Ever since childhood, all Nicole had ever wanted was to be like Pierina Legnani. The name, ballerina, the legend. From the moment she could walk, she trained. At first it had been something her mother had put her in just to get a few hours to herself, but it wasn't long before Nicole fell completely and totally in love with the elegance, line and poise of the ballerina.
Nicole wasn't very good at first, she was a clumsy child with genetic chubbiness that led her teachers to smile and shake their heads as they watched her try to pirouette around the ballet room in her pink leotard, her translucent white skirt spinning about with her. In their minds she'd never make it much further past grades and school shows, her tubbiness and her short frame did not make her fat in any way, but it certainly did not make her a prime candidate for the dream of her young life- becoming a prima ballerina.
Unlike other girls, Nicole's dream to be a ballerina didn't end when she reached 6 years old or so, nor did it end when she turned 9, or even 15. Nicole was driven day and night by her dream to be a ballerina. The famous faces of ballerina's through the ages lined the walls of her powdery pink room, from the pure prima's like Anna Pavlova, Sylvie Guillem, Eva Evdokimvoa, Cynthia Gregory and Yvette Chauvire, to the true spirits of ballet, the prima ballerina assoluta's: Alicia Alonso, an inspiration as she was sight impaired; Alessandra Ferri; Alicia Markova; Mathilde Kschessinska; Galina Ulanova; Maya Plisetskaya... the names go on and Nicole could recite their life stories and most famous roles in ballets.
Yes, Nicole truly wanted to be a ballerina. She wanted to be the best. She wanted to be a prima assoluta. She worked towards her dream day after day, praciticing in her cramped room, week after week, year after year, from ugly duckling to tall, graceful swan. Her teachers had been put to silence and shame as they watched Nicole turn into the ballerina they never could be.
Of course, Nicole wasn't a robot, she felt the hormones that other teenagers felt, the pressures and the zits that came with growing up, she wanted to fit in and have a boyfriend, but no matter what, ballet came first. Although not a loner, Nicole was hardly the centre of attention at her school. Her close group of friends conisisted mostly of intellect-driven girls, girls with a plan. Boys never paid much mind to them as they sent out a stand-offish vibe, a cool collected coldness that billowed out around them in a protective shield.
If her friendship group and passion weren't enough to deter boys, then her physique did. Nicole's extreme drive to be the perfect ballerina gave her the slim, verging on too skinny, appearance, which inevitably meant no boobs. Her shoulder length brunette hair was always pulled back into a tight ballerina bun, complete with classic netted bun-holder. She walked like a royal, spine pin-straight, shoulders back and head held high, set upon a graceful neck.
Nicole waited for boys to ask her out and when they never did she decided to be proactive, taking the bold approach and asking boys out instead. Threatened by her confidence at their young, immature age, she had been rejected over and over until her pragmatic- albeit heartbroken- self took control and she threw herself deeper into her practice, distilling her teenage pain into the choreography.
Because Nicole didn't dance for the school, she had no reputation for her brilliance on the dancefloor. Suspected, but never questioned, Nicole's luminous ballet skills remained in the dark ignorance of her peer's. Her one other talent, her one academic talent, was her affinity for chemistry. This, instead, was her reputation at school; the local scientist, the grade’s nerd, the near-anorexic chemical genius. By this time in her school-life though, she'd learned to tune out to the teasing and the smart remarks, like her friends, words simply didn't bother her. In fact, if anything ruffled her, be it a particularly toxic insult or a fight with her mother, she'd simply used the anger or shame and distilled it into something else. She turned it into energy to dance harder, to exorcise her pain through her leaps and twirls, to feel the catharsis of the completion of a difficult choreography.
Nicole trained and practiced and performed. The only time she ever felt truly herself was when she was upon the stage. In the ballet world where she lived, she was a legend. Taking as many lead roles as she could, Nicole brought the audiences to tears of sorrow or joy with her flowing steps in 'Swan Lake', 'Romeo and Juliet', 'The Nutcracker', 'Giselle', and 'La Sylphide'.
Her small town fame spilled over into the next town and the next until avid amateur ballet watchers would come to watch her dance her heart out on the wooden blocks of her pointe shoes. When Nicole turned 18 her life changed dramatically. When Nicole was 18, she was scouted.
