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  “What’s wrong?” she said.

  “Sasha’s brother got into an accident and she won’t talk to me. I’ve got to get out of here.”

  She touched my arm. “Wait—I’ll come with you. I heard Kevin’s okay.”

  Lisa guided me to Con Brio, a café on a corner a few blocks from the studio. It has two walls of windows, counters filled with newspapers and magazines, and long wooden tables where you can play chess or backgammon. I’d never been in. Sitting in cafés was for grown-ups.

  Grown-ups. Luckily, I didn’t say that out loud. Older people, I meant. We crossed the threshold and entered the shop. Lisa—who is older, after all—ordered two iced lattes and chose a table for two in the window. The sun at her back made her dark hair glow with auburn highlights. She pushed one of the tall glasses across the table to me. We faced each other, stirring in sugar.

  “I’ll tell you what I know,” Lisa said. She didn’t use the excited tone that Sasha reserves for juicy gossip. She was matter-of-fact. Her boyfriend and Kevin have friends in common, soccer players. They’d held an after-game party on Friday night. “The accident happened on his way home. He ran a red light and got sideswiped.” Lisa twisted her glass in her hands. The barista was hammering at the espresso machine.

  Kevin didn’t sustain serious injuries, but his license was suspended. He has to go to court and will miss the second half of tree-planting season. “His parents are so angry that they want him out of their place, like, yesterday.”

  I stared at the tabletop.

  Lisa touched my hand. “It could have been a lot worse. And I’ve seen other guys smarten up after an accident like that. In the meantime, I wouldn’t take anything Sasha says too personally.”

  I frowned at my glass and poked at the ice cubes with my stir stick. “Did you hear her call me a slut when I walked up to you guys at lunch on Friday?”

  The roaring of the espresso machine drowned out Lisa’s response. A young woman struggled to push a stroller into the café until a man entering behind her held the door. I chewed my lip and waited for the grinding, hissing, and banging to cease.

  “No, I didn’t,” Lisa said.

  “I’m sure I heard her say it, and then I figured you’d all been talking about me.”

  “I wouldn’t have joined in that kind of gossip, Natalie.” The warmth in Lisa’s face convinced me. Sasha may have her issues with me—maybe she even hates me right now—but that doesn’t mean everyone at the studio sides with her. “How’s your latte?”

  I’d forgotten to try it. I took a sip: It tasted way more like a milkshake than I was expecting. “Delicious.” Being a grown-up might not be so bad.

  Before I knew it, I was telling Lisa about seeing the fireworks with Kevin, the phone call asking me to sneak out, the trip to the lake—and the pain of having to keep it all from Sasha because of the Gina Incident.

  No one had ever listened to me like Lisa. She radiated compassion like a heat lamp. It made me dissolve. My torso jerked and tears streamed down my face, warm and wet. I can’t remember the last time I cried in front of someone. I let my hair fall forward to hide my face.

  I wanted to ask Lisa so much more—was she having sex with her boyfriend, Luke? Had he pressured her into it, or did she really want to? When they were making out, did her skin ever feel numb, like it belonged to somebody else?

  On second thought, there was no way Lisa was a “Doing it to stay together” sort of girl. I grinned at her and wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.

  “Feeling better?”

  “A little.”

  “Why don’t you rinse off your face, and we’ll head back for ballet?”

  As we approached the studio, Lisa grabbed my hand. “Merde.”

  “Hm?”

  “That means ‘good luck.’ Dancers say it to each other before going on stage.” She chuckled. “But really, it’s French for shit.”

  Recorded piano music was drifting out the window. We were late for class.

  “Then merde to you, too.” I returned Lisa’s hand squeeze. “We’ll need luck, ’cause we’re in shit.”

  We slipped into the studio when Ms. Kelly’s back was turned. Without even turning around, she snapped, “Have you girls decided to grace us with your presence? How lucky we are!” Some of Lisa’s strength must have rubbed off on me because Ms. Kelly didn’t really get to me. I just took a deep breath and sucked in my belly.

