Showtime!

by Sheryl Berk

  Scarlett glanced over at Mrs. Chang. She didn’t seem “bossy” like Bria said. In fact, she was smiling sweetly and helping Scarlett’s mom double-check their bags.

  Scarlett was glad her mom didn’t pressure her—not to get perfect grades and not to win dance titles. She was anything but a stage mom. “You do your very best—that is all I can ever ask for,” she told her and her little sister, Gracie. “I’ll always be proud of you if you try your hardest.”

  Her parents were divorced, which Scarlett knew made things difficult for them as a family. Her dad now lived in Manhattan, so her mom had to juggle a full-time job as a teacher and fulltime parenting. Scarlett liked to think that she was pretty independent. She could take care of herself, even make her own breakfast (Eggo waffles in the toaster) if her mom was too busy.

  But Gracie was a whole other story. Ever since the divorce, she was super clingy and super annoying.

  “Scoot, can you play Barbies with me?” she’d plead, right as Scarlett was trying to get her social studies homework done before dance class. She always called her Scoot—ever since she was a baby and couldn’t pronounce her full name. Scarlett hated the nickname, but it stuck.

  “Not now—I have to finish this.” She tried to close her bedroom door, but Gracie pushed back in. “Mama’s busy. I wanna play Olympics with the Barbies. Pleeeeeeeease?”

  Scarlett was sorry whenever she gave in. It meant an hour of tossing Barbies in the air and watching Gracie pose them in splits and handstands.

  “This is the front pike somersault my coach showed us last week!” Gracie said. She kept the doll’s legs straight and flipped her over. “Put your arm out—you’re the beam!” she instructed Scarlett.

  “Uh-huh.” Scarlett yawned. She knew Gracie loved being on the Mini Sparklers in her gymnastics school, but to her, it was playtime. Gracie loved the shiny red, white, and blue leotards and swinging on the rings. At every gymnastics class, she would race around the mats, tumbling and flipping every which way. Her coach called her “the Jumping Bean” because Gracie could never stand still.

  “She’s a diamond in the rough,” Coach Maggie told her mom. “She has so much natural talent and ability. But she doesn’t want it badly enough to take it seriously.”

  Scarlett understood what that meant. She knew lots of girls at Dance Divas who were naturally graceful and talented. Some had beautiful turnouts, pointed toes, and straight legs. But that was only part of it. To be on a competition team, to work with Miss Toni, you had to want it badly. You had to eat, sleep, and breathe Dance Divas. It took so much dedication, determination, and concentration that everything else faded into the background. Sometimes Scarlett was exhausted and fed up, but she pushed herself to nail a routine or take an extra stretch class. Miss Toni expected only the best, and Scarlett expected it from herself.

  “I am as good as those big girls on the Elite Sparklers team,” Gracie told Scarlett. “Better! I could win a gold medal if they just gave me a chance. I can even do this . . .” She twisted her Barbie’s leg into a wide split until it accidentally popped out of the socket.

  “I hope you don’t do a split like that,” Scarlett teased. “Ouch!”

  Gracie’s face turned bright red. “You broke my favorite Barbie!” she wailed, sending her mom racing into the room to referee.

  “Did not!” Scarlett countered. “You broke her. I was just sitting here—”

  “Mama, she’s so mean!” her little sister sobbed, cradling the legless doll in her arms. “Look what she did!”

  Her mom scooped Gracie up in her lap and gently stroked her hair. “Shhhh,” she whispered. “It’s okay. We can put a Band-Aid on Barbie and she’ll be all better.”

  As she was searching through the first-aid kit in the medicine cabinet for bandages, she scolded Scarlett. “You’re eleven and your little sister is only seven. Can’t you just play nicely?” Her mom sighed.

  It was no use trying to explain or defend herself. Gracie always won.

  “Just imagine how hard it must be to be your kid sister,” her mother told her. “You’re a hard act to follow, honey.” She pointed to a shelf in her bedroom, lined with crowns and trophies from dance competitions over the years. “Try and understand that Gracie just wants some attention, too. She wants to be you, Scarlett.”

  Chapter 4

  Grace Face

  It sounded crazy at the time, but when Gracie set her alarm for 6:30 Saturday morning to see her off, Scarlett suspected her mother might be right.