The prim woman looked about in her early 40's. Completely unaware of her presence in the audience, Nicole had taken the stage to perform a choreography of her own composition. She spun, she leaped, she twirled and arabesqued, she performed her revoltades and her rond de jambes, her grande jetes and sissonnes, ending with a picturesque fifth position pose that had the whole auditorium on its feet before the music had even come to a complete stop. Impressed, the scout waited for the end of the show before personally approaching Nicole and offering her a position with her ballet company.
News travelled fast in her tiny town. Nicole's face was soon branded on the local newspapers, she and her mother were interviewed, Nicole's wallflower status at school blossomed into a quasi-celebrity status overnight. All of a sudden, Nicole's ballet fame exploded over into her scholarly reputation. This did nothing but make Nicole uncomfortable as for many years she'd kept the two strictly separate. Not even her friends had seen her perform. As far as she was aware no-one at her school had ever seen her perform.
~oOo~
This, however, is where she was wrong. She was wrong because there was a school-mate that had seen her perform. His name was Christian. As he had a younger sister, he'd often been dragged along to her ballet recitals. When he was a child he'd paid no mind to the silly girls on the stage, they were boring and they danced to boring music, and to top it all off, they had cooties. But as he'd matured he came to notice a particular dancer that stood out in her group pieces.
She was a mousy brown haired girl with baby fat still clinging to her face. Suddenly, there was a reason to come to the recitals, the glazed look in his eyes transformed into one of rapt concentration whenever she came on stage. Even when his parents decided he was old enough to stay at home and look after himself whenever a recital was on, he'd find a way to join. His secret longing to watch the mysterious beauty on stage came to an end, however, when his sister decided to quit ballet. At the ripe age of 9, of course his petulant little sister could make decisions for herself, could ruin his dreams.
Christian would never admit to enjoying watching the ballet out loud for fear that his friends would tease him or his parents would question his sexuality, so instead he learned how to sneak out, how to lie to his parents, how to trick his friends into thinking he was somewhere when he wasn't. It wasn't until he turned 16 that he discovered that the ballet dancing fantasy girl went to the same school as him, more than that, was in the same grade as him!
He'd noticed one day in assembly- an occasion he regularly skipped to spend sleeping somewhere in the school's many hideouts- a girl with a tight brown bun and impeccable posture sitting a few rows in front and to the left of him. Curiosity spiked within him, he refused to believe that he'd simply not seen her this entire time. Maybe she'd just transferred to his school? Maybe she wasn't the girl?
After a short talk with one of his friends he soon discovered that she had neither just moved to his school, nor was she a ballet dancer. His friends, by no means popular or with connections, assured him that the girl- Nicole- was a chemistry brain, not a ballet dancer. Not only that, but the more he tried to push the subject of Nicole, the more he was rebuffed. She wasn't worth his time, she didn't date, even the whispers that she was lesbian.
Christian learned to shut up about Nicole. To stop asking questions to which he would never get answers. Instead he consoled himself by watching her dance and treasuring the stolen glimpses he got of her during assemblies- an event he had started to attend more regulaurly They shared none of the same classes. He took AP English Lit, where she took normal English Lang. He took Computer Sciences where she took AP Chemistry. The near misses continued and continued. They simply never met half way.
So naturally, he was there the night Nicole was scouted. Naturally, he'd ditched his friends playing x-box in order to watch the figurine on stage. Christian didn't know to call the intense emotion for Nicole love. He'd never breathed a word to her in all his life, but it was something that rang true throughout him: he was a love-sick fool for the rejection-hardened ballerina. The tin soldier to her jack-in-the-box guarded ballerina figurine.
When Nicole said yes to the scout, desperation crashed into Christian like a freight-train. If Nicole left to some fancy new town, how could he watch her dance? He hardly had the money to flit all over the world. With every news article he read and every new piece of gossip he heard, the faster he felt Nicole slipping through his fingers.
Then one day, the day after graduation, the night of prom, she disappeared. His worst nightmares had come to life and Nicole had left his life like a candle extinguished by the cold water of reality. Christian had planned to ask Nicole to dance the night of prom, his nerves getting the better of him, coupled with his bad timing in his intentions to actually ask her to prom as his date. In his mind he'd had a huge proclamation of something planned to say to her, in his mind Christian knew he had to talk to her at least once before they parted to college.
