"Alex says hi." Said Marc as he hung up the phone.

"I hate back to back grand prixs" Isabella muttered. He leaned down to kiss her forehead, "Me too" He was leaving again, this time for a long time. Isabella was on the floor helping him pack his things, little did he know that her suitcase was packed as well. "I was thinking...." She said, folding one of his shirts.

"What?" Their eyes met in the mirror where he stood buttoning his chemise.

"I think I wanna stay in the dorms." She bit her lip anticipating his answer, to her surprise and disappointment his voice remained calm. "You don't want to stay here anymore?"

"Not while you're gone." She mumbled, eyes falling to the folded shirts tucked in the bag.

"But you'll be back?"

She looked up, "Of course I will."

A smile, "Then it's all good"

*

"Then it's all good." His words that she repeated to herself.

"Pardon?"

Isabella turned around to look at her friend who had her leg stretched over the barre, most graciously she stretched for her toes. "You said something."

Isabella chases away the invisible fly, "No, I was talking to myself."

"Weird." Her friend's word wasn't meant to hurt, but they did. "How's Marc?" She continued. Isabella hated to be asked about Marc or worse, be seen with him, she wasn't ashamed, just timid. "He's fine." She smiled politely hoping that the answer would satisfy her friend, it hadn't, but before she could protest Madame had entered and the room went still.

"You will not take another breath in my presence if you cannot carry yourself with the bone you call back." Like Charlie Chaplin, Madame always went around carrying a cane, students called it The Talking Stick. When the stick tapped on the wooden floor echoing beneath their bare feet. None of the students dared talk, sometimes not even breathing. "...Too many chickens and hens clucking around in my studio not knowing how to carry a decent posture, this ends today."

A dancer's body was meant to be bent in every pointed direction that every dancer understood, however, if you take away the enchanted movements of an elite contemporary you are simply left with a bunch of worn out marionettes with all of their shredded ligaments and tendons.

"Chest up Simon..."

"Do you call that a plea Miss Delgado...?"

Isabella was desperately trying to follow every correction she overheard, so that by the time Madame came her way she'd be given as few as possible.

"Isabella Etienne..." The talking stick eventually travelled towards her, trailing a veil of silence. ".....or should I say Dumbo himself?" Isabella held still in her upright position, one leg stretched out like a long tail behind her. "By the way your hips move you'd really think they'd really belonged to an actual elephant." Madame snorted. However Isabella held her ground, soon feeling how her legs began to tremble.

Madame took one last glance at her and said "Stay off the carbs." before giving her cane two taps echoing on the wooden floor and moved onto the next dancer.

It's not what you think. Despite Madames harsh words Isabella knew that she had done good, she had been given no corrections for her dance positions or posture.

The benefit of staying at the dorms was the close access to all of the dance studios, Isabella had barely spent any time in her friend's dorm room, she only used it for sleeping.