Act Forty-Seven
Baylee Wright
My core flames with each sit-up. One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
I lift my body to meet Luka’s intensely charismatic gray eyes. His pink lips curve, his hands securing my ankles, protective and tender. I feel so safe.
He disappears when I lower my back to the blue mats.
“Five,” Luka counts aloud.
Rising up, he leans forward and places a gentle, warm kiss against my lips.
I smile, lowering back to the mat.
“Six.”
I use my core to bring my body up again, and my eyes widen, horrified. I try to scream, but no sound escapes.
Geoffrey replaced Luka; he kneels before me—gripping my ankles so tight, his fingers dig into my bones.
His ill-humored glare slashes at me, his goatee out-grown and hair curling in oily tendrils. Before I can lie back down, Geoffrey leans forward and slams his forehead forcefully against mine—
I gasp awake, breath stuck in my throat. My tank top and fleece pajama shorts suction to my sweaty skin.
“Baylee. Baylee,” Luka repeats my name, his hands on my cheeks, hovering over me. I tighten my eyes shut. I’m on Luka’s top bunk.
I’m not in the gym.
Geoffrey isn’t here.
I repeat it all, tired tears slipping out of the corners of my eyes.
“Bay, can you look at me?”
I catch my breath, my pulse racing, and I open my eyes. Luka’s concern blankets me, and I try to hang onto him. Metaphorically and physically. I clutch his wrists while he holds my face.
“Luka…” My face is frozen in a wince. I think I scared myself.
He quickly pulls my body onto his lap, sitting up, and his strong arms wrap around my back in a skintight hug. I press my forehead to his shoulder, my arms sliding underneath his, curving up his back.
God, Geoffrey is invading my nightmares, and I can’t ever remember having one that vivid.
“You’re okay,” Luka whispers against my ear. “You’re okay.”
He’s such a dreamer. Because I don’t know if we are okay anymore. Luka has the darkest circles beneath his eyes, as sleep-deprived as me, and these past weeks, months, have been a giant struggle.
He searches my gaze. “What are you thinking?” His voice is a whisper since Dimitri is on the bottom bunk beneath us.
“That we’re sinking in quicksand, and I’m afraid…” I shrug, unable to say the rest.
Luka combs back the sweaty pieces of my hair. “He won’t be our choreographer forever. This will end at some point.” His lips rise. “And we can watch the Mets lose to the Cubs in peace.”
I start smiling. How am I smiling? “Hey, you have to admit, the Mets showed spunk and fought a good fight.”
“Oh yeah,” he says easily. “They never gave up.”
Those four words hang over us for a moment, and our eyes dance over each other again. I don’t want Geoffrey to hurt Luka, but our choreographer pushes him before and after performances in ways that he doesn’t push anyone else. Not even me.
He has this gross fascination with Luka’s emotional restraint, and he tries to trap him in different acting exercises. Just to break him down.
Each one ends the same way: Luka starts laughing and Geoffrey orders him to leave the gym. It plays out so often now, I’m scared that outcome will morph into something worse.
The bottom bunk creaks, a body rolling ungracefully out.
I rest against Luka. “We’ve woken the sleeping giant.”
“Say that a little louder, I couldn’t hear you over your dry-humping,” Dimitri says, flitting on the lights by the dresser.
Luka and I squint.
“We weren’t humping,” I say flatly.
Dimitri rests an elbow on the dresser. “Sounded like dick against pussy to me.”
Luka rubs the tired corners of his eyes. “Shut up, dude.”
I yawn again. “You seriously make it impossible to forget human anatomy.”
“I’m an educator,” Dimitri agrees.
“No,” Luka and I say in unison.
His eyes dart between us, waiting for one of us to explain the truth of the matter, but we both hesitate for a long moment.
Dimitri is concerned enough that he says, “I can always go find Brenden. I’m sure he’d love to hear about Luka’s pecker in his sister—”
“Fuck you,” Luka says with very little malice.
“Okay,” I say, and as he spins to the door, I add, “No, wait. I meant okay I’ll tell you.” I rotate so I’m on Luka’s lap, but I lean my back to his chest. He holds me comfortingly around the waist. “I had a nightmare.”
Dimitri makes this grunting noise that sounds like a hmm.
“What?” I ask.
“Just wondering if it had anything to do with Geoffrey.”
My stomach drops. “How’d you know?”
Luka frowns. “You had a nightmare about Geoffrey.” It’s not a question. His concern heats me up inside, and he rubs his face again like he wishes our torment would all end tonight.
