You start out as potential energy and then you fall. Before Nathalie mailed and offered to take me back, before I killed anyone, I saw variations of the same quotation everywhere: Paris is always a good idea. On mugs, on throw pillows, on Instagram. Always attributed to Audrey Hepburn, always in pink I couldn't escape it; everywhere I went, there were those forking words. At the time, they seemed like a sign the I should do it. I should go home. When I'd lived in Paris, I'd never had starry-eyed notions about what the city was, but I was perfectly ready to buy into them if they meant I could come back. Paris is always a good idea? Great. Bring on the macarons, the endless wine, the strolls along the seine. But the truth is, I was one of the best dancers on the planet. I was a member of the Paris Opera ballet. I'd never thought about the city as extending beyond my tiny sphere of influence, which meant that Paris was small for me, too. Paris was my birthplace, my home for the first twenty-three years of my life. It was where I had my first kiss, where I met my two best friends, where I danced in sixty-four performances of swan lake, forty-three Nutcrakcers, twenty-six La syphides. Where my mother wrenched my three-year-old hand and ground it, smarting, against wood of the barre. "It's like church, Okay? You know how you have to stay quiet and still during church? Just pretend like you're there." She took hold of my thigh, twisting it so my knee faced out, ninety degrees to the side. Then she took the other and did the same, so that my heels were touching. "There. That's first position." "It's like...church?" "I mean, you're not in charge of anything, all right? The only thing you're in charge of is your own body." You start out as whole and then you break. Now, of course, it's a totally different story. I see that quote all over the place and it sends needles od rage shooting through my bloodestream.If I'm in a good mood, it irritaes me; if i'm in a bad one, it makes me want to grab Audrey Hepburn by her bony shoulders and shake her until her teeth rattle. Always a good idea? Paris is nothing more then an empty stage. It's only as good or bad as the people in it, and the wildful naivete of that statement turns my stomach. I don't see what good it does to mythologize a city. sure, it's pretty. But how much is pretty worth? Paris is also a place where the government massacred its citizens: lining them up against the wall of the cemetery, throwing their bodies into a huge communal trench. Paris is a place where, under siege one freezing winter, the citizens ate every animal in the zoo. Paris is a place that transported more then ten thousand children to d3 camps. Audrey did get one thing right, thought. Paris is , more than anything else, an idea. Maybe, in the end, the romantics dreaming about Paris see the same thing in the city that I do: that empty stage. A place where the rough adges are sloughed off behind the scenes, where the pain disappears behind pale pink smiles and satin, where the stage lights erase all shadows as they illuminate you with an otherworldly glow. But you start out as perfect and you become something else. -September 1995- Margaux stumbled into my dorm room, groaning as she fell back against the wall. "I hate yellow." "You love yellow."she scanned my body. "It's not fair. You're so pale, you look great in pastels. So basically, you'll be there looking perfect until we graduate, and I'll be over here looking like---like---" Like she had a stomach flu. But even at thirteen, I knew better than to finish the thought for her. Every year, we had a new leotard color, and every year. it was a pastel that washed her out. With her brown hair and Hazel eyes, her warm beauty looked better in anything else: reds, golds, oranges. She was a summer, one of our magazines had told us the previous year. With my black hair and blue eyes, I was a classic winter. "You'll get to wear white in a couple of years." But we both knew it wasn't easy as just waiting. About a quarter of our class disappeared each year after exams. Those final summer days were both exhilarating and heartbreaking as girls--friends--sobbed outside the gates where the school posted our results. We hugged them. We patted their backs. And all the time, our insides were soaring because it wasn't us. We were still the right shape and size, still good enough. I threw down my brush with frustration. "will you do my hair?" Margaux came over and started scrapping the thin black strands into a bun, then let it fall as she grabbed a bottle of hair gel. My hair was too fine to stay up all day without it, and none of us had time between classes to dart back to the dorms. Margaux's hair never fell out of its bun. We headed down to the studio together. Ready to see who was there, ready to dismiss them as temporary. four of our classmate had been thrown out the previous June.
⚠warning⚠ The Book contains Bad language Original author: Rachel kapelke-dale
