“What I think is that you need to put on a T-shirt or a sweatshirt,” Gina told her.
“Wh-what?” Devane stammered. She hadn’t planned on this.
“Remember what I told all of you last class?” Gina asked the group. “We have rules about what is appropriate to wear in here. And even though I’m impressed that you made that top—I can hardly sew on a button—it’s too revealing. You need to put something over it.”
Devane stared at her. “I don’t have anything.” It was summer. In Florida. In the afternoon. Only a crazy person would be walking around with an extra shirt. Forget about a sweatshirt. People went grocery shopping in bikinis in this weather. Devane had seen them.
“I’m sorry, Devane, but you won’t be able to stay in class today,” Gina told her. “The rules are very important. That’s why I printed them all out and sent copies home for your parents.”
“I didn’t know it wasn’t okay. The rule sheet said no leotards. This isn’t as tight as one of those,” Devane protested.
“That’s true, Gee. The shirt—” M.J. began.
Gina silenced him with a look. “It also said nothing too revealing,” she reminded Devane. “I don’t want to spend class time every week debating what is okay and what isn’t.” She looked from person to person as she spoke. “Some of you might have trouble making a call on what’s appropriate. But I think you all know when there’s no question something is okay. Just wear basic gear and you’ll be fine.”
She opened the classroom door. “We’ll all be glad to see you next time. And it would be great if you could get in touch with one of the other kids in the group and have them go over the new moves with you.”
“I’ll do it!” Max called, bopping up and down on her toes. “We can meet here early. I’ll teach it all to you. No problem!”
Devane shook her head. She couldn’t deal with Max’s extreme pep right now. She started for the door. Everyone was watching her. She felt like the door was a couple of football fields away.
“I have a sweatshirt you can borrow,” Emerson called as Devane passed her.
Emerson tugged off the DKNY sweatshirt she was wearing. Underneath, she wore a plain, ordinary T-shirt that should have come from Kmart but probably came from Bloomingdale’s.
“Thanks, Emerson,” Gina said.
Thanks, Emerson. Thanks for coming to the rescue of Devane, who is obviously so needy, she has to make her own clothes.
Devane cringed at the thought that had slammed through her head. “No, thanks,” she said loudly. “I don’t need charity,” she added under her breath to Emerson.
“I wasn’t—” Emerson began.
“Devane, it would be a much better class if you stayed,” Gina protested.
But Devane was outta there.
Like Gina really wanted her to stay. She was the one who decided that the top was inappropriate. It said no leotards on the rule sheet. Well, Devane wasn’t wearing a leotard.
And Emerson. Why had the girl gone and gotten in Devane’s business? Gina might have backed down if she knew Devane really didn’t have anything else to wear. But Emerson had to jump up and down, squealing about how she had a sweatshirt.
Now Devane was going to be stuck in the back row for the rest of her life. And it was all their fault.
CHAPTER 6
Is it all my fault? Emerson wondered as she headed into the Aventura Mall. Maybe Gina would have let Devane stay in class if I hadn’t opened my mouth about the sweatshirt. Maybe Gina would have let her off with a warning about appropriate clothing if Gina knew for sure that Devane didn’t have anything else she could possibly wear.
“Maybe, maybe, maybe,” Emerson muttered. She was making herself insane going over the same maybes again and again.
And she was still dealing with the issue of appropriate clothing. Not Devane’s, but her own. Her mother had told her to take the car service to the mall after class and find an appropriate dress to wear to the dinner party her parents were having a week from Friday.
Appropriate. Gag. Everything Emerson owned was appropriate, down to the little tracksuits. She totally loved those wild purple-and-orange camouflage pants that Sophie had and the goofy Happy Little Puppy T-shirt Chloe was wearing in class today. And she’d almost drooled over that top Devane had made. But her mother would have vetoed all three of those. She probably would have burned Devane’s top!
Emerson couldn’t fight the veto. Which didn’t put her in the shopping mood. She decided to hit L’Occitane first. Her mom had asked her to pick up some linen water. Lavender Harvest. Largest size. Pour top, not spray. She found it quickly and paid.
