The Other Side of Perfect

by Mariko Turk

Genres: YA Contemporary Romance; Young Adult

Synopsis

For fans of Sarah Dessen and Mary H.K. Choi, this lyrical and emotionally driven novel follows Alina, a young aspiring dancer who suffers a devastating injury and must face a world without ballet—as well as the darker side of her former dream.

Alina Keeler was destined to dance, but then a terrifying fall shatters her leg—and her dreams of a professional ballet career along with it.After a summer healing (translation: eating vast amounts of Cool Ranch Doritos and binging ballet videos on YouTube), she is forced to trade her pre-professional dance classes for normal high school, where she reluctantly joins the school musical. However, rehearsals offer more than she expected—namely Jude, her annoyingly attractive castmate she just might be falling for.But to move forward, Alina must make peace with her past and face the racism she experienced in the dance industry. She wonders what it means to yearn for ballet—something so beautiful, yet so broken. And as broken as she feels, can she ever open her heart to someone else?Touching, romantic, and peppered with humor, this debut novel explores the tenuousness of perfectionism, the possibilities of change, and the importance of raising your voice.

Release date: May 11, 2021

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Print pages: 336

Sample

“WHEN CAN I DANCE?” My voice came out quiet in the small, sterile recovery room. The doctor kept messing with his charts, so I didn’t know if he’d heard me. I was about to ask again, but I got distracted by the steel rods rooted into my bones and extending out, attached to a frame outside my leg. Ever since I woke up from surgery, I couldn’t stop staring at it. After ten years at the Kira Dobrow Ballet School, I’d seen my share of bodily horrors: weeping toe blisters, a ruptured Achilles tendon, but nothing like this. It was called an external fixator, and it wasn’t messing around.

Colleen was staring at it, too—her fingers tapping out the melody of the Kitri variation from Don Quixote on the metal post of my hospital bed. I caught her eye, and we had one of our silent conversations.

It’s not that bad, right?

Totally not that bad.

I let out a breath and glanced behind Colleen to my parents. Dad’s eyes were steadily on the floor so he wouldn’t accidentally look at the external fixator and need to sit with his head between his legs again. Mom gave me a smile I knew she meant to be reassuring but was 100 percent not.

“When can I dance?” I repeated loudly. The doctor startled, put down the charts, and sat on the stool next to my bed.

“Let’s take it one step at a time,” he said, looking at my leg and chuckling. “Pun not intended.” When no one reacted, he cleared his throat. “You’ll be bed to chair for a couple of weeks until we get you out of that external fixator and into a cast. A few months after that, you can start learning to walk again.”

If he wasn’t going to answer my question, I’d figure it out myself. I did some mental calculations. The American Ballet Theatre summer intensive in New York was in July. Four months from now. If I was walking in a couple of months, I could dance in four. “That means I can still do the ballet intensive in July,” I said. “I can still go.”

My parents shifted and the doctor sighed. “Alina,” he said carefully. “If it was a clean break, your bones could have healed naturally. You might have been able to dance on pointe in four months. But it wasn’t a clean break.”

He stopped talking, like that explained everything. When I kept staring at him, he sighed again. “We needed to put in sixteen screws and two plates to keep your bones together. That hardware is meant to stay in there forever. It means your leg won’t be as strong or flexible as—”

“So when? If I let it heal and do physical therapy and everything I’m supposed to do, when will it be back to normal?”

“Never,” the doctor said simply. “When something breaks like that, you can’t put it back together so easily. And when you do, it won’t be the same.”

That was the epitome of bullshit, but there was no point saying it. “I’ll be able to dance in four months,” I said coolly. “I’m going to New York.” I looked at my parents so they’d know the plan hadn’t changed. Dad looked queasy and uncertain. Mom looked like she was holding back tears. Only Colleen was unfazed.

“Definitely,” my best friend said, turning to the doctor. “I read this article that said orthopedists can fix anything now, except maybe knees, but she didn’t do anything to her knee.”

“Yeah,” I said, latching on to Colleen’s words. “I didn’t break my knee, just my tibia and fibula.”

“Honey…” Mom put a firm hand on my shoulder. “Let’s not think about what may or may not happen in the future. All you can do right now is focus on healing. That’s the number one thing.”

Dad looked at the external fixator again, cursed, and took a seat in the chair at the other end of the room, elbows on his knees. Mom squeezed my shoulder again, like I was supposed to say something back, but I had nothing. Not thinking about the future didn’t make any sense to me. The future was everything, and it had only ever looked like ballet.

