Practice Makes Perfect (Completed)

Chapter 28

The gym for the state meet was packed with people Anastasia had never seen, but she had always been comfortable in crowds. She stayed on the crutches to preserve her ankle until the performance, which made things a bit more tricky, but she still managed to follow her coahc through the crowd.

"Let's check out the auditorium. There shouldn't be any surprises once you get on  stage."

Anastasia followed her coach to the mostly empty auditorium. Normally she would get a good look at the room as she watched the performers ahead of her, but she had barely gotten enough points to qualify for the competition, so she would be preforming very close to the beginning of contestants. It was a good idea to check it out before she got dressed.

At least it had seemed like it.

As she walked in, she took a moment to survey the whole room. Her eyes went first to the expansive stage, then to the judges booth, then finally to the back corner of the room, where two teens were standing, talking with coffee cup in their hands.

One of the two teens was wearing a familiar hat. He put a hand on the girl's shoulder, and pulled her into a hug.

ANastasia wished she could say that she didn't care, wished she could ignore them, wished she could walk away without letting it affect her. But this time, she recognized the burnette Luke was with and her anger bubbled over the top faster than she could control.

In a moent of impulsive anger, she kicked the seat in front of her. 

With her bad ankle.

If she hadn't been dancing on it for months, the pain would have been too much to bear. As it was, she gasped loudly and bit her lip as she used her crutches to limp away.

He coach followed. "Anastasia, are you okay?"

She ignored him and charged foreward. 

"We should take you to see a medic. Your ankle should have been mostly healed, so it shouldn't be a big deal, but it's better to know now."

Anastasia knew he was right, and grudgingly followed him to the onsite medical room.

"Make it quick," her coach demanded. "we've got to get her on stage."

The nearest doctor rolled his eyes, but hurried over all the same. He started to unfasten the brace o her ankle as he spoke. "What happened?"

"A while back she broke the ankle real bad. Just a minute ago, she kicked a seat, and we just want to see if anything is wrong."

The doctor set the brace on the table next to Anastasia and nodded to her ankle. "I would say so."

Months of dancing on it had turned her ankle an even more disturbing color than before. The pruple was tinged with red, and the edges were a sickening yellow. As soon as it was free of the brace, it was clear that her ankle was severely swollen, and anybody would have been able to tell that something was wrong.

"Is all that from kicking the seat?" her coach asked.

The doctor rolled his eyes. "No. It's probably from putting weight on a badly broken ankle. There's a reason you aren't supposed to walk on an injury like that."

"We did everything we could." her coach protested. "Her doctor even let her take off the cast early because we were doing so well at keeping her off of it."

The doctor scoffed. "That seems unlikely."

Anastasia's coach turned on her, looking suspicious. She tried not to look too guilty.

"What did you do Anastasia?" he accused.

"I just needed some wins, or I wouldn't have made it here, and---"

"You danced on it? After I told you it would be better to wait?"

"I needed this!"

"No, you didn't! This is one competition of thousands. You were risking your entire future based on this stupid dream."

"If I didn't dance on it, I wouldn't be able to win today, and I would never get in at--"

"Well guess what Anastasia," he interrupted. "You danced on it, and because of that, you can't even dance today. Are you happy."

He stormed off, and Anastasia had to take a deep breath to center herself. The doctor was staring at her with some concern. "He's right you know."

Anastasia shook her head. Her coach was just another lousy person, and people always abandoned her. Ballet wouldn't do that to her, it couldn't. Losing her coach was just another unavoidable annoyance, not something that would determine her fate.

The way she saw it, she didn't have any other options. She had to get up on stage and prove them all wrong.

She stormed out of the medical room on her crutches and set up camp in the corner of the hallway. She had a little more than an hour before she needed to be onstage, and she planned to make the most of it.

An injection of Lidocaine, a case of makeup and  a can of hairspray later, she was standing backstage, wearing her best tutu and lucky dance shoes. She tights covered the gruesome sight of her ankle and the numbing medicine kept the pain at a minimum. Hopefully, no one would even notice that she was injured.

As the music started, so did she. The routine hurt, but she had practiced it a million times, and it went smoothly. This was the kind of routine she could do with her eyes shut.

Except, apparantly, she couldn't.

There were a lot of factors that affected the stability of a broken bone.  Anastasia's spiral fractire had left the bone intact, but dancing on it continuously had sheared away at where the cracks met, twisting the fracture deeper and deeper. All it took to shear the rest of the way through was a hard landing on a high jump, which came three-quarter's of the way through Anastasia's performance.

She heard the snap as her ankle collapsed, and she felt her dreams collapse along with it. She was crying by the time she hit the floor, and not because of the pain.

She music continued on at it's cheery pace. The crowd watched in stunned silence.

Then, suddenly Anastasia felt a hand on her back.

"Are you alright? Please tell me you're alright!"

Hands grabbed her shoulders, and she looked up at a familiar hat. She scoffed at his attempt to comfort her. Not only was she still mad at him, he could never understand what she was going through.

She knew what the snapp meant. Chances were, recovery and rehabilitation would take years. She may never have a full range of movement again. It was a risk she had known about when she had first started dancing on a broken ankle, but now it was a reality, and she couldn't handle it.

Ballet had finally abandoned her. Just like everything else.

"I have nothing left." She turned her head to the ground and cried onto the stage.

Luke turned her around and took her hands. His eyes shone a little too brightly, like maybe he had been crying too. 

"That's not true Anastasia. You have me. I promise, you have every part of me. I will never leave you."

As Anastasia watched a tear drip from Luke's face, the shock from her injury set in, and she slipped into unconsciousness.