Bab 7: CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER FIVE
Josie McMillan
WHEN JOSIE WAS FIFTEEN years old, something very special happened the very day the team played the finals.
After the performance, an apparently forty — year — old woman, strikingly beautiful, with a slurred accent came up to her and spoke:
— What's your name, girl?
— Josie... Josie McMillan
— It has a strong name, girl, I like it, and it dances very well too. It takes a lot of training to do what you did.
— I love to dance.
— Me too. I was the first ballerina of the Moscow ballet.
Josie knew that Russian dancers were the best in the world.
— Wow! What's your name?
— Ivana Baryshnikov.
Josie's eyes sparkled at that moment.
— I know it's a bit unexpected, but I'd like to audition with you. There's a school close by that a friend of mine owns and teaches ballet, despite being on vacation, it's impossible to see a talent and stand still, I feel like I made the day looking at you.
— I don't even know what to say, dona Ivana.
Ivana, if you speak, please. I'll feel old, and that's not cool, you know?
It is simply impossible for this woman to grow old.
— Of course, Ivana.
— Wonderful, can we meet tomorrow morning? — Six hours would be perfect for me.
— Clear!
But Josie had never woken up this early in her life.
JOSIE DIDN'T SLEEP, she stayed up all night rehearsing and the first thing Ivana noticed was her swollen eyes.
— Apparently someone hasn't even slept.
— I was very anxious.
— I guess. Do you like a specific song, or can I put something that I think is more appropriate?
— Let's go for you.
Ivana took a record and put it on, the music played softly, Josie closed her eyes and let her body be led by the sound that her ears were enjoying for the first time, until she reached the last note, when Josie ended up tripping and hitting her face on the floor, making Ivana, who was looking closely at everything, laughed.
— Forgive me, I...
— You're forgiven, dear, it went very well — I would very much like you to be part of our company, I would just need your mother's permission.
— That won't be a problem, maybe change is what she wants most in life.
— Wonderful.
Ivana handed over her card.
— Call me, all right? — I will be anxiously waiting for your reply.
Josie ran out of the dance school jumping for joy.
Ivana was looking at her from the window, happy with what she saw and happy for the girl, knowing that the difference she saw in Josie's footsteps was a pain that life must impose on her, the girl was strong, she would easily bear the load of studies and trials that would be afflicted in Moscow.
She knew that if the girl was a winner in life, she would be a winner on stage.
For a moment, Ivana remembered when she started, she was Russia's biggest star, at just fourteen she had already become Moscow's prima ballerina, she had a brilliant career ahead of her if it weren't for the accident in which her parents died and she ended up undergoing several surgeries to regain mobility, she was not able to return fully, she only won the position of teacher, which she has held for twenty years.
JOSIE OPENED THE DOOR and saw her mother preparing breakfast.
— May I know where the young lady was?
— I went for a test.
The mother nodded and put the scrambled eggs on the plate and sat down next to her with a smile that only a mother can give a child.
She gently stroked her daughter's face.
— I'm so proud of you, honey, I know how much you want that.
Josie hugged her.
— I promise, mother, that one day I will give you the life you deserve.
— Sometimes I don't think I deserve the daughter I have, you know? I wish I had the willingness to pursue my dreams like you have. So how was the test?
Josie told every detail of what had happened.
CARRIE MCALISTTER was born in Boston and since she was a child she wanted to be a dancer, however, in the numerous tests she did the answer was always the same:
Something was missing...
Since dancing was the only thing Carrie knew how to do, she decided to risk dancing at night, that way she would get some money to pay for her studies and finance her plan B:
To be lawyer....
The plan was going well, he was making good money dancing in clubs. Every now and then, she ended up going out with someone who paid a little more, one of those nights she met a guy named Josh McMillan.
— You're very beautiful, you know that?
— Thanks — Carrie replied, blushing.
They went out a few times and in one of them Carrie ended up getting pregnant, this was the first of the countless beatings she took from him.
Josh, contrary to what she imagined, was an out-of-control person, especially when he drank or when the Boston Celtics lost, forcing Carrie to run away with her young daughter. However, it was always a matter of time to find them, he made a thousand promises that he had changed and at the first opportunity he would do it all over again.
Over time, Josh got used to taking his frustration out on his wife and daughter and they got used to being Josh's punching bag, but with the invitation his daughter had received to dance in Moscow, everything was about to change, and really changed...
But this time forever.
JOSIE DECIDED TO BE A BALLERINA, which did not surprise either of the two friends, after all, they both knew that she danced since she was a child and had plenty of talent to take higher flights than just being a cheerleader in that end of the world with no tradition in ballet...
There was only one problem with this great blessing he received:
The scholarship he won was in Russia, on the other side of the world, a country that didn't have the same culture, the same language, the same customs, the same foods...
Away from everything and everyone, especially, away from both...
Mark congratulated her and kept silent again his suffering at seeing her leave without knowing everything that was going on inside him.
Anthony tried to reason with her in every possible and impossible way, but neither Anthony's useless chatter, much less his desperate silence, changed the course their fates traced at that moment.
— There's nothing you can do to change that decision, I understand that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
— There has to be some way out.
— Exactly! That's the way out.
For Mark, fate was playing dirty and there was absolutely nothing that could be done for him.
FOR JOSIE IT WAS PERFECT, she would be away from many things that made her suffer and at the same time she would be creating the opportunity she needed to build a future she had always dreamed of. If all went well, she would return home a heroine, get a decent job, fame and money, and stay as far away from her father as possible.
JOSIE HAS BEEN DANCING SINCE she was three years old, her parents were still reasonably happy together, another world, it looked like she had slept happily, woke up in a nightmare and was waiting to sleep again to go back to having a dream life.
But as in every nightmare, everything you think is bad...
It sure can get worse.
IT WAS TWO AM when the doorbell to her house rang, her mother Carrie got up thinking it was her drunk husband who had lost his keys again but was one of her bar friends.
— Sorry, Dona, but your husband is dead at the bar.
Carrie closed the door in the boy's face and went back to sleep, for the first time in years she slept peacefully.
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone