“Morning, Brooklyn,” he said, and gave me a welcoming smile that made it hard for me to hold anything against him.
I gestured at the table.
“No breakfast?” I asked.
“You know the drill. Tanner is still sleeping, so your mom decided to take a shower before he gets up. He had a rough game last night, so it’s best to let him rest.”
Right. Tanner. How could we even consider eating before he’s awake? I swear he gets the royal treatment. The world acted as if he were a king, simply because he could throw a ball down the field. I didn’t get it. Not one bit and especially not when I was starving.
My stomach rumbled in protest, and I decided to take matters into my own hands.
“How about I get breakfast started for all of you?” I asked and without waiting for a response, went to the cupboard and pulled out a whole bunch of pots and pans, making sure to create as much noise as possible. Tanner may not be up yet, but I could help with that.
I grabbed the carton of eggs from the fridge, some spinach, a tomato, and mushrooms. I pulled out a bottle of hot sauce that ran empty far too often. I’ve always been a hot sauce fan, but one of the things I learned that Texas was able to do better than Oregon was make hot sauce. It was incredible, and I pretty much drenched all my food in it.
I’d just cracked some eggs into a bowl when Mom wandered in, her long brown hair making the shoulders of her T-shirt wet. Mom called me her mini-me; everyone said we looked like twins. We both had the same brown eyes, freckles, and noses that turned up a tiny bit at the end. Tanner and Stephen had blond hair and deep tans from the Texas sun. Mom and I, on the other hand, had to lather on the sunscreen wherever we went, because it seemed as if our pale skin burned as soon as we stepped outside.
“Sounds like we’re cooking up something very noisy in here,” she said as she poured a cup of coffee.
“Veggie omelets,” I told her and put the frying pan on the burner a little too hard, so that the spice jars lined up on top of the stove clattered together.
“How about we try to keep it down a bit,” Mom said. “Tanner is still sleeping. He needs to rest after all that work last night.”
“Heaven forbid we disturb King Tanner. But desperate times call for desperate measures; I’m starving,” I said and draped my hand across my forehead and acted as if I were about to faint. “I might perish before he wakes.”
“Pretty sure you’ll survive,” Mom said and ruffled my hair, which thankfully wasn’t pulled back into a bun yet, or I would’ve been mad that she’d messed it up.
“Who’s making all this noise down here?” Tanner stood in the doorway in an LHS T-shirt and sweatpants. He had on his glasses, which he hardly wore, and his blond hair was messed up from sleep.
Mom shot me an I told you so look.
“Sorry, honey, Brooklyn was a little bit too loud making breakfast,” Mom said.
“Some of us have already been up and working out for hours and need to eat before we pass out from hunger,” I shot back.
“Give me a break. I had a game last night.”
“So I’ve heard.” I shrugged. “I’m just saying, if you want to be the best—”
“Okay, that’s enough you two,” Mom interrupted. “You’re both amazing athletes. We don’t need a competition to see who is the best.”
I am, I mouthed to Tanner when Mom wasn’t looking. He shook his head and mouthed, Not a chance. And as strange as it was to have this new family, it was fun to experience having a sibling—the silly fights and all.
Mom placed a giant glass of orange juice in front of Tanner, and he gulped it down in about five seconds. Stephen brought up last night’s game, reliving every moment, play by play. Our weekly Saturday breakfasts were supposed to be about family bonding, but I had a sneaking suspicion it was really just another excuse to talk and talk and talk about football. Basically, it was one big continuation of the night before.
Mom and I had only been in Texas long enough for me to realize that football was almost some bizarre zombielike invasion that got into your brain. Take Mom, for example. We were living a perfectly normal life in Connors, Oregon, and then BAM! She met Stephen when he was in town training employees at Mom’s company. They dated long distance for a year, got married in a quick ceremony at city hall, and decided it would be best if Mom and I moved to Texas because Tanner was that good at football. They didn’t want to take him away from his team, even if it meant I had to leave my dance studio and teachers.
Before we moved, Mom had no idea how the game was played, and now her entire wardrobe is pretty much red-and-white LHS clothing, she hasn’t missed one of Tanner’s games, and she has hosted the team dinner twice. The fact that she became a football mom didn’t even make sense, because the only thing she ever cared about that had to do with football before moving here was who was performing during the Super Bowl halftime show.
As I continued to think about all the ways life was so different now, the room filled with the smells of the breakfast Mom was making for the three of them. I might have taken the healthy route with an omelet, but no one else was following in my footsteps.
Mom set a giant plate of bacon on the table, and Tanner grabbed at least five pieces. He then helped himself to a large serving of the scrambled eggs Mom had prepared. I was sure this wouldn’t be his only helping either. Tanner was notorious for going back for seconds and usually thirds. He ate as if he were a bear storing up for a winter’s hibernation.
“So what is Coach Trentanelli saying about the defense last night?” Mom asked and sounded as if she’d been talking football her whole life.
“Um, hello, we were all at the game. Remember? Do we have to talk about every single minute of it again?” I asked, but they ignored me and kept going over every single little detail.