A wave of drowsiness hit me, the anesthesia making everything hazy. At some point, I registered that my parents were whispering, and it was dark outside the window, and Colleen was gone. I closed my eyes again and felt my body dancing, revolving through the air on the tip of my pointe shoe. Springing across the floor in quick brisés.

As I slipped in and out of sleep, it was hard to tell what was real and what wasn’t, what was happening right now and what was a memory.

But one thing was clear. In four months, I’d be on pointe again. In four months, I’d be in New York, dancing.

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE ONCE WROTE: “Hell is other people.” I think a more accurate statement would be: “Hell is other people auditioning for Eagle View High School’s spring production of Singin’ in the Rain.” Perhaps that’s a touch dramatic. But since that dumb doctor turned out to be right about my leg, I had to start junior year as a normal full-time student. And as terrible as the past two months had been, I hadn’t, before this moment, been subjected to this. To my left, a curly-haired girl belting “Ma may mee moe moo!” To my right, a skinny guy in tight capri sweatpants, belly dancing.

I spotted Margot, my life raft, near the stage of the school auditorium, sipping an iced coffee the size of her head. I wound my way through the packed aisles until I finally reached her side.

“Who are these people?” I hissed. She looked at me with an expression I’d never seen on her before. Apologetic? Sheepish? But because it was Margot, it was gone in a second and replaced with a smirk.

“There’s no people like show people,” she said. Then, sensing what can only be described as my highly disgruntled vibe, she added: “I know it seems weird, but it actually doesn’t suck.”

I raised my eyebrow at her, still completely surprised she was into this. Margot was so fuck-it-all, and these people were the total opposite. I was pretty sure they fucked nothing. Then again, what did I really know about the essence of Margot? Yeah, we bonded last year in first-period chem. And yeah, she was hilarious, but besides the one time she came over to help me pick out an audition song, I’d never hung out with her outside of school. Lately, I’d been too busy napping and sitting alone in my room eating entire bags of Cool Ranch Doritos to hang out with anyone. But Margot was my lifesaver at Eagle View. We had homeroom and ninth-period study hall together, so I began and ended my day with her. Thank God.

On the first day of school this year, I’d told Margot I would be going for the full day now because part-time online schooling only worked for kids who were “pursuing professional careers in the arts,” and I… wasn’t anymore. I warned her not to say “Everything happens for a reason” or “Maybe it’s for the best” or “When life shatters your leg, it opens a window” or any other crap like that. I’d heard enough of it already and didn’t believe a word.

But Margot had just looked at me and said: “Nah, I’m glad you broke your leg and have to go to school with us normals. Afternoons without you were kind of boring.”

That solidified our friendship, at least on my end. A lifetime of desperately trying to squeeze a word of praise from demanding ballet teachers made me a sucker for people who knew how to throw out a perfectly constructed compliment scrap. If anyone was ever too effusive about me, it turned me right off.

“I mean, you could back out now,” Margot said, brushing a dribble of coffee from the jean shorts she wore over black tights. The emerald-green stud above her lip caught the light and glistened. With that piercing and her turquoise-dyed bob, she always reminded me of a punky mermaid. “But then you won’t get to hear ten thousand overly dramatic renditions of ‘On My Own’ from Les Misérables.”

“If you’re going to do musical theater references, I’m leaving.”

“And I don’t know,” Margot said, pretending she hadn’t heard me. “You might like it.”

My hands gripped the straps of my backpack as I looked around at the shabby auditorium. I couldn’t help but compare this—the maroon plastic seats, depressingly gray carpet, flimsy black curtains, and cold overhead lights—to the plush jewel-box quality of the Epstein Theatre downtown where the Kira Dobrow Ballet School had its shows. I missed its rich upholstered seats, the golden lighting fixtures around the mezzanine, and the red velvet curtain that Colleen and I used to rub our pinkies over for luck.

Horrifyingly, my eyes started to sting. I coughed and blinked rapidly. “So how does this work?” I asked, my voice coming out crisp and professional.

“Two days of singing auditions, starting today at three. At four thirty, they’ll teach us a dance combination. No problem for you. Tomorrow, singing goes until four thirty again, and then we audition with the dance. Callbacks happen Friday for the main parts.”

I sighed and plunked my backpack down. Two days of after-school commitments in this genuinely hideous auditorium filled with show people was not ideal. So why was I staying? Maybe it was to avoid my parents’ increasingly less subtle suggestions to “do stuff outside the house.” Maybe it was because Margot was literally my only friend right now, and abandoning her felt wrong. Maybe it was a reason I hadn’t fully thought through yet.

