School of the Indifferent

Chapter Two: "So She's Miss National Soloist?"

Chapter Two: "So She's Miss National Soloist?"

Song: Fake Love by Drake

THE FIRST THING I heard the next morning was the irritable, loud sound of music coming from the room next door. Also known as Tara's room. Sometimes I really thought that Tara hated me. I mean, I know that we only met less that twenty-four hours ago but she'd already classified me as a friend and I had done the same for her. So her blasting out 'Inside Out' from her room, which happened to be next to mine, at this ungodly hour in the morning was painful for both my ears and my sleep.

"Tara, can you not!" I groaned as I threw my pillow over my face, muffling my screams so I wouldn't end up waking up Olivia and Marlowe but I doubted they were still asleep with the absolute ruckus Tara was creating with her music.

I slowly peeled myself out of bed and when I said peeled, I meant peeled. My head came off the bed first, then my neck, my torso, my arms and then my bottom half. The January air hit me like a ton of bricks. Maybe that was karma for wearing a tank top and pajama shorts to bed. I moved out of any general vicinity of my bed and walked through the archway into Tara's bedroom, only to see her midway through her pirouette turning sequence. Oh, that explained the deafeningly loud music blasting from her iPod dock placed on her desk. She had moved her beanbags and decorative rug to the sides to make a suitable space to practice her turning. I wondered when she had gotten up.

When Tara had finished her turning sequence, she turned around to look at me, an almost invisible layer of sweat covering her forehead.

"How long have you been there?" she asked me as she turned to get her water bottle.

"About a minute. Those turns were on point," I told her and she grinned in return.

"I'm really trying to get up to twenty turns in a row," she said.

"How many are you at?" I asked.

She thought for a second before finally get her answer. "I think fifteen."

"You'll get twenty pirouettes in no time then." I mean, being a fifteen now would get her up to about twenty in less than a month: two weeks tops.

Again, Tara beamed at me, obviously happy with my praise. "How many pirouettes can you do?"

"I think twenty-two?" I said slowly as I tried to confirm what my mouth was saying. I mean, I'd been practising my dance routine for today for about a month and that didn't need any more than sixteen pirouettes in a row.

I think Tara's eyes popped out of her skull before she shook her head in disbelief. "No way. Prove it."

Looking down at my pajamas and then to the clock on Tara's wall, I shrugged. It was five fifty and I probably wouldn't be able to get back to sleep until night time again and I needed the warm up for dance today.

"Sure, let me change my shorts first," I replied and quickly rushed into my room and pulled on my pajama shorts to exchange them for my dance shorts I saw draped over my desk chair.

As soon as I walked back into Tara's room, she put on 'Chandelier' by Sia and turned to look at me, as if asking if this was a good song. I nodded in response and stretched slightly so I wouldn't pull any muscles before dance even began. Damn, that would be unfortunate...and I wasn't being sarcastic.

I finished stretching and Tara skipped the song backwards so I could start turning. As soon as the beat semi-dropped, I started turning, switching between fast turns, slow turns, arching my leg inwards or outwards and jumping between turns until I finally lost balance and put one foot backward to stop. I turned to Tara to ask her how many turns I did and her jaw was slightly open.