She wished her mother had just told her exactly what dress to buy, too. It’s not like Emerson’s opinion mattered, and it would be easier knowing what her mother was expecting her to come home with instead of going through all those racks trying to guess. Emerson usually called it right. But she’d had to make a few returns.
Now for the next unnecessary purchase. Emerson hesitated outside L’Occitane. Should she go to Saks or Macy’s to look for the acceptable but pointless dress?
Saks, she decided. It was closer. And it was near the place with the yummy cookies. She took two steps in that direction and blinked. Olivia Pitre was coming toward her. “Olivia!” Emerson exclaimed. “You’re not supposed to be here!”
“Should I go away?” Olivia teased when she reached Emerson.
“That’s not what I meant. I just meant, shouldn’t you still be at the Jamison Intensive?” Emerson asked.
“I am,” Olivia told her. “I’m only back until Saturday. My mom’s fiftieth birthday is tomorrow, and my dad’s giving her a surprise party. I’m part of the surprise. I’m staying at the Biltmore tonight so I won’t be spotted.”
“So what am I missing out on at the Intensive? Tell me everything!”
“Everything?” Olivia smiled. “Where to start? There are classes, classes, and more classes. All kinds of ballet. Pointe. Pas de deux. Character. Some modern dance and jazz, too. And stuff like nutrition and dance history. It’s incredible. Just to do this one thing you love all day, every day. I can’t wait for the Nutcracker auditions this year. My dancing has gotten so much better already. And this year you know we’re moving up to snowflakes.”
Emerson felt oily guilt slide through her body. Sometime she was going to have to tell her parents the truth about ballet. She was going to have to tell them that she’d made an executive decision to veto it and the Nutcracker. She shoved the thought away. It was summer. She didn’t have to deal with the snowflake issue right this second.
“Now you have to talk,” Olivia rushed on. “You have to tell me all about everybody in ballet class. I want to know all. Like I heard that Felicia broke up with Jared. Can you believe it? They’ve practically been going out since kindergarten!”
“Um, I don’t really know,” Emerson admitted.
“How’s that possible?” Olivia asked. “You’re in class with her every week.”
“I don’t know. I take the class. There’s no talking in class. I leave.” Emerson shrugged. “I guess you’re the one I mostly talked to.” Except she hadn’t talked to Olivia all summer. Or written her.
It hadn’t occurred to Emerson that she’d fallen out of touch with her ballet friends. When did that start? she wondered. Probably ever since she’d been feeling that ballet wasn’t as important to her as it always had been. “I’ve been doing something new this summer,” Emerson told Olivia. “I’ve gotten really into hip-hop. I’m in a Performance Group and everything.”
“No way! We did a little tiny bit of hip-hop at the Intensive,” Olivia answered. “But how are you going to perform with them and do the Nutcracker?”
Is the Nutcracker all anyone cares about? Emerson thought. “I think . . . I think I’m going to pass on the Nutcracker this year,” she admitted.
Olivia’s eyes widened. “No way! That’s our big chance. We get to perform with professionals. At the Intensive they say that’
s really important. That it’s never too early to start making contacts.”
Emerson tried to think of something else to ask Olivia about. Something not related to dancing of any kind. But she couldn’t come up with anything. “I guess I should go. My mom has ordered me to buy a dress.” Is it completely obvious I just want to get away from Olivia? Emerson wondered. She shifted her L’Occitane bag to the other hand. “Want to come with me? To Saks?” she added quickly.
“That’s okay. I’ve, um, got to go to the bookstore. To buy my mom a present,” Olivia said. It kind of sounded like she was lying. It kind of felt like Olivia was ready to get rid of Emerson, too.
Emerson was relieved. She didn’t know what she and Olivia would talk about if they kept hanging together. “Okay, well, see ya when you get back.”
“Yeah, see ya. But I might get moved up one level in the fall.” Olivia gave a half wave, then turned and walked away.
