by Nicola Yoon
I hop off my bike and look around for a rack to lock it to, but (naturally) there isn’t one. I’ll have to take it inside with me. It looks like the actual studio is at the top of a long, steep and narrow staircase. I pick up my bike and begin the hike.
Almost every inch of the stairway walls is covered with dance memorabilia. It feels a little like I’m ascending to ballroom dance heaven. There’s a poster for a movie called Swing Time with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. There’s the Mad Hot Ballroom poster with two larger-than-life brown kids dancing in front of the New York City skyline. There are dance trophies and medals and framed records. Close to the top of the staircase, there’s a life-sized poster of a man and woman of indeterminate age wrapped tightly around each other. The woman is wearing a scarlet dress with matching heels. The man is wearing a blinding white tux. I think the pained look on their faces is supposed to be passion, but it looks like actual physical agony. I’d guess the pain is from the (Photoshopped) flames they’re dancing in. Across the top of the poster it says Come Feel the Heat. Across the bottom, written into the flames, it says Argentine Tango.
When I finally get to the top of the staircase, I lean my bike against the wall and stretch my aching arms. There’s a small office with a receptionist’s window just ahead, but no one’s in it. On the sill, I see pamphlets for lots of dances—salsa, bachata, waltz, etc. I take one of each and flip through them while waiting for the receptionist to come back. Occasionally a door down the hall opens and salsa music drifts out toward me. I wait ten minutes before deciding to ring the tiny bell on the sill.
A woman—white and tiny, with severely cut jet-black bangs—stomps down the hallway toward me. She’s wearing an astonishingly red asymmetrical dress with long fringe (also astonishingly red) across the bottom and perfectly matching bright-red strappy stilettos. Her fringe sways madly with each stomp. She’s an exploding firecracker in human form.
Once she’s in the office, she grabs the bell from the windowsill and tosses it into a drawer. Satisfied, she peers through the window at me and then improbably—given the situation with the stomping and the bell—smiles. “You are interested in the waltz, I see.”
Except for when she says it, it sounds like You are eeenterested in zee waltz, I zee. Her accent is vaguely Eastern European and very heavy.
“What? No,” I say, putting the pamphlets down. I open my backpack and take out the Instructions for Dancing book. “I just came to return this,” I say. “It says to return it to this address.”
She takes it from me and flips through it for exactly two seconds before tossing it to the side. “Come, Saturday morning is perfect time for you to come in. Best waltzing class in history of world is about to begin.”
She takes off down the hallway.
“Wait,” I say. “I can’t just leave my bike here.”
She opens a door with a sign that reads Studio 5 and tells me it’ll be okay in there.
Once I’m done stashing my bike, we walk down the hall to another studio. She holds the door open for me. When I hesitate, she stomps one foot. “You want to learn or no?”
In my head, I hear Martin imploring me to keep an open mind. I remind myself that the reason I’m here is to figure out what’s happening to me and that this is the only clue I have.
“Yes, I want to learn,” I say, and go inside.
The studio is a wide-open space with hardwood floors, barres for stretching and floor-to-ceiling mirrors. Twenty or so people are standing in pairs next to the windows in the back of the room.
“These are clients,” says the woman. “Most of them have wedding coming up and need waltz for first dance.”
Almost all of the couples are in their late twenties and early thirties. I spy a few engagement rings. Some of them seem eager and others seem nervous. I hope I don’t see any of them kissing.
The woman turns to me. “But where is special friend? Cannot ballroom dance alone.”
“I don’t have a special friend,” I say.
“Why not?”
Is she really asking me about my love life right now? Mercifully, the older Black couple I saw on the website last night walks into the room. Exploding firecracker woman shifts her attention to them, and I’m saved from having to explain why I don’t have a special friend.
“Welcome to La Brea Dance,” says the older woman, Maggie.
In my entire life, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so regal. She looks like she’s just assumed the throne of a small but powerful Caribbean island nation. She has thick gray dreads that are piled high on her head, with a few strands framing her bright brown face. Her ball gown is high-necked and pale blue and made from sequined lace, tulle and (I’m pretty sure) the diaphanous wings of actual fairies.
Her husband, Archibald, is tall and thin, with a bald head and a salt-and-pepper mustache. He’s wearing a white tux with white suspenders and a bow tie that matches Maggie’s dress perfectly. He’s so dapper, I’m pretty sure he’s the reason the word dapper was invented.
He claps his hands together. “Today you’ll be learning both the regular English waltz, which is slow and boring, and the faster Viennese waltz, which is much more interesting.”
“Don’t be nervous,” Maggie says. “Nobody ever died waltzing.”
“Although there was a time they were persecuted for it,” Archibald adds.
He goes on to give us a small history lesson. He tells us that the waltz is the oldest of the ballroom dances, that it began as a peasant dance in Vienna in the seventeenth century and that the name is from the old German word walzen, which means “to turn or glide.”
