Page 60 of Your Echo
“Sorry.” She laughs at my reaction. “I know the makeup is kind of scary. You have to overcompensate when you’re on stage.”
Shedoeshave a shit tonne of makeup on right now, but she manages to wear it like a supermodel instead of a clown.
“Do you haveglitterin your hair?” I ask, noticing the way her whole head sparkles when she moves.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.” She shakes her head from side to side so I can get the full effect. “Thank you for my flowers, by the way. I can’t remember the last time someone sent me flowers backstage. Now everyone’s asking who my mystery man is.”
“These guys won’t shut up aboutyou,” I tell her, jerking my thumb towards the group behind me.
They’re so caught up in the fact that the machine gave Cole two Mars bars instead of one that no one has noticed Stéphanie yet.
“You brought your friends?” she asks, taken aback.
“They brought themselves,” I tell her. “They don’t really understand the meaning of the word ‘no.’”
“Oh! Are you Stéphanie?” Kay joins us, holding out her hand. “I’m Kay, Matt’s girlfriend.”
Before she can grasp the hand Stéphanie offers her, JP slides in and takes hold of it instead before bringing it to his lips.
“Bon soir, mademoiselle.I am Jean-Paul Marc Joseph Bouchard-Guindon, but you may call me JP.”
Stéphanie looks between JP and I, clearly at a loss for how to respond, but Kay intercedes and swats JP away.
“Don’t mind him. He’s harmless. Mostly.”
“You can knock it off with the French charm thing,” I tell him. “Stéphanie is Francophone.”
His eyes light up, and in French, he asks Stéphanie if she’s ever been to KTV before.
“Uh...non?” she answers.
Matt and Cole come introduce themselves after that, and before we have time for the awkwardness of small talk, an announcement sounds, calling all the performers back stage.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you!” Stéphanie exclaims, just before she rushes off. “One of my students couldn’t make it tonight, so I’m filling in on my next choreo. You’ll get to see me do something more impressive than be the driver of a human shuttle bus.”
We sit through another five numbers before the program says Stéphanie’s choreography is due on stage. We have to have made it through the entire Katy Perry discography by now. Even thetap dancersdanced to Katy Perry.
The lights dim as the group before Stéphanie’s shuffles off. When they come back on, the stage is filled with half a dozen dancers arranged in an elaborate, interconnected pose. Their limbs are so tangled it takes me a moment to pick Stéphanie out among them. The students are older than most of the other performers, all somewhere in their early or late teens. A few soft piano notes sound, and they begin to slowly shift out of formation, expanding away from each other to fill the stage like an unravelling knot.
A woman’s voice joins with the piano, singing about fire and cold winds. Now that I’m sure which arms and legs belong to Stéphanie, I can’t look away from her. She moves like she’s somewhere else, like the music has picked her up and carried her away to the dark, secret place that all sound comes from. Her body echoes every swell and lift in the song, and I recognize the look of rapture on her face.
I feel that same rapture down to my very bones every time I’m up on stage, when I hear the crowd roaring, their arms waving in the air like the limbs of one giant beast moving in unison to a rhythm only I control. In those moments, there’s no past and no future, nothing tugging me out of the present. There’s a certain kind of stillness to it, a power that also brings peace, and I feel it now as I watch Stéphanie dance.
The rest of the show is easy to sit through after that.
“Stéphanie was so good!” Kay exclaims, as we join in the train of people shuffling back out into the lobby.
“She really was.” Matt thumps me on the back and raises an eyebrow at me. “Are you bringing her to KTV?”
“I’d actually like to see this girl again,” I tell him, “and I doubt she’ll want to keep talking to me if she experiences what you’re all like at KTV.”
“Oh come on,” Kay urges. “I’mgoing.”
“Yeah, but you and Matt are basically married already.”
That gets them both off the subject fast. For two people who are clearly going to end up married, they sure do fucking love to pretend the opposite when anyone brings it up.
“I’m just going to text her and see if she wants to say goodbye,” I announce, stepping away from the group once we make it into the school’s front parking lot.
