by Tiler Peck
Katarina froze as she was lifting her key to the lock.
“Things haven’t been great at work,” he was saying. “My commissions are way down and… No, I can’t do that. Katarina loves those classes.”
Katarina felt like someone had punched her in the gut. She hadn’t realized her dad was struggling with money so much. And still he was paying for her ballet classes, even though she knew they must be expensive.
Katarina opened the door and stepped into the apartment.
“I’ve got to go,” her dad said into the phone, quickly hanging it up. “Hey, honey! How was ballet?”
“It was good,” she said. He was sitting at his computer, piles of papers around him. Bills, probably. He closed his laptop and quickly gathered the papers, shoving them into his briefcase.
He didn’t want her to know about their money troubles. Probably didn’t want her to feel guilty about the cost of her ballet classes.
She went up to him and gave him a huge hug.
“Hey,” he said, rubbing his hands across her back. “What’s this for?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Just for being the best dad in the world.”
“Superdad!” he said in his silly superhero voice.
That was it. No more goofing around in ballet class, not when her dad was sacrificing so much so that she could take them. She was going to make it worth his while by working hard and becoming the best ballet dancer she could possibly be.
Chapter 7
THAT FRIDAY KATARINA met Sunny after school with her pajamas and clothes for the next day packed into her backpack. The Kapoors took them to a movie theater near their house, and Katarina and Sunny sat in the balcony with their popcorn and Milk Duds to watch Leap! It was about a girl who dreams of becoming a ballerina and gets to audition for the Paris Opera Ballet. It was Sunny’s favorite movie because there was lots and lots of dancing in it. But Katarina could barely pay attention. She kept thinking about the worry in her dad’s voice and the stack of bills he had tried to hide from her.
“Hey, are you okay?” Sunny asked as they walked back to her house after the movie was over. “You’ve been really quiet.”
“We were in a movie theater,” Katarina said. “You’re supposed to be quiet.”
Sunny smiled and rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean. Is everything all right?”
Katarina sighed. “Actually, I am pretty worried about something. I overheard my dad on the phone last night, and he’s having trouble paying our bills. I guess he’s not making as much at work as he usually does, and with the new cost of my ballet classes…”
“Oh, I see.” Sunny frowned. “That’s a tough one. But I bet we can figure something out! We’ve got all night tonight and all day tomorrow to think about it.”
They thought about it, but Katarina and Sunny didn’t come up with any solutions as they played Just Dance on the Wii, ate dinner, and gave each other funny hairstyles. It was only when they were lying in their sleeping bags on Sunny’s floor, the lights out and Sunny’s cat, Milo, snoring peacefully between them, that Sunny suddenly sat up.
“I’ve got it!” she said.
Katarina’s eyes flew open. “Yeah?”
“Yeah!” Sunny turned on her desk lamp, which gave the room a warm glow. “We take the train all the time with Beatz, right?”
“Right.”
“And he plays his music for donations from people riding the train,” Sunny said. “We could do the same thing with our dancing!”
“Dance on the train?” Katarina said. “Wouldn’t we just fall over anytime the train takes a curve?”
Sunny laughed. “We don’t have to do it on the train. We’ll go somewhere where people appreciate ballet, and we’ll dance for whoever is walking by. That way you can practice your technique and we can make some money to pay for your lessons at the same time!”
“Oh my gosh, Sunny, you’re a genius!” Katarina said. This plan could solve her two biggest problems all at once!
Sunny’s grin was huge. “I know, right?”
“We’d better get to sleep,” Katarina said, snuggling down into her sleeping bag. “We’ve got a long day of dancing coming up tomorrow!”
* * *
The next morning they asked Mrs. Kapoor if she would take them to Lincoln Center. They’d decided that was the perfect place to try out their plan since both the New York City Ballet and the American Ballet Theatre performed there, so there were bound to be ballet lovers around. Mrs. Kapoor agreed, and because the girls’ original plan for that day had been to go to the park with Lulu, they picked her up first.
