Love You, Hate You Page 13

  “Hey,” said Julian. “What are you doing here? Skipping?”

  It suddenly occurred to Taylor that Julian had no business at that bus stop either. “Um, what are you doing?”

  “Skipping. Don’t tell Tristan and Kageki, though. They are such uber-keeners. I totally needed a day off. I’m going crazy.”

  “Oh,” Taylor said defensively. “Well, I’m skipping, too. But because I got mixed up on which day it was, so I brought the wrong textbooks and stuff, so I didn’t have my homework, and I didn’t do it last night, anyway. Today totally sucks, so I’m going to skip.”

  “Why don’t you just tell your teachers that you got mixed up with the days? They’re really nice about it, I’ve done it before. I mean, they look at you like you’re an idiot, but that’s survivable.”

  “I can’t,” said Taylor, jutting her lip out and making a hole in the gravel around the bus-stop pole with her toe. “I miss my homework too much. And I’m, like, failing math and English and science …”

  “But for math aren’t you in—” Julian stopped himself, embarrassed, realizing what he had been about to say. He wiped away the water trickling down his face.

  “Loser math? Yes. And I have a whole block of skills development, and … I don’t know. I take Ritalin and stuff, but it doesn’t seem to help. And I never seem to have any time for my homework because of dance and stuff.” Taylor frowned.

  Julian had slipped his backpack off and was digging his lunch out.

  “Julian … Jules, It’s only like 7:45-ish! And if you open up your lunch right now, the rain will get in and ruin it.”

  “I’m hungry, so whatever!” When he opened his container, rain immediately began splashing in. Taylor started laughing, watching him try to eat the wet white rice with the rain doing its best to wash it off the fork. “Want a chicken foot?” Julian grinned as he pointed it out with his fork.

  “Ew, no! Gross. Mrs. Yu is the weirdest cook. You look so funny.” She watched him eat it. “Really, you look like you should be the stupid one.”

  “Who says I get honour roll?” asked Julian, wiping fried egg off his mouth. “I’m not like Tristan and the rest either, I’m a strictly C student. B if I’m lucky. But seriously,” Julian said between mouthfuls, “are we the only mediocre students from the academy? Because that totally sucks if it’s true.”

  “Basically, yes,” Taylor sighed. “At least of the ones who are good at dance. Like, Alexandra gets straight As …”

  “Tristan, too,” Julian said, rolling his eyes.

  “Nobody knows about Kaitlyn, yet, though.”

  “Oh yeah, right. She’s new too.” Julian quickly stuffed his lunch in his backpack as the bus approached.

  They got on and sat down on one of the benches, Taylor getting the window seat.

  “Where are you going before rehearsal?” Taylor asked, suddenly shy. She hadn’t really talked to Julian before. The people he hung out with most at the academy terrified her.

  “Um … rehearsal …” said Julian, suddenly looking nervous. “Okay, I, like, really don’t want to go to that.”

  “Don’t you want to be a dancer?”

  “Well yes, of course. I mean, I think so. But we haven’t had a day off since October.”

  “We never do.”

  “Well, I want to have one, and I pick today. Do you think Mr. Moretti would kick me out if I skipped?”

  “No. You’re a boy. A tall one. He needs you.” Julian looked relieved. “But say that you’re sick. That way they can pretend they believe you, and it’ll just work better.”

  “Hey, do you want to come with me?” Julian asked suddenly.

  “Where are you going?”

  “No idea!”

  “I’d love to. But I’ll be kicked out. I’m not a boy, and I’ve only got corps roles.”

  “Come on,” Julian wheedled.

  “All right,” Taylor said, taking a deep breath. “I will.”

  They both phoned, one after another, and made Gabriel promise to remember to tell Mr. Moretti.

  “Now where are we going?” Julian asked.

  “I don’t know. But we better decide soon. I don’t want to waste our day off on the bus.”

  “For sure! I know, let’s go to Whole Foods and get some food first.”

  “You just ate!”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t like it. And I’m growing! I need food.”

  “Growing, sure, but which direction?”