Dimitri explains, “I’ve been having a reoccurring nightmare where Geoffrey starts screaming at all the girls in Infini. My brothers and cousins restrain me, but I eventually land a fist in his face. And I’m fired.” He thinks for a second. “I thought maybe Geoffrey wasn’t just penetrating my mind at night. Maybe yours too. That fuck-face.”
Luka asks, “What happened to fart-face?”
“He became a fuck-face when he started penetrating brains at night,” Dimitri nearly growls. He massages his knuckles and scans me in a once-over.
Luka extends his leg out, his muscle probably cramping. “Geoffrey needs to relax.”
We wear weak, nostalgic smiles as we’re subtly reminded about the sex toys and relax note someone slipped in Geoffrey’s office.
“Did I ever tell you,” Dimitri says, “I found out who gave him the blow-up doll and ball gag?”
My eyes grow, curious, but my phone buzzes. I search beneath the buried blankets while Luka asks, “Who?”
My ankle touches the hard phone cover, and I wrestle with the sheets for it.
“Sergei.”
I freeze. “Sergei?”
“No,” Luka rejects the idea. “Someone’s fucking with you.”
“If they were fucking with me, I’d know it,” Dimitri says. “You forget that I grew up with Serg. Once upon a time, I knew him better than I knew you.”
I find my phone. “Sergei is a rule-follower.”
“To the core,” Luka adds.
“Like me. Like Nikolai,” Dimitri agrees, “but Sergei also can’t turn down a dare. Erik dared him, and what do you know—it happened.”
Luka looks dumbfounded.
Dimitri flips off the lights, returning to his bunk. “You’re probably too young to remember all of Serg’s dares. Nikolai once got him to streak buck-ass naked through a Waffle House in Atlanta.”
The bed squeaks as he climbs on, the entire structure rumbling. I clutch Luka’s thigh in case the bed collapses.
I’ve imagined the super shitty scenario a dozen times, and I always feel terrible for Dimitri Kotova. On the flip side, he told us that if he dies underneath our bunk bed, he’ll haunt our asses for the rest of our lives.
It’s a seriously terrifying threat.
Luka calls down, “How old were all of you, back then at the Waffle House?”
“Fifteen, seventeen,” Dimitri says from below. Luka would’ve been nine-years-old at that time, and while he mentally sifts through his history, I click into the email notification.
Date: August 25th
Subject: New Changes
From: Geoffrey Lesage, Choreographer
Cc: Baylee Wright
Baylee Wright:
Starting tomorrow, you will practice with machetes for the opening number. Clubs are over. (You will still perform with fire for your juggling act and use balls for the trampoline act.)
I expect a completed, pristine performance with machetes on stage in one week.
Don’t fail this show.
Geoffrey Lesage
Infini Choreographer
I have no reaction. None at all.
I spin my screen to Luka, the soft blue glow illuminating his angered eyes.
It’s a rare sight, his anger. I keep soaking in his features. He’s twenty-one now. He looks older, but more so from stress.
I pre-ordered the Hamilton soundtrack on vinyl for his birthday, August 21st. He’s been obsessed with the musical, and the soundtrack is releasing soon, so he was happy and surprised I remembered.
But I wish I could’ve done more. Hamilton just moved from Off-Broadway to Broadway this month, and he would’ve loved to go.
It’s not even the price that stops me. We don’t have time. I mean, we celebrated his birthday in Verona, the club. Not the city. And even then, Luka and I had to leave early.
Geoffrey had the costume department make miniscule changes on our “nightmare” outfits. He scheduled us for fittings on that particular day, at night.
Luka shakes his head. “We’ll get Perrot to change this.”
“Perrot hasn’t fought Geoffrey on anything. Even Nikolai called him spineless.” I can’t be surprised anymore that this is happening. I can’t even be mad. I feel like I’m reserving all my energy for an apocalyptic scenario where Geoffrey attacks Luka.
Luka looks away, thinking.
“You know what’s weird? Months ago,” I whisper, “machetes seemed like the most dangerous, worst thing that could happen.” I shrug. “Now they don’t seem that bad.”
Luka gapes at me. No one ever asks if I’m being serious because they always know I am. “Come on, Bay.”
“What?” I frown.
“They’re bad.”
“They’re dulled, and I can put rubber on the edges while I practice.”
His nose flares. “What happens when you drop the machete on your head and the blade hits your skull? You’ll need twenty stitches, and you may form a stutter.”
So that happened to one of my instructors when I was eleven. I shouldn’t have told him that story. “Will you still love me if I form a stutter?”
“Bay,” he forces.
“You better,” I say. I already know he would.
Luka hugs me again, and he presses a long, warm kiss to the top of my head. As though healing a wound that hasn’t arisen yet.