dancing shoes, flask of booze OPEN

"Have you ever watched a dancer cut it up?"

Questions bubble up from Cassedy's mouth every day, but this is indeed a bizarre one for her to ask. She's watching a designer with bright eyes, that reflect the golden thread of the deconstructed dancers shoes. Rexa does not look back at her, as though to prove she is above and beyond the childish ways of her seventeen year old daughter, who shyly slinks into her workplace every day. Perhaps she is above these questions, perhaps Rexa has had enough question for a lifetime, because having Cass as a daughter for so long must have counted for something in the cosmic question-asking way of the world.

Or maybe this is all just karma for Rexa being an awful mother to Oedy, and a worse wife to Jameson. Maybe Cassedy is a clever, cruel trick of the world. She is being intentionally smart now, and rubbing her mother the wrong way. The fabric rips under her rough hands as Minka, the secretary, rips more soles out of the shoes.

Cassedy shudders thinking about soles and shoes and how once she heard of a certain Martha Graham who said dance is the hidden language of the soul. And how sole and soul are pronounced exactly the same way.

"Do you think the sole of your foot is equal to the soul in your heart?"

She asks this next before Cassedy can squelch her inner desire to know things, and her need for answers. Her dirty habit does not pay off in the way she had hoped, but it doesn't end in the way she expected - being banned from the studio for the rest of the day. Piteously, Cass casts her eyes toward the wall of models with ugly feet who stretch against a mirrored wall, wearing uncomfortable fashion clothes. Her mothers designs are not her style, but Cassedy had looked forward to watching the dance. Seldom did she indulge her sense of sight, being one to trust word of mouth and touch and most of all feelings above the things her brain registered her eyes "seeing."

She had even stayed sober all throughout the long, dim-lit night, sitting her room with a bottle stolen from her fathers store, she had pressed it to her heart and waited long hours for the morning to arrive, but in the end it had slipped from her loose grasp and rolled away, mysteriously enough, never reappearing from beneath her comforter again.

Cassedy Magela looked down at herself and pondered where exactly her studded, platform ballet slippers would be carrying her swaying, sashaying body today. The night was a long ways from now - it was half past noon and she had canceled an eyebrow appointment for this. Curiosity, it seemed, had once again killed any chance she had of building a fashion-design relationship with dear old Rexa.

Her sigh stretched forward, bouncing off the walls of the silent hallway outside of the House of Rexa Magela. It seemed to ask the question her mind had posed, and by the time the echo rebounded and touched her ears again, Cassedy was plotting an impromptu trip to a friends house.

The only question was, who of her friends would be awake and presentable at this unholy hour of the early midday? Lunch time wasn't for decades and most shop-ladies who worked the 8 AM - 2 PM shift were old and wrinkly, with tight faces that did nothing but betray them the second you brushed up against the paper dry, crinkled skin of their hands. Those ladies never could guess what size Cassedy was, and they all told her she needed to gain a bit of weight, that they could scarcely see her.

Ah, the elderly and their peculiar habits - eating small meals a few times a day, never making room for more food or drink, instead allowing their stomachs to process the filth they crammed down their gluttonous throats! It was both fascinating and hard to watch, like torture for her undependable eyes. When Cass spotted old people eating, she usually wished for one of her illusions or delusions or flickering pictures that accompanied a great amount of potential and a overly-worked imagination. Normal life could be so trite when you let go of all the glamorous drama, gossip, and boys that life brought your way.

That, and old people were hardly nice to look at.

So it was decided - Cassedy thought - no place with old people. Her friends would have to be young and unwrinkled, but old enough that she did not run the risk of an encounter with a matronly woman or scowling old man while on her way to a friends house, or even worse - parents within the houses themselves!

Shivers ran up her spine at the travesty of the situation, and Cass let her wandering mind jump to conclusions.

A friend between eighteen and twentysomething, a friend who was willing to wake up, or was odd enough that they were already out and about at this hour. A friend she could depend on, in case Cass was overwhelmed by a need to vomit up words of hatred for her selfish, all-encompassing mother, that Rexa - that fiend. A friend she did not know too well, in case she did complain of the famous Majela designer, and she had to live with seeing the person every day of her life, knowing they held a burning secret of hers.

Well thats settled then, Cassedy thought as she walked on down that cavernous, never-ending hallway from the House of Rexa, toward an elevator. Unbeknown st to her, the elevator was about to shut down when too many leap-frog modeled bounced right over an aging floor board, which collapsed, twisting ankles and sending limbs flying everywhere as a wire was snapped and the elevator system shut itself down.

Whoopsy doopsies.