Free Various Positions by Martha Schabas

with his eyes. “So if you aren’t interested in becoming an artist, please”—he lifted his hand and held it out toward the door—“get out of my studio because you’re wasting everyone’s time.”
    The change in his expression was immediate. It wasn’t anger. It was more like a shock of blankness, a TV screen turned to snow. An embarrassment flooded up from my chest. I didn’t understand it, but I had to look away. There was an enormous silence in the room. After a moment Roderick cleared his throat. He told us to face the barre and began to count us through the first exercise.
    I couldn’t concentrate throughout the class. I moved my arms and legs in the appropriate configurations, but my attention wasn’t inside my body like it should’ve been. It was on Roderick. Unlike all the ballet teachers I’d had before, he didn’t circle the inside of the studio while we danced, poking bent knees and keeping the rhythm with his foot. He stood in the very far corner, almost completely behind the piano. He leaned his body into the crook of the walls, holding his face so that his fingers covered most of it. I tried not to look at him but it was impossible. His reaction felt so important. We were doing what he’d told us to do but still, there he was, slinking as far away from us as possible. I couldn’t see his mouth but I was sure there was something strange along his eyes, something almost sneering. This is it, I thought, this is the Rodomization. I bent forward in a deep port de bras devant and felt a tingle all over my body.

 
    FIVE
    I watched the other girls in the change room the next morning. Sixty chose a locker next to mine and Veronica was beside her. They took off their tank tops and skirts and stayed naked for much longer than necessary. There were no windows in the change room, just long tubes of yellow light that dangled beneath exposed piping. Veronica had blue underwear with white elasticized trim. It cut a blunt line below her hip bones, and she had moles there too, hooking beneath her belly button in the shape of a bass clef. I tried not to look even though I wanted to, but then my eyes were on Sixty instead, tanned everywhere except for a tube around her boobs and the white ghost of her bikini bottom.
    “You should really use a higher SPF.” Veronica sat on the bench now, gathered her tights into scrunches, and placed a foot inside. “Tanning will age you prematurely.”
    Molly Davies laughed. She was the black girl with a cloud of curly hair. She only had her tights on, and she reached up for something on the top shelf of her locker. The seams curved over both her bum cheeks, dropped straight down the middle of her legs.
    “Gorgeous.” Veronica smacked her lips at the magnetic mirror inside her locker door. In her hand was an uncapped lipstick, rolled up to reveal a ruby bullet of wax.
    “Gorgeous for who?” Molly leaned over her shoulder. “Nathaniel or Jonathan?”
    Everyone laughed. Nathaniel and Jonathan, the two boys in our class, looked like mannequins for kids’ clothes and weren’t the kind of boys that anyone normal would date.
    “We’re going to need alternative options.” Veronica shut her locker with a clang. “I’ll make it my mission.”
    Molly tossed her ballet slipper like a Frisbee, aimed straight for Veronica’s gut. “Nympho,” she said.
    “Pretty much,” said Veronica.
    At ten minutes to nine we left the change room as a class and made our way to Studio A. I felt slightly deadened by the conversation about boys. It hadn’t been what I’d expected. We were supposed to be focused on the task at hand, preparing quietly and seriously for our second technique class. But I forgot about it as soon as I saw Roderick. He had the same air of lazy interrogation, eyeing us up and down as we walked into the studio. It sent a throb up my body, the challenge of it. He leaned against the piano. His striped dress shirt was rolled neatly above his forearms, and he pulled