I’d just situated my leg on the edge of the stage for a hamstring stretch, tugging on the hem of my legging to make sure my scars weren’t showing, when two white guys shouted “Margot!” and sauntered over.

One of them was tall and rangy, with a mass of artfully messy auburn curls. I recognized him from English—I think his name was Ethan—so he must have been a senior. I was a junior, but I was in senior English because the online schooling got me ahead by a bit. The other guy I didn’t recognize. He had swoopy dark hair and a wide, toothy smile that would have looked goofy if his tanned skin hadn’t set it off so well. Not that it mattered.

“Margot never lies,” Smile Guy said. He looked at Ethan for confirmation. “Right? Margot Kilburn-Correa tells it like it is.”

Ethan shook his head. “Nope, Margot is a contrarian. She’ll give one answer just because everyone else would say the other one. It’s her thing.”

Margot smacked Ethan’s arm. “It’s not my thing.”

“See?” Ethan said. Margot smacked him again.

“Fine, I’ll ask an outsider.” Smile Guy turned to me and I swear there was an actual gleam in his eyes. “Have you ever seen me before?”

“Nope,” I said, switching legs.

His mouth did a quick little upturn, like he had won a bet with himself. “Right. So, with fresh eyes and no preconceived notions”—he waved a hand between himself and Ethan—“who’s the Fred Astaire and who’s the Gene Kelly?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Smile Guy pretended to faint, grabbing on to Ethan for support. And I thought I was dramatic.

Ethan held him up and shook his head in disappointment. “Margot, have you brought a musical theater novice into the hallowed halls of the Eagle View auditorium, birthplace of the Happy Crack?” All three of them doubled over at this.

Oh, the joy of inside jokes when you’re on the outside.

After an unnecessarily long bout of laughter (the Happy Crack couldn’t be that funny, whatever it was), Margot finally came to her senses. “Shhh, you’re scaring Alina. That’s Ethan.” She waved her hand at him and he inclined his head, making his curls fall even farther into his eyes. If he remembered me from English, he didn’t let on, so neither did I.

“And that’s Jude.” So Smile Guy had a name.

“Hey, Alina, all kidding aside, we really are very welcoming of newcomers,” Jude said, the gleam reappearing. “Are you a freshman?”

Scoff. “Junior,” I said flatly, lowering my leg from the stage and taking my phone out of my sweatshirt pocket. He didn’t take the hint.

“I thought I knew all the juniors. Why don’t I know you?”

I sighed. “I used to only go here in the mornings.”

“Why?”

“It was the time of day I was least likely to attack strangers who asked me too many questions.”

Margot snorted. Ethan snapped his fingers like he was at a poetry reading. But Jude kept smiling in that irritating way, like he was winning a game I didn’t know I was playing. “Ah, yes. Can’t be too careful, especially with strangers.”

I stared at him. A weirdo in a sea of weirdos.

“All right, dudes,” Margot said, shooing them away. “We’ve got preparing to do. We’re not all musical theater gods.” The dudes left, and under normal circumstances, I would have roasted Margot for saying the phrase musical theater gods. But the auditorium suddenly hushed as two women with clipboards took the stage. The one I recognized was Mrs. Sorenson, the music teacher, whose strawberry-blond hair was slicked back with a mauve headband that matched her sweater set and pumps. According to Margot, she directed the musical every year. Beside her was a tall woman in her fifties with a frizzy pouf of orange-ish hair tied up in a black ribbon. Ms. Langford, apparently. The choreographer. She looked like Mrs. Sorenson’s kooky older sister.

Mrs. Sorenson clapped her hands. “Singing starts now,” she called out primly. “One at a time, give me your music, stand center stage, and say your name. Ms. Langford will stop you after a few bars. That’s all we need to hear right now.”

With that, Mrs. Sorenson sat down at the worn piano onstage and Ms. Langford took her seat in the fourth row, clipboard at the ready. Immediately, a gorgeous South Asian girl with black elbow-length waves jaunted up onstage.

“Diya Rao,” she said, enunciating crisply. “Singing ‘No One Else’ from Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812.”

Margot scoffed. “No one asked what you were singing, Robobitch.”

“Friend of yours?” I whispered, glad for the distraction of Margot’s commentary.

