Time for Change

by Varian Johnson

  “Dude,” Alejandro said, coming over to the mural. “What’s up with the al fresco rehearsal? It’s not exactly summer anymore.”

  Red nodded as we all gathered around him. “Noted, bro. But with only a few more meetings before the big day, we should get serious about prepping however we can. We gotta get used to performing in all sorts of settings, you know? If you can perform out here, with the cold and the cars driving by, and the squirrels squabbling over acorns, you’re golden for any stage, right?”

  “I guess, man,” Alejandro said, “but you owe me a hot chocolate or something.”

  “Deal,” Red said. “And let’s go all out for performances and feedback today. No holding back, all right?”

  We all nodded.

  “Okay. The sidewalk is our stage and the mural is our backdrop. Gabby—you’re up!” Red pointed to me. “Everyone else, take a seat in the audience, aka on the bumper of Aunt Tina’s car.”

  I grabbed my notebook and hopped in front of the mural. I couldn’t wait to share the new lines I’d added last night! I thought my “Dream Big” poem was just about ready for the slam.

  Goose bumps prickled my arms as everyone got settled. I glanced at my notebook one more time, then took a deep breath and began.

  “When I think of my dreams

  I remind myself

  a seed doesn’t know

  what kind of flower it will become …”

  That buzz started up in my belly again. I made it through my whole poem only looking at my notebook once. I hadn’t meant to internalize the poem, but somehow, the words were already inside me. I hardly stuttered, either—just once when a car pulled into the lot. By the time I was done, the buzz in my belly had spread to my fingers and toes.

  I stood there as five sets of eyes stared at me. There wasn’t one snap, not one clap. Even the squirrels were quiet.

  “Gabby,” Red said, after several seconds of silence. “That was …” He couldn’t seem to find the words.

  “Awesome sauce?” Isaiah offered in a voice so quiet I could hardly hear him.

  “No,” Red said. “Better. Gabby—you were made for this. Like, it’s a part of you, huh? Almost as natural as breathing.”

  I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.

  Yes. That’s exactly how it felt. Like poetry was as much a part of me as the mural was a part of this wall. Like it had roots as big as the oak’s reaching deep inside me.

  “Any feedback for Gabby?” Red said.

  “Just …” Bria started. “Just keep doing what you’re doing.”

  “Yeah,” Isaiah said. “Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.”

  “I will,” I said, and took a seat on Mama’s car.

  I planned to do this for forever.

  “I put mine on on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday …” Mandy counted days on her fingers as I entered studio four a little later. “Not Friday … yes Saturday … not Sunday—but only because my mom said I had to let the counter be a counter and not a ballet barre at least two days a week.”

  “Whoa,” Natalia said. She turned to me. “How many times did you put on your shoes since last week?”

  “Um …” The only time I’d touched my pointe shoes was to take them out of my bag before tap, and put them back in for today. “Zero?”

  “Really?” Mandy said, her eyes wide. “I don’t know how you did it.”

  I just shrugged. Between ScareFest prep for tomorrow and working on my “Dream Big” poem, there hadn’t been time to even think about putting on my pointe shoes this week. But at least I’d done my homework! Until I knew for sure if I was quitting ballet, I didn’t want to disappoint Amelia.

  I slipped on my ballet shoes and headed to the barre to begin class. With my body still buzzing from poetry, it was like every cell in my body was fired up and ready to go. There was an energy in my movement that I hadn’t felt in a long time, like the buzz from poetry was a motor pushing me along. When we moved into pointe work, my torso was longer and stronger than ever. My ankles were solid, my alignment almost perfect. I was pretty sure I had blisters on my feet, but I pushed through, feeling invincible. This wasn’t ballet magic, but it was something. For a split second, I wondered if I shouldn’t give up ballet after all. What if I was missing out by not seeing how far I could go en pointe?

  “Great job, Gabby!” Amelia said as she walked around. “You’re looking fabulous today. Keep doing what you’re doing!”

  Her words made me freeze in place. Hadn’t Bria and Isaiah said the same thing about my poetry less than an hour ago?

