Word Count: 1940

“Miniature humans, dead ahead.”

Paris looked up from examining the latest rose that had been left for him backstage—from an “admirer” his fellow dancers all refused to describe or name, though Paris was nearly certain he knew who it was —and set his sights on a small herd of children who suddenly appeared backstage.

Occasionally, usually after matinee performances, the producer or the director or the choreographer or one of the countless others responsible for the production would arrange for children from local dance classes to visit backstage and interact with the performers. It typically resulted in a fair bit of mayhem, with children wandering in all directions and adults doing their best to keep them in check. The dancers either met the circumstance with exuberance, wariness, or barely concealed annoyance, depending on their stance on kids.

Beside him, Ross looked marginally uneasy.

Paris smirked lightly. His friend never seemed to know quite what to do around so many eager faces and chattering voices. Paris, for his part, tended to take such situations in stride, partly because he didn’t feel much of an aversion toward children, but also because no groups had yet to come backstage after any of his performances.

At least until today.

“Are you the Sugar Plum Fairy?”

A little girl with brown pigtails peered up at him. She’d come to the show decked out in tights and a frilly pink tutu. A few of the others had dressed up as well, but there were just as many who wore regular clothes. None of them could have been more than five or six years old, hardly trained dancers, but impressionable and brimming with excitement. Most of them were girls, but Paris spotted three little boys scattered about through their number.

He smiled down at the little girl in front of him. He knew what sort of answer she was looking for. Kids that young tended to forget that they were just dancers in costumes. They looked at them and they saw the real thing. He knew that because he could still remember being five years old and believing the same thing.

“I am…” he told her.

“I like your tutu,” she said. “I wish I could have it. Can I see your crown?”

Paris slipped the stem of his rose into his bodice and kept it there for safe keeping, the blue blossom coming to rest over his heart. He lowered himself onto his knees so that the little girl could get a better look at the glittering tiara atop his head, and as he did so a dozen or so other pairs of feet pattered over until he was nearly surrounding by the entire herd of oohing and aahing children. The three little boys lingered at the back of the group. Paris beckoned them forward and made sure they got a close-up look, too.

“Everyone say ‘cheese~!’” one of their chaperons said. She had a camera at the ready and began snapping away before the first child even managed to utter a single word.

They took a group picture and then individual shots. Paris posed with all of them, sometimes with one or two of the others dancers, but most of the time on his own. Pictures turned into hugs for the less shy of the bunch, which turned into more pictures, which turned into an impromptu dance lesson. Paris looked for permission and received little more than a nod before ushering the overexcited group of kids out on stage. He lined them up and stood in front of them and spent half an hour teaching them a simple dance. Very few of them executed it with any notable amount of skill, but there were plenty of smiles and lots of giggling, and Paris thought that was the most important thing—that they were having fun and enjoying themselves and learning from someone they thought of as more than just a boy in a costume.

Maybe some of them would remember this day, when they got to dance on a real stage with the Sugar Plum Fairy. Maybe a few would grow up to be career dancers. Maybe the boys would keep with it even if they ended up being teased for it when they were older. Maybe they would come to love it as much as he did.

Whatever happened, Paris made sure that there wasn’t a single child without a smile on their face when they left. He showed them all backstage again and returned them to the care of their chaperons. After a few more pictures and last minute hugs, they were gone in a group of happy laughter and babbling conversation.

“You’re really good with kids,” Ross observed, approaching again only when he’d deemed it safe enough to do so. He’d been dragged into a few pictures, but for the most part he’d done his best to stand off to the side and remain out of the way.

“You think so?” Paris wondered as he waved goodbye to the last of the stragglers.

“Yeah,” Ross said. “Holy s**t…”

Paris glanced up at him with his eyebrows raised. “Is it really that surprising? I don’t think I really did anything all that special. No more than any of the others did, at least.”

“Well, yeah, but I didn’t really peg you as the type for kids.”

“There’s a type?”

“I guess so.” Ross grinned down at him. “No offense, but I always figured you could be sort of a b***h.”

Paris’s brows rose higher.

“A loveable one,” Ross amended. “You’re okay with us, but I figured it was because we have the dance thing in common, and we’re all kind of conceited and full of ourselves and stuck up to begin with.”

“Birds of a feather…” Paris began.

“Exactly.”

