Shell Games
Full-Fledged Reunion
A little seven-year-old. That’s how old I was when I met him. He and my brother became best friends over an afternoon of street hockey in the summer, and my brother just had to have him over at our house. I told him he was a stupid and icky ten-year-old boy. Soon I was chasing him down the block because he pulled my pigtails and then proclaimed I was infested with cooties while I was watching The Magic School Bus. I already had to deal with one annoying older brother. Why, at seven years old, was I being blessed with another?
Because he and my brother, Gavin, were three years my senior, they believed they had the right to do whatever the fuck they wanted to me. There were pranks, name-calling, and all the other typical things boys that age could do to a little girl. I’ll admit I was just as bad. I was annoying. Actually, that’s an understatement. Everywhere they went, I went. Everything they did, I did. I was the little tag-along sister that brothers loathe. As my brother’s best friend, he often took the opportunity to tell me how much he hated me.
A stupid fourteen-year-old. That’s how old I was when I started crushing on him. Up until that point, I never really understood why girls, why my friends, thought he was such a catch. Sure, he was a hometown boy playing major junior hockey for our local team, but I’d always known him, so he was just him. Conditions changed over the years. Spending so much of our youth around each other, we became friends. He stopped telling me that he hated me. He was such a charmer, then, at seventeen. He was funny, attractive, and even sensitive when he wanted to be. I started to see him in a different light. I fell for him. I fell hard.
He remained best friends with my brother. I didn’t see much of him past fourteen. I moved two and a half hours away to fuel my own ambitions. Whenever I was home in our little city, I ignored him. Whenever he was at the house with my Gavin, I would hide away in my room or make sure I was out and about. Because I couldn’t utter a single word to him normally. It was like he had some kind of power over me. Everything about him was so intimidating. I should have stopped liking him then, on those long weekends and school breaks, because I saw how girls threw themselves at him. Because he was a boneheaded teenage boy and I saw how he didn’t exactly treat them like princesses.
Eventually things got better around him. As my confidence grew in my life away from home, my confidence grew around him. I could send smiles his way and form complete sentences again. Relatively, things were once again normal. But we weren’t friends anymore like we’d grown up to be. Mostly because I moved across the country, and the local hockey team he played for traded him, but also because I never did stop liking him.
Typically, teenage boys that play major junior hockey in Canada aren’t given the opportunity to play in their own local market the way that he did. Leaving home at sixteen and living with billet parents to continue the dream of playing hockey is a huge deal. I can relate since I left home at fourteen to further my dream of a career in ballet. Ten years before I left home, I did my first plié and I’ve been hooked ever since. I’ve been blessed with the right body type and work ethic of a dancer. So when I nailed an audition to study at a highly regarded program in a bigger city, and when my parents realized that my dreams might actually be something feasible, I went.
Like junior hockey players, I lived with billets through the last two years of junior high so I could attend the full year pre-professional program at the School of Alberta Ballet. Another opportunity came knocking on my door by the end of Grade 9. I successfully auditioned for the Canadian National Ballet Academy. The distance from home was no longer just the drive between Lethbridge and Calgary. It meant being two whole time zones away; it meant living in dorms for all of high school in Toronto. I never had anything less than a soloist’s role in all of the student showcases and I had the principal female role at year’s end before graduation. I’d even heard I was considered for the same role a year earlier, but I missed a few months of dancing due to injury. I thrived under the pressure of my young dancer’s life. I worked at my craft with passion and a fire in my eyes. Before graduation I was offered an apprentice position with the company that the school fed into, the Canadian National Ballet, which felt like a dream come true.
A running quip between my brother, his best friend, and me is that role reversal happened somewhere in our lives. Whereas I had followed them around as a little girl, it was almost like they were following me once I got out of Alberta. My brother moved to Toronto a year after me to attend university. His best friend got drafted to the NHL in one of the later rounds once he was eligible, and thankfully so, because his career in major junior was never the same once he got traded by the local team. When he wound up playing in Providence, we were all reunited in the same time zone. But that was only temporary and never a full-fledged reunion.