But now it was too late and his ballerina had left to pursue her unwavering dream.
~oOo~
Life for Nicole became a swirl of tight corsets with boning that bit into her flesh, and starched tutus. The buns she wore became tighter, the shoes she wore became finer. The academy she'd been accepted to smoothed her already smooth edges. Every morning she woke up aching, every night she'd nurse her blistered and bunioned feet before writing a letter home to her mother and a few emails to the friends she was still in contact with.
Nicole was thrown into the drama of dealing with ballerina's just as driven and perfect as her. In order to achieve the status of prima assoluta, she'd need to beat out the rest of that competition, she needed to steel her spirit and embrace the crippling pain of her art. Nicole had been introduced to a new level of pain, the Vaganova Academy, famed for it's high student to prima turn over, and it's infamous Vaganova method.
No-one had ever said that prima dancing was easy.
At practice, Nicole studied like her life depended on it, staying hours and hours past the end of the sessions, going over moves again and again until she could do it perfectly 10 times in a row. It was only when she was back in her dorm that she'd allow her porcelain mask to slip and agony to contort her stoic face.
All her hard work paid off though, and before she knew it the academy performances rolled around. At first her raw talent had her dancing with the chorus, watching a final year ballerina make tiny stumbles in the routine that she knew she could pull off unerringly. Then slowly as the years went by, her part was moved forwards and forwards on the stage, until in her final year she was dancing the second to main character. A disappointment to her of course, not having the main role, but a task she undertook in unwavering seriousness.
She practiced her part in front of the mirrors of the studio, she learned it until she could do the choreography with her eyes shut. Then she learned the main choreography, not to undermine her fellow ballet-colleague, but just to challenge herself, to justify to herself that she could do it. During the dress rehearsals Nicole was at ease, her only stress coming from the dancers around her, although dedicated dancers, not all were as passionate as she was, and thus not all had learned the steps as perfectly as she had.
A fact that came to her saving grace when the main prima of their performance decided to prance during their breaks from the rehearsals. The girl, caught up in her big-headed pride, showed off her more dangerous dance moves, things she'd not learned properly or had made up herself. A mere week and a half from the opening night, disaster struck.
The prima had been out partying, claiming her youth, as Nicole never had. The girl and her understudy had decided to drive home after their little indiscretions on the dance floor. That isn't to say that these girls were irresponsible, you did not make it to their level for lack of pure want, indeed these girls were very intelligent, very mature, and usually very responsible. What they did was not stupid or daring, they simply went to dance at a club and drink and be merry. What they didn't do, however, was choose the designated driver, and with hindsight that wasn't entirely sensible.
There had been a crash. Nowhere near fatal, but a serious accident none the less. Serious enough to leave the prima with a broken leg, and her understudy with a concussion and fractured rib. Panic would be the expected response to this drama. Panic and mayhem. But no, when the two prima's hobbled into the studio two days after the incident, the show co-ordinator simply turned to Nicole and told her to swap her costume. No questions, no fuss. It was a well known fact that Nicole could have stepped into any role and have made it breath-taking.
And thus, be it unconventionally, Nicole came to be the prima of the dance show. Once again, she relived her childhood but this time on a grander scale, the feeling was so familiar but so different. Same role of protagonist, same feeling of nervous excitement, but different in every possible way because she was an adult now, she was in an academy production, because her costume wasn't stitched by some harassed mother, because when she danced this show she knew she'd be on the brink of her career and her dream.
Come opening night, the curtains were drawn and the beauty that stepped out en pointe wearing glittering shades of soft blue fabric was not Nicole the prima, it was a creature made of pure distilled dreams. She was flawless. She was a prima assoluta.
Job offers poured into the academy for Nicole, company rep after company rep came seeking her exclusive contract to have her sign with them. She graduated top of her class. She joined the most prestigious of all the ballet companies and her first steps to global fame began.
~oOo~
Christian had not wasted his time after graduation. After being accepted to university overseas on a scholarship, Christian muddled his way through his double degree. Although never at the top of his class, he sat in a happy place somewhere in the middle percentile of his peers. He never forgot Nicole, but he learned from his mistakes and was braver when it came to making a move on a girl he liked.
