Breaking Big

by Penny Draper

  Oberon taps me on the shoulder. “For you,” he says, bowing low. He gives me back my rose, and everybody bursts out laughing.

  Then Rick bursts through the dressing-room door—literally. His wheelchair practically takes out the doorjamb. “It was great! I went incognito in the audience, and the vibe was good. They really got the fact that it was all a dream. And you, kid”—he wheels around to face me—“that was a mean double tour you managed out there. You were holding out on us!”

  We’re supposed to stay in our costumes and hit the lobby as a group, but first we have to mop up sweat and freshen our makeup so we’re not too gross to mingle with polite company. As I wait for the others to be ready, I spot Odette and head her way.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey yourself.”

  “What did you think?” I don’t know why I’m nervous asking.

  “For a guy who just learned the jump last night,” she says, “it wasn’t too bad.” She has her odious voice on, but I think I can hear a hint of a smile.

  “Come on, Robin, we’re ready,” calls Peaseblossom.

  “I have to go. Odette?”

  “Yeah?”

  “We’re having pizza tonight to kill time until the reviews come out. Do you want to come?”

  “Pizza? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “I like pizza. So shoot me.”

  She hesitates.

  “In the kitchen, kind of a midnight raid, so we can have ice cream after the pizza.”

  “Ice cream? Gross!” She stalks away.

  * * *

  Walking out into the lobby as a company member—well, I can’t describe it. There are squeals and shouts of “There they are!” and we’re mobbed. The principals are anyway. Me, well, I am too, but my mob consists mostly of my family and the better part of my hometown.

  “Robin!” My mother literally shrieks my name as she runs across the lobby toward me, spreading her arms wide for a hug. It’s like a bad car commercial. “You were spectacular, the best in the whole show!” Ouch. Say that a little louder, why don’t you, Mom?

  I brace myself for the hug. “Hi, Mom.” As the life is squeezed out of me, I catch sight of Jeremy standing with his mom as she chats up a big donor. He grins at me. Moms will be moms, I guess. Dad’s turn comes next, and my brothers do the man-hug thing, then my cousins and Aunt Sally and Uncle Harry, and after that I kind of lose the names. Everybody’s talking at once, and I let it roll over me until Mom’s voice rises above the chatter.

  “But really, darling, that costume? Don’t you think that’s a little inappropriate?”

  I swear every single person milling about in the lobby stops mingling and stares at me. All of me. About every inch of me that it is possible to stare at. I sigh.

  “Yeah, man,” says my oldest brother. “What can I say? You’ve sure got balls to wear something like that out in public.”

  “One wrong move and we’ll be able to see the balls in question!” my other brother adds, laughing. “You better stop that leaping around, bro.”

  I lean in so the three of us are head to head. “Take a look around,” I say. Their eyes widen when they see what I knew they were going to see. All eyes are on me, all right, including those of every hottie in the place.

  “Whoa,” says my oldest brother. “Chick magnet.”

  “Want to borrow it sometime?” I ask.

  * * *

  Mom wants to do this whole party thing at the swanky hotel, but I beg off until breakfast with the promise that I’ll bring Cam and Jeremy with me. It’s one last hug, and then Dad and my brothers corral Mom and point her toward the door. I mouth a big thank-you to them as they head out the door. I think she’s still talking sequins.

  I stay and mingle with the company for a while, but they don’t party on opening night, I guess because of that nine o’clock debriefing and all. I’m too keyed up to go to bed, so while I change, Charis, Sybille, Johanna and Mavis steal the key to the kitchen and Cam and Jeremy order the pizza. That’ll keep us going until the reviews come out—online first, and then the media start printing hard copies for the morning newspaper delivery. I get to the kitchen as Cam and Jer arrive with the pizza, and a moment later Odette shows up. I didn’t think she’d come, but I’m nowhere near as surprised as everybody else.

  “Odette,” says Jeremy. “Ah, hi.”

  “Hi.”

  “Come on in,” says Charis. Johanna stares at her as if to say, Are you kidding? Sybille’s frowning.

  “Yeah, Odette, pizza’s here,” I say. “You need to celebrate your great success.”

  “What success?” asks Mavis. “What are you talking about?”

  “You did take note of my absolutely brilliant double tour tonight?”

  Cam grins. “No, actually,” he says. “We couldn’t bear to watch, so we all had our eyes closed.”

  “Ha-ha,” I reply. “Odette taught me how to do it.”

  “No way,” says Jeremy.

  “I was there,” says Charis with a shrug. “Saw it with my own eyes.”

  “Well, somebody had to do something,” replies Odette, with just a trace of odious. “I couldn’t let him embarrass us.”

  “So in honor of this miracle,” I say, “I have a gift.”

  Odette frowns, and everybody else looks puzzled.

  “My mom sent me flowers,” I go on. There are commiserating groans all around.

  “Like in Baby Ballet,” Jeremy says, chortling, “when every kid is the star of the show.”

  “Yeah, well, what can you do?” I say. “I gave them away.”

  “Good move,” says Cam. “You don’t want to be caught dead with flowers.”

  “Yeah, all but one,” I reply. With a flourish, I present it to Odette. “For your hitherto unknown teaching skills.”