My first year in the corps de ballet with the company was his rookie season in the NHL, in Chicago. I was so used to success with my career, but that year belonged to him and my brother. There’s a hierarchy in ballet that is rarely, if ever, broken. In big companies, you have to work your way up. Being a star as a student and an apprentice will get you into the corps, and then it’s a whole new battle. At that level, everyone is so good and so motivated…and so uniform. Dancing in the corps is dancing with the group, highlighting the soloists. Being part of the corps also gets comfortable. There are a lot of dancers that spend their entire careers there without promotion—sometimes because they never seek it. That first year in the corps, I was bright eyed and bushy tailed. It was a big enough deal for me to be part of the company because it was what I worked for every day since I was a little girl. But not to be outdone, my brother graduated from university with a job offer in place despite the recession. And his best friend? Well, he was a finalist for the NHL’s Calder Memorial Trophy.
A cynical 21-year-old. That’s what I am now. The upcoming ballet season will mark the beginning of my third year with the company. In the last two years I’ve realized that I don’t want to be a principal dancer but I also don’t want to just be in the corps. I do want solo roles. I do want the spotlight on my pas de deux partner and me for a part of the amazing shows our company puts on. This season, I have my biggest role thus far in my career. I’m still in the corps de ballet, but I have a part as big as one of the demi soloists. So I shouldn’t be this cynical. You don’t choose a life in dance for the money. I’m fine with the fact that I have to live with Gavin to maintain a healthy lifestyle and my sanity because it means that I get to keep living my dream. The problem is…that full-fledged reunion that never happened with my brother’s best friend…it’s about to happen.
He won the Stanley Cup in June and at the end of that month he got traded. To the Toronto Maple Leafs. I’m very worried about living in the same city—in the same building—as him. It’s easy to forget that I ever had a crush on him when I’m seven years removed from being fourteen and when I’ve rarely seen him in that time frame. I’ve obviously dated and been in relationships with other guys. But all it took was celebrating his championship in the summer in our hometown to remind me why I ever secretly had a thing for him. He’s even more of a catch now than he was at seventeen. It all came rushing back. I found myself ignoring him and hiding in my room again, really trying to avoid acting like a schoolgirl around him.
I’m cynical because it’s pathetic how much trouble I have being around him. Our lives have taken similar routes. We both moved away when we were teenagers. We both know the grind of physical training. We both know what it is to chase a dream and succeed at it. Honestly, I have so many more similarities to him than he has with my brother. I also see parts of myself in all the girls he’s ever paid any real attention to. I’m a great listener. I’ve never been a clingy girl. I’m well-liked by everyone in his family. I have a fucking dancer’s body. I’m even a natural blonde.
And Kris Versteeg still doesn’t like me.
Because he and my brother, Gavin, were three years my senior, they believed they had the right to do whatever the fuck they wanted to me. There were pranks, name-calling, and all the other typical things boys that age could do to a little girl. I’ll admit I was just as bad. I was annoying. Actually, that’s an understatement. Everywhere they went, I went. Everything they did, I did. I was the little tag-along sister that brothers loathe. As my brother’s best friend, he often took the opportunity to tell me how much he hated me.
A stupid fourteen-year-old. That’s how old I was when I started crushing on him. Up until that point, I never really understood why girls, why my friends, thought he was such a catch. Sure, he was a hometown boy playing major junior hockey for our local team, but I’d always known him, so he was just him. Conditions changed over the years. Spending so much of our youth around each other, we became friends. He stopped telling me that he hated me. He was such a charmer, then, at seventeen. He was funny, attractive, and even sensitive when he wanted to be. I started to see him in a different light. I fell for him. I fell hard.
He remained best friends with my brother. I didn’t see much of him past fourteen. I moved two and a half hours away to fuel my own ambitions. Whenever I was home in our little city, I ignored him. Whenever he was at the house with my Gavin, I would hide away in my room or make sure I was out and about. Because I couldn’t utter a single word to him normally. It was like he had some kind of power over me. Everything about him was so intimidating. I should have stopped liking him then, on those long weekends and school breaks, because I saw how girls threw themselves at him. Because he was a boneheaded teenage boy and I saw how he didn’t exactly treat them like princesses.
Eventually things got better around him. As my confidence grew in my life away from home, my confidence grew around him. I could send smiles his way and form complete sentences again. Relatively, things were once again normal. But we weren’t friends anymore like we’d grown up to be. Mostly because I moved across the country, and the local hockey team he played for traded him, but also because I never did stop liking him.
Typically, teenage boys that play major junior hockey in Canada aren’t given the opportunity to play in their own local market the way that he did. Leaving home at sixteen and living with billet parents to continue the dream of playing hockey is a huge deal. I can relate since I left home at fourteen to further my dream of a career in ballet. Ten years before I left home, I did my first plié and I’ve been hooked ever since. I’ve been blessed with the right body type and work ethic of a dancer. So when I nailed an audition to study at a highly regarded program in a bigger city, and when my parents realized that my dreams might actually be something feasible, I went.