Mom sat down and eased right into the conversation, so I pulled up YouTube on my phone. Mia had posted a new video on her channel. She already had forty-six views and a bunch of comments. I stuck my earbuds in and put my phone in my lap to watch it, although I probably didn’t need to—it wasn’t like anyone was going to pay attention to what I was doing when there was football to discuss.
“Good morning, Knights country!” she said. “It’s great to wake up to a win, isn’t it? Oh wait, we’ve done that every Saturday this season because our team is unstoppable!”
Mia was adorable. She wore her straight black hair in a shoulder-length bob, and her bright blue glasses made her stylish and edgy. Her mom was from Japan, and her dad was from right here in Leighton, and she always said that she was the perfect mix of the two greatest places in the world.
She launched into some commentary that would rival Tanner and Stephen’s discussion, and if she had been at our kitchen table right now, she totally could have joined right into the conversation. Mia knew football, and somehow she always managed to get information or a scoop that no one else had. That was why her videos were so popular. Well, that and her on-the-street interviews, where she’d ask anyone and everyone the same question. She would pick one for each video, and it was fun to see all the different responses; they were always a mix of serious, funny, and off-the-wall answers. She was definitely going to be an awesome sportscaster someday.
“Rumor has it that the next generation of Knights may need a few more years before they can fill our LHS boys’ shoes,” Mia started. “So I went into the crowd at last night’s game and asked them myself.”
The next shot was of her turquoise sneakers walking up the bleacher steps. She stopped in front of a man with a big bag of popcorn in his hands.
“What do you think of the middle school team’s record this year?” she asked.
The man shook his head. “It’s looking like they may have a perfect record. A perfect record of no wins.” He laughed, but it was true. They’d lost their first three games so far, and I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be laughing once the team got to high school.
She interviewed a bunch of people of all ages.
Usually, she’d get different responses, but this time they all seemed the same. Everyone agreed; the middle school boys stunk.
I held my phone up and pointed to the video. “Mia said the middle school football team isn’t any good this year.”
Mom, Tanner, and Stephen stopped talking and focused on me. Leave it to the mention of football to finally get some attention.
“Aww, did Mia make another one of those fun videos?” Mom asked.
“They aren’t fun. She gets a few hundred hits on each of them. And on her new one she interviewed a bunch of people about the middle school team and it doesn’t sound as if they’re doing too good.”
“They’re not,” Tanner spoke up. “Coach Trentanelli is nervous that they won’t be ready for next year.”
“They seem as obsessed with the sport as everyone else,” I said, but I remembered one of the boys on the team had recently come to school on crutches.
“They’re not taking the game seriously enough, and there have been a lot of injuries. They’re making mistakes because of it.”
“Do they have a personal trainer who can work with them? Maybe someone from the high school?” Stephen asked.
Tanner shook his head. “They’ve tried that. The boys all think they’re awesome and know what they’re doing. They aren’t willing to listen.”
“Yep, that sounds like the boys in my grade,” I said and thought about how obnoxious they could be in class, especially on game days, when they acted as if they didn’t have to do any work because they needed to focus on preparing for the game.
“Coach is dead set on taking the Dallas Cowboys route.”
“The Cowboys route?” Mom asked.
“It sounds nuts, but a few years ago, they added ballet barres outside the locker room to help the team with stretching, and they haven’t had as many injuries since. They are going to make the middle schoolers take conditioning classes at some dance studio to help so they can become quicker on the field.”
“I bet some parents weren’t too thrilled with the idea of their sons taking dance classes,” Stephen said.
“Would you be?” Tanner said and laughed. “But what else can they do? They don’t want their kids to get hurt and they want them to be better players. You know how it is, Dad. If it helps you win, parents will do it. Remember when Coach had us learning yoga a couple of years ago? He’s all about trying random stuff if it means possible wins.”
“The team is taking dance classes?” I interrupted, now very interested in the conversation.
“Not dance. Conditioning. Stretching and stuff,” Tanner said, and I wanted to be like, Hello, “stretching and stuff” is a major part of dance. “He’s got some ballet teacher helping out.”
“Where?” I asked as a nervous flutter began in my chest.
“I don’t know, some studio right by the middle school. Maybe your studio,” Tanner said as if it were no big deal.
“You’re kidding, right?” I asked and hoped this was a big prank they were pulling on me for some reason, because my studio, Center Stage, was the only dance studio near the school.
“Coach needed to do something. Those boys are messing up on the field and will be playing high school ball soon enough. He needs to figure this out before then,” Tanner said.
“I think that sounds great, Brooklyn!” Mom said with way too much enthusiasm. “You’re always talking about how you wish there were more male dancers. Now you’ll have a whole team full!”
“Dancers,” I emphasized to Mom, the panic slowly rising in my chest at the realization that this might actually be a real thing. “Not football players. I wanted more boys who were actually interested in ballet. This is the worst news ever.”
And it was. It really was because ballet was the one place I belonged in this football-obsessed town. The studio was my space and now, just like everything else in my life, football was taking that over too.