Despite having a few promising relationships over the years, he always walked into them feeling disappointed, and walked away feeling relieved. In short, he’d never gotten over Nicole. So when he’d graduated and moved home to start up his little business, he’d moved home alone, much to his mother’s dismay.
Fast-forwarding a few years and his business, still relatively small, was popular enough to rake in adequate funds for him to begin working fewer hours. Bored one day in his apartment, Christian decided to take a holiday and simply get away. So he did just that, went online and- feeling a thirst for adventure- entered himself for a lucky dip-like holiday website. Unsure for just how long he would need to wait, Christian had pulled out all his laundry to iron when the ‘bing’ of his emails went off.
He was approaching his computer slowly, when he’d suddenly felt a pang of dread. What if he’d just signed up to spend a week in a place outside of his comfort zone, or some poor disease-riddled town? What if the flight was shot down while flying over a war-zone? Christian had only barely regained a tenuous hold on his rationality by the time he was sat down and had his mouse hovering, tantalisingly, over the new email.
*Click*
And it was open. The hotel and flight details were all listed, but Christian’s eyes were narrowed in on two words alone. New York. He’d been to New York before on business, but never for a holiday. So that’s where he was to go. Looking at the dates he was staying, Christian started looking up things he could do to fill his evenings.
After scores and scores of generic "must do in the big apple" lists as he scoured the websites on Google, he finally found one that allowed him to put his travel dates in and gave him back the events that were happening in New York in that time span. Christian scrolled through dining offers, concerts, and museum displays, pausing every so often to open a tab for one thing or another. About three quarters down the page, however, he saw something that made him stop completely.
"The Mariinsky Ballet Company Presents 'La Sylphide'. For a limted time only! Book tickets now!"
On the icon above the link to the ticketing page showed the image of a beautiful young woman. A ballerina in sparkling white. Nicole.
He clicked on the ticket booking immediately and decieded to buy tickets to all four nights, just for the hell of it. Christian sat in wonder at his fate. Somehow, he'd won Nicole back into his life and this time he sure as hell wasn't letting her get away.
When he went to work the next day, he had more of a skip in his step and a tune in his whistle. He worked hard every day leading up to his trip, as he'd hoped that by working more the time would tick away faster and he'd be on the doorstep on the New York escape.
The moment arrived. It took barely a few days, but it felt like an eon. With light luggage, Christian walked proudly onto his flight, he was a man with a mission. He watched a few movies and slept for a short while before finally touching down.
On his first day, Christian walked around Central Park, trying to whittle time down until the show. At around 7:30pm he treated himself to a fancy dinner and then returned to his hotel to dress to his nines for the black tie event. For the first time in his life, he was publically going to the ballet, he was a sophisticated man about town and no longer the pimply, awkward, socially driven teenager he once had been.
The velvet seats were real, not cheap, worn down material. The dancers hurrying about behind the red curtain were professionals, not hormonal, petulant teenage girls. Christian was at the ballet.
Having seen "La Sylphide" before, Christian knew that he'd see her the second the curtains drew. He couldn't help but fidget as he listened to the orchestra tune and the audience settle into gentle murmurs. The lights went out, the spotlight hit the curtains, and then they drew back revealing Nicole, sat at the foot of a chair next to a sleeping male dancer.
She was perfection. Her motions were graceful and flawless. Nicole stole the audiences breath on the first night. And the second night. And the third night. She had not once wavered in her steps, nor had dark bags beneath her eyes from lack of sleep. Christian sat through every show, he admired her dancing and her poise, he gazed lovingly at the face of his long lost crush. Nicole had done it, made it big as a ballerina and despite that fact that she did not even know his name, he was proud of her for it. Christian knew, hook, line and sinker, that there was no-one else for him but Nicole.
Then came the last night. The fourth night. The finale, the final performance in New York. Nicole had drawn the attention of the masses, her face finding its way to the huge light bulbs of Times Square. The show was sold out.
Taking his usual seat, Christian felt no dread, no worry, not even the slightest premonition of something bad coming his way. Tonight he was going to wait for her and then ask her to dinner. So when the music started tuning and the audience hushed, when the lights dimmed and the curtains were drawn, all that he saw was the stunning woman in sparkling white. His Nicole.
Had he perhaps taken a glace at the male lead's face he might have noticed, had he not been so intent of Nicole's every move he might have seen that the lead male's leaps weren't as high as they'd been on previous nights. Not that noticing any of these things would have changed what happened next.