“Okay, girls,” Mrs. Kapoor said when they reached Lincoln Center. “I’m going to go to that coffee shop on the corner to work while you do your thing. Have fun!”
Katarina and Sunny decided the best place for them to perform would be in front of the big fountain in the plaza. Sunny had brought a small speaker that hooked up to her phone, and she put some classical music on. Katarina had found an old bowler hat Sunny had once worn for a tap dance recital and placed it on the ground in front of them, dropping a few coins in to get them started.
“Keep an eye on our hat, girl,” she said to Lulu. Lulu lay down beside it and curled up.
“Ready?” Sunny said.
Katarina nodded. “Let’s do this.”
They started dancing the combination Madame Alla had been teaching them in their class. At first no one was really watching, so Sunny took the chance to give Katarina some pointers on her technique.
“You need to turn out more,” Sunny said, pointing at Katarina’s toes. Sunny’s feet made a perfectly straight line while Katarina’s looked more like a V.
“Ugh, I can’t,” Katarina said, glaring down at her turned-in toes. “My toes have always looked like this.”
“That’s okay,” Sunny said. “Turnout really comes from your legs, anyway. Your feet might not ever look like mine, but you have better extension and balance than me.”
“Okay, I’ll work on it,” Katarina said, focusing on opening up. It was a weird feeling, but she was determined to do whatever she could to improve as a dancer.
Soon the girls had gathered a small audience around them, so they focused on just doing the best performance they could. Katarina didn’t feel any of the nervousness she had felt when she’d danced in front of everyone at the talent show. She thought it was probably because she had Sunny at her side. As they performed their pirouettes, pas de bourrées, and jetés, loose change and even the occasional bill rained down into the bowler hat in front of them. Lulu barked appreciatively at each donation.
When the dance was over, their little audience applauded and moved on. All except for one young woman dressed in black who came up to them after everyone else was gone.
“So, you girls like ballet, huh?” she asked.
“We love it,” Katarina replied. “We take lessons at Ballet Academy East.”
“Have you ever seen the New York City Ballet perform? You know they do their shows right over there,” she said, pointing at one of the buildings that faced the fountain.
“I have!” Sunny replied. “My parents take me to see The Nutcracker there every Christmas.”
“I haven’t, but I would love to someday,” Katarina said. The closest she’d ever gotten was watching them perform on the big screen in the Electro-Land window.
“Well, how would you like to see them today?” she asked. “My name is Molly. I’m an usher there, and I could get you in to watch the matinee performance.”
Katarina’s mouth dropped open, and she looked over at Sunny, who had the same expression of shock on her face. Was this girl a theater usher or her fairy godmother?
“Are you serious?” Katarina asked.
“Totally,” she said.
“Oh my stars!” Sunny shrieked in joy, and the two girls hugged each other, jumping up and down. Then Sunny turned to the usher and threw herself into her arms, hugging her, too. “I love you!”
Katarina
laughed at the girl’s shocked expression and the way she awkwardly patted Sunny on the back. “Sure. My pleasure.”
She told them where to meet her before the performance started, and Katarina and Sunny ran to the café on the corner where Mrs. Kapoor was working on her laptop. Out of breath and speaking at the same time, they told her what had happened. It took her a minute to understand what they were saying, but once she did, she said she’d call her friend who lived nearby and go to a long lunch with Lulu while the girls went to watch the ballet.
While they were waiting to go meet Molly, Katarina and Sunny counted the money they’d collected from passersby as they danced.
“Wow, we made almost twenty-five dollars!” Sunny said when she was done totaling it up.
“That’s amazing!” Katarina replied. She didn’t know how much her ballet lessons actually cost, but twenty-five dollars would have to help. She got her cell phone out of her bag to call her dad.
“Hey, sweetie,” her dad said when he answered the phone. “What’s up?”
