just finished my set, so the men will be generous with the tips when they see me out there with them. That’s the way it goes. I’ll be right out.” She had a small wave of relief in her that she could spend the rest of her shift earning money while keeping her clothes on. It wouldn’t be as much money as she’d make on the stage, but it would be good, especially since she had just danced. It would be an easy night, she hoped.