  At lunch, Sasha and Jamie left and didn’t return for the afternoon. The way everyone keeps skipping classes, Ms. Kelly must think it’s mutiny. She’ll probably sit us all down for a lecture tomorrow.

  Tuesday, July 13th

  She walked into the studio like she was riding on wind. Her pants, cropped at the shin, billowed around her legs as she moved. Her torso bloomed out of her waist and branched into long, expressive arms. “Hello girls, my name is Petra. Welcome to Advanced Ballet. We’ll start in the center.” Her voice rang with silvery tones: church bells, waterfalls.

  We raised our eyebrows at each other, and not only because of her voice and her posture. No. We were shocked because every ballet class in our collective memory had started at the barre. Not Petra’s. She led us in a series of arm swings and shifts of weight from leg to leg—to establish range of motion and center of gravity, she explained. She circled the room, oozing enthusiasm, and asked each of us our name and our favorite ballet step. As the class progressed, she worked each person’s choice into the exercises.

  At the end of class, Petra said, “It was my pleasure to teach you this morning, girls. Thank you for sharing your energy so generously. I look forward to working with such a gifted group of movers over the coming weeks.”

  We gaped at each other as we filed into the change room. It was my pleasure. Thank you for sharing. No one had spoken to us like this before. We were all in so much shock that the tensions from yesterday were forgotten for the moment. We gathered on the lawn to eat lunch and pool our knowledge: Petra studied with Ms. Kelly up until five years ago. She belongs to the Vancouver company Ballet Now. She also creates and performs her own work as an independent choreographer. Ms. Kelly persuaded her to come and teach us on her summer break.

  Sasha was half lying down, propped on an elbow. “She seems kind of fake to me.” She pulled up a piece of grass and chewed it.

  “Yeah,” Jamie said. She was holding herself in plank position, balanced on forearms and toes, her elbows and ankles at right angles. Her biceps bulged.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sasha said. “Kind of airy-fairy.”

  “I think she’s great,” Lisa said. “She’s really encouraging. We could use more of that around here.”

  “What do you think?” Sasha looked straight at me. It felt like she didn’t want to soil her tongue with my name.

  “It’s too early to say for sure—”

  Jamie sneered. “Cop out!”

  “But so far, so good.”

  Sasha spat out the chewed piece of grass.

  Lisa looked at her watch. “It’s almost time.” Our break lasted only forty-five minutes. “What’s happening after lunch?”

  I pulled out a crumpled paper schedule from my bag. “It just says, ‘Rehearsal.’”

  In the studio, Petra was trying out some movement and consulting a sheet of handwritten notes. Ms. Kelly carried her observation chair to the front of the room and said, “Petra has agreed to set a piece on you senior girls for the showing.” She sat down and folded her hands. Her eyebrows arched in anticipation.

  Petra seemed to emerge from a trance. She did a double-take when she saw Ms. Kelly in the observation chair. “I’m sorry, but I can’t work like this.”

  Ms. Kelly’s mouth dropped open. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re welcome to watch the
piece when it’s finished, but during the creative process, I hope you’ll understand—I need to be alone with the dancers.”

  Ms. Kelly flushed. She glanced back and forth from us to Petra as if debating what to say. Finally, she stood and lifted her chair. The cushion, tied only to the back rungs, hung straight down. Ms. Kelly looked so hurt and offended that I almost felt sorry for her. Still, when she marched out, her high heels clicking, it felt like the prison warden had gone off duty.

  First, we lay on our backs and closed our eyes. Petra told us to release our weight into the floor, to feel the heaviness in our limbs. We took deep breaths and imagined sending the air into any tight spots, then we blew out the tension. She told us to isolate one part of our bodies and focus our attention on it. How did it feel—was it sore, relaxed, twitchy? Did it want to move? In what way?

  “Let the impulse arise from within,” Petra said. “Shut off your mind. Let the body part lead.” I had picked my right foot, so I circled my ankle, pointed and flexed my toes, and shook it. I was glad we kept our eyes closed. No one could see how dorky my moves were.

