The Brokenhearted Read Free

Six-year-old Zahra scandalized me by stealing a whole tray of petit fours before lunch was even served, demanding that I lead her to my room where we could devour the treats. Zahra’s always been daring, up for anything, anytime. Me, I need a lot of convincing to choose new and risky over safe and predictable. Always have.
    I shrug, wishing I’d stayed home with an Epsom salt bubble bath and my tried and true DVD of Olga Inkarova’s all-time best ballet performances. If I’d stayed home, I would be asleep by now, ready to get up early and head to the studio, with an hour of ballet to myself before our Saturday morning practice. This is the year I get to try out for the Bedlam Ballet Corps, where I find out if my twelve years of dedication to ballet have been enough to make a career out of it.
    As we walk closer to the massive warehouse, a rainbow of colored lights passes over us, and doubt starts bubbling up inside me like acid indigestion. Is this party really worth a sluggish day at ballet tomorrow? “Are you sure we should be here, Z? Because I don’t think—”
    But then the double doors at the top of the building’s stairs swing open as if sensing our arrival, and my words evaporate on my lips. A thin blond man in a worn velvet top hat slithers out of them and extends a hand to Zahra, who’s standing a few feet closer to him than I am. He has a long, skinny black star tattooed beneath each of his eyes.
    “Come inside, sparkly girls.” His smile reveals a missing tooth and several gray ones. “Be corrupted.”
    A South Sider. I take a reflexive step backward and freeze, the dumb smile of a foreigner in a strange land glued to my face, hoping my initial revulsion at his teeth doesn’t show. But Zahra grabs his hand and follows him in without a second thought.
    “Let’s go, Anthem.” Z turns around for a moment and thrusts her pointy chin toward the party, a wicked little grin lighting up her face. “This is exactly where we should be.”
    And then she’s inside, leaving me no choice but to follow. I let the man in the top hat pull me up the steps, his grip so firm it hurts a little. Then I walk with Zahra through two sets of shabby velvet curtains until we find ourselves on an enormous checkerboard dance floor.
    A tickling heat travels along my spine as I ogle the revelers: guys in bespoke suits and leather pants, women in high heels and shiny vintage dresses, feathers and jewels dripping from their shimmery shoulders. On the edges of the massive room are stations for drinks, each staffed by bartenders in top hats like the doorman’s. Swooping from the ceiling are women on trapezes, wearing nothing more than a sticky-looking wax, each with a set of tattered black wings sprouting from her shoulder blades.
    “Told you. Party of the year!” Zahra shouts over the music, stepping out of her boiled wool trench. Gold hot pants cling to her tiny butt, and a white cotton tank with a red-and-black silk bra beneath it is tasked with harnessing her ample chest. Five long strings of black pearls dangle from her neck. “Give me your coat.”
    I fiddle with the last button still fastened at my collar, take a deep breath full of sweat and smoke and alcohol fumes, and finally unbutton it.
    “How did I let you talk me into wearing this?” I scream, but my words are lost in the noise. Zahra insisted I wear my costume from last year’s ballet recital, so I’m dressed as Juliet. As in, Romeo and.
    She looks at me and smiles tenderly. “You look beautiful,” she says, leaning into my ear so I hear her.
    “The costume is beautiful,” I correct her. Juliet wears a purple-and-black corset with real whalebone in it, paired with a black lace tutu edged in zippers. It makes my waist even tinier than it already is and gives me the illusion of cleavage. It screams Look at me , and I’m not someone who likes to be looked at. Not unless there’s an orchestra playing and I’m onstage, having rehearsed my every move for