“I just wanted to let you know I’m going to be home a little late,” Katarina said. She explained to him how she and Sunny were going to see the ballet that afternoon.
“That’s fantastic!” he said. “I hope you girls have a great time. I’ll keep an eye on my phone in case you need me.”
“I will.” She took a deep breath. “I also wanted to tell you that I know my dance lessons are expensive, so I’m going to be working really hard from now on to make sure it’s worth it. And I want to help pay for them. Sunny and I made almost twenty-five dollars dancing today.”
Katarina’s dad was silent on the other end for a second, and then he said, “Oh, honey, you don’t have to do that. Boring things like worrying about money are my job. I just want you to have fun and learn, okay?”
“But—”
“No, don’t argue with me,” he said. “You love ballet, and that’s all that matters to me. Got it?”
Katarina smiled. “Got it.”
“Now, take that twenty-five dollars and put it into your piggy bank or buy a T-shirt at the ballet or something,” he said.
“I did see some really cool T-shirts in the window.”
He laughed. “That’s my girl. I’m the luckiest dad in the world.”
“I’m the luckiest daughter,” she said. “See you later?”
“You bet.”
Five minutes before the show was supposed to start, Katarina and Sunny went to wait in the spot by a side door where Molly had told them to meet her. She brought them inside as the last stragglers were heading to their seats in the auditorium.
“Just act like you belong,” she whispered to them as they walked.
“Tickets, ladies,” another usher said as they walked through the doors to the theater.
“It’s okay. They’re with me,” Molly replied. Katarina held her breath, waiting for the other usher to demand their tickets and then throw them out, but he just shrugged and let Molly lead them inside. The theater was so much bigger than it had seemed from the outside. Row after row of red velvet seats faced the stage, and balconies rimmed in gold seemed to reach up practically to the sky. A chandelier that looked like a cross between the sun and a disco ball twinkled above them. The New York City Ballet theater had been designed to look like a jewelry box, Molly explained. It was the most beautiful place Katarina had ever seen. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like to be one of the ballerinas who got to perform in this gorgeous theater.
“Okay, here you go,” Molly said, pointing to a couple of empty seats on an aisle. “Enjoy the show, girls!”
“Thank you so much!” Katarina said as she sat. “Oh, what’s the ballet today?”
“Swan Lake.”
“Ooh, that’s one of my favorites,” Sunny whispered to her as the lights started to go down. “You’re going to love it.”
Katarina felt like her whole body was humming with excitement as the orchestra began to play. She’d never seen a live ballet before! She watched, enraptured, as the huge gold curtain rose to reveal the corps de ballet in old-timey costumes enjoying a party. It was the prince’s birthday, and soon he would have to pick a bride. But he’d rather go out hunting with his friends, and that’s where he stumbled onto the lake where he encountered the beautiful Swan Queen, Odette.
“That’s Odette,” Sunny whispered. “The Swan Queen.”
Odette and the prince danced together and began to fall in love. The other swan maidens joined in, and at one point four of them linked hands and began to dance.
“Oh!” Katarina said softly, unable to hold the sound back. She knew this part! She recognized these steps and the ballerinas with feathers in their hair from the video she’d watched at Electro-Land. Swan Lake was her favorite ballet and she hadn’t even known it! Now that she’d learned more about ballet, she was able to appreciate what they were doing so much more than she ever had before. She knew now how difficult all those moves were, but the dancers on the stage made them look so effortless, like their bodies were made to do those things. She thought about what Madame Alla had said: Ballet was about passion but also hard work. She’d have to work very hard if she ever wanted to be as good a dancer as the four little swans.
When the ballet was over, Katarina and Sunny jumped to their feet, clapping wildly.
“Did you like it?” Sunny asked over the roar of the crowd as the ballerina who had portrayed Odette (the Swan Queen) and Odile bowed.
Katarina’s hands were starting to hurt from clapping so loudly, but she didn’t care. “I loved it! She was amazing, wasn’t she?”