Paris couldn’t say he was terribly offended. He figured Ross had a fair point. Besides, as the saying went, it took one to know one.

“You’d make a good teacher,” Ross decided.

“Why? Because I can keep a bunch of five year olds together and teach them how to do a decent pirouette?”

“Yeah,” Ross agreed, “there’s that. But also because you love it so much. The dancing. I don’t think anyone can be a good teacher unless they really love what they teach, and you obviously love ballet. You should have seen how your face lit up when you took them out on stage.”

Paris hadn’t realized it. He knew he’d been smiling. He knew he’d laughed a few times, cheered when one of the kids did something well, and talked to them in a voice that was just as excited as theirs were, but he figured it was only because they’d been kids, and instinct directed him to act a certain way around kids so young. He certainly hadn’t realized that his enjoyment had been so obvious at the time. It wasn’t as if he could feel it whenever he “lit up.”

“Some people get tired of this after a while,” Ross said, “or they get to the point where they stop feeling the magic in it and it’s just another show to them. They go through the motions and act the part because they know what they’re doing and they’re talented, and maybe they still like it, but at some point it just becomes a job to them. But people like you… you still look at it like those kids do, wide-eyed and magical. You haven’t lost that spark yet.” He paused and shrugged. “Maybe it’s because you’re still pretty young, but… I don’t know. I think you’ll keep it. You really come alive when you’re dancing. I can sorta see the magic again.”

Paris was a little slow to respond, suddenly flooded with warmth. He felt flattered and wasn’t sure how to appropriately act on it. It wasn’t often that he was taken by surprise like that. “Thanks… I didn’t really know. I mean, I know I still love it. I’ve always loved it. I can’t really imagine doing anything else…”

It was one of the things he’d come to fight for—his friends, his family, his teammates, their future and survival, and the future he’d always wanted for himself.

“Trust me,” Ross said, clapping a hand on one of Paris’s shoulders, “anyone who looks at you out there can tell.”

Paris glanced from Ross to where the group of children had disappeared.

He hadn’t seriously considered teaching dance before. He’d thought about it once or twice, especially in regards to disadvantaged kids, who might not have had the same chances he did. He’d lived around enough of them to know they wanted and needed the same opportunities as the kids whose parents could afford it. He’d told himself it was an option if he never made it big on stage, and he could remember mentioning it to Chris once, but he hadn’t really looked into it beyond that.

“I never finished school,” he said. “I dropped out. I hated it. If I decided to teach, I’d have to go back and finish, wouldn’t I?”

Ross shrugged. “Maybe. It’d probably help, but that’s not to say you couldn’t get by without it if you had enough experience or something.”

“RIght…”

He’d always hated school, even before Hillworth’s restrictive atmosphere. He’d hated the classes, he’d hated some of his teachers, he’d hated some of his classmates, and he’d hated the utter inanity of it. College might have been better if he’d ever made it—at least then he would have had more diversity when it came to the classes he could choose from—but it had never seemed as if it were the right path for him. That was for smarter, more ambitious people. It wasn’t for kids like him.

Or so he thought. He wasn’t so sure anymore.

He wondered if teaching and being on the other side of the education system would really be any different, or if he’d hate it just as much. He liked performing better. He liked being onstage. Then again, his dance lessons had always been the better part of his days—the part he lived for, the part he dragged himself out of bed and through the halls and around town for.

If he could provide that for other directionless kids—like the boy he’d been months ago—he didn’t think it would be so bad. It seemed tripe, telling other people that they could be whoever they wanted to be or do whatever it was they dreamed of doing, but it was what he believed. It was what he was getting the chance to live right now.

He thought he might enjoy that, showing kids that it wasn’t a bad thing to dream. He thought it could be fulfilling.

Paris turned to go change with such thoughts still lingering there in his mind. When he was done, he went out for dinner and drinks with Ross and some of the others, but he found himself a bit distracted, gently fingering the petals of his blue rose while the memories of young, smiling faces danced about his head.

He’d wanted the chance to dance like this so badly, and he was happy now that he was doing it. If he could give that chance to someone else like him, he thought he could be happy with that, too.

He thought he could make a difference.

When he got home that night, Paris went into his bedroom and sat down in front of his old laptop.

After it loaded, he opened a web browser, went to Google, and typed “how to get your GED.”