Back to the wall, I attempt to open the flimsy metal back door. With a rattle and a kick from the boots I borrowed from Dad’s truck it swings open. Even the door has a palpable excitement.

Despite it being 8:30 at night the sky is a hazy shade of pinks and purples. The sun struggling to shine for just a few minutes more, the heat is dense and thick. Under my work polo and mandatory cargo pants it felt like the wrath of a million suns. The road beyond the Gas’N’Go having that wiggly effect on my eyesight.

So honestly, I welcome the dark cool concrete dance studio walls. Though the AC was turned off an hour ago at least for closing time, the walls filled with placid teenage smiles still were cool to the touch.

‘8:30 isn’t even that late.’ I attempt to justify to myself as I punch in the alarm code. When Mama and Donna used to run this place it had so many keys to give out that the locksmith knew us by name. Tony was less of a kind spirit. I distinctly remember his face contorting in a weird almost fearful way when I asked him if I could come after shift.

“No! Not under any circumstances!” He had said getting up from his office chair.

I had nodded meekly and left the office, carefully joining the line up of porcelain like girls who doing their bar warmups.

Shaking off my shame I amble myself quietly to the first practice room. It’s usually for the tiny kids, hence why the door is a push open with no lock. Besides that and the mural of dancing mice and kittens it functions the same as any practice room.

Self consciously I change out of my stale uniform in the curtained corner. Carefully wrapping my feet next to hula hoops and gymnastic mats. Coming up to the mirror I observe my every move with a precious precision. My body is a complicated tangle of complex moves strung together. As I leap and kick I feel free. Not an ounce of shame in my mind.

I do a barrage of tight spins to test how many revolutions I could do, I end up falling in a spill of giggling and panting. After giggling to myself for a minute I reach for my water, a foot away, just by the mirror. As I grab it I notice a smudge on the mirror. Probably from a stool or chair leaned up against it. It’s black and grey and more like a scuff I notice.

Like some sort of well meaning burglar I hurriedly grab the Windex and towel propped up in the corner. Determined not to leave the place I broke into in a worse state. But, as I wipe the stain it doesn’t go away, only it gets bigger, and wider, almost like flat scuff is gaining dimension. My skin prickles with goosebumps. I quickly swing my head backwards, hoping that this is someone who had came in behind me. That happens to be keeping an abstract flat shape, somehow. The room is empty besides me and the painted dancing mammals.

The mirror however, tells a different story. The scuff gains a shape. A figure. A person. A girl. A dancer. About my height but built like a twig. Her skirt is wide and stiff like any ballerinas, the material looks like one from the 80s, like how Donna’s hand me downs look. I am still on the ground windex in hand. But my eyes seem permanently stuck on the girl in the mirror. Her lips separate to show a thin grin. Her posture is odd, bent in on itself. Crumpled nearly. Not from inexperience I infer, but from some outside force. Almost like she has been pressed into that form.

With a sudden force indescribabley quickly I am brought to my feet. Now level with the thin girl she begins to turn and spin in complicated and artful leaps and poses. Some look familiar but others seem impossibly challenging. Eyes still glued to the mirror I barely register I am copying her exact movements. My thighs burn with how much extension is required for her complex movements. Yet, I feel a deep pull to keep doing it. I wonder if I could even stop if I wanted to. Despite her movements and artful expressive dance her body still seems to be curved inwards. Like a bent hanger.

Suddenly, mid movement she collapses into a heaving mess. I fall with her. Eyes still intensely focused on the mirror I watch as she falls foward in a jagged inhumane way. The skin from behind her back opens like a chest and she just falls. Like planks of wood only held together by craft glue. Like she was, hollow. I however, register that I fell like a human. I scream in pain as I hit the lightly padded floor. My vision going blurry. The strangest moment in my life going out in a bang.