The drugs were, at first, a part of it. A way of asserting their dominance over their bodies, over their parents, over the paternal order of their instructors and the needs of dance. Their way of being independent, being alive in their flesh, until they had to wake up at the first gray slice of dawn and pour themselves into tights and limber up before morning class. The drugs were, at first, just another way of putting on the pelt of how they wanted to be seen. Beautiful, young, but older than their years, wise in that they could get their bodies to do what they wanted.
