by Daphne Maple
“Because you didn’t give me a chance,” Bri hissed.
“Right, everything is always someone else’s fault,” I said.
Bri spun around to try and stare me down. “At least I’m not the one who stranded a dog at home and let the owner down. If you keep going like this you’re going to destroy the club.”
“Maybe if we just—” Taylor began, but I interrupted.
“The club that I helped found?” I shouted, furious and hurt by her words. “The one that I spend hours working on every day while you just sit around whining?”
Boxer barked, clearly worked up by all the tension and yelling. Caley went over to soothe him but she glanced back at us warily.
“Guys,” Taylor pleaded. “Let’s try to talk about this quietly.” She was patting Jinx, who was looking at all of us with big eyes.
“That’s not going to help anything,” Bri said, throwing out her arms.
Hattie, who had been standing behind her, backed away, nearly bumping into Gracie, who growled, which was totally unlike her.
“No, but you insulting all of us will?” I countered. That coal of anger was burning white-hot in my stomach and my fists were clenched. Mr. S came up to me and leaned against my leg.
“At least I say what I think,” Bri said, glaring at Taylor. She had a point: I was tired of how Taylor kept telling everyone to calm down but never actually helped out.
“Well, we’re all sick of hearing what you think,” Kim snapped in a very un-Kimlike way that made Missy let out a slight whine. Humphrey heard and howled.
“Too bad because—” Bri began loudly.
But then Alice strode in between us and held up her hands. “Enough,” she said in a forceful voice that reminded us who the ultimate dog whisperer was. “You’re scaring the dogs.”
I looked around and saw that every dog in the shelter was still, all of them staring at us. I couldn’t even see Big Al because he was hiding in his cage and Missy was cowering in a corner. Alice was right: the dogs were totally freaked out by all the yelling.
Guilt ballooned inside me and my shoulders slumped, the fight gone out of me. It was bad enough that I’d let down Mrs. Torres—now we were all being completely unprofessional. And the worst part was that the dogs that we loved so much were frightened. They were scared by the very people who were supposed to be taking care of them: us. How could we have let this happen?
“This is not the first meeting that has been disrupted by whatever is going on between you,” Alice said. “It’s interfering with our care for the dogs and it can’t continue.”
I started to apologize for the millionth time, but Alice went on. “Take the weekend to think about where you want to go from here,” she said, her voice sober. “If you think you can work together again, by all means come back. But until you’re ready to put the dogs and their needs first, you need to take a break from the club.”
Her words hit me like a punch.
“Owners are arriving,” Alice continued. “And we don’t want them seeing their pets anxious and the people they trust to care for those pets shouting at each other. The four of you should go home. Now.”
Alice had never gotten angry with us before and it felt awful. My hands were shaking as I leashed Mr. S and grabbed my coat and backpack. Kim was stuffing her arms into the sleeves of her fleece jacket and I saw that her lips were trembling. Bri kept her eyes down as she snapped Lily into her leash and Taylor led the way toward the door. I could tell by the tight expression on her face that she was trying not to cry.
The evening was cold and an icy drizzle fell from a low, gray sky. Bri pulled Lily ahead and marched toward her block, not pausing to look at us or say a word. Taylor glanced at me and then Kim. Her eyes were moist and for a moment I thought she might say something. But then she just turned and started for home, her hands jammed into the pockets of her coat.
I turned to Kim. Maybe if we could talk we could somehow fix this terrible mess. But Kim just gave me a hard look and then stomped down the block.
I looked down at Mr. S and felt tears start in a slow trickle down my face. “I guess I really blew that,” I told him, sniffing as I spoke.
Mr. S gave a sympathetic yip but even he couldn’t make me feel better now.
Because if we didn’t fix this and fix it soon, it would mean the end of the Dog Club.