Margot made a puking face as Mrs. Sorenson started playing in a minor key and Diya sang out in a startlingly clear voice. Her voice vibrated, shimmered. Goose bumps sprang up on my arms. As she went on, the notes became warmer and fuller. The song was about falling in love and she made the words sound like they were flying on top of the melody.

My jaw dropped. It wasn’t that I hadn’t expected anyone here to be good. I just hadn’t expected anyone to be that good. I glanced around to see if others were as shocked as I was. But a lot of them looked like Margot did—annoyed. I heard a few scattered mutterings of “Robobitch.” So Margot wasn’t the only one who called her that.

When Diya finished, she threw a confident smile to the audience and left the stage, taking a seat in the front corner of the room, away from everyone else.

“Robobitch always goes first to intimidate people,” Margot said. Sure enough, nobody volunteered until Mrs. Sorenson made Ethan go. His song had an old-fashioned doo-wop rhythm and was about… being a sadistic dentist? Whatever it was, he played it up, strutting across the stage like a weird version of Elvis, his curls flopping every time he cocked his head to dramatically belt out, “I am a deeeeentist!”

It was bizarre, but it relaxed the mood, and things went pretty smoothly from there. People sang, with varying degrees of skill and volume, and then marched back to their seats, getting high fives or ass pats or chest bumps along the way. Everyone was so comfortable here it made me uneasy.

In the middle of the singing time, Jude took the stage. “Jude Jeppson,” he announced. I snorted. Somehow that perky name suited him. He didn’t have Ethan’s swagger or Diya’s poise. He was just light and carefree, like he was joking around with friends. Mrs. Sorenson started playing, and Jude began to sing.

Okay, fine. I could see where the musical theater god thing came from. He was good. His voice was strong, but tender enough to convey the dreamy happiness of the lyrics, which after a while, just consisted of the name “Maria.” I didn’t get goose bumps like I had when Diya sang, but maybe that was because the swooning happening all around me was a bit distracting. It seemed no one was completely immune to the charm of a cute guy who could sing a girl’s name over and over again in such a romantic way.

On the last “Maria,” the “Woos!” and “Ow-ows!” started up, and Jude broke into a grin midnote. Ethan took his phone out and snapped a picture. Maybe Jude would autograph them later for his fans. When he finished, the cheers grew and followed him all the way back to his seat in the second row.

Jude must have sensed my gaze, because he looked over. Whenever I got caught staring, I tried not to look away. So I held his glance and did a golf clap for him. He smiled and tipped an imaginary hat to me.

Our exchange was interrupted by a blond guy in a slouchy beanie walking stiffly down the aisle, clenching and unclenching his hands.

“Holy hell, Harrison Lambert?” Margot said.

“Who’s that?”

“He’s… Harrison Lambert. He’s not the musical type. He’s the kind of guy who asks what your favorite movie is, and if you say anything other than the most obscure movie ever, he’s like, ‘Oh yeah, I used to like that movie. In middle school.’”

“Ew, he said that?”

“I mean, no. But he would if I ever talked to him.”

Margot gave Harrison a hard look as he began a shaky a cappella version of “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” by Neutral Milk Hotel. Picking an alt-rock song for a high school musical audition seemed weird, but he wasn’t bad once he got going. And he finished impressively, looking completely relieved as he walked off the stage.

And he kept on walking, right out of the auditorium. As the door swung shut, the whispers kicked up again, and the guy I’d seen belly dancing earlier let out a loud “Whaaaaaat?” which got some laughs.

“Maybe it was a bet,” Margot theorized.

The singing dragged on, and the auditorium got emptier as people left to get snacks or change for the dance audition. Margot went up onstage eventually, singing in a nasal, exaggerated New York accent that simultaneously impressed and confused me.

“So, this might be a good time for you to go,” Margot said afterward, checking the time. I looked around, making sure that Jude, Ethan, and Diya had left. I didn’t need the best people here watching me suck.

As I walked to the front of the room, I tried to blur out how bizarre it felt to be stepping onto a stage to sing, not dance. I’d asked Margot if there was any way to skip the vocal audition and just do the dancing one—it wasn’t like I was going for a lead role—but she said it was mandatory.

“Alina Keeler,” I croaked out. Then I sang the first few bars of “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” from My Fair Lady. Margot had suggested it because it wasn’t too difficult. I was pretty quiet, and Ms. Langford looked bored, but no one covered their ears.

I blew out a breath as I left the stage. Musical theater goddess I was not. But at least I hadn’t totally embarrassed myself.

