Mom, Mr. and Mrs. Acosta, and Greg’s parents take what feels like a billion pictures of us. Mom takes a couple pictures of me by myself. I send one to Trey and he sends back a bunch of heart-eyes emojis. Then he sends a picture of him and Eric wearing matching tuxes because their prom is tonight, too. We have plans to meet up this weekend at the beach.
“You look so beautiful, baby,” Mom says, sniffling a little.
“Thanks, Mom,” I say, hugging her.
“I’m so proud of you,” she says.
She’s been telling me this almost every day since I got my e-mail from the conservatory. I was wait-listed. At first, I was devastated. The moment where I slipped during the audition showed up in my dreams over and over again. It was a really hard e-mail to read. But I’m at the top of the waitlist, so there’s a chance that someone could drop out at the last minute or choose another conservatory, and then the spot will be mine. Either way, I’m not giving up on my dream. I’ll never regret everything I went through in order to audition, and I’ll still move to New York City after graduation. There’s a place for me in the ballet world somewhere. I know that to be true.
Our limo finally pulls up in front of the house. It’s white and shiny like it just went through a car wash.
Reina looks at me and frowns. Where’s your date? she mouths.
I ask myself the same question and pull my phone out of my clutch to find the answer. Then the Greenes’ front door swings open and Larissa runs outside.
“He’s coming! Don’t leave yet!” she shouts, turning around and beckoning for someone to follow her.
Eli steps onto the front porch and adjusts his tie. He’s wearing a slim-cut black tux, and his hair is starting to grow back, so his curls are nice and trimmed. There are so many different shades of purple that it’s easy to confuse another shade for violet, so I suggested that I go with him to pick out his vest and tie. Very offended, he told me, “I can pick out a tie, Chlo, sheesh. Give me some credit, please.” He was right. His vest and tie are the exact shade of my dress.
He strides across the street, sporting his confident smile. He hugs Mom and says hello to the other parents and slides my corsage onto my wrist. It has violets and a white ribbon.
“Yes, I picked it out myself,” he says, still smiling. “You look really beautiful.”
“Thank you. You don’t look too bad yourself.”
I kiss his cheek. He’s wearing cologne with a chypre scent. And there’s no lingering tobacco smell. He hasn’t smoked a cigarette in almost three weeks. He still hates the patch, though.
I pin on his boutonniere, and then we take more pictures as a group. Larissa buzzes around Eli and me, touching up my hair and trying to smooth out his lapels, but she eventually stops when she realizes she’s photobombing all the pictures. Then, at Eli’s request, Larissa goes to get Geezer so he can be in our pictures, too.
Right before we get in the limo, Ms. Linda pulls into her driveway and hurries across the street to take a few pictures of Eli and me. She’s still coming around to the idea of Eli going to art school. Every now and then she’ll make an offhand comment about how he’d be better off at UNC, but she’s stopped trying to argue with him about it. The other day he caught her browsing the San Francisco Art Institute’s homepage when she thought he wasn’t home.
We climb into the limo, and I’m surprised to see it has a bar. But it’s stocked with Coca-Cola and ginger ale since we’re under twenty-one.
Greg pulls a little vodka nip out of his pocket. “Anyone want some?”
Eli laughs. “No thanks, bro.”
Reina says, “Uh, maybe we should wait to drink until after prom is over.”
“Okay.” Greg shrugs and drops the nip back in his pocket. I hope our vice principal doesn’t see it when he’s checking everyone at the door.
Reina looks at me wide-eyed. The expression on her face says, What the heck? I try to hold in my laughter.
I made a special prom playlist, so I plug up my phone to the aux cord, and my go-to girl, Beyoncé, blares through the speakers. Reina jumps up and starts dancing. Eli groans, pretending to be annoyed. Then he puts his arm around me and smiles.
Every single moment between us has led up to this one. It all happened for a reason, just like he said. I can’t wait to see what moments the future holds. Who knows. Maybe tonight could be the best night of my life.
Eli lightly brushes his fingers over the shimmer on my cheekbones. “I hope this dance isn’t corny,” he says.
“It won’t be,” I say.
He raises an eyebrow. “How do you know?”
I smile and shrug as I lean into him. “I just have a feeling.”
Chloe’s Prom Playlist
1. “Party”—Beyoncé feat. André 3000
2. “Rather Be”—Clean Bandit feat. Jess Glynne
3. “Int’l Players Anthem (I Choose You)”—UGK feat. OutKast
4. “Uptown Funk”—Mark Ronson feat. Bruno Mars
5. “Candy”—Cameo
6. “Latch”—Disclosure feat. Sam Smith
7. “Square Biz” —Teena Marie
8. “We Found Love”—Calvin Harris feat. Rihanna
9. “Nice for What”—Drake
10. “Hey Ya!”—OutKast
11. “Swag Surfin’”—F.L.Y. (Fast Life Yungstaz)
12. “King of the Dancehall”—Beenie Man
13. “I Would Die 4 U”—Prince
14. “Bougie Party”—Chloe x Halle
15. “Wobble”—V.I.C.