12
“Excellent work, dancers,” Madame Florence said. It was Thursday afternoon and we had just finished up our final dress rehearsal in the studio. Tomorrow afternoon we’d do one last run-through in the auditorium itself. “You are more than ready for the performance on Saturday. And I’m happy to announce that our tickets have sold out. We’re going to have a full house for what I know will be a wonderful show. So give yourselves a hand.”
All the dancers around me whooped and cheered. Asha and Dana did a jumping high five, while a few members of the advanced modern class did an impromptu jig across the floor that made even stoic Madame Florence laugh.
The only person not laughing or cheering or even smiling was me. I wanted to, of course. We’d worked so hard and earned this moment of fun together. Plus it was a great way to let off steam before the pressure of a performance. But it was impossible to feel happy after what had happened at Dog Club yesterday.
When I’d gotten home from the shelter I’d explained my splotchy face and lack of appetite as nerves about dance. My mom seemed slightly suspicious but then she’d had to answer a call from work and I’d gone upstairs and stayed in my room for the rest of the night. The one good thing that happened was that when I called Mrs. Torres to check on Daisy and apologize again, she had been kind, saying that she understood, that Daisy was fine, and that she was looking forward to the next Dog Club session. I’d breathed a sigh of relief that Mrs. Torres wasn’t pulling Daisy from the club. But if things didn’t get fixed soon, there might not be a club for Daisy to come back to.
And that made it impossible to be happy about anything.
“Sasha, are you okay?” Dana asked, her brow furrowed with concern. The other dancers were dispersing now, laughing and talking as they milled toward the dressing room.
I forced a smile, but it felt stiff on my face. “I’m a little nervous about the show,” I said.
“I get that,” Asha said, slinging an arm around my shoulders. “You have a major solo.”
“Don’t make it worse for her,” Dana said. She was rolling out her shoulders to loosen them up after the intensity of our rehearsal.
“It’s okay,” I said. “We’ve practiced so much I think I could do it in my sleep. I just need to remember that when I picture the auditorium filled with people.” We headed over to put our costumes for the last dance in the bins at the back of the room. For each of our numbers in the show we wore our own basic black leotard and tights, and then added fun accessories, like sparkly silver vests, colorful swirly skirts, and for the final number, butterfly wings.
“Yeah, it’s pretty cool we’re going to have a full house,” Asha said, setting her wings, which were a shimmery blue and lavender, carefully in their bin. “That’s a lot of people.”
“Make sure to tell Kim and Taylor and Bri to get there early for good seats,” Dana said. “I think Emily, Naomi, and Rachel are planning to arrive around one thirty.” The show started at two o’clock.
“That’s when my friends and family are coming too,” Asha added.
I was glad we were now walking to the dressing room so they couldn’t see my expression. Because if my friends didn’t even want to talk to me, why would they come see me dance? Or sleep over at my house afterward? The answer, of course, was that they wouldn’t.
I half listened as Dana and Asha chatted while we changed, but my mind was playing back the way none of my friends had even looked at me during that day at school, our big fight yesterday, and the day before that. The reality was that whatever had gone wrong was not going to be better by the weekend.
And so before I headed out to
meet my mom in the parking lot, I sent the hardest text I’d ever had to send. I canceled our sleepover for Saturday night.
I waited all night for my friends to write back, to protest, to say they would be there to see me dance no matter what.
But no one did.
I was in English class when I realized how badly I’d messed up. Mrs. Benson, looking polished in her pressed pants and white linen shirt, was lecturing us on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which we were reading as a follow-up to our unit on The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I was writing down the main themes of the book when Mrs. Benson cleared her throat.
“One thing to remember in literature and life,” she said, raising an eyebrow as she stared down at Jade, who was trying to pass a note to Sofia. Jade crunched up the paper, her cheeks turning pink. “Is that actions have consequences. And when we take those actions, we cannot always foresee what the consequences will be.”