  “Oh my gooshness!” Gracie said, fingering a red sequin leotard. She had this really irritating habit of combining words into her own “Gracie language” whenever she felt like it: like “Oh my goodness” and “Oh my gosh!” equaled “Oh my gooshness!”

  “Careful!” Scarlett snapped, snatching the costume out of her hands. “You might tear it.”

  “I won’t!” Gracie continued rummaging through the suitcases, undoing all the packing Scarlett and her mom had done the night before.

  “What’s this one for?” she asked, pulling out a light-blue chiffon dress. The skirt tiers looked like flower petals.

  “My solo. It’s called ‘In the Clouds.’”

  Gracie nodded. “It looks like the sky—or Cinderella’s dress. Can I wear it sometime?”

  Scarlett thought for a moment. Miss Toni never wanted them to wear a costume in competition more than once. “Sure, after City Lights, you can have it.”

  “Really?” Gracie leaped off the bed and did a cartwheel.

  “Wow! That’s pretty impressive. You’re getting good at gymnastics!” Scarlett laughed. “Miss Toni would probably love a couple of those acro moves in our dances.”

  Gracie raised an eyebrow. “She would? You think? Maybe I could be in Dance Divas, too?”

  Scarlett had never considered that her little sister might be a dancer as well. Gracie loved gymnastics and tae kwon do classes. But ballet? Jazz? Lyrical? And she was never serious. Her mom insisted it was because she was only seven, but Scarlett knew their difference in attitude ran deeper than that.

  They sort of looked like sisters: Scarlett had her mom’s unkempt curly red hair and freckles, and Gracie had stick-straight, strawberry-blond hair that she got from her dad. But Scarlett loved watching any talent competition show—Dancing with the Stars, American Idol, The X Factor—whereas Gracie could sit staring at shows on Animal Planet for hours. And if Scarlett felt like sushi (her fave) for dinner, Gracie insisted on peanut butter and ketchup on a hot dog bun. She was the only seven-year-old Scarlett knew who ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner on a hot dog bun.

  Scarlett’s mom let Gracie get away with it—even if it was incredibly gross—because of the divorce.

  “I think Gracie misses your dad,” she confided in Scarlett. “Hot dogs remind her of the backyard barbecues we always had on Sundays.”

  Scarlett missed her dad, too. But there was no way she was going to eat scrambled eggs or ham and cheese on a hot dog bun. If she tried to talk about it with Gracie, her little sis quickly changed the subject.

  “You doing okay, Grace Face?” Scarlett asked her one day when they were setting the table for dinner.

  “What do you mean?” Gracie asked.

  “I just mean, how are you feeling?”

  Gracie scratched her head. “Michaela in my class got strep throat and Randy in gymnastics has broccoli-itis.”

  “You mean bronchitis,” Scarlett said, and chuckled.

  “Whatever,” Gracie said, putting out the silverware.

  “I didn’t mean how is your health. I meant how are you doing with the whole divorce thing.”

  Gracie winced every time anyone mentioned the “D” word. Maybe she thought that if no one talked about it, it never really happened.

  “You know you can talk to me, right?” Scarlett offered, trying to sound very big sisterly. “If you have any questions or stuff?”

  Gracie grinned. “What’s the world’s record for the most hot dogs eaten in ten
minutes?”

  Scarlett frowned. “Not those kinds of questions.”

  “You just don’t know the answer,” Gracie taunted her. “I do! It’s one hundred ten!”

  Scarlett’s mom put her in charge of Gracie whenever she had to work late.

  “Just let her stay at the dance studio with you,” her mom pleaded. “Just for a few hours. She can sit outside and watch.”

  Scarlett knew what that meant. Gracie would press her nose against the studio windows, cross her eyes, stick out her tongue, and do whatever else she could think of to distract Scarlett. Luckily, Miss Toni was always too focused on correcting the dancers’ technique to notice the little girl using her princess lip gloss to write “SCOOT!” on the window backward.

  Gracie was an expert at driving her crazy, but occasionally Scarlett liked a challenge.

  “Betcha can’t do this!” Gracie teased, holding her leg in a heel stretch and hopping around in a circle.