After the intermission, after finding their seats again, the audience sat and watched, silent spectators to the oncoming tragedy. Nicole stood off-stage, waiting for her cue to get into position for the curtains to draw. In her mind the words of her teacher rang in her mind: you're on the brink, Nicole, in a few years you will be this generation's assoluta, I feel it in my bones. So close to her life-long goal, Nicole had a hitch in her breath, a skip in her heart beats, she was nearly, truly, perfect.
The curtains vanished. Nicole was stood in her position on stage. Christian was sat smiling up at her with love in his eyes. The music began and the dancing commenced. The leaps were in time, the twirls were flawless, the male and female leads danced together in breathtaking symmetry.
The assisted leaps looked fine on the outside to the unknowing audience. Up on the stage, Nicole grew more and more frustrated with her partner, her jumps were becoming more and more forced on her part, and less and less supported on his. Goodness knew that Nicole was light as a feather, she was pure toned muscle, but her partner was weary, lagging, tired.
Come the dramatic lift, the moment when Nicole was forced to put all her trust into her leading man, the unimaginable happened. On her way up, Christian finally noticed a slight change in the ascent. Something was off, was wrong. His breath hitched, his heart caught, Christian couldn't believe his eyes as Nicole soared upwards and then... started to fall.
She fell, time stopped, life stopped, Nicole was suspended in mid-air, her face as serene as a painted doll's. She was falling through thick honey. She collided with the ground in an instant. The music died off, the audience were all on their feet and horrified gasps swept throughout the hall.
Nicole's body was at an unnatural angle. She'd hit the ground hard but no sound was heard, covered, probably, by the music. Slowly, ever so slowly, like a leaf falling from an autumn tree, her body flattened onto the floor, one arm outstretched to the audience, her face turned towards the back of the stage, invisible to the onlooking crowd.
Nothing happened. Not even the sound of a person's breath could be heard. Out of the eerie stillness of Nicole's body came a strange, bone-chilling sound, a choked mewling that although near silent, echoed throughout the very bones of Christian. He watched, transfixed, as she tried to move and all that she could do was twitch her fingers a little.
Inside her broken and nearly dead body, her heart shattered. Inside Christian's frozen body, his heart shattered too.
Then everything happened at once. The dancers scattered as medics raced onto the stage, the curtains were drawn and the audience were left in shock to mutter to their friend about what had just occured. Sound, like a tidal wave, crashed down over Christian, surging through the room and filling every crevice.
He was trapped, he was drowning, he needed to get out and just see her. He needed to know she was ok and that she'd survived.
~oOo~
Nicole knew pain. She knew pain like a close ally. She knew how to manipulate it and make it work for her. Pain was stabbing her in the back now, both figuratively and literally. On the stage she couldn't feel her body, on the stretcher was a different story. At the hospital, Nicole had been told that her back was broken, it was fixable but she'd likely never dance again.
She wanted to die. Nicole had nothing else in her life except for her ballet, her dream. Now it was all gone, one mistake had cost her her career. The medication kicked in and she dreamed of nothingness and inbetween those waves of nothingness she felt the strong desire to overdose on her morphine and die in her sleep.
But pain wasn't done with her yet. Pain had been her bitch for years and now it was back with a vengence. Nicole wasn't dead, but she sufferered like a tortured soul in limbo. She'd felt like she'd lost an arm or a leg or some crucial part of herself that she'd never regain. In a sense she was correct as Nicole was now paralysed completely on her left hand side.
She was too doped up to notice the man that wasn't a doctor that visited her everyday. The man that talked to her while she slept and entertained her in her more lucid moments. None of her fellow ballerina's came to see her, apart from her teacher, eyes red-rimmed from crying over the loss of the ballerina with passion that shone from her like a blinding light. Nicole's partner had tried to send apology letters, but Christian had binned all but one, knowing that they'd do nothing but upset Nicole if she were to read them all.
After a week or so of extending his holiday, Christian was forced to abandon Nicole and return home to his business. His heart broken and mourning, he was never in the mood to do much more than click from dull email to dull email forwarded on to him by his secretary. The only thought that replayed in his head during the day was how he'd find her again.