I wasn’t sure if this was about the book or the note-passing, but her words made my pen freeze over my paper. I realized I’d been thinking about the fight and my friends’ seeming indifference to my stress as things that had just happened to me, kind of like a rainstorm sweeping in or a big report being assigned when you already had too much going on: the kind of thing that you had no control over. But now I started thinking in Mrs. Benson’s terms, about actions and consequences.
At first all I could see were my friends’ actions: Kim not really hearing me when I first tried to talk about how stressed I was, Bri nagging me, Taylor not doing anything to help. But then I realized part of the picture was missing. And that part was me. Because they weren’t the only ones who had acted; I had too. And when I thought about it honestly, I saw that my actions had created the consequences just as much as anyone else’s, if not more. I was the one who was upset about the division of jobs for the club, but instead of talking about it calmly, I’d blown up about it. It had bothered me for weeks, but instead of trying to sort it out, I’d stewed and gotten angrier and angrier until it exploded. And now here we were, with our friendship in tatters and the whole future of our club up in the air.
Mrs. Benson was back to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but I wasn’t even trying to listen anymore. My actions had helped cause this whole mess, and now it was time to act again. But this time I needed to clean things up.
I waited for my friends under the big maple tree on the front lawn of the school. It was the perfect place because everyone had to pass by it on their way out, after the final bell. I’d skipped going to my locker to make sure I was there before any of my friends had a chance to leave. That way I’d be sure to catch all three of them. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say exactly, but I did know how I was going to begin: I was going to apologize.
Students spilled out of the big metal doors of the school in a steady stream, pairs of eighth-grade girls talking with their heads bent together, groups of seventh-grade boys laughing and shoving each other in a way that reminded me of Boxer, Lily, and Jinx when they ran after a ball together. I saw Dana leaving with Emily, Naomi, and Rachel, and she waved to me.
“See you at the auditorium,” she called. Madame Florence had instructed us to go home and eat a healthy snack before heading over to the town hall auditorium at four for our final run-through.
“See you there,” I called back, smiling. Because I was sure my friends and I would be friends again by then.
More students filed out. Jade and Sofia and the rest of their fashionable crowd strolled down the steps as if they were posing for a magazine and then a group of boys from our class crashed into them. There was a lot of yelling and in the end the boys walked off meekly. I kept my eyes on the students still coming out but didn’t see my friends. Where could they be? The stream of students had now slowed to a trickle, and there was still no sign of them.
But then the door opened and there they were, all three of them, together. Bri was saying something and gesturing with her hands while Kim leaned forward, listening intently. Taylor brushed a braid back from her face, then nodded. They were so focused on their conversation that they didn’t even see me standing there in front of the maple tree, alone.
My insides felt scraped out and raw as I watched them walk to the end of the path together. Taylor said something and Kim and Bri laughed, the sound carrying in the wind. Tears pricked my eyes as they headed down the sidewalk, clearly having a great time without me. I’d been ready to be friends again and apparently so were they. The only difference is that they only wanted to be friends with each other and not with me.
Obviously I was right: my actions had caused all our problems. And now my best friends in the world didn’t want to have anything to do with me.
13
“You’re going to be great,” Asha said. We were backstage at the Roxbury Park town hall auditorium and in exactly ten minutes our performance was going to begin. The seats were filled and we could hear the low hum of the people talking and rustling their programs. Madame Florence had finished taking us through our warm-up and given a stirring pep talk. Her eyes had darted over to me a number of times while she spoke and I’d seen concern flicker across her face each time. It was a lot like the concern I saw reflected in Asha’s eyes as she tried to cheer me up now.
And I knew why: I’d been awful at our run-through yesterday. My lifts sagged, my spins dragged, and I couldn’t stay on beat. Madame Florence had called it pre-performance jitters but I knew it had nothing to do with the show. Or jitters. It was the loss of my friends. I needed to feel joyful to dance and now, knowing my friends no longer wanted me had sucked every bit of joy away.
