by Rachel Shane
Amanda shook her head. “No, Kasey would have been arrested for like, attempted murder or something if she did that.”
Carson raised a brow at her, making Amanda flush and giggle. “How do you know she wasn’t arrested?” They both turned to me in unison. “Were you arrested?”
A boy two seats away from Carson whipped his head to us. “Wait, Kasey was arrested?”
I held up my hands to them, shaking my head. “No one was arrested.” Though the police did interview me. And my name went all over the their report.
Crista Finnochio from the dance team joined in from across the room. One seat over from Denise. My pulse spiked. “Guys. It’s obvious. The whole story is set up so she steals Lara’s spotlight, wins the competition, etcetera. We’re supposed to feel bad for you.” She met my eyes. “But I don’t. I feel bad for Lara.”
“I feel bad for her too,” I whispered under my breath. The sound of chairs swiveling in my direction drowned it out.
Several people cheered in agreement with her comment. Shouts of, “I do too,” and, “Poor Lara,” flew across the room. Nausea roiled in my stomach. Wasn’t the sub going to stop this behavior from the class? We should be reading our assignment, not ganging up on me.
My eyes flicked to Denise. Did she feel bad for me? For Lara? She lifted her ankles, balancing on her toes under her chair, but made no movement otherwise.
“Yeah, that’s why I think Kasey pushed her down the stairs after the show.” Carson snapped his fingers. “Or,” he snapped his fingers, “she pushed her off the stage.”
Amanda pointed a finger gun at Carson. “I like the way you think.”
“No wonder Finn stopped talking to her.” Crista leaned toward the room, captivating their attention. “She’s clearly psycho if she’s capable of that.”
I slunk into my seat, but I didn’t even need to. I was invisible already.
Crista twisted in her seat and tapped her nails onto Denise’s desk. “ What do you think?”
“Better question is what do you know?” Amanda added to Denise, earning more cheers of agreement.
The room fell silent as everyone waited for Denise’s response. My lungs burned from withheld breath.
Slowly, she pivoted to face the class. The smile she always wore had fallen off her face. “I think you should leave Kasey alone. That’s my strategy.”
Crista flicked her wrist at Denise. My mouth parted. Denise had stuck up for me. I didn’t deserve it, not at all, yet she’d done it anyway.
I spent the rest of class fielding similar questions and insults and guesses as to what I did to Lara. No one guessed right, probably because what I did was too horrible for them to even imagine. A minute before the bell rang, I shoved my books in my bag and stood up. Several students were already waiting by the door, smiling and gabbing and doing all the things I used to do before I became a total outcast.
I leaned into my knee like a sprinter about to leap, and as soon as the bell rang, I weaved through the desks until I cut off Denise by the door. “Thanks,” I said before she could even think about maneuvering around me to leave. If that was all I got to say, it would be worth it.
Crista stopped reapplying her lipstick and lingered close to us.
Denise stuffed her English textbook into her bag and shrugged. I took it as an invitation to ask more. I had planned to just let the Clark comment go, assume it was Ali and move on. After all, the comments on yesterday’s blog had all come from New York City. But here was an opportunity to get Denise’s help. And if I got Denise’s help, maybe it would open the doors for me to return the favor.
“Did Ali write that comment? The first one? From Clark?”
She slung her tote bag over her shoulder and marched to the door. “I doubt it.”
I rushed to catch up to her. We spilled into the crowded hallway. “Really? I was sure it was her. What makes you think it’s not?”
Denise faced forward, so even though we walked side by side, it was like she wasn’t acknowledging me. “Because she’s more confrontational than that.”
I nodded even though she could only see me in her peripheral vision. “Can you find out? Please?” I had no doubt the last batch of Clark/Finn comments had come from students messing with me, but it was the first one I got stuck on. The one that held real possibility it could actually be him.
Denise pulled her lower lip into her teeth. After several moments, her shoulders relaxed. “Fine. But only because I want to know the answer too.”