  “Hey! For your information, I’m as skinny as a rail. Even Mr. Yu said I needed to eat more meat so I would have ‘good muscles like Leon.’ And I’m even skinnier than Tristan.”

  “For how much longer?” Taylor asked, laughing. “Okay, we’ll go to Whole Foods.”

  Julian rang the bell just in time, and they got off the bus. “Want to wait for the other bus or just walk?” he asked, shrugging his shoulders into his backpack.

  “Let’s just walk. It’ll be warmer that way.” They walked the rest of the way in silence; the noise of the rain and the wet that was becoming uncomfortably cold were conversation deterrents. Finally they got to Whole Foods. Julian plunked his backpack on one of the benches.

  “Islander! It might not be safe leaving our bags,” snorted Taylor, but she put hers down, too.

  “Hey, I lived in Toronto, too!”

  “It didn’t seem to take,” Taylor teased. Julian grinned.

  They started at the produce section and worked their way across the store to the prepared food, arguing over every section. Taylor thought that the sole purpose of food was to give you a sugar high, while Julian believed that food was a statement about what kind of a person you were.

  “Organic food is not a waste of time and money! Like, seriously, do you want a million chemicals in your body, not to mention the ground? Why do you think we have cancer and obesity nowadays?”

  “Soy milk is so gross! Omigod, I didn’t know they even had almond milk. Hemp milk? You have got to be kidding me.”

  “Okay, but have you even tried goji berries?”

  “Brown sugar is healthy, you know. It’s only the white kind that isn’t.”

  “Okay, I’m going to buy a carton of soy ice cream to split, and you can see if you like it the same as dairy ice cream.”

  “Hippy.”

  When they got back to their table, Julian picked up his backpack with a grin. “Islander wins!”

  “You got lucky,” Taylor said. She picked up her bag to check that her pointe shoes were still there.

  Julian started dividing up their food. Taylor frowned. She picked up one of the napkins and started shredding it into little pieces, kicking the table leg.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Do you think Mr. Moretti will kick me out?”

  “I dunno. But he can’t really kick you out of everything, can he? I mean, it is a school, not a company. You’re paying them, they aren’t paying you.”

  “True.” Taylor’s eyes welled up. “But it’s Mr. Moretti.”

  “Yeah,” Julian said, uncomfortable. “Um, do you want some ice cream?”

  Taylor took the proffered bowl with both hands. She tried it warily. “Hey, I like it!”

  “Told you! Eat some more,” he urged her as he finished his muffin and moved onto his salad. “I’m going to eat it all if you don’t take it.”

  “That’s okay.” Taylor took a spoonful of her ice cream and smooshed it against the bowl until it melted. “I’m not that hungry.” She looked up and watched Julian eat for a while. “You are so going to puke.”

  “What? No, I won’t,” Julian assured her as he moved onto the ice cream.

  “You’re getting better in pas class, hey?” Taylor said casually.

  Julian looked up, surprised. “I hope so. I mean, that’s the idea, isn’t it?”

  Taylor laughed, a bit too heartily. “Yeah.”

  “What was wrong with me before? I wasn’t that bad, was I?”

  “No …” Taylor answered slowly. “And you’re
tall, so that’s good. Do you know yet if the Demidovskis want you to do a pas in festival?”

  Julian shrugged, not looking up. “Not likely, is it? I mean, I didn’t get a pas in The Nutcracker.”

  Taylor fidgeted nervously. “Well, you could just ask to do one.”

  “Yeah. But who’s gonna want to do it with me? Lexi? Yeah, right.”

  “I would do one with you.”

  Julian looked up, surprised. “Oh. Cool. Yeah, that’d be fun.”

  Taylor nodded and bit the head off the dark chocolate Santa she’d been saving.

  “Oh, sweetie! That is amazing,” Charlize said, gasping into the phone. “I can’t believe it! That is the best thing that’s happened to you all year.”

  “I know,” Taylor said, smiling as she snuggled into the bus seat with her cellphone clutched to her ear, thankful for the heater vent next to her feet. She felt a warm glow of satisfaction spread through her as she answered her mother’s many questions. She, Taylor Audley, was going to do a pas de deux with Julian Reese, the boy with more potential than anybody since Andrew Lu. Perhaps including Andrew Lu. He hadn’t been tall, despite his talent.