16. “Last Dance”—Donna Summer
17. “Adorn”—Miguel
18. “Crazy in Love”—Beyoncé feat. Jay Z
19. “Hold On, We’re Going Home”—Drake
20. “Forever Mine”—Andra Day
The End
Author’s Note
I fell in love with dance when I was eight years old. At the time, I had no formal training. My friends and I made up routines for fun. We performed in our town’s annual Fourth of July parade every year and were members of our school’s dance team. Eventually, my mom signed me up for ballet classes, and I took to the dance form immediately. I loved the precision of it, the required discipline. To me, a ballerina was the ultimate dancer.
There is a moment in this book when Chloe recalls looking at herself in the studio mirror while standing next to her peers, and she has the startling realization that her body type is different from theirs. I experienced a similar moment when I was seventeen. In most cases, I was the only Black girl in my classes. It didn’t actively bother me when I was younger, but I found myself feeling frustrated about it toward the end of high school. At that point, I was beginning to fall out of love with ballet, and I was finding a new love in writing. I cut back on dance classes and focused on enjoying the rest of my senior year. In the fall, I started college as a writing major. But part of me always wondered—and still wonders—what would have happened if I’d stuck with ballet a little longer, pursued it a little harder. Years later, when I wanted to write a book about a girl who was so devoted to one passion she’d risk anything and everything to pursue it, it only made sense to make her passionate about ballet.
Chloe’s idol, Avery Johnson, is loosely based on Alvin Ailey and his legacy. When I began working on this book, six years had passed since I stepped foot in a ballet studio. I knew that in order to properly recapture the feeling, I would need to take classes again. I lived in New York City, so what better place to take classes than at Alvin Ailey’s Ailey Extension program? I realized right away that I was pretty rusty. I messed up on simple steps and compared what had become my subpar technique to the technique of the dancers around me, who clearly hadn’t taken such a long hiatus. I often felt nervous, overwhelmed, and doubtful. But I’m thankful for those feelings because they brought me much closer to Chloe and her feelings of inadequa
cy after her injury. And, like Chloe, I realized just how much I still loved ballet. I couldn’t believe I’d gone so many years without it.
For additional research, I read Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina by Misty Copeland and Taking Flight: From War Orphan to Star Ballerina by Michaela DePrince. I’m grateful for their stories and for what these two women represent for young Black ballerinas everywhere.
In real life, ballet conservatories begin holding auditions much earlier in the year, but for the timing of this story, I chose to have auditions in April. Spring is a time for new beginnings, and it’s also a time for love. Both of which are so very important to Chloe’s story.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kristina Forest was born and raised in Lawnside, New Jersey, a teeny tiny town that was also the first self-governing African American community north of the Mason–Dixon line. She started dancing when she was seven and her dream job was to be a backup dancer for Michael Jackson. By the time she was seventeen, she’d realized she loved writing more than dancing, so she enrolled at Rowan University and majored in Writing Arts, and then earned an MFA in Creative Writing at the New School. Kristina work in children’s book publishing, and lives in Brooklyn, New York with two huge bookshelves. I Wanna Be Where You Are is her first novel. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Chapter 1. For the Greater Good
Chapter 2. A Favor for a Favor
Chapter 3. Road Trip
Chapter 4. The World’s Smallest Circus
Chapter 5. Game Plan
Chapter 6. Eli Has an Idea
Chapter 7. Promises
Chapter 8. Reunited and It Feels So Good?
Chapter 9. Be Social
Chapter 10. Self-Defense
Chapter 11. Our Nation’s Capital
Chapter 12. Frenemies: A History
Chapter 13. The Radcliffe Hotel
Chapter 14. The Nobleman
Chapter 15. Secrets Revealed
Chapter 16. Wishes for Daughters
Chapter 17. It Starts Here
Chapter 18. Dance Is Art
Chapter 19. Starting Over
Chapter 20. Audition Day
Chapter 21. Merde
Chapter 22. Eli Has Another Idea
Chapter 23. Mr. Greene
Chapter 24. Life’s a Beach
Chapter 25. Eavesdrop
Chapter 26. Lost and Found
Chapter 27. Now or Never
Chapter 28. Quarantined
Chapter 29. The Miserables
Chapter 30. Resurrection Day
Chapter 31. A Philosophy
Chapter 32. Pas De Deux
Chapter 33. Message
Chapter 34. Promenade
Chloe's Prom Playlist
Author's Note
About the Author
Copyright
Text copyright © 2019 by Kristina Forest
Published by Roaring Brook Press
Roaring Brook Press is a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings Limited Partnership
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All rights reserved
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018955874
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eISBN 9781250294890
First hardcover edition, 2019
eBook edition, June 2019
I Wanna Be Where You Are Page 19