Chapter 4
I stormed out of the kitchen and slammed the door to my bedroom.
This was not cool.
Not cool at all.
There was no way those boys were invading my dance studio.
“Over my dead body!” I yelled as I kicked my laundry basket out of frustration. I stubbed the side of my toe and yelped in pain.
I threw myself on my bed and screamed into my pillow.
I was being dramatic and immature, but I had a right to, didn’t I? Ever since we moved, nothing was familiar to me. Sure, I had Mia and the girls at my new dance studio, but it wasn’t the same. Living in Texas was like being in a country where I didn’t understand the language. There were all these customs and traditions that everyone seemed to understand but me. The food was different, the weather was nothing like Oregon, and I missed Dasha and everyone else from my old studio so bad. Ballet was the only thing that made sense, so if what Tanner said about the football players was true, I didn’t know what I was going to do.
But what made me even more frustrated was that Mom hadn’t even understood how wrong this all was. Instead, she’d told me I should be happy to have the boys at the studio.
Happy.
As if those boys were anything close to serious dancers. The only thing they were serious about was football.
I wanted to text Dasha and tell her what was going on, she’d understand, but she was probably headed to class right now. On Saturdays, we would take a jazz class for fun, as a way to let loose. I wished like crazy I could be there with all of my friends. The class was full of laughing, dancing, and having a great time. The girls at my new studio were supernice, but it wasn’t the same. They weren’t as serious about dance as I was. Most of them were happy to simply take classes and get a spot on Leighton High School’s drill team. They didn’t see themselves joining a ballet academy or dancing professionally like a lot of my friends did at my studio in Oregon. Here, dancing was fun, but that was all it was, and I missed that dedication and competitive drive Dasha and my old friends had.
Before I let myself get too upset about what I was missing out on, I grabbed my laptop and lay on my bed.
There was only one thing that could make me feel better.
Thinking about the future.
I went to TSOTA’s web page.
The main page loaded, and the pictures I’d become so familiar with popped up; all the images were etched in my mind after spending so long studying them.
A calm came over me as I got lost in the world of the school. I forgot about Tanner and football and the fact that the football team might be invading my studio. Instead, I studied the photos on the website.
It seemed crazy to think that only a few months ago I’d known nothing about TSOTA, especially since it was pretty much all I thought about now. The plan had always been to go to Juilliard’s Summer Dance Intensive and hopefully dance professionally one day, but the idea of focusing on ballet while I was in high school was nothing short of amazing. It wasn’t until my new teacher, Mary Rose, pulled me aside and told me that she thought I had a good chance of getting in if I was interested that I even learned a school existed that focused entirely on the arts. Of course, you still had to take the usual boring classes like math, English, history, and science, but that was only half of the day. The other half was dedicated to your focused area of study.
Is there anything more wonderful than that?
It was as if the school was made for me. A place where I was surrounded by what I loved. And somehow, someway, I’d convinced Mom to let me audition for the school. When things seemed super lonely here or all mixed up, TSOTA was what kept me going, and I vowed to get one of the spots for incoming freshmen.
I clicked to the page that showed the campus. The outside was nothing special. It was a giant, boring concrete building. The inside looked like any other school, but when you scrolled down farther on the page, it was the other stuff that made my heart swoon. They had a room for dance that took up a huge section of the third floor and was lined with windows. They had eight smaller practi
ce rooms, a yoga studio, and a studio with video gear set up so you could record your dances and watch them back. They had areas for art, music rooms, and a giant theater for weekly public performances. The back of the school was an outdoor garden full of sculptures and benches and a large, grassy area where you could sit in the open air.
I thought about Leighton Middle School and the hallways filled with posters for the football team, the stadium, and the weight room that only those on the team were allowed to use. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to understand what my middle school valued, and the idea of going somewhere that praised the arts instead of football filled me with such excitement that it sometimes made it hard to fall asleep at night when I imagined the possibility of being a student there.
I searched the navigation bar at the top of the website and found the link to the page titled “Student Creations.” It was my favorite part of the website. The school updated it weekly, and it was full of artwork, photography, and videos of dance and musical performances. I’d examined the technique and skill of all the students in the dance program. I’d compared my dancing to what they could do. And I’d studied their faces and imagined myself dancing alongside of them. It sounded silly, but I’d pretend I went to school here. I could easily imagine the weight of my book bag and dance bag on my shoulders, a familiar melody from a routine I was working on buzzing around in my head, and the way my muscles would ache from dancing every day, but also how alive that would make me. I pictured myself headed to a class or maybe to meet some friends in the cafeteria to swap tips on how to break in our toe shoes or keep our hair in tight, sleek buns. I closed my eyes and could almost hear the music that might come from a practice room down a hallway or the claps of someone who helped keep count as a dancer moved across the floor. I imagined the chemical smell of spray paint and the giant sculpture made out of some kind of shiny material that sat in the back garden.
I thought about everything I had lost when we moved here and everything I might gain if I got into TSOTA.
Friday Night Stage Lights Page 2