The girls nodded like bobblehead ballet dolls, except for Jenna Finch, who busted out laughing. Laughing!
Nicole shoved her shoulder, but it was too late.
It set off a chain reaction.
Almost all the girls were giggling behind their hands.
Giggling.
Laughing.
Laughing!
I didn’t deserve to be snickered at by a bunch of dopey ballet girls with perfect buns on their heads because of Dad’s actions. This was what I’d been worried about. Why couldn’t I go to a dance class without having to be reminded? Was I more upset with them for laughing at me or with Dad for what he’d done that made everything harder? Angry feelings whirled inside me, like they were spinning in some kind of internal emotion blender, and I couldn’t figure out what feelings were caused by which people.
Part of me wanted to flee from the room, but my stiff new size-ten ballet slippers felt cemented to the floor. No way would I give these girls the satisfaction of that happening. I was just as good as every one of those bunheads.
It wasn’t my fault my dad resided at Wayside Correctional Institution in Babcock Lakes, Florida, a town so tiny the population was 1,236.
“Enough!” Miss Delilah clapped her hands three times. “Let’s get to work, ladies!”
I forced myself to walk to the barre with the rest of the class, who’d finally stopped laughing, and then I stared darts at the back of Jenna Finch’s perfect bunhead. Why couldn’t that girl be nice to me? Didn’t all our years of being friends mean anything? We used to have so much fun together—playing marathon Monopoly games with me and my dad and horsing around in the pool as Dad performed crazy cannonballs into the water, or the times he took us out for ice cream at Snazzy’s Snack Shack. Didn’t Jenna remember all those good times we had? Didn’t they matter to her?
Even though my cheeks felt like they were on fire… even though I was the only person in that whole room with an incarcerated parent… even though I could barely hold my head up from all the shame that filled it… I would stay there and be a true, poised French ballerina. Then I would leave all of them in Sassafras dust.
My project was going to work. It had to. It was the only way to get away from these awful feelings.
Small Things Can Cause Big Pain
LINE UP. BACKS STRAIGHT. PRETEND there’s a string being pulled from the tops of your heads. That’s it. Perfect!”
Parfait, I thought. Everything will be parfait… someday.
As Miss Delilah called out positions, I worked hard to keep up with the other girls, making my body move like the ballerinas I’d studied in the videos. It took extra effort because I was also holding back tears, but that was okay. I could do anything they did, only better and with more panache!
I glanced at myself in the mirror while holding on to the barre. There I was—Cleveland Rosebud Potts—wearing a brand-new leotard, tights, and ballet slippers. The beret made me look très chic, if you want my honest opinion. I was staring back at a real ballerina. So excited about how I looked, I almost winked at myself but didn’t want to give the girls another reason to laugh at me. Besides, I wasn’t very good at winking. Instead I held myself as tall as I could and let my inner ballerina sparkle.
“Okay, ladies,” Miss Delilah said. “Now that you’re warmed up, let’s step away from the barre and work on our pirouettes.”
I walked across the floor to practice spinning on one foot.
I couldn’t help peering at myself again to make sure I still looked like a real ballerina. I did! As I spun, I imagined myself onstage at a Parisian theater, twirling into the arms of a ballet dancer who would toss me in the air, as though I weighed less than a bag of snack-size Cheetos Puffs.
I felt freer with each revolution. All my problems fell away as I spun and spun. A few spins, pause, spin.
Ballet was fun.
Spinning.
Spinning.
Spinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnning. Wheeeee!
“Cleveland Potts!”
“Huh?”
I stopped spinning and looked around, but the world continued to whirl. Everyone was back at the barre while I’d been in the center of the room, spinning. Alone. With everyone glaring at me. How had I missed the instructions to stop spinning?
Humiliant!
I had to get back to the barre, but the floor swayed beneath me, making walking nearly impossible. When I managed to get close, I leaned over and felt my beret slip. I reached up to grab it, but I must have accidentally touched Jenna Finch’s arm, because she screeched, “Get off me!”
“Sorry.” I hadn’t meant to touch her, but I wanted to keep my beret from falling. Too late.
