“It’s like five degrees out here and you’re barefoot,” Sophie said. As if I didn’t know I was barefoot.
“Really, Sophie? I’m barefoot? Thanks for that information. Why don’t you go and brush your hair a hundred times or something?” I said, watching my breath come out in little clouds, like smoke.
“My mother still can’t believe someone bought this dump,” Sophie said.
I squinted toward her, trying to maintain my concentration.
“It has character,” I said. It’s one thing for me to say our house was a dump, but when Sophie said it I wanted to kill her.
“They couldn’t sell it, you know. They lived there for like forty years and never lifted a finger. The man, Mr. Greer, died inside.” Then she added in a whisper, “Of cancer.”
Now I searched the hole until I found a piece of Sophie’s face—one eye and her nose. Nothing was worse than Sophie having important information that I didn’t have, especially about my very own house. “In the kitchen?” I asked her. Of course I was trying to sound disinterested, but really the possibilities thrilled me. Maybe the kitchen was the source of power in the house. Maybe every miracle I performed would originate from there. Maybe a ghost was helping me with my miracles!
“I don’t know,” Sophie said. “He had hospice.”
I frowned and memorized the word to look up later. Even though my parents were writers, whenever I asked them what a word meant they said, “Look it up.” I always said, “But how am I going to do that when I don’t even know how to spell it?” “Trial and error,” my father would say. One of my parents’ prized possessions was their Oxford English Dictionary, which stood in the middle of our living room like another member of the family on its own library stand.
“You,” Sophie said, snapping me out of my thoughts, “are, like, crazy.”
“And you say like too much,” I said. “My parents charge me a dime every time I use like inappropriately. Your parents should do the same. They would be rich by now.”
“They’re already rich,” Sophie said so matter-of-factly, I wanted to kill her all over again.
“Good for them,” I said. I suppose Sophie had drawers full of Fruity Punch Lip Smackers. Closets full, even.
“Are you li—” Sophie stopped herself and I smirked, right in her direction. “Are you a ballerina or something?”
“I was in the Boston Ballet’s production of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker,” I kind of lied. I mean, my performance was with the official company. Did Sophie have to know that it was just one special performance and not the official show? After all, she had so much to brag about and sometimes she made me feel terrible. Surely a little white lie didn’t matter?
“But I saw that!” Sophie said while I searched my conscience. “Why wouldn’t you tell me if you were in it? I’m sure you weren’t in it.”
“I was, too!” I shouted. “I didn’t tell you because we haven’t hung out in a long time,” I said hoping she might feel badly about that.
That was the truth, and it was probably why I felt mad at her. Her family went skiing over Thanksgiving break, somewhere fancy with perfect snow. When we moved here three months ago, she actually came over with a stupid T-shirt for me that said: Watch out where them Huskies go, Don’t you eat that yellow snow.
Sophie considered my white lie. “Were you Clara?” she said finally.
“I was a Spanish dancer,” I said, which was true, and when she looked smug I said, “Next year I’ll be Clara,” with more certainty than I really felt. “I have perfect ballerina feet.”
Sophie pressed her face against the hole for a better look.
“Like Marie Taglioni,” I added.
No way did Sophie know who that was. It was my mother who introduced me to Marie Taglioni. For my eighth birthday she gave me a book called Great Ballerinas and we both fell in love with Marie Taglioni above all of the others. Born, 1804; died, 1884; created a delicate new style marked by floating leaps and balanced poses, such as the arabesque. I was already taking ballet classes then, but we were little and just ran around for half an hour while the teacher yelled, “Be a tree!” and we’d all strike a pose like weeping willows or giant oaks. Sometimes we would lie on the floor and bend ourselves into shapes like the alphabet. But after my mother gave me that book and we read about Marie Taglioni, all I wanted was to do floating leaps and arabesques, just like her.
“Madeline,” my mother called from the porch, “it’s time!”
“I have to go,” I said, relieved. “My father’s going to Idaho and we’re all taking him to the airport.”
Taking Dad to the airport meant lunch at Durkin’s Park first. My father and I always got the Yankee pot roast. I hopped across the patches of snow in the yard so my foot would stay dry.
“I don’t think you were in The Nutcracker,” Sophie said. “I still have my program. I’m going to look.”