I can’t believe the only thing we had to talk about was ballet. If I’m not interested in ballet, Olivia has no interest at
all in me, Emerson thought. I wonder if we’ll be friends at all when she gets back.
And it’s not like Emerson had made any new friends lately. Devane’s face rose up in front of her. Friends, no. Enemies . . . maybe.
“My sister taught me some moves. We’re the kind of sisters who are friends, too. Not the kind that fight all the time,” Sammi told Maddy Caulder. Maddy was subbing for Randall, the regular teacher of the basic hip-hop class. Sammi hadn’t even met Randall yet. Today was day one for her.
Maddy shook her head. “I still can’t believe it’s your first class. You’re picking up everything so fast.”
“I guess cheerleading helps, too. We’re always learning routines,” Sammi told her.
“Okay, guys, let’s go through it once more. People on the left, watch me. People on the right, watch Sammi. Remember, we’re all doing the same moves. We’re just doing them in opposite directions.”
In the mirror Sammi saw the kids behind her nod and smile. “All right,” Maddy said. “And five, six, seven, eight. Step out. Shoulder up. Shoulder out. Head out. Knees in. Knees out—toes out.”
Maddy continued to shout out the moves, and Sammi followed along, snapping her arms and legs and shoulders and neck in the series of motions. It made her body feel juiced, like there was this electric current running through her veins. No wonder Sophie loved this stuff!
“Foot behind and turn,” Ms. Caulder concluded. She turned around and applauded the class. They applauded back. “Very nice. Randall will be back next week. He’ll add on to the combo, and you’ll start working it to music.”
Sammi grabbed her sweatshirt off the floor and used it to wipe down her neck and face. She pulled the rubber band out of her hair and let it fall loose in a black stream down her back. Did she have time to run to the locker room for a quick coat of lip gloss?
No, she decided. Sophie’s Performance Group class was supposed to start up in the room down the hall in ten minutes. Sammi didn’t know how early ill papi liked to get there, so she couldn’t risk being in the locker room when it was the right moment to just happen to run into him.
“Thanks for helping me out with that last part, Sammi,” Maddy said as Sammi headed out the door. “It makes it easier if there’s someone up in front demonstrating each direction.”
“It was fun,” Sammi told her. Then she took a deep breath and stepped out in the hall. A quick glance in both directions showed that ill papi wasn’t around yet. She uncapped her sports bottle and drained the water that was left.
Sammi wasn’t too worried about what to say. With boys, it didn’t really matter. Just talking to them at all—looking at them, maybe a fast arm touch—showed you were interested. And that was pretty much that.
A flash of movement near the boys’ locker room caught her attention. Uh-huh. There he was. Sammi headed down the hall, timing her walk so that she’d intercept him before he reached the door of his practice room.
“Hey, you’re ill papi, right?” she asked when she was close enough. She gave her hair one quick flick. The hair flick was a really effective boy-attention grabber. But Sammi reminded herself not to use it again in this conversation. Too much flicking could make a girl look nervous. Or like she had a scalp condition. Eww.
Ill papi’s eyes followed the hair flick. But he didn’t move closer. Hmmm.
“My sister’s in the Performance Group with you. Sophie.”
Ill papi nodded. That was all. Hmmm.
“And I just started taking classes today because the stuff you do in the group is so killer.”
He nodded again. And backed up a step.
Backed up. As in away from her. Sammi’s brows came together.
No boy had ever stepped away from her before.
“Look at that.” Sophie took a step closer to the window. Emerson stopped her pre-class stretching and moved over next to Sophie. She looked through the practice room window and into the hallway. “What am I seeing?”
“You are seeing something that no one has ever seen before,” Sophie said, using her best TV infomercial announcer voice. Then she realized she was attracting a little attention from the other people waiting for class to start, so she continued more softly, a lot more softly. “You’re seeing my sister crash and burn with a boy. Ill papi, to be exact about it.”
“Your sister’s taking classes here?” Emerson asked.
Well, since she’s standing there all sweaty in a tracksuit, that would be a yes, Sophie felt like saying. But Emerson didn’t deserve her snark.