Someone suddenly touched Katarina’s shoulder, and she jumped. Had they been caught? Were they going to be dragged off to theater jail?
But luckily it was just Molly. “Hey, girls,” she said. “Come with me.”
While the rest of the audience continued to applaud as the dancers took their second bows, Katarina and Sunny snuck out of the auditorium with Molly.
“I’ve got one more surprise for you,” she told them. She took them through a door that said STAFF ONLY and led to a long corridor. Katarina and Sunny exchanged puzzled looks as they followed. Where was Molly taking them?
At the end of the hallway and around a corner was an elevator, which they rode down one level. When the elevator doors opened, Katarina gaped at what she saw.
It was a hallway a lot like the one at school, except this one was filled with ballet dancers. Some were taking off pieces of their costumes or walking around barefoot with their pointe shoes in their hands. All of them were sweaty. As the girls followed Molly past open doors, Katarina saw dancers removing their makeup. They had to step around a rack of feathery tutus like the ones the swan maidens had worn, and someone carrying a violin almost bumped into them.
“Do you realize where we are?” Sunny asked her quietly.
Katarina nodded. She almost didn’t want to say the words, too afraid this was a dream that she’d wake up from. “We’re… we’re backstage!”
Molly stopped at a closed door and knocked lightly.
“Come in!” a voice called from inside.
“Hey, Tiler,” Molly said as she opened the door. “These are the girls I was telling you about.”
“Hi, girls!” Tiler Peck, the Swan Queen herself, said as they stepped into her dressing room. “I hear you like ballet?”
Chapter 8
KATARINA COULDN’T TALK or even think about anything besides her visit to the ballet for days afterward.
“It was incredible!” she said to Beatz as the 7 train rumbled down the tracks toward Manhattan. “Tiler Peck is a huge star, but she let Sunny and me hang out with her in her dressing room and ask her all kinds of questions about dance and what it’s like to be a professional ballerina. She was so, so nice!”
“That’s awesome!” Beatz said, kicking his foot so that one of his cymbals clanged in celebration.
Sunny nodded. “Yeah! She even asked us if we would do some steps for her
. After we danced, she said we were both really good and had a lot of potential and should stick with it.”
Katarina sighed, remembering the way Tiler had hugged her and wished her luck with her dancing. “It was the best day of my whole life.”
“Other than the day you met me, right?” Beatz teased, elbowing her in the ribs.
Katarina laughed. “Well, obviously.”
They waved goodbye to Beatz when the train pulled into their station, then headed to the dance studio. While most of the dancers spent the minutes before class chatting with one another and “gooping” around, Katarina didn’t waste any time. Ever since her conversation with Madame Alla, she’d been doing her best to stay completely focused on ballet whenever she was in the studio. So while Sunny and the others joked around, she stretched her muscles and then stood at the barre, working on her turnout. If she wanted to dance as beautifully as Tiler Peck someday, she was going to have to work hard for it!
Madame Alla, followed by Lapochka as always, came into the studio a few minutes later. The last stragglers took their places at the barre and everyone quieted down, waiting for her to clap and yell, “Music!” to Mr. Simeone for the start of their warm-up.
But instead Madame Alla said, “I have something very exciting to tell you all. Please, gather around.”
All of the dancers stepped away from the barre. Madame Alla sat in the chair in front of the mirror—which was always there, but Katarina had never seen her sit in it—and they sat on the floor in a semicircle around her.
“We have been invited to participate in a very exciting event,” she told them. “The School of American Ballet is starting a new ballet camp near Washington, DC, this summer. They will be inviting dancers from all over the world to come for two weeks to participate in the camp and learn from the best teachers the ballet world has to offer.”
Katarina met Sunny’s eye, and she looked as excited as Katarina felt. Imagine spending two whole weeks doing nothing but learning ballet from famous teachers and hanging out with dancers from other countries!