  “I will,” I responded, and in the moment I meant it. But just as quickly, that little voice inside me added, but not for long. I’m not going to do this forever.

  “Ouch!” I stuck my finger in my mouth. I was trying to make my wings for tomorrow, but as if the blisters on my toes weren’t enough pain for one night, I kept poking my fingers with the sharp ends of the wire hangers. That little voice had followed me home and wouldn’t quiet down, no matter how many times I shushed it. Some part of me had already decided to quit ballet, it seemed.

  Ouch! A wire poked me in the belly. That’s it! I said to myself. I have to figure out this ballet thing once and for all. My wings would have to wait until after school tomorrow.

  I put my pajamas on, grabbed my journal, and climbed into bed, my blisters stinging as they hit the sheets. I flipped to a new page in my notebook.

  Reasons to NOT quit ballet and pointe:

  I’m so close to going en pointe for real!

  Mama and Amelia would be disappointed

  It would be neat to see how far I could go en pointe

  Reasons TO quit ballet and pointe:

  More time to work on my poetry

  More time for leadership activities

  I don’t really have any friends in ballet anymore

  No more blisters!

  No more ballet magic anyway?

  I was most unsure about that last one. Did I really not like ballet as much as I used to, or was I just so tired lately that I wasn’t enjoying it as much?

  I reviewed my lists as Maya hopped up onto my bed. There were more reasons to quit than to stay, but the reasons to stay somehow seemed more important.

  “What am I going to do, Maya?”

  She answered by rubbing her face against my ear and letting out a meow that sounded almost like “Ma.”

  “You’re probably right,” I said. “I should talk to Mama about this. Maybe after tomorrow, with tomorrow being Halloween and all. Sound good?”

  Maya curled up in a ball and closed her eyes, so I did the same.

  No More Ballet—revision

  Could I really give up my

  ballet shoes and the barre?

  Pliés and chassés?

  Tendus and fondus?

  What would happen to my feet

  if they could no longer leap

  along the Liberty floor?

  What would fill my heart

  if I gave up this dance?

  But even as I question it

  I know what the answer would be

  I know what would fill ballet’s space

  It’s on this page

  staring back at me

  Rise and shine!” Mama woke me up early the next morning so we could get me decked out as the Bride of Frankenstein.

  She helped me put on the dress, then we wrapped my arms in strips of gray fabric just like in the movie. As I climbed up on her bed so she could put the wig on me, she noticed my blistered feet.

  “Goodness, Gabby,” she said. “We should get you some tape for your toes before next week’s class. And then later I can show you how to soak your feet in Epsom salts.”

  “Um … okay,” I said. Maybe now would be a good time to talk to Mama about ballet after all. I gathered my courage as she put the wig on my head and made sure it was extra poofy.

  “This looks great!” Mama said after she’d emptied approximately half the bottle of hairspray o
n the wig. “Time for makeup. Scoot closer to me and I’ll do your eyeliner.”

  We got really close, face to face, Mama being careful to not bump my blisters as she did so. I looked right into her green eyes as she drew thick liner on my lids. I was about to tell her how I was feeling about ballet when I noticed something else.

  “Mama?” I said. “Are you crying?”

  She laughed. “You caught me. It’s just … your first blisters from pointe shoes—I’m so proud of you, Gabby. A lot of dancers don’t get this far in their training. I’ve been bragging to my friends all month that my little girl’s going en pointe.”

  She grabbed some powder for my face and neck as a prickly ball formed in my tummy. I tried to imagine Mama having to tell her friends her little girl went en pointe … and then quit.

  “And—we’re done!” Mama said. “Take a look!”

  Happy for the change of subject, I jumped down from the bed and went over to Mama’s mirror.

  Whoa! I looked just like the character in the movie!

  “Mama! This is awesome-sauce-amazing! Just wait until the other ambassadors see me! Thank you!” I gave her a big hug. She squeezed me back in the best Mama-hug ever.