  For a minute I think she won’t take it. Her eyes begin to flare into that omnipresent glare. Then she stops. She takes the rose, and she smiles. Honest to goodness, she actually smiles. There are catcalls all around.

  * * *

  “I can’t believe you eat this junk,” says Odette, wrinkling her nose at the smell of grease.

  “It’s a myth that dancers don’t eat pizza,” Cam retorts. “Do you really want to be the one who proves the stereotype true?”

  Everybody bursts out laughing. “Don’t worry,” Cam continues. “We truly appreciate your efforts to uphold the cliché on our behalf, and we love you for it.”

  “It’s not only me!” Odette insists as she turns red. “Jeremy comes from a proper ballet background, and he’s not eating pizza!”

  So Jeremy locks eyes with Odette and reaches for a piece of pizza. Slowly, slowly, he raises it to his mouth, then stuffs practically the whole piece in. With great huge bites he demolishes it, spraying bits of mushroom and olive all over the table. The girls groan, and Cam and I howl.

  “You are so disgusting,” says Odette primly. Then she delicately reaches for a slice, and we laugh even harder.

  “Well,” says Sybille, looking at me as she wipes her fingers, “you weren’t Rick, but you weren’t bad.” I throw a napkin at her.

  “So he’s still your heartthrob?” Johanna asks. “I don’t want to be nosy, I just want to keep up.” Everybody laughs.

  “I’m so over him,” says Sybille firmly, as if we all should have been able to guess. “It wouldn’t work to have a boyfriend in the company anyway.”

  We all hoot. “Finally, she sees the light!” I say.

  “So who will it be now?”
asks Charis. “Inquiring minds want to know.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Sybille says airily. Then she takes the napkin I threw at her and dabs some of the tomato sauce off Jeremy’s face. He practically melts.

  Cam’s eyes grow big, and he shakes his head in wonder. “What a night!”

  * * *

  Mavis is surfing the Net, jumping from one critic’s site to the next to see who will post first. Suddenly she yelps.

  “Here it is!” she cries. “Mamie Blue from the Gazette!”

  We all crowd around the screen.

  “With Noah Grayson and Rick Mathews on the injury list, expectations were that the Premier Dance Company’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream would be nothing more than a placeholder, a lighthearted, easy romp for the less-experienced dancers,” Mavis reads. “It was indeed lighthearted, but there were a few moments of note.”

  “What moments? Whose moments? Does she mention me?” I can’t help myself.

  “Hang on, hang on,” says Mavis, scrolling down the page.

  “Yes!” she shouts. “Here you are!”

  “Robin Goodman as Puck had particularly big shoes to fill. Only sixteen and still a student, he stepped into Rick Mathews’s role just one week before opening night. Although lacking in strength and maturity, his lively interpretation of Puck amused and satisfied. Brash, merry, yet unsettling, Goodman became ‘that shrewd and knavish sprite’ in body and spirit, a characterization that clearly galvanized his fellow dancers. Certainly his performance suggests that the Premier Dance Company has depth within its ranks and a strong future ahead of it.”

  “Wow,” says Charis. “That’s awesome.”

  “Lacking in strength and maturity is awesome?” I groan. “Since when?”

  “A lively interpretation that amused and satisfied is pretty darn good,” says Jer. “Galvanized his fellow dancers? I sure wouldn’t mind somebody saying that about my work.”

  “And anyway,” Cam adds, “you’re supposed to lack strength and maturity. You’re sixteen. We’re all sixteen. We have to totally embrace our immaturity for as long as possible.”

  Charis and Johanna jump him, beating him about the head, and Cam is laughing so hard he can’t get away. Jer jumps in, and it’s a free-for-all. I’m about to prove how immature I can be when I see that Odette is starting to look a little odious again. She rolls her eyes and stands up, and I’m sure she’s going to leave. Wrong again. “Ice cream?” she asks me.

  All I can do is stare. Of all the surprises—my big break, the epic prank, Jer and Sybille, the double tour—watching Odette eat ice cream may be the biggest shock of all.

  “Sure,” I reply. “I could do ice cream.”

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank the teachers of the world—all the teachers who have explained, encouraged, inspired, cajoled, disciplined, handed out gold stars and, quite simply, believed in us. We are better people for them. In particular, my thanks go out to the dance teachers who have touched my family: Miss Celeste, Madame Van der Post, Gina Sinclair, Arabella Martin, Lynn Spargo, Maureen Eastick and Lynda Raino. To Clinton and Ashley, thank you for bringing dance home I loved every recital and still smile when I find errant sequins stuck to the floor. Thanks so much to Orca for helping to celebrate the arts, and to my editor, Robin Stevenson. It’s been a pleasure. And, as always, thanks to Dale.

  PENNY DRAPER is the award-winning author of numerous books for kids and teens. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia, and when she isn’t writing, can often be found zooming around on her motorbike or standing on her head in yoga class. Before Penny started writing books, she told stories orally, working for many years as a professional storyteller. She shared tales at schools, libraries, festivals, on radio and television and once from inside a bear’s belly. For more information, visit www.pennydraper.ca.