If she wanted to know the answer, that meant there was hope of me giving her back the very thing that had ended our friendship. And since we’d just exchanged our first conversation that didn’t involve accusations—well, the one about Ali didn’t count—I considered this the first step in mending things between us. They weren’t friendship words, but they weren’t hateful words either. They were progress.
PER-DANCE TO DREAM
Posted by Kasey at 11:11 A.M.
Monday, September 8
Past Mood: Guilty
SAT Word Of The Day: Praxis. Definition: the process in which all the desires I’ve coveted are practiced.
You fake commentors do realize I can see your IP addresses, right?
The next morning, I woke up to an empty room. I knocked on my parents’ door but there was no answer. Maybe they let Lara join them on their six A.M. excursion in Belize. I pulled on my workout clothes with a little too much force, snapping the waistband of my yoga pants painfully against my skin, and slammed the door on my way out to meet Finn outside the gym to practice. I managed to suppress my anger over my family ditching me and instead took the opportunity as a way to feel like Lara for once. Step into her shoes.
We bypassed treadmills and complicated weight machines until we found the lone dance studio. And the lone dancer inside, working her butt off.
Lara stopped in place as the music blasted around us. She waved at the mirror, then spun around to greet us, wiping sweat off her brow. Obviously, she would be practicing, not gallivanting on the beach despite what she had promised yesterday. I envied her determination and sacrifice.
“What are you two doing here?” Lara said, her chest puffing in and out, accentuating her abs. I swallowed hard and glanced at the floor, too afraid to see if Finn was checking her out or not.
“Came to watch you,” he yelled over the music, nudging me with his elbow. When I glanced at him, he winked, the secret signal for don’t tell her about our plan.
More and more it felt like we were going behind her back, purposefully deceiving her, instead of doing this for the right reasons.
“Oh, don’t watch me.” She walked over to her iPod and turned off the Rihanna song pumping through the room. The shock of silence amplified my rapid breathing. “I don’t need any more pressure.”
“We should probably go then,” I said, turning toward the door. Once we exited the gym, I let the air out of my chest and betrayed my emotions with my words. “Well, guess we don’t have any place to practice.”
Finn gave me a sidelong look. “You don’t think I’m that easily deterred, do you?”
“First time for everything?”
“Come on, a good spy always has a Plan B.”
After leading me clear across the ship, he pushed open the door to the empty Karaoke room. A grand stage jutted out to an audience of empty couches and miniature drink-sized tables. Finn headed over to the Karaoke device and turned it on. “Lady’s choice.” He waved his hand in front of the machine.
If my sister was doing Rihanna as her practice seemed to indicate, that was the only artist I needed to avoid. I racked my brain for the latest pop music we’d danced to on the team before the school year ended and snapped my fingers. “What about that new Katy Perry song?”
Finn’s head started bopping to an invisible beat. “Yeah, I think that can work. It’s fast, so we can cha cha or rumba or…” His lips curled into the cutest of smiles. It was also a smile that scared the crap out of me. “We can s
wing.”
My eyelashes fluttered closed. “I was afraid you were going to say that.” Due to our strictly female dance team, we never got to do any cool swing dance routines, but it was always my favorite to watch on Next American Dance Star. We did, however, get to have a taste of swing dancing one semester in gym. I had gotten stuck with a partner who reapplied antibacterial lotion every time he touched me, so we mostly just practiced the footwork. Lara, however, came home every day with her friend Jules Barlow and they threw each other around like they were weightless.
I wanted to suggest to Denise that we do that, but I never got up the nerve. To me, swing dancing seemed to require the most creativity, the most agility, the most talent. None of which I had. I backed up a step toward the edge of the stage. “No, Finn. I don’t know how to swing dance.”
“That’s what YouTube is for.”
“Fine, I’ll be back.” I started down the steps, already calculating the best hiding place on the ship.