  Chapter Eleven

  Alexandra Dunstan

  “Take me I’m alive, never was a girl with a wicked mind, but everything looks better, when the sun goes down…”

  It was still mostly dark when Justin dropped Alexandra off at McKinley, and the early morning air was cold. Alexandra shivered as she went up the steps, her feet and hands freezing. She shook her limbs, trying to get some circulation back into her hands and feet. Inside, Grace was already sitting at a table. Alexandra went to join her. “Nobody else here yet?”

  “Tristan,” Grace said, staring blindly at her socials book. “He’s in the washroom putting gel in his hair.”

  Alexandra dug out her textbook and tried to finish her homework.

  “Can I copy yours?” Grace asked. Alexandra pressed her lips together hard. She really hated it when Grace copied her homework. “Please.” Grace’s plea sounded more like a command.

  Alexandra passed Grace her notebook, forcing them to sit closer together. “There you go, nice to be nice,” Grace said as she began to copy. “Your writing is so messy I can hardly read it.”

  “Good,” Alexandra said under her breath. Then she said out loud, “That’s what happens when you do homework at one in the morning.”

  As Alexandra worked and Grace copied, Grace told her how Mr. Demidovski had asked Leon to work with her on the Black Swan pas for a special charity performance, and how she was so busy this year she just didn’t know how she was going to fit it all in, she certainly wasn’t going to be able fit in festival, too. Alexandra rolled her eyes: the real reason Grace wouldn’t be doing festival was that she never did well, while Alexandra always did. She didn’t mention that Mrs. Demidovski had asked her to do a pas with Tristan.

  Alexandra waited for the bus after school in a foul mood. She tried not to listen as Taylor go on and on about how she hoped Mr. Moretti wouldn’t be “like, mad at me!” because she was sick yesterday. Alexandra imagined punching Taylor in the face. The bus was late, and Alexandra’s feet and hands were numb by the time she got on. She sat down on one of the middle benches, avoiding the noise everyone else was making in the back. Tristan came and sat down next to her.

  “Look,” Tristan said, pointing out the window. Kaitlyn was running for the bus, but it pulled away and she was left behind. Tristan and Alexandra both laughed.

  “Sometimes life just works out,” she said.

  “Definitely. What’s in that?” he asked as Alexandra pulled out a thermos.

  “Chocolate protein powder, hot water, and this Echinacea anti-cold mix.” She opened it carefully, trying not to spill any of the contents on herself. “Where are your sidekicks today?” Julian and Kageki were not on the bus.

  “They both had to see their counsellors. Kageki wants to transfer out of ESL English to normal English because he’s doing fine in all his other courses, and Julian wants to transfer out of French because he’s failing it.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yup. He’s going to take it online this summer, instead.”

  “And he’s going to do this when? If he can’t pass it with the whole school year and a teacher, how does he expect to pass it online, without a teacher, in only a couple of weeks, during summer school?”

  “I don’t think he knows about summer intensives,” Tristan said, laughing. “I asked where he went last year and he said ‘mostly the beach.’”

  They were interrupted by Anna, who’d come to sit on the bench in front of them.“Hey, Trissie. I was looking for you. Mrs. Demidovski asked me the other day if I’d like to do a pas de deux with you this year in festival.” At this, Alexandra accidentally spilled some of her drink on herself. “But I’m going with my family to Hawaii during festival.”

  “What? The Demidovskis are letting you do that right before the June show?” Alexandra exclaimed in spite of herself.

  “Sure. Why wouldn’t they?” Alexandra glared at her and shrugged, sitting back in her seat again, sulking as she drank her mixture. Anna went back to sit with Grace, and they burst out laughing.

  “Do you have any gum?” Tristan asked after searching through his pockets.

  “No. You should just smoke,” she teased. “You know what Mr. Yu says, the more you smoke, the higher you jump.”

  Tristan snorted. “Yeah. I can see how great it’s made Dmitri jump.”