Then he tucks his hands into his pockets and rocks back on his heels. I can tell the next part is his favorite from the way his eyes twinkle madly. “Everyone hated the waltz when it was first introduced to high society. Religious leaders thought it was vulgar and sinful,” he says, and points at Maggie’s dress. “Because the women wore ball gowns when they danced, they had to hold one corner off the ground so they wouldn’t trip. Can anyone guess why this was a problem?” he asks.
No one can, so he answers his own question. “The problem is ankles,” he says. “Sexy, sexy ankles.”
Maggie picks up a corner of her gown and wiggles her foot. Everyone laughs.
He tells us that when the waltz arrived in England, one English newspaper thought it was so “obscene” that it printed an editorial warning parents against exposing their daughters to “so fatal a contagion.”
He smiles. “Isn’t it funny how time changes everything?” he asks.
Maggie walks over to the record player and moves the needle to the record. Archibald dims the lights. “Fallin’ ” by Alicia Keys starts playing and they begin to dance.
I’ve seen ballroom dance shows on TV before, but that doesn’t compare to the romance and drama of seeing it in real life. It’s not like they’re telling a story with their bodies, more like they’re dancing an emotion. When they get to the Viennese waltz, it’s like they’re skipping through air. They dance by me, and Maggie’s ball gown makes a small tornado at my feet.
I’m enchanted. Everyone is. Some of the couples move closer to each other, caught up in the magic of them. As the song ends, he spins her one last time and bends her into a dip. The room sighs into quiet for a few seconds and then explodes with applause.
I’m clapping too, but mostly I’m watching them. I don’t think they’ve noticed the applause. I don’t think they’ve noticed anything but each other. They’re still holding the dip, his hand on her back, her arm on his shoulder. They’re breathing hard and gazing at each other with so much love, it’s almost too bright to look at. A few more seconds pass before they turn into a bow. We all cheer so loud, you’d think someone sank a game-winning three-pointer instead of just ending a waltz.
Firecracker woman ushers me out of the studio as soon as the a
ctual lesson begins.
She turns to me once we’re back in the hallway. “What is word you Americans are always using? Amazing. They are amazing, no?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” I say, and I don’t just mean their dancing.
Once we’re back at the reception office, she sits in front of the computer.
“What is name?” she asks, wiggling her fingers over the keyboard.
“Evie,” I say, before rushing to add that I’m not ready to sign up for lessons yet.
“But if not now, then when?” she asks. “You could do it even without special friend.”
“I just need some time to think about it,” I say, backing away.
She sighs and stares at the screen, disappointed. “Well, it was nice to meet you anyway.” She leaves the office and heads back down the hallway.
I walk toward the studio where I left my bike and hear the distinct trill of the bell coming from inside. I slow down. The lights are not on. Which means someone who is not me is riding my bike around a dark dance studio.
The door is just slightly open. I move closer to it.
“I’m sorry, Jess. No, don’t cry. Please don’t cry,” pleads a guy’s voice.
Holy crap. I’m pretty sure I’m overhearing a breakup. I wait, expecting to hear a sniffled response, until I realize the guy must be talking to someone on the phone.
“I didn’t mean to break— Yeah, no, you’re right, I’m a jerk….I’m sorry, Jess….No, I didn’t know you bought…Wait, when did you buy a dress?…Yesterday?”
Overhearing this conversation reminds me of the visions. Why am I being subjected to knowing the secret lives of other people?
There are lot of things I’d rather do than have to turn on the lights and interrupt this emotional cataclysm. But I also need my bike so I can go home and forget about this disappointing trip.
“But, Jess, we broke up like ten months ago,” says the voice. “I don’t even go to school there anymore. Why would you buy a prom dress? Okay, okay…yeah, I’ll talk to you later. Okay, don’t cry. Okay. I’m sorry.”
My bike bell trills again and the studio lights flicker on. I take it as my signal that the conversation is over, and push open the door. Just like the other studio, this one has floor-to-ceiling mirrors, so instead of seeing just one guy riding my bike slowly around the room, I see many of them.
The first thing I notice is his face—all brown skin, dark eyes and cheekbones. The second thing I notice is that he’s very tall. Gratuitously tall, really. He looks ridiculous on my short bike. The third thing is his hair—long, skinny dreads dipped in blue and piled high on top of his head. So maybe not quite as tall as I thought, since his hair is responsible for at least three inches. The fourth thing is his hands, which are giant and completely dwarf my handlebars. The fifth thing I notice is I’m noticing a lot of things about him. So I stop.
“Umm,” I say.
He swings one absurdly long leg over the bike and hops off.
He tilts the bike toward me. “I’m guessing this is yours,” he says.
I step into the studio. “Did you adjust my seat?”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” he says. “Long legs.” He lifts one leg and wiggles it. To demonstrate how tall he is.
I notice him some more.
He’s wearing ripped jeans, black canvas shoes and a teal-blue T-shirt with a line drawing of a unicorn. It says Not the Only One in cursive. Could he be any more hipster? Dyed dreads, torn jeans, old-school shoes and ironic T-shirt. Any three of those things would’ve been enough. Four is too much. He’s a hipster overachiever.
“Nice bike, by the way,” he says when I take the handlebars. “Never seen one of those. What kind is it?”