It was on the floor; I made a grab for it before Miss Delilah noticed. Everything spun inside my head, which made everything spin inside my stomach, too. I struggled to keep from hurling a partially digested peanut butter and jelly sandwich and mini carrots from lunch onto my brand-new size-ginormous ballet slippers.
“Oh, I’ll get your stupid hat,” Jenna said.
But I was headed for the floor an instant before she bent down.
Jenna tumbled over me, her long, flexible legs flipping up behind her.
One of her feet banged into the barre hard enough that I heard it connect. Crack!
We ended up in a very ungraceful heap.
I sat up and blinked a few times, glad my stomach had mostly settled.
Jenna sat across from me, cradling her foot in her hand, rocking back and forth and wailing.
“Oh, good Lord!” Miss Delilah shouted as she approached the gaggle of girls surrounding Jenna. She peeled off Jenna’s ballet slipper, which made Jenna shriek.
“Jenna, you’d better get those tights off so I can get a good look at your foot.”
“Nooooo! My toe! Cleveland broke my toe!”
A few girls turned to glare at me.
Tiny bumps sprang up across my arms. This was the second time I’d wanted to run away in a matter of minutes.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Jenna. Your toe’s not broken,” Miss Delilah scolded. “Don’t be so melodramatic. Now, take your tights off so I can look at it. Probably just needs ice on it, is all.”
Jenna, with two girls holding her up, hobbled toward the changing room. The other girls followed them. Silence settled like broken glass between Miss Delilah and me while we waited. Those were the longest minutes of my life. Not the worst minutes, but the longest. I hoped Jenna was okay. Even though she didn’t want to be my friend anymore, I didn’t want her toe to be broken. I knew how much ballet meant to her. She loved wearing the costumes and performing at the recitals and had often practiced her routines when we used to hang out.
Jenna eventually hobbled back, wearing her leotard with no tights. The other girls had worried looks on their pinched-up faces.
“Oh,” Miss Delilah said. “Ohhhh.”
I bit the skin at the edge of my thumbnail.
Jenna’s pinkie toe had swelled and purpled up like a little eggplant, the kind they sometimes sold in wooden crates at Weezie’s Market and Flower Emporium. Declan called the vegetable crates “Weezie’s fancy-pants foods section,” and he’d buy up whatever was in them and make some kind of delicious stew. Even if you hated eggplant or didn’t know exactly what it was, you’d love the stew Declan made from it, because that boy could cook as good as any famous chef.
“We should call your mom,” Miss Delilah said in a hushed tone. “I think your toe’s broken.”
Jenna wailed with renewed zeal.
I attacked the skin next to my thumbnail with equal zeal.
Miss Delilah and the girls encircled her, and then Miss Delilah looked back at me. “Cleveland, get dressed and gather your things. I’m calling your mom too.” She shook her head, causing her beaded eyeglass chain to rattle. “Good Lord, child, you certainly are something!”
I squeezed the beret in my right fist. May all your dreams come true, baby girl, Dad had said to me when he gave me the beret for my ele
venth birthday. But now the beret was causing me a big problem. Gros problème! After squeezing the life out of it, I jammed it back on. Even though it shouldn’t have, the beret somehow made me feel better, less alone.
I watched the chosen ballerinas support Jenna and follow Miss Delilah toward her office; the other girls huddled close behind them, like baby ducklings following their mama.
This was not good.
This. Was. Not. Good.
Ce n’était pas bon.
Sins of the Father
I SAT ON ONE OF THE three hard plastic chairs in the lobby, clutching the bag with my ballet clothes in it and shivering. This time it was from the AC. I never understood why the inside of every single building and store in Sassafras felt like you’d stepped into a refrigerator. Georgia had to wear long sleeves at work, even when it was over ninety degrees outside.
I’d read that most people in Paris didn’t have air-conditioning because they didn’t need it. The temperatures in Paris were ideal most of the year. Too bad I was stuck in Sassafras.
I slumped in my seat.