Night was the worst though because, surrounded by quiet darkness, all he had on repeat in his mind's eye was the vision of Nicole tumbling and tumbling, then the sound- like pins through his being- of her mewling on the stage like an animal caught in a trap.
~oOo~
The months passed and Nicole eventually started physiotherapy, eventually gaining back movement in her left side. When she was deemed good enough to travel, Nicole packed her small boxes of belongings and bought the first ticket back to her home town to live with her mother.
Back in her hometown it felt like nothing much, if at all, had changed. Nicole slipped into a monotonous life almost as easily as she slipped into severe depression. She didn't feel anger or bitterness, but instead lonely and empty. Her friends and family tried to cheer her up but she no longer bothered to put the effort in to smile in thanks at their attempts.
Jobless, dreamless, and alone in life in more ways than one, Nicole found herself longing for the mysterious faceless man from her dreams in the hospital. She couldn't remember if he was real or not, but she nevertheless longed for him. His soothing voice, how he knew exactly what to say, even though she couldn't remember what he'd said to her.
The man she semi-remembered was of course Christian, but she didn't know that. It wasn't until a chance encounter one day that the world clicked into place and for once, Nicole felt something.
She had been sitting in a coffee shop, staring blankly from the window when she'd suddenly caught sight of Christian. Unable to move, she watched as he walked through the coffee shop doors with another man, a work colleague. They queued and chatted, ordered, paid and waited to get their drinks.
That's when Christian first saw the fraile girl sitting in the coffee shop by the window. The girl with lanky hair that covered half her face, the girl with lackluster eyes and an anorexic appearance. Nicole.
Excusing himself, Christian got his drink and walked ever-so-tentatively up to the girl. There was a slight tremble in her left hand he noticed as he drew closer. He sat opposite her, said nothing, and she said nothing either. Both their hearts were racing at the encounter.
He finished his drink, set it on the table between them, and tilted his head at Nicole, taking in her gaunt appearance with innocent curiosity. Nicole felt naked under his gaze, but not uncomfortable, so she didn't move. Then, Christian left.
They continued this mute dance every day for a month. She watched how pinched his forehead was as an indicator of the stress he was experiencing. He watched the expressions on her face as the signals of how she was doing on any particular day. After a month, Christian got up to leave as usual, but before he left the table, he simply placed a scrap of paper down with his number on it.
He'd left the coffee shop for a good 10 minutes before she scooped the note up and smiled for the first time in what felt like a lifetime.
~oOo~
It had started with a phonecall at 2 in the morning. Nicole couldn't resist the temptation any longer, so she simply dialed the number and listened to his hypnotic, caressing voice. They didn't chat for long, but it was enough to make her feel hope again.
Christian helped Nicole fight her depression, he saved her more than once from herself. In a sense, the two had begun dating, only without the titles or formalities. They simply fit into one another's lives.
After a year, Nicole was on the road to recovery. After two years, they had moved in together. After five years, Christian proposed to Nicole.
Nicole said yes. She loved him with all her heart, but there was a part of her missing. Despite Christian eventually convincing her to persue her academic talent, and becoming a chemistry teacher at the school she'd grown up in, Nicole felt a part missing of her soul.
As a teacher her tone was tinged with bitterness, her words slightly harsh. She was still a lovely person, but Nicole was a woman that had survived the physical wounds over time, but there was no cure for a broken dream. Nicole had bad days and good days, the bad days eventually waning in numbers until they rarely happened, but Christian still caught her gazing at her pointe shoes from time to time.
A few years after they were wed, Nicole discovered she was pregnant. Nine months later, she borned a bouncy baby girl with her father's eyes and her mother's nose. Christian and Nicole had a girl and as she grew up, they discovered her love for dancing, they discovered her affinity for ballet...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Just a note- the point at which Nicole breaks her back is at around 1:15:00ish on the youtube video (just in case you were wondering)... The video is of the actual "La Sylphide" ballet by a French Ballet Company. It's a gorgeous ballet.
So, this is just another short story for those of you who like them. i've tried again with the 3rd person perspective just to try and broaden my writing abilities. I'm open to critique so please comment plainly!
This story is slightly bittersweet as this is actually based (loosely) on a real teacher at my school. She was a prima ballerina, she broke her back and now she's a chemistry teacher at my school. Those were the only details I have to create this story from so I hope you enjoyed it!