Strings Coming Loose - Saylor Skidds

I started ballet when I was three years old. I stopped when I turned nine. One day in class

I broke down in tears. I wasn’t even crying because of anything to do with ballet. We had been

learning how to code in school that day, and I was awful at it. My emotions, at least the ones like rage and shame,

didn’t dissipate over time. Negative emotions could seize me for hours, days, or months after the event that had triggered them occurred.

They’d be just as intense whenever that happened. It was like a water balloon that had been filled almost to the breaking point.

If nothing brushed up against it, it could stay intact for a while.

But the slightest prick of pressure could cause it all to burst. That was why I started crying in ballet class.

When class was over that day, I choked back tears as we walked to the parking lot. Mom shut the car door so slowly it blew back open.

She had to grab it a second time. Finally, she got a handle on it. We drove for about a mile in total silence.

“I don’t think we should do this anymore,” Mom told me.

Next week, when I was supposed to be having my lesson, we marched in and she told the  teacher the same thing.

I started ballet again when I was 12.

This time, I had classes in a bigger room in the back of the studio. I didn’t go in there when I was little.

The walls, ceiling and door frames were all painted various slightly different shades of pale purple. The floor was black and scuffed and

always smelled of boot polish.

It was always covered in random strips of gaffer’s tape that peeled off as we walked or practiced steps across the floor.

My new teacher was named Emily. She was young. I don’t know how young. She had

dark hair and a big nose. Her hair was always stringy.

She smelled like burnt microwave popcorn and hand sanitizer. Her hands were always cold, just like mine.

A problem with her circulation. I never thought her face was attractive. But I was fascinated by her demeanor.

The ballet teachers I had as a little kid were so much more maternal. In my memory, they all slowly melted into a homogenous mass. They

always styled their hair the same.

Some had signature colors.

They themed our lessons around Disney princesses. They were all the same age as my mom.

They’d talk to her like a friend when class let out. They styled their hair the same way she did.

They smelled like hairspray and the perfume inserts from the fashion magazines in the lobby.

Emily might have been in college. She wasn’t cold or apathetic, but it was easy to think she was. She only cared about ballet itself.

Her classes were bare bones with no frills or games or cartoon characters. Other kids thought she was a bitch. I was obsessed with her.

Ballet was harder this time. Some of the difficulties were predictable. I had gotten out of practice, so I wasn’t as flexible as everyone else.

My knees didn’t rotate as far. I couldn’t do splits or push my leg over my head or anything else like that.

A lot of them were in gymnastics as well and had been since they were even younger than I was when I first started ballet. I kept going to

class because I wanted to be near Emily. But there were other difficulties that weren’t directly related to ballet itself.

These were harder to pin down.

The girls who had been there longer than I had walked differently.

Their hips went from side to side, and their steps fell in an even rhythm.

My hips were always locked into place unless I thought to walk otherwise. My right foot always skipped a beat behind my left.

My hair wasn’t long enough for a bun. And I always covered as much of my scalp as I could with large elastic headbands.

At the beginning of class, I put my ballet shoes on and rushed to the barre as quickly as possible to be ready for warm-ups.

They lingered to talk.

The same overachiever mentality that made me sob over a coding game set me apart here, too. I wasn’t delusional.

I knew I wasn’t that great at ballet. At least not anymore. But I wanted to do well. Or at least give the appearance of trying to do well.

Of being industrious and paying attention to what the teacher had to say. Something along those lines.

Class wasn’t a social space for me. Part of that was out of my control. No one else from my school went to that dance studio.

But it’s not like I tried to fill that gap, either. I knew something was off.

It could have been the walking thing. It could have been the hair.

But I discerned most of it from overhearing their conversations as I watched them all put on their shoes.

Even if I tried to talk much with these people, we wouldn’t have a lot in common.

After a while, there were all these walls we’d eventually hit. Usually, they had something to do with boys or pop culture. It

became clear I was never going to be one of those laidback, chatting in the back row kids. I threw my whole body into the dance itself.

Even though my results were lackluster.

This was part of why I didn’t think Emily was a bitch the way the other kids did.

My concentration meant I could usually escape her sharp glares or being called out in front of the class.

This manifested one day during warm-ups.

She was walking back and forth next to the barre. She almost never touched us when she was checking our form.

If she did, she only ever barely grazed our shoulders.

She stopped next to a girl, Ruby, who had dyed her hair so much it was no longer any one color at all.

She was having trouble with her balance.

“Hold your stomach.” Emily told her. “Everyone, try holding your stomachs more.

Engage those muscles. It’s not enough to just move your arms and legs in the right positions like you did when you were little.

You all need to be more precise.”

“Except for you.” Emily doubled back over on her path and stopped in front of me.

“You’re like, super-engaged.”

I had my own special spot at the barre.

Most of the barre was one long unbroken section at the back of the room, directly facing the mirror.

There was another barre on one of the walls perpendicular to the mirror, but no one ever stood there.

There was a place near the door where a few feet of the back wall jutted forward a bit.

There was an extra area of barre there that still faced the mirror but was separated from the rest of it.

I liked it there because there was more room for me to spread out.

I resented when someone else stood with me there because I’d get less real estate.

Unfortunately, the wall jutting forward created a blind spot between me and the other girls, so I couldn’t copy their movements if I didn’t

understand what to do.

But the blind spot also meant they couldn’t see whether I was doing particularly terrible on any given day.

She pressed her hand against my leotard, just above my belly button. “Yeah, that is, like, rock-solid. You need to relax.

If you engage your core anymore, you’ll probably get constipated or something. I don’t want to be responsible for that.”

When she let go and turned around, my stomach dropped like it did on roller coasters. Her hand was cold, as usual. I could feel the chill

through the fabric.

But a warm, buttery feeling began to simmer in my navel and slowly spread to the rest of my body. Everything became loosened.

My muscles were strings tied into tight knots. Emily had taken a pair of scissors to them. Snip, snip, snip they came undone.

But I didn’t float away. I stayed perfectly still.

I made a corny joke I can no longer remember. She squinted at me and went back over to help Ruby.

To her, what she had done didn’t mean anything. Even if it was out of the ordinary for her to touch us there.

And for a while, it didn’t mean anything to me, either. That memory became submerged in a whole cohort of other dance-related

memories, like when I was told to arch my feet or straighten my knees.

It only stood out to me because it wasn’t a correction. After a while, I barely remembered it.

But a few months later, I was visiting my grandma.

When she hugged me hello, she reached down and patted my stomach just above my belly button. I wasn’t fat.

She didn’t mean anything by it. But I winced and leaned back slightly. That area felt special now. Off-limits.

It wasn’t just for anyone. I spent the rest of the visit with my arms crossed down low, angling my body away so no one, but especially not

Grandma, could get any closer to it.

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Saylor Skidds is an English major at UAlbany from Rhode Island. Saylor is a sophomore, and their first time being published in ARCH was Fall of 2025. In their free time Saylor enjoys reading, sewing, and volunteering at the library.