Through the front window, I looked across the highway at the closed-down gas station—GAS, GRUB, ’N GO. It had been shut down as long as I could remember, and nothing ever showed up to replace it, like an animal shelter or a movie theater. I thought about the other stores along the strip where Miss Delilah’s school was: a Chinese restaurant that never seemed to be open, Ronnie’s Auto Supplies & Service (where Mom used to buy things to fix up our car, Miss Lola Lemon, but now, because of what happened, she’ll have to order parts online or get them from a supply shop all the way in Winter Beach—thanks a lot, Dad), an insurance office or a real estate office—I couldn’t remember which—and Patty’s Pampered Pets (which was fun because I could watch the dogs getting a bath through the window). There were also three empty stores that I wished would open up as something interesting, like a bookstore or a tea shop or a French bakery. As if places like that would ever come to Sassafras!
A quick movement in the parking lot caught my attention. Jenna’s mom’s BMW nearly plowed down an unsuspecting squirrel; he leaped out of the way to avoid being flattened as the car swerved into a parking spot. She might have run over the tip of his bushy tail.
Poor squirrel.
Wearing a sleeveless top and a bouncy white tennis skirt with a purple stripe, Jenna’s mom marched in. “What’s this all about?” she said to no one.
I pretended to be invisible, and it worked. Jenna’s mom’s eyes slid right over me and focused on Miss Delilah’s office door, which she opened without knocking.
“Jenna!” I heard through the now-closed door. “Your toe! It’s humongous!”
“Oh, Lord.” Miss Delilah’s voice.
After some crying and loud voices, which I couldn’t clearly make out, Ms. Finch and Jenna, who was leaning on her and hopping, came out of the office. That was when Ms. Finch noticed me. “Is this who did it?” She scrunched up her face as though I were a glop of just-discovered dog poo under her expensive tennis shoe.
Jenna sniffled and nodded.
“Figures.”
What was that supposed to mean? I pushed back into my chair as hard as I could and stared lasers at the visor perched on her suntanned forehead.
“Cleveland Potts!” Ms. Finch was so close to my face that I saw beads of sweat on her upper lip, which I couldn’t understand how, considering how cold it was in there. “Look here,” she said. “I’m truly sorry about what’s going on with your daddy, but that’s not a reason to go around hurting other people. You don’t need to act bad because he did.”
My stomach twisted into a thousand knots. I would never do what my dad did. I took a shaky breath, then exploded: “It was an accident, lady!”
“Mm-hmm.”
I wanted to shove past her and run all the way to Declan’s trailer, where we’d go back to sipping limeade spritzers, and I’d listen to him call me Scout, like I meant something.
Miss Delilah forced her body between Jenna’s mom and me. “Cleveland, please go into my office. Your mom’s on her way.” She faced Ms. Finch. “We’ll continue our discussion soon.”
“Oh, yes we will.” Then Ms. Finch swiveled and gave Jenna a yank on the elbow that made her wince. “That girl’s always been jealous of you.”
Me? Jealous of Jenna? Ha! Ms. Finch didn’t know what she was talking about, but I decided not to tell her just then. I was still boiling from what she’d said about my dad.
Jenna limped out of the dance school with her mom, and I could hardly believe what I saw: the bun at the back of Jenna’s head was perfectly undisturbed.
It was a shame her pinkie toe looked like a miniature hot dog about to explode from its casing.
After the awful things Jenna’s mom said, I felt like a car that had run out of gas. I wasn’t bad. Even though my dad did some bad things, he did a lot of good things too. He fixed people’s cars sometimes without charging them, if he knew they couldn’t afford it. He once brought a whole bag of groceries over to Mr. Jenks’s trailer when he’d hurt his back and couldn’t work for a while. And if me or Mom or Georgia was having a bad day, Dad always told jokes to make us laugh away our foul moods. He even let our dog up on the bed at night because he couldn’t resist Miss Genevieve’s sad eyes. Did the couple of bad things Dad did erase all the good things before that? Was he really bad? The state of Florida sure seemed to think he was. But to me, I wasn’t so sure.
I could barely muster the energy to follow Miss Delilah into her office.
I sat in one of the chairs across from Miss Delilah’s desk. The same place I sat when Georgia signed me up only three weeks ago, back when everything sparkled with possibility.
