LITMIR.BIZ

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said.

      “Bet you can’t,” Tristan said. Julian and Tristan watched as Kageki prepared, and then just as he started Tristan yelled, “Jinx!”

      Kageki gave up on doing a proper pirouette and turned into a spiralling spin, both hands clutched onto his heart. “I hate you,” he informed Tristan and prepared again.

      “Don’t wind up,” Tristan said, laughing at him. Kageki stopped, looked at Tristan, and then prepared with exaggerated care. He went around one … two … three … four … five … he started slowing down at six, but just as he was about to stop, he twisted his body and managed to get around another time.

      “Nice!” Julian said admiringly.

      “Cheater,” Tristan said. “Now me.” He did the first three pirouettes normally, then hunched his shoulders and grabbed his crotch for four more.

      “It doesn’t count if you do it that way,” Kageki argued. But Tristan defended himself.

      Julian did a few pirouettes off to the side. He could do five max, grabbing his crotch or no.

      The show went pretty well as far as Julian could tell. The children liked the national dances, tolerated the waltz and contemporary dances, yawned through Aiko and Dmitri’s pas de deux from Le Corsaire, and were wildly enthusiastic about Tristan, Julian, and Kageki’s version of the Russian dance taken from The Nutcracker.

      “I need a drink,” Dmitri said later, as everyone unloaded themselves and the costumes out of the car.

      “Me too,” Julian said. Dmitri looked at him in surprise.

      “We have costume fittings today,” Tristan reminded him.

      “You want to go to No. 5?” Dmitri asked Mr. Yu.

      He nodded, continuing to unload. Everyone began to go inside, but Mr. Yu called the boys back to help.

      “Where’s No. 5?” Julian asked, as they pulled out a trunk of costumes.

      “Downtown. It’s a good bar,” Dmitri told him.

      “No it’s not,” Tristan said quietly, wrinkling his nose in disgust. “It just has strippers,”

      “You want to come with us?” Dmitri asked Julian, ignoring Tristan.

      “Sure!” Julian said. “Uh, actually I can’t. I don’t have any I.D.”

      Dmitri grimaced. “Too bad, man. You find some I.D. and I’ll take you. They used to have Pam Anderson stripping there before she got famous.”

      “No, it was Courtney Love,” Mr. Yu said. “Come on, let’s go.”

      Dmitri rolled his eyes and whispered “Pam!” to Julian. He got in the van and they drove away, leaving Julian, Tristan, and Kageki to carry the costumes into the academy.

      The whole hall was filled with people waiting to get into the studio, which was full of precariously stacked tutus and large props. As Tristan and Julian walked by carrying a trunk, a peculiar man, who was measuring Taylor’s hips, called out to them. “Boys! Hurry back, I need you next. So nice to see you again, Tristan.”

      “Who was that?” Julian asked.

      “The costume guy.” Tristan was struggling as they manoeuvred the trunk down the stairs. “His name is Cromwell Gilly. He used to go to McKinley. He’s training to be a designer now, and he likes to practice sewing and stuff at the academy.” They heaved the trunk down onto the costume-room floor with relief. “Whew! Let’s leave the rest for Leon and Jonathon, okay?”

      “Sounds good to me,” Julian said, and they trudged up the stairs.

      Cromwell Gilly was even more eccentric close up. He was very small and had long, thin blond hair, and he was in constant motion. He wore extremely tight, black skinny pants, pointed leather shoes, a white poet’s shirt open to show a great deal of his chest, a belt with a huge silver buckle on it, three rings, and a leather and silver necklace. As he darted around measuring people, he’d tell them to put their arms up and down, then shout out their measurements to Michael’s mother, and generally promoting noise and confusion. The students were sprawled all over the hall, talking loudly to be heard over the commotion.

      “By the way, he likes to be called by his full name,” Tristan whispered to Julian.

      “He’s even more interesting with sound,” Julian whispered to Tristan as soon as they were close enough to hear him. They both sat down on the floor next to Alexandra, snickering.

      “Oh. My. God.” Cromwell Gilly said as he measured Aiko’s ankle.

      “What?” she asked, sounding worried.

      “Oh nothing, nothing,” he said, frowning. He called out the number to Michael’s mother, his eyebrows raised. She gave him a weird look, but wrote down the number.

      “What? What?” Aiko asked, starting to freak out.

      “Oh, nothing,” Michael’s mother said.

      “Done!” Cromwell Gilly sang out, smiling at Aiko. She walked off frowning, clenching and unclenching her hands. “Lexi, baby, how are you, love?” he asked Alexandra, gesturing her forward. Without letting her answer, he continued. “I can’t believe I was called in this late. What were they thinking?” Cromwell Gilly didn’t like the Demidovskis. Every year he would design new costumes for them, and every year they would nod politely and continue using the twenty- or thirty-year-old costumes instead. Any time something on the building was fixed, he took it as evidence that they had money they could give him to make the costumes but preferred to waste it on stupid things like fixing the roof.

      “Did you know that they got a new car?” he asked ALexandra in a stage whisper as he measured her hips. She shook her head. “Done!” he said, spinning her around by the shoulder and pushing her away.

      “Next!” Angela stepped forward, and Cromwell Gilly frowned. “What are you in?” he asked, scanning his list. “Oh, ‘Trepak,’” he answered himself in relief. “Thank god it’s not a tutu! Those ‘Trepak’ dresses are easy to let out.” Behind her Alexandra and Tristan giggled. Angela’s face turned completely red. Cromwell Gilly gestured her away, saying “We’ll just do you later, shall we? Next!” Delilah giggled as she stepped forward.

      “Del, darling, how are you! What are we going to do about your boobage m’dear?” he said, frowning as he measured them. Delilah blushed. “We’ll just take some of the material from the waist and add it to the chest, shall we?” She rolled her eyes and he called for the next dancer.

      Tristan shoved Julian forward. But, much to Julian’s relief, Cromwell Gilly didn’t have anything embarrassing to say about him, merely remarking that he had “a very nice body for dance, don’t you think, Tristan?”

      In the big room where the stacks of costumes were, the girls were rummaging through the tutus, each trying to find one in their size. Taylor was trying to do up Kaitlyn’s Clara costume, but it wasn’t working. Kaitlyn looked like she was about to cry, as Taylor gave up happily and said, loudly, “It’s just not going to do up, Kaitlyn. It’s all right, though. They always have to adjust the costumes for me, too, because I’m so small. Like, in width.”

      Keiko found a tutu that fit. But she scowled when she looked at the tag, and went off to find another one.

      “Are some of them taken already?” Julian asked Tristan.

      “No, it’s just that these tutus are so old, they kind of have history, you know? Everyone wants to get one that a good dancer, or one with a good body type used to wear, just to see if it fits. It’s kind of cool that they used to wear it. So you always look inside the costume to see who wore it before you.”

      “Yeah,” Kageki said enthusiastically. “I got to wear a costume that Mr. Yu wore once. It was so cool.…”

      “It fit you?” Julian asked.

      Tristan

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