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Chapter Seventeen: Crystal Confirmations

[Monday Day Sixteen of the Enchantment]

Denise woke to the whisper of her alarm and the soft weight of hair over her cheek, the familiar unfamiliarity of it no longer startling. Sixteen days in and the mirror no longer felt like a stranger. Wash. Moisturize. Concealer in a crescent under the eyes, feathered out with ring finger taps. Mascara with the hand braced on the counter to keep from sneezing. She could do all of it on autopilot now—because she’d watched, learned, and mirrored the motions until they were hers. Mimicry had started as survival. Today it slid through her like choreography.

At breakfast, Mom watched with that sly half-smile she wore when she was proud but pretending not to be. Denise buttered toast, cut fruit, and swiped the extra crumbs into her palm to keep the counter clean, echoing Mom’s motions so neatly that Mom finally huffed a laugh.

“You move like you’ve been doing this forever,” Mom said.

Denise shrugged, heat rising beneath her collar. “I watch. I repeat.”

“Just don’t forget which parts are you,” Mom said, more softly.

Denise didn’t say that copying gave her permission to try on courage like a jacket and see if it fit. She didn’t say that some parts felt more hers than anything had before. She just pressed her toast to her plate and checked the time.

At school she navigated the hall’s current with that same learned ease: backpack hinged on one shoulder, hip angled so boys didn’t clip her as they plowed by, chin tucked just enough to be approachable but not a target. The girls’ bathroom stamped a faint floral over disinfectant; she keyed into the rhythm there too—eye contact over the mirror then away, compliment traded for compliment, little favors banked like coins. By third period she’d already swapped a scrunchie for a better hair tie and rescued a smudged winged liner with a Q-tip she kept in her pencil bag. Little mimicked moves, small wins.

Richard found her between classes, hovering at the edge of the flow as if it might snatch him away. He had that washed-out look people get after a fever breaks, color pooled high in his cheekbones but not in his lips. His eyes were… off-focus. Like he was tracking something three inches to the left of her face.

“Hey,” he said, and the sound was scratchy, like it had to climb past something to get out.

Denise smiled with automatic relief. “Hey yourself. How are you?” She reached for his forearm and paused, fingertips hovering. “You look better.”

He smiled too, but his mouth overshot it, too many teeth for the feeling behind it. “Yeah. Better.” A blink, too slow. “You smell like peppermint.”

“New shampoo.” She didn’t say she’d picked it to smell like calm. “You hungry? I’ve got—” She jostled her bag. “—emergency granola.”

“I can’t… eat at school right now,” he said, like he was reading line by line off a card. His hand lifted and fell, hovering in a ghostly mimicry of hers. The motion snagged her heart anyway. “I really missed you.”

“I missed you too,” she said, and wished she hadn’t said it so quickly. He glanced past her. A ripple of cold slid down her spine, as if a door had opened somewhere.

“Do you think the team—” He broke off. “Never mind.”

“We’ll talk later,” she promised. “Rest. Don’t push.”

He nodded, relief and something else flickering, then he turned into the crowd and went away without looking back. Denise watched him vanish around the bend and had to swallow the acid doubt that rose. He’s recovering, she told herself. Bodies are weird. Minds take longer. The enchantment had taught her the elasticity of everything. Still, the hairs along her arms refused to flatten.

The day, though, asked to be lived. She gave it what it wanted.

By lunch she was playing to the room without thinking: open posture at the edge of the table to invite sit-downs, laugh pitched to carry, palm on a forearm at the right beat to uproot a sulk. It was a girl’s skillset, and she carried it like a second language. After school, she swapped sneakers for jazz shoes in the studio’s hallway, the sky beyond the high windows a paling blue. The stereo in Studio B breathed low static. Francine’s voice drifted from the office. Sabrina and Hailey argued amiably about counts in the lobby (‘On the and, not the one, Hailey, do you even math?’). Routine. Ritual. The things that made Denise’s breath drop from throat to belly.

She had a crystal in her pocket, the size of a plum pit, faceted and dull as if someone had breathed on it. Dr. Ariel’s hands had been careful when passing it over, a murmur stitched under her words: It doesn’t lie, but it isn’t kind, so be ready. Denise had nodded like stone.

Chelsea slid into the studio last, ponytail flipping a heartbeat after her head. She grinned when she saw Denise and flung her arms wide. “Partner me, Mimic Queen.”

Denise’s mouth answered before her nerves could: “Prepare to be flung, Your Majesty.” Laughs skimmed the room. Relief loosened the strap around Denise’s ribs.

They warmed up to a low brush of piano—Francine’s choice, always: teach the body to listen before it leaps. Denise’s muscles sang the sequence the way a tongue sings a beloved lyric. When she turned, Chelsea turned. When she floated her wrists, Chelsea’s wrists caught the same current. Mirroring made them click like magnets. Francine made a pleased throat-sound and clapped once.

“Partner throws,” Francine announced, crisp as a metronome. “Control, breath, commitment. Keep your integrity in the air.”