“Oh no. You’re not getting away that easily.” He followed me all the way to the Internet lounge where I used my remaining allotment of minutes to freshen up on the steps. My stomach churned at the thought that I wouldn’t be able to email Denise the rest of my letter, not unless Lara chose to donate some of her minutes to me, which seemed unlikely.
When we got back to the karaoke room, sweat formed along the back of my neck as Finn waited for my instructions. Lara always said she could see the dance in full view in her mind, every twirl and footwork coming to her as if already in a blueprint. I wasn’t a leader. I followed the steps given to me. “We should choreograph it together,” I suggested. I didn’t want to take the full credit for this.
“You have to teach me the steps first.”
It was just teaching Finn. Nothing else. If I thought of it that way, it wasn’t so daunting. “Let’s start with the footwork.” Mostly because that was the only part I knew really well. “Step in place with your left foot like this.” I lifted my right foot and set it back down. Finn copied me. “Now do the same to your right. The beat goes slow, slow, quick, quick, slow, slow, quick, quick.”
Finn picked up the rest of the footwork fast. Faster than I usually did at dance practice when we learned a new routine. I swallowed back the pang in my throat and turned to face him, placing my left hand on his shoulder. He followed suit and we interlocked our remaining hands so I could show him one of the turns. We practiced those moves through one entire version of the Katy Perry song. “Good, you’re getting it.”
“So are you, might I add.” He raised his brows at me.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t notice that.”
I found myself smiling as I turned and he forgot to lift our interlocked hands so my head crashed into them. On one of my spins, Finn also decided to turn, which was wrong, but looked pretty cool.
“That’s good.” I paused to catch my breath. “We should use that move.”
I showed him a few more easy tricks I’d picked up in my whirlwind YouTube refresher course, but after the twentieth version of the Katy Perry song, I needed a break, both from her voice and dancing. I fanned myself while Finn shut off the karaoke.
“This isn’t so hard.” Finn plopped in a chair.
“That’s because we haven’t gotten to lifts and aerials yet.”
After nearly a full eight hours of practice, with a small ice cream break in the middle, Finn and I parted ways to get ready for dinner. We’d only managed to practice—and hopefully master—three lifts. When I taught him the first one, his muscles shook as he tried to lift me and I watched his teeth jam together. I probably should have avoided that ice cream.
The good news was, he only dropped me twice. Though that was bad news for the bruise forming on my thigh.
Even though we’d had a chance to run through our routine a few times, I clung to the hope that Jorge wouldn’t find the fake skit we’d thrown together funny and he’d evict us from the show. No dancing. No way I could steal this important opportunity from my sister.
But I knew there was a part of me that wanted this as much as she did.
When I got back to the room, Lara sat on the floor with her legs stretched out as she bent over them. “Have fun with Finn today?” She raised her eyebrows a few times in succession, code for, “Did you have fun making out with Finn today?”
“Yep. Nervous for tonight?” I made a lot of noise knocking over the items I needed for the shower to cover my own shaky voice. When I lifted my arm, I got a whiff of my, uh, ripe body odor so I backed up away from her at a fast clip, my back smacking against the bathroom door.
She waved her hand. “Nah, got the routine down. Thank God, because Mom is seriously driving me insane.”
I stared at her for a moment, fighting the prickle in my throat.
“What?” She pawed at her face. “You’re freaking me out.”
My eyelashes fluttered shut. “Nothing, Lara. Break a leg tonight.”
She groaned and bent into a stretch. “Never say that to a dancer.”
“Sorry. I meant good luck.” That wasn’t right either. I escaped Lara’s glare by disappearing into the bathroom. I knew what my next line was. It was right there in the script, as obvious as a cliché. I forced the words out. “You’ll be great.”
Displaying 1 out of 7 comments
Kasey said…
I’m not approving any more comments from Finn or Clark impersonators.
MOM BARGED INTO MY room, startling me. The Western Civ textbook flew from my hands and landed on my blue carpet. I bolted upright and yanked my notebook closer to my chest as if I’d been caught doing something wrong, even if I was only doing my homework.