  Scarlett lifted her left leg perfectly vertical to her body. Her move was fluid and graceful. “Miss Toni calls this ‘développé to the side,’” she explained.

  “No hopping?” Gracie asked.

  “No. No hopping.”

  “Well, that’s not fun,” she said. “Maybe I don’t want to be part of your Dumb Divas team.”

  But once again, Scarlett thought that maybe she did. Maybe her mom was right and Gracie did want to be like her. She looked at her sister, oohing and ahhing over the costumes, and felt momentarily bad for constantly complaining and calling her “Grace Face.”

  Then Gracie stuck out her tongue and grabbed a pair of pink panties from the suitcase. She put them on her head and twirled around the room like a whirling top, wrecking everything in her path.

  “Mom!” screamed Scarlett. “Gracie is being crazy again!”

  Her mother came into the room wearing the same clothes she’d had on last night. She looked exhausted. A few red sequins were stuck in her auburn curls. “Girls, please, keep it down to a dull roar. I went to bed at three a.m. I haven’t had my coffee yet.”

  “Did you finish the costume for the trio?” Scarlett asked hopefully.

  “Yes, I finished. I think I must have hot-glued about a million sequins on that thing. Did we really need the entire bodice blinged out?”

  Scarlett nodded. “You know what Toni says: ‘Bling’s the thing.’”

  “You’re supposed to be a girls’ dance team, not the Rockettes,” her mother said, and sighed. Then she noticed Gracie was wearing underpants on her head.

  “New hat, munchkin?” she teased, pulling them off and tossing them back into Scarlett’s bag.

  “I don’t wanna stay home with Grams and Poppy,” Gracie whined. “Why can’t I go, too?”

  “Because Miss Toni has rules,” Scarlett reminded her. “No siblings on the bus or backstage. But you’re going to come to the show with Dad, Grams, and Poppy to cheer for us, right?”

  Gracie shrugged. “Yes. But you’re gonna have all the fun.”

  Chapter 5

  All Aboard!

  “Fun” wasn’t exactly how Scarlett would have described the scene outside the studio. It was tense and chaotic. Toni was pacing anxiously. She looked like a volcano about to erupt.

  “I said eight a.m. sharp. Where are Liberty and Rochelle?” she shouted.

  She was reaching for her cell phone to call them when a long black stretch limo pulled up. Out stepped Liberty and her mom, Jane. They were wearing sunglasses and matching pink fauxfur jackets. Mrs. Montgomery had glossy long blond hair just like Liberty. They could be twins, Scarlett thought—give or take thirty years.

  “OMG, is she kidding?” Bria gasped. “What a show-off!”

  Mrs. Montgomery kiss-kissed the other mothers on both cheeks before setting her sights on Toni.

  “We’re here!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms out for a hug. The dance coach took a big step backward and glared.

  “You’re late. No one is late for a dance competition. You of all people, Jane, should understand that show business waits for no one. Not even you and your daughter. I would have thought you would be more professional.”

  Mrs. Montgomery stopped grinning. Uh-oh, Scarlett thought to herself, those were fighting words!

  “Are you calling me unprofessional?” Mrs. Montgomery hissed. “I have choreographed dozens of music videos. I have worked with Madonna!” Her face turned bright red.

  “Mom, please, I told you she was tough,” Liberty whispered, trying to hold her mother back.

  “She looks like a ferocious pink grizzly bear,” Bria said, and chuckled. “This is so good! I have to post pics on Instagram!”

  “Let it go, Mommy,” Liberty pleaded. She knew better than to make Miss Toni mad.

  “Yes.” Toni smiled. “Let it go. Because if you don’t, your daughter won’t go to City Lights today.”

  “Ha! As if you’d pull a dancer out of a group number at the last minute!” Mrs. Montgomery tossed back.

  “I would . . . I have . . . and I will.” Toni had nerves of steel. She didn’t flinch.

  Scarlett’s mom stepped between the two women.

  “Ladies, ladies, can we please calm down and behave like grown-ups?” she pleaded.

  As a third-grade teacher, she knew how to break up fights in the schoolyard. Still, Scarlett worried that her mother was in over her head this time.

