O.C. Writers

1980 Laguna Beach, CA

When she first awoke from the coma, she wanted to stay in the dream, stay in the safe, surreal comfort she found there.

Odd. Why would I want to stay in a place I don’t remember?

She closed her eyes, slipping into that familiar place she knows in sleep but not awake. The place where the lone observer emerges from the deepest shadow toward a tiny dancing light, free of earthly limits, buoyed by mystical music. Lifting, shrinking, swaying, the vibrant image grows to overlap the confines of the stage. Weaving in frenzied dips, flaring into and out of view, the whirling blur settles into a liquid human shape spinning into its own shadow. Near and away, exaggerated leaps and darts propel the shape to enormous heights above clusters of buzzing lights.

Joy and grief emerge and collide. The dance is within the shared breath and unified heart. A collective inhale. Airborne, they fill the stage together, shadows against the sun.

The music crescendos into the boom of drum and trumpet amid flying piano strands. A split second of silence. A final exhale. The thunder of a thousand hands releases the spirit of a single soul. The firefly dancer lights the darkness with her new, heated presence in the world.  

“Damn.” Lucy Brighton sat up, the dream already falling into disembodied images making no more sense than the last time, or the time before that.

Be still. What does this dream mean? Something or it wouldn’t repeat. Her fingers pressed her forehead, then temples. Nothing. Less than nothing. 

She pulled the photo from under her pillow, smoothing out the creases, studying them again, trying to know them. She blinked at the image of her own face staring back at her with all the energy and passion of her lost youth. A youth she’d been told about but couldn’t remember. The handsome blue-eyed man with her was still a stranger too.

No time for this. Today, with the ocean breeze and bright sunlight pouring through the open window of her childhood bedroom, a rare flicker of excitement tickled her gut.  

She must be ready when Isabelle, the one she trusts, arrives to take her to teach the morning ballet classes. Then the promised afternoon at the festival to give moral support to a talented young musician making her debut performance.

She inhaled, pressed her fists into the bed and swung herself into the waiting wheelchair, landing with a solid, practiced plop.

 

Ten years earlier. New York 1970

Lucy stepped up. The gilded entrance to City Center’s backstage door gleamed at her, sending tingling flurries charging her veins. This is the moment to remember forever. Her fingers gripped the sun-warmed brass door handle, lingering before pulling it open and stepping into her future. Glorious Manhattan buzzed in typical gridlock, a siren’s blare, a car horn’s bark, but mostly it was July’s steam and grit lacing the very air she breathed charging the lightning bolt at her core.  

She turned to Isabelle. “I’m okay from here.”

“Oh no you don’t. I promised your mother…”

Lucy shrugged. “Marion’s not here, but if you insist.”

“I do. You’re seventeen. I’m not leaving you for a second.” Isabelle leaned in, her warm chocolate eyes sparkling. “Besides, I need to see Director Fenster.”

“Of course you do!” Lucy rolled her eyes but couldn’t quite restrain the giggle. Isabelle, more than her teacher, a mentor and more like a mother than her own, had never admitted the affair everyone talked about back in her day. 

“You go see Director Fenster, Madame Isabelle.” Lucy swung the door wide, holding back so Isabelle could walk through first. “I’ll go warm up.”

Once inside, Isabelle faced Lucy. “Class like you always do.” The words filled Lucy like a kitten’s purr as the former ballerina’s faded red lips slipped into the deep smile lines etched into her long, narrow face.

“Whatever happens, thank you for arranging this audition, Madame.” Lucy squeezed Isabelle’s arm. “Marion would never let me come all the way to New York alone.” Like traveling to the big city from her Laguna Beach, California home was the only obstacle. Marion would have tried to stop her if the audition was only next door. Marion wanted a different life for her daughter. A college degree. A decent living. And mostly, never be dependent on a man. That part won’t be a problem. Lucy’s choice to pursue an almost impossible career in ballet did not include men, and certainly not boys. Her mother considered ballet as useless as surfing, having married a surfer who traveled the world looking for the perfect wave.

Isabelle, her life-raft, understood Lucy’s need for ballet, and her mother’s need for security. She helped her negotiate her life to keep her mother happy enough and still be here, auditioning by special request in the company’s actual company class.

Isabelle placed warm fingers on Lucy’s cheeks. “Focus. Trust your training and your gift.” Her eyes wandered to the winding staircase at the back of the lobby. “I’ll go see the director now.”

Lucy watched her go, wishing she could have seen Isabelle in her day, when she could have bounded up the stairs, when she pulled off multiple entrechats and danced the Sugar Plum. 

Wading through the lobby, Lucy recognized some dancers from the performances she’d seen when the company was on tour in California. Would she be touring with them next year? What if she earned a contract, but her mother refused to let her live in New York? Well, I’ll be eighteen in three months.

Lucy shouldered her duffel bag, lifted her chin, and entered studio R-1. A place she’d never been, but already loved, right down to the smell of rosin and old sweat. She dropped her dance bag onto the well scuffed hardwood floor, the cavernous echo welcomed her amid the endless mirrored walls.

Early enough to claim that prime spot at the barre if she hurried. Stripping to her Navy leotard and pink tights, she added knit leg warmers and a loose-knit sweater, checked herself in the wall mirror and trotted directly to the open spot at the barre. She began her pre-class warmup.

Her warm muscles told her she was ready when Madame Du Pond clapped her hands twice to begin class. Lucy placed her feet in position, spreading and pressing her toes into the wood. This wasn’t scary. This was home.

The first hypnotic piano chords pinged, and her audition began. 

When a body skidded toward her, she had to jump back in mid plie’ or be crushed against the barre. A male dancer suddenly occupied her vacated spot, having slid into the exercise as if he’d always been there, not missing a beat. Lucy looked toward Madame Du Pond, but she was busy giving instructions to the pianist and probably didn’t even notice the near collision, much less the latecomer.  

Lucy angled her position at the barre, scooting between the end of the barre and the wall. And this guy was still too close since he took a space that didn’t exist. She turned her body so she wouldn’t kick him with her long-legged battements and glared at his back. Not that he’d see her, especially through that gigantic crop of wild, blonde waves bouncing almost to his shoulders.  

Wait. Is that? Oh. Of course. He’s that conceited rising star wonder-boy. The one the newspapers called “Darling Donovan.” Well, he’s not so darling as all that.