“Why did you take out nine hundred dollars from the bank account?” She stomped toward me and slapped a printout of the recent ATM transactions onto my bed. She hadn’t made contact with my skin, but it felt like a slap in the face.
“I—” I threw my hands up in defense, planning to finish the sentence with, “didn’t,” but as my eyes flicked to the sheet of paper in front of me, I realized who did. “I’m sorry.”
Date: September 9
Time: 3:09pm
Location: 575 Lexington Ave, New York
Amount withdrawn: $200
Date: September 6
Time: 11:24am
Location: 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York
Amount withdrawn: $150
The dates went all the way back to the last week of August; the most recent from an hour ago. Lara was still in New York City. She hadn’t left me entirely.
“What do you need that kind of money for, Kasey?” Mom snatched up the print out.
I was asking myself the same question, but about Lara instead. I thought back to the summer when I’d come home mid-afternoon to find a strange woman in our living room, helping Lara balance on her good leg.
“That’s enough for today,” the woman had said.
“No. My body’s used to pushing itself,” Lara replied in a snippy tone.
“You’re overdoing it. You shouldn’t even be doing physical therapy until you get the cast off. You could get hurt.”
“Fine.” Lara flipped on the television, already tuning the woman out. “I’ll just find someone else to help me.”
That had been the first of many physical therapists Lara had hired behind Mom and Dad’s back. At the time, I wondered how Lara paid for them. Now, I had a pretty good idea. Though I hadn’t seen any physical therapists since July and these ATM withdrawals hadn’t began until August.
Mom jiggled the paper.
“I’ll pay it back.” I had to cover for Lara. Which meant I had to come up with a reason why I needed that much money.
“I don’t care if you’re going to pay it back. What’s the money for?”
My eyes flicked to the Western Civ book I’d thrown to the floor. “College applications.” With each word my voice grew more confident. “I didn’t want to burden you guys with paying the processing fees.”
Mom’s arm flopped to her side. She swayed in place, as if deciding if she should be mad about this. “Just how many schools are you applying to?”
“A lot.” I swallowed hard and forced the next words out of my mouth. “Now that I won’t have the option of applying for a dance scholarship, I—”
Mom scoffed. She didn’t say anything else but her meaning was clear. I would never have received a dance scholarship even before quitting.
She backed away into the center of my bedroom. “What about the money you made this summer at McDonalds?”
“I gave it to Lara.”
That was only partly true. Lara had never accepted it. But now she would. She just wouldn’t know it.
WHEN YOU WISH YOU WERE THE STAR
Posted by Kasey at 7:17 P.M.
Tuesday, September 9
Current Past Mood: Apprehensive
SAT Word Of The Day: Quell. Definition: Not quelling fears but delusions.
I wrote this post with a squeeze ball in hand. I suggest you read it with one as well.
Finn and I met Jorge on stage where he huddled with crew members. “Our routine includes a song. Where should we set that up?” Finn asked him.
Jorge pointed us in the direction of the technical crew.
Finn started to walk, but I stayed in place, staring at Jorge, willing my lips to form into the words I knew I should say. Words that meant quitting. But my mouth wouldn’t take orders from my brain. Finn rushed back over to me and tugged me into step.
By the time we got back, Jorge was chatting with other guests. We waited patiently next to him but he didn’t even acknowledge us.
I tapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t you need to see our routine?” This was my last chance, my last out. If he hated our routine, that would be it, I wouldn’t perform.
“Sure. Go ahead.” He waved us onto the stage.
As we ran through it, he never glanced at us. At one point, he even headed backstage and missed a large chunk of our performance. It didn’t matter though. This practice run was really for the music. The technical crew paid attention and our song played on cue. We ran through the rest of our fake routine knowing that everything after that point would be replaced with our dance. My feet itched to step to the beat, but I controlled myself.