  “Poet and ballerina last night, Bride of Frankenstein and leader today,” she said when we pulled away. “You never cease to amaze me, Gabriela McBride.”

  I smiled, but would Mama still think I was amazing if I quit ballet? And in that moment I knew I couldn’t quit. Wouldn’t quit. I’d stick with ballet and pointe. For Mama.

  At school, I met Sondra, Aaliyah, Bryson, and some of the art students in the library to help with finishing touches for the ScareFest. Aaliyah, of course, was the best mummy I’d ever seen, with her entire body wrapped in strips of cloth. The tea had definitely made them look ancient and creepy! And Bryson made a great werewolf … except with his gloves on, he couldn’t even hold a pencil!

  Over the course of an hour, we transformed the hallways of Kelly Middle School from boring brick and carpet into a creepy, ghoulish graveyard. Moss hung from the walls, cardboard tombstones lined the hallways, and a huge full moon hung from the ceiling outside the main office. But as cool as the decorations were, what was even more awesome was that it was a mix of all grades doing the work together.

  “The eighth-grade hallway looks even better,” I told Red when I met him in the seventh-grade hallway before the first bell. Red had on a thin black tie, a tweed jacket, and a fedora—and had even penciled in a thin mustache over his lip with some of Mama’s makeup. He was supposed to be Langston Hughes. He knew that most people wouldn’t get his costume, but he didn’t care.

  Neither did Isaiah.

  I did a double take as he approached us. Isaiah had on an old-timey black suit with a small black bow tie. A pair of wire-rimmed glasses frames sat on the bridge of his nose, and he had shaved a thin straight line right down the middle of his Afro.

  “Way to go all out with the hair,” Red said. “I don’t know if I could have done it. It’s bad enough covering up my fauxhawk with his hat. It kind of itches.”

  Isaiah laughed. “I figured it would grow back. How many other opportunities would I have to dress up as Dunbar?”

  He meant Paul Laurence Dunbar, a famous African-American poet and novelist from the late 1800s.

  “I like your costume, too,” Isaiah said to me. “You really went all out!”

  “You should compliment Aaliyah, not me,” I admitted. “I wouldn’t have finished it without her help.”

  Ms. Tottenham came over to Aaliyah and me at the end of social studies that day. The ScareFest had gone better than any of us expected. “Look at what you’ve done after being ambassadors for only a few weeks,” she said, beaming. “Principal Reedy is so pleased that he wants to meet next week to see what we can come up with for November.”

  A November event? But we had just finished the October one! Aaliyah and I glanced at each other. This ambassador role was turning out to be more work than I thought.

  The bell rang, though, and I had another problem on my hands.

  Only a couple hours until trick-or-treating, and my butterfly costume was still without wings!

  “All right,” I said to no one in particular when I got home. “I’ve got ninety minutes to transform from bride to butterfly. I can do this!”

  Half an hour later, I’d washed off all my makeup and tossed my dress, the strips of fabric, and wig in the corner of my room. I had on my black leotard and leggings. All I needed now were wings.

  I managed to wrangle the wire hangers into the proper shape. The next step was stretching an old pair of tights over the top, which was only one hundred times harder than shaping the hangers. Every time I slipped the tights over the hangers, they ripped. At this rate, I was going to have to quit ballet … simply because I’d run out of tights.

  Forget the hangers. It was time to improvise.

  I spun a slow circle in my room. Wings. Wings. Wings. There had to be something around here—

  Suddenly, Maya shot out from behind one of my curtains. I must have jumped four feet.

  “Maya! Oh! Curtains!”

  With only ten minutes until people arrived, I climbed up on my loft bed and took down one of my bright pink curtains. It was a little dusty, but it would do.

  I fastened the curtain to the back of my leotard with a safety pin … or tried to.

  “Too bad you don’t have hands,” I said to Maya, who was staring at me like I’d sprouted wings. Which I guess I had. “I could really use a little assistance with this sheet.”

  I finally got it attached to the leotard. Then I found some hair ties and put one around each wrist, tucking the corners of the curtain inside.