I gave Asha a wan smile. “You too,” I said. She would be great, of course. Everyone would. And I knew I had to rally, to find some way to get through this recital without letting everyone down. They’d all worked too hard to have this day spoiled by one brokenhearted dancer. The problem was, I had no idea how to fly through my dance when I felt this heavy and low.
“They’re here,” Dana said, coming up with a big grin. She’d been peeking out through the thick velvet curtains. “And they got front-row seats.”
“Great,” I said, my voice thin. I knew she was happy to have Emily, Rachel, and Naomi there to cheer her on. I’d always loved having Kim there clapping for me. And I’d so been looking forward to having Taylor and Bri join her.
“Kim, Bri, and Taylor must have been the first ones in the door,” Dana went on. “Because they’re sitting front and center.”
I was sure I’d misheard. “Wait, don’t you mean Emily, Naomi, and Rachel?” I asked.
Dana nodded, slightly distracted by one of the backstage moms who had accidentally dropped the bin of butterfly wings. “Yeah, they’re there too, right next to Kim,” she said.
That couldn’t be. My heart was fluttering faster than real butterfly wings as I tiptoed up to the curtain and pulled it back the tiniest bit. Sure enough, right there in the front row, each holding a bouquet of pink roses, were my friends. Kim’s cheeks were bright with anticipation, Bri had styled her hair in an elaborate twist, and Taylor had tucked an extra rose behind her ear. But the very best part of all? Each of them was wearing our T-shirt, the one that said “Roxbury Park Dog Club.”
A huge grin took over my face, my heart so full of happiness I thought it might burst.
“All right, dancers, find your marks,” Madame Florence called in a low voice.
I headed over to stage left, my feet light as feathers.
“Are you ready?” Asha whispered from her spot next to me.
I grinned. “Oh, yeah,” I said.
Because now that I knew my friends were there for me and that our club would be okay, I was filled with so much joy I was beaming. And that meant I was ready to fly.
And fly I did. I soared across the stage, my spins glorious, my steps nimble, my timing perfect. I was radiant. I could feel it in every part of me as I leaped higher, twirled faster, and smiled bigger than I ever had before. And at the end of my solo
, the audience rose up in a standing ovation. My friends were the first ones to their feet, Kim clapping hard, Bri doing a fist pump, and Taylor whistling loudly.
I bowed deeply and winked at Kim, Taylor, and Bri, who cheered even louder.
The moment the curtain fell after our final number, the celebration began. And this time I was right at the center of it, high-fiving my friends, laughing with everyone, and applauding when Madame Florence herself joined the impromptu dance led by the advanced modern class.
“We were awesome,” Asha said, her eyes shining. “And your solo was incredible, Sasha. I’ve never seen you dance like that before. I mean, you’re always good, but that was amazing.”
“Thanks,” I said, my insides fizzy with the euphoria that only came from dance—dance and my friends. “I think I had a little extra motivation.”
“It was beautiful,” Madame Florence said, coming up to us and resting a hand on my shoulder. Her cheeks were pink. “A flawless performance you should be proud of.”
I glowed at her words.
Family and friends had started to stream backstage and I waved wildly when I saw Kim, Bri, and Taylor appear.
Kim flew over and wrapped me in a huge hug. Taylor threw her arms around both of us, and Bri did the same, though a bit more gingerly. “Careful not to crush the flowers, you guys,” she said. “They’re for the star and they need to be perfect.”
“Kind of like you were perfect,” Taylor said as she released me. “Sash, I knew you were good but I had no idea you were this good!”
“Seriously, you are so talented,” Bri said, her voice tinged with awe.
“It was fantastic,” Kim agreed, nodding.
“Thanks, you guys,” I said, grinning and ducking my head. The praise felt good but also kind of overwhelming. “I’m so glad you were here.” I looked back up at them so they could see how much it meant to me that they’d showed up despite everything.
The three of them exchanged a look.