  Petra told us to imagine that we weren’t in a dance studio, but lying in bed on Sunday morning. Would we roll over, would we extend a toe outside the covers to test the temperature in the room? What would our sleepy, relaxed bodies want to express? It felt gooey and luxurious. I stretched my arms above my head. I reached the soles of my feet to the ceiling and let my legs flop down one by one. I rolled and squirmed.

  She instructed us to stand, keeping our eyes closed, and to remain still until a movement impulse surfaced within us. “You may find that your body feels programmed to move a certain way. That’s normal. You’re advanced dancers with years of training. Allow yourself to move in that habitual way—whether it’s pointing and flexing, pliés, jazz isolations, whatever. Keep repeating the movement until you recognize that it’s a pattern, it’s something you learned. Then ask yourself, what’s underneath it? What happens if you release your limbs from the grooves of habit? What do they have to say for themselves?”

  Pretending to lie in bed freed me, but when I stood up, my limbs got stuck, just like she said. I couldn’t seem to break out of my rut until Petra said, “Imagine you’re swimming in a pool filled with Jell-O.”

  The air thickened and my limbs pressed against it. It felt like make-believe, not dancing. Petra kept giving us cues—“Now the Jell-O dissolves into mist; the wind is blowing so hard you can barely stand up”—and I responded from my gut. Minutes later, I opened my eyes as if waking up after a night of vivid dreams.

  We sat cross-legged in a circle. Petra hugged her knees to her chest and clasped her wrist. “Improvisation will help you to develop a new dimension in your dancing. We’ll also use these exercises to generate movement. You, as dancers, will help to build the piece. You’re co-creators.” Petra smiled and made eye contact with each of us in turn, her green eyes luminous.

  When we were leaving the studio, Ms. Kelly stepped out of the office. She had probably spent the whole afternoon looking for a knothole in the wall to spy on us. She crossed her arms and inspected us as we traipsed past her to the change room. I caught her eye by accident. “Did you enjoy yourself, Natalie?”

  I flattened my voice to sound casual. “It was all right.”

  But it was much more than all right. Inside, I was soaring.

  Wednesday, July 14th

  This morning, Ms. Kelly taught ballet again. The adagio was set to somber music and involved a lot of slow ports de bras. My arms seemed to push through water. As I stretched over my front leg in the lunge, I let my torso soften instead of holding it stiff like I usually do. This meant my fingertips actually swept the floor. I rose in one fluid motion, arms outstretched and framing my head, then arched backwards, my shoulders wide and my chest open. For once, Ms. Kelly didn’t criticize me, but she gave me a weird look. Lisa leaned into me and whispered, “That was beautiful.”

  The compliment startled me, and I jerked my head towards Lisa. She nodded, as if trying to convince me. “Really.”

  “Thanks.”

  Later, in jazz class, Ms. Kelly hounded me. She had just started to lead the warm-up to a pounding rock beat when she spun around and pointed the remote at the stereo. Silence filled the room.

  “Natalie. Go change.”

  I was wearing wide-legged sweat pants and a T-shirt. “All I have is my ballet gear—it’s soaked.”

  She strode to her desk in the back corner of the studio and snatched up a flyer. “May I remind you of the studio rules?” She folded back the first page of the pamphlet and smoothed the crease between her thumb and index finger. “Rule number four: Close-fitting clothes must be worn for all classes except Stretch and Conditioning. When you registered at this studio, you agreed to abide by the rules. I’ll overlook it this time, but I suggest you do laundry tonight.”

  In the past, when Ms. Kelly pissed me off, anger sharpened my lines, made me spin faster and jump higher. It ricocheted through my body and left me feeling roughed up and edgy, like I’d been in a fight.

  It doesn’t work anymore. Today, her attack made me sloppy. I couldn’t control my limbs. You can imagine how well that went over with Sergeant Kelly. I think it reinforced her theory that loose-fitting clothes are the root of all evil.

  Thursday, July 15th

  I phoned Dad tonight. He sounded surprised because I usually call on the weekend. Well, tough. I’m not always going to stay in the little box he wants to keep me in.

  “I miss you.”

  “I miss you too, honey,” he said.