Like junior hockey players, I lived with billets through the last two years of junior high so I could attend the full year pre-professional program at the School of Alberta Ballet. Another opportunity came knocking on my door by the end of Grade 9. I successfully auditioned for the Canadian National Ballet Academy. The distance from home was no longer just the drive between Lethbridge and Calgary. It meant being two whole time zones away; it meant living in dorms for all of high school in Toronto. I never had anything less than a soloist’s role in all of the student showcases and I had the principal female role at year’s end before graduation. I’d even heard I was considered for the same role a year earlier, but I missed a few months of dancing due to injury. I thrived under the pressure of my young dancer’s life. I worked at my craft with passion and a fire in my eyes. Before graduation I was offered an apprentice position with the company that the school fed into, the Canadian National Ballet, which felt like a dream come true.
A running quip between my brother, his best friend, and me is that role reversal happened somewhere in our lives. Whereas I had followed them around as a little girl, it was almost like they were following me once I got out of Alberta. My brother moved to Toronto a year after me to attend university. His best friend got drafted to the NHL in one of the later rounds once he was eligible, and thankfully so, because his career in major junior was never the same once he got traded by the local team. When he wound up playing in Providence, we were all reunited in the same time zone. But that was only temporary and never a full-fledged reunion.
My first year in the corps de ballet with the company was his rookie season in the NHL, in Chicago. I was so used to success with my career, but that year belonged to him and my brother. There’s a hierarchy in ballet that is rarely, if ever, broken. In big companies, you have to work your way up. Being a star as a student and an apprentice will get you into the corps, and then it’s a whole new battle. At that level, everyone is so good and so motivated…and so uniform. Dancing in the corps is dancing with the group, highlighting the soloists. Being part of the corps also gets comfortable. There are a lot of dancers that spend their entire careers there without promotion—sometimes because they never seek it. That first year in the corps, I was bright eyed and bushy tailed. It was a big enough deal for me to be part of the company because it was what I worked for every day since I was a little girl. But not to be outdone, my brother graduated from university with a job offer in place despite the recession. And his best friend? Well, he was a finalist for the NHL’s Calder Memorial Trophy.
A cynical 21-year-old. That’s what I am now. The upcoming ballet season will mark the beginning of my third year with the company. In the last two years I’ve realized that I don’t want to be a principal dancer but I also don’t want to just be in the corps. I do want solo roles. I do want the spotlight on my pas de deux partner and me for a part of the amazing shows our company puts on. This season, I have my biggest role thus far in my career. I’m still in the corps de ballet, but I have a part as big as one of the demi soloists. So I shouldn’t be this cynical. You don’t choose a life in dance for the money. I’m fine with the fact that I have to live with Gavin to maintain a healthy lifestyle and my sanity because it means that I get to keep living my dream. The problem is…that full-fledged reunion that never happened with my brother’s best friend…it’s about to happen.
He won the Stanley Cup in June and at the end of that month he got traded. To the Toronto Maple Leafs. I’m very worried about living in the same city—in the same building—as him. It’s easy to forget that I ever had a crush on him when I’m seven years removed from being fourteen and when I’ve rarely seen him in that time frame. I’ve obviously dated and been in relationships with other guys. But all it took was celebrating his championship in the summer in our hometown to remind me why I ever secretly had a thing for him. He’s even more of a catch now than he was at seventeen. It all came rushing back. I found myself ignoring him and hiding in my room again, really trying to avoid acting like a schoolgirl around him.
I’m cynical because it’s pathetic how much trouble I have being around him. Our lives have taken similar routes. We both moved away when we were teenagers. We both know the grind of physical training. We both know what it is to chase a dream and succeed at it. Honestly, I have so many more similarities to him than he has with my brother. I also see parts of myself in all the girls he’s ever paid any real attention to. I’m a great listener. I’ve never been a clingy girl. I’m well-liked by everyone in his family. I have a fucking dancer’s body. I’m even a natural blonde.
And Kris Versteeg still doesn’t like me.
Notes
Extended Chapter NotesI realize that Steeger has played for two different teams since he was a Leaf. But he was the character I wanted for the story and the timeline just worked. I think there are a couple of ideas introduced by the narrator in this prologue that spurn some questions but I'm going to stop myself here because I think they're adequately addressed in the first chapter.
Omg, its sooo good.
3/15/14