  “You know, you’re probably the only one of the older boys who doesn’t smoke. Except Julian. Does he smoke?”

  “It’s not a question of does he smoke, as of what he smokes,” Tristan said, giggling. “He is such a little granola-muncher.”

  Alexandra laughed. “I should have known. I was walking down the hallway at the academy the other day, and he looked shocked when he saw me. And then he started looking around like he was seeing little fairies everywhere. I thought he’d just taken too much cold medication or something. ”

  “Nope! People don’t get that laid back naturally.”

  “He’s probably ingested enough from the air on the Island to be naturally like that! At least now I know what to get him for Secret Santa!”

  “True,” Tristan said, laughing. “That is so weird that you two got each other for Secret Santa!”

  At that moment the clamour from the back suddenly increased, and they both turned to see what was happening. Two of the younger girls were trying to feed one of the little boys some of Taylor’s hard candies. They’d told told him that they were birth control pills.

  “No, no!” he yelled. “Birth control makes you gay!”

  “I thought that was soy milk,” Alexandra said. “And all the time it was birth control.”

  “Well, that explains a lot,” said Tristan, shaking his head sadly. “Remind me to cut back on my birth control use.” They both laughed quietly as they turned back to their lunches. “So, I guess I get out of a pas de deux this year.” Tristan’s voice was full of false cheer. “That’s great. I mean, now I have more time to work on my solos.”

  “Um, yeah, about that. Mrs. Demidovski asked me yesterday if I wanted to do a pas de deux with you. I guess I’m second choice. I can say no if you really don’t want to do it.”

  “No, that’s great!” Tristan quickly assured her. “Did she mention if they had decided which one?”

  “Nope,” Alexandra said, taking Tristan’s bag of carrots from him. “Any one that you want?”

  “Ah … Sleeping Beauty or Black Swan?”

  “I’d love Black Swan, but I don’t know if they’ll let us. Otherwise, sure, Sleeping Beauty … I’d like Le Corsaire or Blue Bird too, but since we’re both doing Sleeping Beauty variations, it’d be kinda nice to have it all themed. Who’s Julian doing a pas with?” Alexandra asked curiously.

  “No idea,” Tristan said, passing her his apple.

  “Thanks,” said Alexandra. “Puffed corn?” He took a hand
ful.

  “I don’t think he’s doing festival,” Tristan continued. “He said the Demidovskis haven’t talked to him about it, and he won’t do anything on his own steam.”

  “Mr. Yu will make him. He wouldn’t let a boy from his homestay do nothing.”

  “Yes, we wouldn’t want to besmirch the family honour,” Tristan snickered.

  Mr. Yu was downstairs trying to shift some of the backdrop and props to find something

  “Mr. Yu!” Cromwell Gilly said as he ran down the stairs in a panic. “Where did you put the flowers for the ‘Trepak’ head pieces?” Mr. Yu began arguing with Cromwell Gilly, saying that he should have moved them out of the storage room before he started moving the sets around, and Cromwell Gilly started arguing that Mr. Yu needed to move “that stupid Christmas tree off of my costumes now!” He looked like he was close to tears and/or slapping Mr. Yu.

  Alexandra shook her head as she witnessed the scene and went to her locker to change for classes. She pulled out her bodysuit and looked at it for a second. It was completely faded and was stretched out of shape, making it extremely unflattering. It looked a couple of years old instead of just the couple of months that it was. Alexandra made a decision. Since they hadn’t cast her well, and they never helped her, she wouldn’t wear their stupid uniform. It wasn’t like the boys ever did. And besides, what can they do to me? Yell at me? Not cast me? Give other people solos and pas de deux ahead of me? The corner of her mouth turned up a little in a smile at the thought of her rebellion. She put the uniform back in her locker and looked through the rest of her bodysuits. Not red or pink, she wasn’t going to push it that far. There, perfect! She pulled out an old favourite: a beautiful blue bodysuit that was the kind of fabric that never seemed to fade. She went into the bathroom and changed into it. She did her hair, admiring the way her striped warm-ups went with the colour of the bodysuit.