“Beach cruiser,” I say, wondering how he’s never seen one. These things are all over every beach in Southern California. It’s true, though, that mine’s really nice. Tasseled handlebars, wide wicker basket, fenders and a step-through frame so I can ride it with a skirt on and not show my goods to the world. Dad got it for me for my birthday before everything fell apart.
I flip down the kickstand so I can adjust the seat from tall-hipster-guy height to not-tall-non-hipster-girl height.
“I was gonna change it back right after I got done—”
“Breaking Jess’s heart,” I say, finishing his sentence for him with the thing he was probably not going to say.
He looks away from me, embarrassed, and then palms the entire back of his neck with a single enormous hand. There’s a tattoo on the back of his biceps. It’s either an X or a plus sign. Hipster-trait tally at five.
“My name’s X, by the way,” he says.
I look up. “Ex? Like an e followed by an x?”
“Short for Xavier. Everyone calls me X.”
“So that’s an X tattooed on your arm? Aren’t you supposed to tattoo someone else’s name?”
He lifts his arm and frowns at his own biceps. “That’s not me. I’m in a band. X Machine.”
“Oh. So the band is named after you?” I don’t know why I’m giving him such a hard time. Maybe for the sake of this Jess girl.
He frowns some more and looks a little lost. “It’s just a cool name,” he says.
I finish adjusting my seat and flip up the kickstand. “Well, nice meeting—”
“What’s your name?” he asks.
“Yvette,” I say. I don’t know why I don’t say Evie.
“Thanks for letting me borrow your bike, Yvette,” he says, and gives me a grin so spectacular it makes me (temporarily) stupid.
Technically, it’s not a perfect smile. He has a small gap between his front teeth, and the right side of his face scrunches a little too much. Still, I have no doubt it’s a grin that works wonders for him. It gets him A grades on B papers, into sold-out concerts and the phone numbers of heads of state. When the time comes, it’ll get him into heaven, even though he should clearly be headed in the other direction.
It’s a grin that works well for him. I know because it’s working well on me.
I force my brain cells to stop abdicating their duties and remind myself that he’s not my type.
Mainly because I don’t have a type. Not anymore.
And even back when I did have a type, it was never anyone so…obvious. Tall, hipster-hot and in a band? I mean, he’s the definition of a heartbreaker, right? Literally, he was just breaking someone’s heart. It doesn’t matter that he seemed genuinely pained while he was doing it.
“Okay,” I say. “I’m leaving now.”
He raises a single eyebrow and I almost laugh. For a second, I feel like I’m a character in one of my old romance books. Raising a single eyebrow is such a Classic Romance Guy Characteristic.
I grab my bike and head out and tell myself I’m not in a romance novel.
CHAPTER 10
Classic Romance Guy Characteristics: A Nonexhaustive List
Aforementioned uncanny ability to raise a single eyebrow.
Propensity to smirk. Or to smile lopsided, self-deprecating smiles.
Inability to choose appropriately sized clothing. T-shirts are often too tight and stretch distractingly across (well-muscled) chests and toned biceps.
Unusual eyes. Typically one color flecked with another color. E.g.: “His eyes are green flecked with gold.”
CHAPTER 11
The Formula for Heartbreak
IT TURNS OUT that people kiss all the time.
All. The. Time.
It happens again later that same day. I’m in the baking aisle at the grocery, picking up the (real, Tahitian) vanilla beans Mom wants. There’s a man musing on the difference between baking powder and baking soda. A woman—his girlfriend—tells him it’s cute how much he doesn’t know. She leans in and kisses him. The entire history of their
relationship plays out in front of me, just like it did with Danica and Ben, and Shelley and Sheldon.
They met through a dating app and had their first date at a coffee shop. The first time he said I love you was over text, with red heart emojis. She called him right away and told him she loved him too. They went ring shopping together. He proposed to her at the same coffee shop where they had their first date.
Sometime soon, he’s going to get a job offer for someplace in South America. He’s going to tell her he wants to break up and take the job and go on an adventure. She’s going to tell him that’s what marriage is. He’s going to tell her that marriage may be an adventure, but it’s not one he wants to take, not yet and not with her.
The rest of the week goes by in the same way. I have at least one vision every day. I’m amazed at all the different ways people connect.
There’s the girl who watches the same movie three times in a row so she can keep flirting with the usher between showings.
And the boy who pretends not to know the rules of football so the other boy will explain it to him.
I figure out some of the rules for the visions. They only appear the first time I see a couple kiss. I know because I accidentally caught another Shelley/Sheldon kiss and nothing happened. I also think the couple might need to be in love. I’ve seen two first-date kisses and didn’t have a vision for either one. The number of scenes in each vision varies by couple. I think I’m only seeing the most important moments in their love story. I don’t know what or who decides which moments are most important.
I spend a lot of time searching the internet. One of the great and also terrible things about the internet is you can always find a community of people interested in the same things you are. Great because some interests are pretty wonderful. Romance novel reading, for example. Terrible because some interests are awful. I’m not going to give any examples. No matter how long I search, I don’t find any support groups for people who are suddenly able to see other people’s romantic futures.