“Yep. She’s in our old class. Oh, he’s looking at his watch,” Sophie said. After the watch check, ill papi took a step away from Sammi. Big I-don’t-want-to-be-talkin’-to-you cues. Sammi said something else, then gave it up and retreated. Ill papi headed for the drinking fountain without as much as a backward glance at Sophie’s sister.
Unsuccessful. Sammi hadn’t even gotten a smile out of him. Unbelievable.
“At least she’s brave enough to make the attempt,” Emerson said. “I’m one of those girls who’s gone to, like, one school dance. And I stood by the bleachers, paralyzed. If a guy had tried to talk to me, I’d probably have said something like, ‘Um, me?’ And actually approach one—nuh-uh.”
Sophie laughed. “I’m pretty much the same.”
Emerson wagged her finger at Sophie. “Liar. You talk to boys all the time. I’ve seen you. You’ve talked to every guy in this class. M.J. Fridge. Ky. The twins. And ill papi. They all love you.”
“I talk to them. But I don’t talk to them.”
“You’re gonna have to explain,” Emerson told her.
“I talk to them, but it’s not guy-girl talking,” Sophie said. “Because of the fact that they don’t even realize I’m a girl. They don’t think I’m a male, exactly. They don’t think about it either way. I’m just a buddy.”
“So, you talk to them all the time. I never talk to them. But we’re both basically chickens around them,” Emerson summed up.
“I wouldn’t say I’m a chicken,” Sophie protested.
“But if there was a guy who did see you as a girl . . .” Emerson said.
“Okay. Yeah, it would feel a lot different. It would be hard to talk to him. I don’t think I’d be able to joke around the way I usually do,” Sophie agreed.
“Hey, we’re having a conversation. Not about dance!” Emerson exclaimed.
“Yeah. So?”
“So, nothing.” Emerson bent down to tie her shoelace, even though it was already tied.
“So?” Sophie asked, bending down to tie her own lace, even though it was also already tied.
“So, I don’t know, I was just thinking it was kind of like maybe we were becoming friends,” Emerson said in a rush, her face close to Sophie’s. “How dorky is it that I said that out loud?”
Sophie grinned. “Very dorky, my friend, very dorky.”
She straightened up and saw ill papi stride into the r
oom. She winked at Emerson and rushed over to him, then whipped the baseball cap off his head. She hugged it tight. Then held it out in front of her and stared at it, frowning.
“Sorry, I thought it was my teddy bear,” she told ill papi.
He laughed. Sammi couldn’t do that, Sophie told herself. She couldn’t even make him smile.
Immediately Sophie felt bad for having such a mean little thought. She tossed the hat back to ill papi. “Better keep it on. You don’t want people to see your bald spot.”
Ill papi laughed again, then his smile kind of slid off his face, and he took a step closer to her. “Can I ask you something, Soph?”
Her heart started doing a stutter move in her chest. Was he actually going to talk to her talk to her?
“I just wanted to know . . .” He hesitated. “Your sister, what grade is she in?”
“Ninth. She’s three years older than me,” Sophie answered, on autopilot.
Ill papi nodded and walked off. Sophie stared after him.
Wha-huh? What was going on? Out in the hall, ill papi looked like couldn’t wait to get away from Sammi.
But just now . . . just now he’d acted the same as every other boy who’d come up to Sophie to score info on Sammi.
That would mean—hold on. Stop right there. Red light.
Did ill papi like her sister?
“I like my little spot all the way in the back, in the corner,” Devane told herself as she headed into the practice room. It wasn’t true. But she told it to herself anyway, because she wanted to be a gold-star student today. Getting known as a troublemaker was not part of the plan.
“Hey, everybody,” Gina called. “I want to get started. But I have an announcement first. We have a new performance scheduled over at Gulliver Academy next Friday. That’s one of the magnet schools for the performing arts. The show will be a month before the Disney World show, so it will be a great chance for us to make sure we have all the kinks out.”
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