“Story of my life,” Hailey muttered.

Denise caught Chelsea’s hands and felt the fine bones, dry palms, the gentle treble of excitement. This was their cue. While they were both focused on anchor and prep, Denise’s thumb slipped under Chelsea’s palm, pressing the crystal into the groove there as if trading a rosin bead. “Hold,” Denise said softly.

Chelsea’s mouth curved. “Always.”

One count, two—Denise nailed the down-up, hips tucked, center fierce, and lifted Chelsea into the throw that had become their signature: a clean pop to arabesque framed like a question mark, catch rebounded to the floor, feet whispering on Marley. Chelsea landed laughing, flushed, alive. Denise felt the laugh like sun. Then she glanced at Chelsea’s closed fist.

The crystal was black.

Not smoky, not shadowed—black like space, swallowing light at the edges. Denise’s breath fell out of her body. For half a count she missed the mark and her heel scuffed. Nobody heard it but her. She took the crystal back with a pat-pull motion that looked like a palm reading and slid it into her pocket where it scorched against her thigh.

Chelsea squeezed her forearm. “You okay?”

“Shin splint twinge,” Denise lied, eyes on the floor. “I’m good.”

She was not good.

They ran the phrase again, because repetition is balm, and Denise could do an entire routine while thinking of nothing and everything. She bled her energy into legs and chest and kept her face bright. Between passes she drifted toward the water table to breathe where the others’ voices were left soft by the studio’s acoustics.

Black. All the way black. The word thudded like a drum mallet. She pictured Dr. Ariel’s diagrams, the way color tracked influence: clear for clean, blue for ambient, gray for exposure, black for saturation. She tasted metal. She could stop. She could wait for tomorrow, after sleep. But she saw Richard’s eyes tracking something that wasn’t her. She saw Hailey tossing jokes like confetti and Sabrina counting the room like a sergeant and Chelsea’s laugh when she was airborne. Denise’s throat burned.

She wasn’t going to wait.

“Again but with Sabrina,” Francine called, shuffling cards of notes in her head like always to keep fresh pairings. Sabrina stepped into Denise’s space, spine like a plumb line, cheeks already glossed with effort.

“Don’t drop me,” Sabrina said lightly.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Denise said, and reached to align Sabrina’s hand with her forearm. When their fingers curled together, Denise palmed the crystal, pressed, and said, “Hold.”

Sabrina’s eyes flicked down, then up. They popped the throw—Sabrina’s lines slicing, her landing a near-silent piston. Denise breathed applause. They reset. Denise glanced down. The crystal was black. The same flat, devouring black. Denise didn’t even have to angle it to the light; it drank.

She nodded once, all motion and no meaning, and slid the pebble of night back into her pocket like a guilty secret. Sabrina shook out her shoulders and rolled her neck.

“You’re stiff today,” Sabrina observed. “That shin?”

“My brain,” Denise said. “It’s doing math all over the place.”

“Tell it to stop.” Sabrina bumped her shoulder. “We’re dancing.”

They switched partners—Hailey bounded up, braid a whip, dimples locked and loaded. “My turn to fly,” she sang, and Denise caught her, each cell aware. Hailey’s wrists were soft but strong, her laugh loud. Denise did it again, hands and breath and feet the only things that mattered, and her thumb slid the little rock into Hailey’s palm.

“Grip,” she said.

“I’m a koala,” Hailey said.

They threw. The world made sense for two seconds. Denise didn’t look as she pulled the crystal back, terrified that looking would break her. She looked anyway because bravery counted more when it cost. Black. No seam of blue, no murk. Just absence.

She re-shelved the knowledge where she kept other impossible things: the first morning her voice had come out an octave higher, the way mascara could change a day, the way a body could rewrite itself and still feel like home. She moved through the rest of class with the absolute focus of someone standing on a ledge and pretending it was a curb.

After, the studio broke into its post-class shuffle: water bottles squeaking, bodies skipping rope in place to bleed adrenaline, Francine clapping hands and praising specifics because general praise is cheap. Denise let herself fall to the floor to stretch, forehead on her knee, air moving in and out like she’d learned in Dr. Ariel’s office: count four, hold four, exhale six.

Chelsea collapsed beside her with a groan. “If I die, I bequeath my spot in the formation to—no one, actually. Ha. Bury me in eight-counts.”

“You’re not dying,” Denise said, and her voice came out steadier than she felt.

“Tell that to my hamstrings.” Chelsea lowered her voice. “You sure you’re okay?”

Denise lifted, met her eyes, and nodded. “I will be.”

It wasn’t a lie exactly.

In the hallway the studio’s noise thinned to a hush punctured by distant laughter from the tap room. Denise’s phone buzzed: a text from Mom (Dinner at 7? Francine says you’re flying.), one from Richard (Call me if you want.), and one from a number Denise had labeled with three star emojis: Dr. Ariel (How did the instrument perform?).