Miss Delilah busied herself with a bunch of papers on her desk.
I heard the clock on the wall above my head tick-tick-ticking as I waited for Mom to show up. With each tick, I imagined how upset she would be with me because I caused her to leave work. She’d also be mad about what Ms. Finch said about Dad, but I wouldn’t tell her that. Mom had enough to deal with.
Miss Delilah glanced up at the clock and sighed.
I tapped my toes on the floor in time with the ticking clock.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Finally Mom peeked around the open door, as if not sure she was in the right place.
Seeing Mom triggered a rush of emotions—worry that she’d be mad at me and relief because I finally had someone who’d be on my side. A few tears leaked out, but I brushed them away with the back of my hand.
Mom wore her MARVELOUS MAIDS AT YOUR SERVICE T-shirt tucked into old jeans, and her hair was pulled into a messy ponytail of wild black curls. Honestly, she looked like she’d been scrubbing somebody’s toilet.
I slunk low in my seat.
“Please.” Miss Delilah pointed toward the chair next to mine. “Join us.”
Mom wiped her palms on her thighs and sat.
Miss Delilah pressed her palms onto the papers on her desk. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but Cleveland ended up hurting another student during our class today.”
“But I didn’t do it on—”
“Cleveland!” Mom snapped. “Let Miss Delilah finish talking.”
I sank lower.
“As I was saying…” Miss Delilah pushed her glasses up on her nose. “I don’t think Cleveland did this on purpose, no matter what the mother of the other girl says. But Cleveland’s actions caused another student to have quite a tumble. And now it seems that student has a broken toe.”
“It was only a pinkie toe,” I mumbled.
“Cleveland Potts,” Mom warned.
“Sorry.” I wished I could pull my beret down over my whole face and leave it that way.
“The bottom line is”—Miss Delilah cleared her throat—“I don’t think Cleveland is ready for ballet.”
“Wait! What?” I bolted upright. “But…”
Miss Delilah reached into her drawer, pulled out five twenty-dollar bills, and handed them to
my mom. “I’m returning the money Georgia gave me for the lessons.”
Mom accepted the money, her lips pressed tight.
“I can’t refund the registration fee.”
Mom didn’t say anything.
“On account of it’s nonrefundable.”
Mom continued looking at Miss Delilah until she reached into her drawer and handed her another twenty. That made me glad, at least, because it was Georgia’s money, after all. But I couldn’t be kicked out of ballet. I. Could. Not.
“I’ll be better. I’ll try harder. I’ll—”
Mom silenced me with a glare.
It felt like a boulder was crushing my heart. I had to accomplish the items on my Paris Project list. I had to!
Mom stood. “Thank you. Cleveland and I are very sorry for what happened to that girl’s toe. Aren’t we, Cleveland?”
I nodded hard, but not hard enough to knock my beret off, because I didn’t want to deal with that disaster again. And not hard enough to shake out the tears that had welled up and were trying to bust loose.
Mom turned toward me. “Let’s go, Cleveland. We’ll talk in the car.”
I gulped.
“Thank you, Miss Delilah,” I whispered, even though I wasn’t sure what I was thanking her for. “May-maybe I’ll come back to take classes another time.”
She gave her head a shake so big it dislodged the glasses from her nose.
“Or not.”
I followed Mom out of Miss Delilah’s School of Dance and Fine Pottery, where I never did see any pottery, fine or otherwise.
Pinkie Toes Are Highly Overrated
THE PASSENGER DOOR ON MOM’S car didn’t open because the handle had broken off a while ago, and Mom said it was a nonessential, so I had to crawl through the driver’s side. The hand brake poked me as I climbed over, and I felt like I deserved it. I shoved the bag of ballet clothes onto the floor in the backseat, angry at all the money I’d paid for them… for absolutely nothing. There wasn’t another dance school in Sassafras, so unless someone wanted to drive me all the way to Winter Beach for classes, that bag of clothes would go unused and probably reside under my bed forever. No one would be able to drive me to Winter Beach for classes.
The Paris Project Page 3