“Let’s run through it one more time!” Ms. Langford’s raspy voice carried over the noise of the packed stage. It was ten minutes until day one of auditions ended and everyone would go home to practice the combination for tomorrow. It was straightforward—some grapevines, a few hip pops, a Charleston-inspired step, two grands battements (Ms. Langford called them “high kicks!”), and a quick pirouette.

For nondancers it was challenging. Margot was swearing up a storm trying to end the pirouette without stumbling. Diya Rao was doing well, though, and so were Jude and Ethan. Margot had told me that Ethan’s older sister taught tap at the Y, and that both boys had been taking lessons with her there for years. Somehow it didn’t surprise me.

I hadn’t done the combination full-out yet. I’d just been marking it because there wasn’t much space to move, and it was already muscle memory. Ms. Langford dismissed us, but then Diya, her hair pulled into a doorknob bun, raised her hand. “Ms. Langford? I have rehearsal for the Shakespeare Festival tomorrow. Can I do the dance audition now?”

Margot rolled her eyes as she fanned the back of her neck. “She does that every year, too. She loves saying she’s in other stuff. And yeah, like it’s so impressive that she can do the dance already without practicing it overnight. I’m sure you could, too.”

Everyone was clearing the stage as Ms. Langford asked if anyone else wanted to do the dance audition now. Maybe it was because I wanted tomorrow afternoon free to nap. Or maybe my competitive side was kicking in. Or maybe it was a reason I kept trying to ignore: I just wanted to dance on a stage again.

I walked back out and stood beside Diya.

She X-rayed me with her eyes, her gaze lingering on my hair, which I hadn’t pulled back like everyone else. It hung, straight as pins, down my back. Her eyes narrowed. “Need a hair tie?”

“I’m good,” I said.

Diya raised an eyebrow. Geez. I wasn’t trying to be cocky. I just didn’t feel like pulling my hair back.

Diya and I took our places at opposite ends of the stage. “We’ll do the combination twice so we can get a good look at both of you,” Ms. Langford said, pushing Play on the stereo.

And it finally hit me. Sure, it was a stupid little musical theater combination. But for the first time in eight months, I was going to dance. My heart skittered into my throat.

When the music started, something familiar took over. I executed all the steps correctly, but I let the music guide my timing. As Gene Kelly’s voice drew out the lyrics, I slowed down my arm movements, picking up speed only when the horns started again. My Charleston step was light, my battements whooshed against my ears, and I prepped for the pirouette with a delicate pas de bourrée into fourth position. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Diya do a double pirouette instead of a single. She finished a touch off the music, but I could see Ms. Langford nodding and smiling as we got back into place to do it again.

I felt my mouth curve up. If it was okay to change the choreography, so be it.

The second time, I made my movements even lighter, even airier. I turned the second battement into a développé layout, arching way back as I extended my leg up, toes pointing to the ceiling. At the end, right before the pirouette, my ballet teacher, Kira, popped into my head. White-blond hair, vibrant blue eyes encircled by wrinkles, like rays of the sun. She was watching me, pushing me to be better. So I did a triple pirouette.

Well, I tried to.

My speed was okay, but my right ankle—which had the screws holding it together—couldn’t take the pressure. Somehow, I forced my core to balance and keep up my rotation, but I could only do a weak double turn, and I couldn’t even finish that with the music.

I didn’t see anyone’s reaction as I walked offstage, but I heard a few scattered claps. Too many thoughts and feelings were competing for my attention: the quick but steady way my heart beat after a performance, the stomach thrill I got from good old-fashioned competition. Those felt satisfyingly familiar, almost like everything could be okay again. But I couldn’t ignore that wobble. The way it knocked me off the music. The way it made me clumsy. The way I’d really, truly never dance on pointe again.

I’d been so stupid to think that dancing in the musical would fill a fraction of the emptiness I’d been clawing around for eight months. Dancing would never be the same. I would never be the same. And nothing could fix it.

I looked for Margot, thinking she would say something sarcastic and snap me out of it. But when I swept my eyes over the rows of seats, I found Jude instead. He was staring at me across the auditorium, his mouth open. It brought back another familiar feeling: the swell of pride when people looked at me like I had just done something beautiful.

I was so homesick for that look. But seeing it now, I only felt hollow. I didn’t deserve it anymore. The hollowness filled up with rage.

Jude was still staring at me. His mouth stretched into a smile as he returned the golf clap I’d given him before. But instead of smiling back or tipping an imaginary hat to him, like I really should have done, I flipped him off instead.

AS SOON AS I SHUT the front door, Mom swept in fr. . .