  But when I suggested that he come out and visit, he said, “You know it works better when you girls come out here.” He just means it’s more convenient for him.

  “So why can’t I go out there next month?’

  “We already discussed this.” He sounded tired. “You came out by yourself last year, and now it’s Paige’s turn.”

  “But what am I going to do? I’ll be lonely out here.”

  “You’ll have your mom all to yourself.”

  “Ha! You know what that’s like. She has her nose in a book 24/7.”

  “What about your friends? How’s that friend of yours … Hannah?”

  “Sasha, Dad, her name’s Sasha. Is it that hard to remember? I don’t go around calling your girlfriend Vicky or Veronica.”

  He chuckled at that. “You know I’m bad with names.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Sasha isn’t speaking to me.”

  The conversation dragged on, and I wasn’t feeling any happier by the time I hung up. Mom keeps asking if I’m going to the cabin with her and Marine next month. She says maybe I could stay with Grandma in Courtenay for part of the week if the cabin idea turns me off. But Paige and I visited Grandma on spring break. I haven’t seen Dad in a year!

  Friday, July 16th

  As Ms. Kelly watched us stream out of the studio after Petra’s rehearsal today, she said, “Where are your pointe shoes?”

  Jamie, who happens to be incredibly good at pointe (her feet are just as strong as the rest of her), told her we weren’t using them. “We’re learning a modern piece.”

  Ms. Kelly pursed her lips and marched into the studio. We overheard her confront Petra. Turns out she assumed that Petra would set a pointe piece on us. She hadn’t intended for Petra to introduce us to modern at all. Before long, Ms. Kelly barged into the change room and ordered all of us to leave, except Jamie.

  While we waited in the parking lot, Lisa reviewed the choreography. Sasha crammed her fists into the pockets of her hoodie and kicked at the gravel. We’ve barely talked since Kevin’s accident. I was figuring out what to say to her when Jamie burst out the door and ran up to us. “I’m doing a pointe solo in the showing!”

  “Right on!” Lisa high-fived Jamie.

  “Congratulati
ons,” I said.

  Sasha shoved Jamie. “You’re such a bunhead!”

  Rehearsals for our group piece continue in bare feet.

  Saturday, July 17th

  This evening I biked to The Ice Cream Place. Claire was working, and I hadn’t visited her since she started the job. The place was swarming with customers. When Claire saw me, she glanced at the long line ahead of me and shrugged an apology. I watched her scoop for awhile—she has already built up her muscles and she gauges cone sizes expertly—then claimed a table on the sidewalk.

  Cars rumbled in and out of the parking lot and exhaust fumes had nearly driven me back inside when a Camaro rolled up. It was full of guys I’d crossed paths with at Sasha’s—friends of Kevin’s. They cruised the parking lot and pulled into a spot. Two of them jumped out and headed for the store. I ducked my head. There wasn’t much chance that they would recognize me, but still. “Look at that line-up!” one of them said. “Screw this. Let’s just head.”

  “What time was Kev supposed to meet us?”

  “At eight—it’s twenty after now.”

  They paused beside my table. “Have you seen a guy hanging around here, about yea high, curly hair, looks kind of like Rafael Nadal?”

  “Curly hair? Looks like Nadal? What, are you in love with him, faggot?”

  The guy who had described Kevin shoved the other one. “Who’re you calling faggot? Takes one to know one, faggot!”

  They wrestled until I thought they’d forgotten about me. But when the first one finally broke free, he turned to me. “Guess you haven’t seen anyone who fits that description?”

  “Sorry. Maybe you should try the tennis courts.”

  “She’s a riot, eh, Brad? Hey, what are you doing out here by yourself? Want to come party with us?”

  The guy named Brad took his friend by the elbow. “You’ve got to excuse Tyler. He can’t decide whether he’s a fag or a pedophile tonight.”

  “What do you mean pedophile? She’s old enough!”

  At that moment, the driver yelled out the window of the Camaro and the guys took off just as Claire appeared with a hot fudge sundae. “Were they bothering you?” She watched the car peel away. Despite the apron and puffy, short-sleeved blouse, she looked ready to defend me.