Chapter 12 - The Academy Turns on Nora
By lunch, everyone believed Ava had removed Nora.
Students whispered.
Nora stopped speaking to her again.
Ava found her packing.
“Don’t leave.”
Nora did not turn.
“You signed my removal.”
“I didn’t.”
“The board says you requested it.”
“The Patron—”
“Stop.”
Nora faced her.
“I believe the mirror. I believe the thing inside you. I believe something impossible is happening.”
“Then believe me.”
“I’m trying.”
That was the cruelest sentence because it was true.
Ava opened her phone and showed the digital signature.
It looked exactly like hers.
Then she noticed the timestamp.
12:17 a.m.
The exact time of the bargain.
Nora saw it too.
They went to Madame Voss.
The board chair claimed the request arrived from Ava’s academy account.
IT confirmed login from Studio C.
At 12:17.
Three nights after the mirror had been sealed.
Voss ordered the studio opened.
Inside, the black-framed mirror stood uncovered.
On the floor lay dozens of printed casting notices.
Every page named Ava.
Every other dancer’s name had been crossed out.
Nora whispered:
“It wants isolation.”
“Marianne stopped speaking to everyone before opening night.”
Ava felt the thing inside shift.
Then one of the printed pages moved.
It slid across the floor to Nora’s foot.
On the back:
SHE WILL CHOOSE THE STAGE OVER YOU.
Ava said:
“That’s what it wants you to think.”
Nora looked at her.
“Would you?”
“No.”
Then Ava corrected herself.
“I don’t know what I would have said a week ago.”
Nora’s eyes filled.
“But now?”
Ava looked at the mirror.
“Now I’m scared the answer only matters if I prove it.”
The mirror rippled.
The Patron appeared.
“You can prove it tonight.”
The studio doors slammed shut.
Every light went out except one.
A spotlight hit Nora.
Music began.
The Black Swan coda.
The Patron whispered:
May you like
“Dance against her.”
Ava’s body moved before she chose to.