  “She started it!” Liberty’s mom protested. Well, that sounds like a third grader! Scarlett thought.

  “And now it’s time to finish it,” Scarlett’s mom insisted. “Please? For the kids’ sake?”

  “Fine.” Mrs. Montgomery sniffed. “I’ve worked with plenty of difficult people in my day. What’s one more?”

  “Tell them about the time that famous pop star wanted to wear red platform shoes, and they clashed with her outfit,” Liberty said. Scarlett wasn’t sure if she was bragging (as usual) or trying to distract her mom from Toni.

  “Oh, what a nightmare!” Mrs. Montgomery began. “I told her that she looked ridiculous. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. But did she listen to me? Nooooooo!”

  “Where would you like these, madam?” the limo driver asked.

  Mrs. Montgomery hated to be interrupted—especially when she was telling a story that starred her and some famous celebrity. “You can put the luggage in there, Raymond.” She motioned to the bus. “Don’t forget the light-up makeup mirror.”

  “And my poodle pillow pet!” Liberty added. “Don’t forget Fifi!”

  Raymond took several bags in each hand and flung two over his neck. He huffed and puffed his way up the bus steps—with a stuffed pink poodle on his head.

  Toni was willing to drop the argument as well. She had bigger things to worry about.

  “Where is Rochelle?” she bellowed. “This bus leaves in five minutes—with or without her!”

  Chapter 6

  “Rock” and Roll

  “Wait! Wait! We’re here! We’re here!” called a voice from the parking lot. It was Rochelle, and she was racing for the bus, her mom trailing behind her.

  “I am so, so sorry,” her mother, Jada, said, trying to catch her breath. “Rochelle’s baby brother, Dylan, was up all night with a fever. I can’t leave him. Hillary, would you mind if Rock bunked with you and Scarlett?”

  Toni put her hands over her ears. It reminded Scarlett of something Gracie would do. She wondered if Miss Toni would throw a tantrum, too.

  “I am not hearing this,” Toni said slowly. “I am not hearing you tell me that you are sending your child to a competition without a parent chaperone.”

  “No, I didn’t say that!” Mrs. Hayes tried to reassure her. “I said Hillary can watch her, right?”

  Scarlett looked at her mom, who was completely caught off guard.

  “Right, sure. Rock can stay with us in our hotel room,” she said.

  “There! Problem solved!” Mrs. Hayes added, pushing Rochelle toward the bus. “You girls go on. Kick some dance butts!”r />
  “I’m sorry,” Rochelle whispered to Scarlett. “I know it’ll be crowded.”

  “Are you kidding? It’ll be just like a slumber party in our hotel room!” Scarlett said.

  Rochelle relaxed, but Toni was fuming. They were already fifteen minutes behind schedule. “All of you . . . on the bus!” she huffed.

  The two-hour ride to New York City flew by. While Bria hit the books, the other girls played Name That Tune (Scarlett guessed One Direction’s “What Makes You Beautiful” in just five notes) and finished with a game of Truth or Dare.

  When it was Rochelle’s turn, she chose “dare.”

  Liberty grinned: “I dare you to go up to Miss Toni and ask her, ‘What’s shakin’, bacon?’”

  “I can’t. She’ll kill me!” Rochelle exclaimed.

  “You don’t have to. You can take a dare back,” Scarlett said, improvising, to protect her friend.

  “A dare is a dare,” Liberty taunted her. “Those are the rules. Unless you want to take it for her?”

  Scarlett saw that Toni was sitting behind the driver, directing him through midtown traffic. Interrupting her was definitely not a good idea. But Rochelle was already in hot water with their dance coach. She couldn’t let her make things worse.

  “I’ll do it,” she said.

  “No! Scarlett, you don’t have to!” Rochelle tried to stop her. But it was too late. She was already inching her way toward the front of the bus.

  “Miss Toni?” she asked timidly, tapping her on the shoulder.

  “Yes?” Toni replied.

  “Um, I have a question . . .”

  “Well, what is it?”

  Scarlett took a deep breath and blurted out, “What’s shakin’, bacon?”

  Toni looked puzzled. Then she replied, “I’m the boss, applesauce. So go sit back down.” She winked, and Scarlett heaved a huge sigh of relief.