Denise stared at that last one until the letters blurred. Then she breathed and typed: Confirmed. Not kind.

A reply appeared a moment later. Understood. Come by this evening? And bring Francine if possible. We must align on next steps.

Denise slid the phone into her back pocket and went looking for Francine.

She found her in the office with the door ajar, tendrils of notes curling up from the desk like paper ivy. Francine looked up when Denise rapped softly on the frame.

“You were good today,” Francine said, and in her mouth it was an evaluation, a clean pin in a card, not flattery.

Denise shut the door and said, “I need to tell you something and I can’t do it in the hall.”

Francine’s eyes sharpened, the way they did when a lift looked wrong or a mood veered. “Sit.” She gestured to the chair opposite. “Or don’t. Tell me.”

Denise sat, but only because her knees felt like bad scaffolding. She placed the crystal on the desk between them. In here, under the yellowed lamp, it looked like a nothing-stone. If she hadn’t watched it drink light, she’d have called it fake.

“What am I looking at?” Francine asked.

“A detection crystal,” Denise said. “Dr. Ariel gave it to me. It—shows… influence.”

“Influence.” Francine’s hand hovered over the stone without touching. “Whose.”

“The thing that’s been… brushing against us,” Denise said. “The wrong thing. The enchantment’s hitchhiker.”

Francine did not roll her eyes. She did not tell Denise to keep mysticism out of her dance. She simply exhaled once, a careful measure. “And?”

“And it turned black when I tested Chelsea,” Denise said. Her pulse thrummed in her ears. “Then I tested Sabrina. Black. Then Hailey. Black.”

Silence. The studio hum existed beneath it: the percussion of a footfall, the electric hiss of a fridge. Francine glanced at the door to make sure it was closed, then reached out and touched the crystal with two fingers as if checking the temperature of a pan.

“And you,” she said, not quite a question.

Denise swallowed. “I tested myself before class. Gray.” The memory had been relief and dread braided together. “Exposure. Not… not saturated.”

Francine nodded once, almost to herself. “You’re sure of this thing?”

“I watched it work on me,” Denise said. “And on—others.” Richard’s name got stuck behind her teeth. She pushed past it. “It doesn’t lie.”

Francine’s gaze slid from the stone to Denise’s face. “Okay,” she said, as if accepting a change in time signature. “Okay. Then we don’t yell fire in a theater. We make a plan and we put out the candles, one by one.”

Denise let out a breath that might’ve been a laugh. “Dr. Ariel wants us to come by tonight. She said—align on next steps.”

Francine’s mouth did its tiny one-sided tilt, the ghost of a smile thrown in the wrong direction. “Ariel likes her alignments. Fine. After I close up.” Her attention returned to the crystal. “Who else.”

Denise shook her head. “No one else today. I… couldn’t do more. Not without….” She lifted her hands, empty, palms up.

“Without breaking,” Francine supplied, precise. “All right.” She pushed the crystal back across the desk gently. “You did enough. You did what was asked, and you did it safely. That matters more than speed.”

Denise closed her fingers over the stone. It felt warmer now, like it had been pocketed by a hand the size of the room.

“Richard texted,” she said, surprising herself. “He seems… off.”

“Has he seen Dr. Ariel?” Francine asked.

“Not yet.” Denise shrugged, a small jerky thing. “He was sick. He says he’s better.”

Francine’s eyes softened at the edges. “Sickness loosens things that shouldn’t be loose,” she said. “We’ll put them back. But not alone.” She stood, decisions stacking in her posture. “Go home. Eat. We’ll meet at Ariel’s at eight.”

“Eight,” Denise echoed.

Francine came around the desk and, startlingly, folded Denise into a brief, dry hug that smelled like chalk and eucalyptus. “Breathe,” she said into Denise’s hair. “Don’t borrow tomorrow.”

Denise nodded against Francine’s shoulder and then stepped back, fingers unconsciously sliding to the pocket where the crystal sat. In the lobby, Sabrina had Hailey in a headlock that wasn’t a headlock, both of them laughing, and Chelsea was methodically rolling her quads with a foam cylinder, face twisted in concentration. Normal. Beautiful. Denise wanted to wrap the whole room in bubble wrap and a warding circle.

She texted Mom (Going to Dr. Ariel’s at 8 with Francine. I’ll eat here.) and got back a heart and a thumbs up and a knife-fork emoji in a row, which somehow made her smile.

On her way out, she caught her reflection in the door’s glass. A girl looked back at her, flush still high, hair frizzed at the temple, mouth determined. She lifted a hand and made a small face, the one that meant we’ll do it anyway. Mimic or not, this was hers. She would make it hers.

Outside, the air had set, warm settling into cool. The sky washed toward indigo, streetlights breathing themselves awake. Denise pulled her jacket tight and walked, the crystal a weight against her thigh, the future lining up like counts: one, two, three, four—Francine, Dr. Ariel, a plan—five, six, seven, eight—catch, and land.