  I stepped in front of the mirror.

  I looked kind of like a butterfly. Maybe.

  My hair was a frizzy mess from being under the wig all day. I didn’t have time to fix it, though, so I grabbed my Bride of Frankenstein wig and stuck it back on my head. Now I just looked like … well, I had no idea.

  Red knocked on my open door two seconds later. “Almost ready, cuz? I talked to Alejandro. He and Bria are on their way over now.” He frowned as he looked at me. “Um … what are you supposed to be again?”

  “A butterfly,” I said, laughing. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “More like a butterfly that flew into one too many windshields,” he said, smiling back. “But don’t butterflies have antennae?”

  I snapped my fingers. “I knew I forgot something.” I dug through my stage makeup. “I’ll be down in a sec, okay?”

  Red ran down the stairs as the doorbell chimed. As fast as I could, I drew antennae on my temples … and they looked like nothing at all. So I tried to incorporate the lines into a butterfly shape around my eyes.

  Nope, I thought as I stopped to take in my work. The lines did not look like a butterfly. They were more of a badly drawn superhero mask.

  “Superhero Butterfly Monster,” I said. “At least it’s original.”

  I took one last look in the mirror, then grabbed my candy basket and bolted down the stairs. Everyone was already outside.

  “Ta-da!” I said, jumping out onto the porch. I put on a cheesy smile to show everyone I knew how ridiculous I looked.

  No one said anything for a few moments. Teagan had a really weird look on her face, but then again, I would, too, if I were looking at me.

  “Wow,” Alejandro finally said, a throwback Allen Iverson basketball jersey loose around his skinny frame and a basketball tucked underneath his arm. “That’s, um, really … what are you again?”

  I held up my arms. “A butterfly. Or a superhero. Captain Monarch?” I offered, giggling.

  He laughed. “It’s a good thing your poetry skills are better than your costume skills.”

  “But did you see Teagan’s costume?” Bria asked. She had on a pink jacket, like in the movie Grease. She pulled Teagan toward me.

  Whoa.

  Teagan was a giant tablet. Dressed in all gray,
she had a shiny black “screen” hanging down her front, like how the workers at the empanada take-out place across from Liberty sometimes wore signs to attract people into the shop.

  “And look what happens when you touch it,” Bria said. She pressed Teagan’s screen-body a few times. I felt my mouth drop open as hearts, little birds, and thumbs-up emojis appeared.

  “That’s really cool, Teagan!” I said.

  Teagan just shrugged.

  “Okay, guys,” Daddy said. “Let’s get to trick-or-treating. It’s a school night, after all.”

  We waved good-bye to Mama and Mr. Harmon, who were staying behind to hand out candy. Then, as the others began to follow Daddy down the sidewalk, I fell into step beside Teagan.

  I cautiously pressed her tummy, and another heart appeared. “Teagan, this is one of the best costumes I’ve ever seen. How does it work?!”

  Teagan didn’t answer me for several seconds. “It’s an optical illusion,” she finally said. “The screen is dark Mylar film, which hides the emojis underneath. But when you press the screen, a sensor relay causes a random part of my costume to light up so you can see what’s underneath. One of my teachers lent me some materials and helped me with it.” She moved her candy basket from one hand to another. “It took a really long time, but it was totally worth it, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Totally. You look A-plus amazing.” I gestured to my own costume. “Mine-Mine d-d-didn’t quite turn out … well, it didn’t t-t-turn out like yours. Maybe we should st-st-stick to zombies next year.” I put my arms out in front of me and did my best zombie impression, my face all twisted and my eyes crossed.

  “Maybe,” Teagan said, her voice flat. “Come on. We don’t want to get behind.”

  I fell into step beside her as we walked to my neighbors’ house. Mr. and Mrs. Marshall sat outside on their small porch, a large bowl of candy on the ground in front of them. They were dressed up as farmers. Mr. Marshall even had a pitchfork and glasses, like in the famous painting.

  “Our favorite Halloween duo!” Mr. Marshall said when we reached their door.