The shoes that came with this letter are in my closet. They’re from the Christmas before my mom died. They will always be the last present I ever get from her, and I need to keep them safe forever, which is why I’ve never worn them.
But right now I’m sitting down and pulling apart the tissue paper and taking the shoes out of their box and tying them on my feet. They are pink ballet toe shoes, and they are the loveliest thing I own. Even though she bought them too big, they’re too small for me now and hard to walk in, but I shuffle over to my laptop and turn on some music. I’m going old-school with the Spice Girls, a band my mom secretly loved. The song is “Who Do You Think You Are,” and it makes me think of my mom, of me, of where I might go one day, of what I might be.
My Damsels audition is Saturday. I know my routine by heart. I could do it in my sleep. But right now I do my own made-up dance that’s kind of a ballet-hip-hop-electric-slide-shimmy-pop and I am amazing. I am the best dancer ever. I am a superstar. The shoes are magic. My feet are magic. I am magic.
SATURDAY
* * *
Marcus (tall, shaggy hair, pointy chin) stands over the kitchen sink, shoveling food into his face. I start to help myself to the coffee, and that’s when I hear, “I said no.”
A woman walks in followed by a man wearing an official Masselin’s store shirt. His mouth is open in midsentence, but he closes it when he sees Marcus and me. By process of elimination, these are my parents.
Mom says to me, “Put the coffee down now.” Then says to my dad, “We’ll talk about it later,” and it’s clear they’re in the middle of an argument. I reach for the largest mug we have and pour myself a cup of coffee.
Mom asks Dad just what does he want her to do, and she sounds like she’s swallowing razor blades, like the guy at Sad Carnival, as we call it, the one out by Big Lots. I try not to eavesdrop, but I can feel my whole body go on alert, the way it always does when they argue.
Dad says to my mom, “Tonight.”
“Not tonight.”
Marcus and I look at each other. He mouths, “What now?”
Dad goes, “There’s slow surgery and there’s ripping off the Band-Aid, Sarah.”
“I said not tonight.” She fixes her eyes on me, and she is not happy. “I need you to pick up Dusty after you’re done today.”
“From where?”
“From Tams’s house.” Picking up Dusty or Marcus or anyone is normally the last thing I ever agree to. Try not being able to recognize anyone and then having to go find them. But this morning I’m not about to argue with my mom.
Even with half of the bleachers folded up, the new gym is an enormous place. You can barely see the ceiling from the floor, and the lights are blinding. From up above, I would look no larger than an ant.
And all at once, that’s what I feel like—an ant.
My palms are sweating. My heart is clenching, but not unclenching. I can’t catch my breath. I watch as it runs out of the gym as fast as it can, just like I want to do.
WHY IN THE HELL DID I VOLUNTEER TO DO THIS?
Heather Alpern and her three squad captains sit in chairs, legs crossed. The squad captains are all seniors, and they look identical, their hair slicked back into ponytails, faces shining. I find their sameness almost as terrifying as Ms. Alpern’s catlike beauty. Most terrifying of all is Caroline Lushamp, captain of the squad captains, who locks her eyes on me like a squid. A few other Damsel wannabes are sprinkled along the bottom row of the bleachers, waiting their turns to try out.
Caroline says, “Are you ready?” in this super-friendly tone that is completely unnatural.
I can barely hear her because I am trapped in my mind and body, shivering and afraid. I suddenly feel like I have face blindness because no one looks familiar or nice, and my eyes are flying all over the gym, searching for help. They land on Bailey, Jayvee, and Iris, at the very top of the bleachers. When they see me looking at them, they go blank, and maybe they can see my terror. Which means everyone else can probably see it too. I tell myself to move, to hide that terror and stuff it down and out of sight, and then Jayvee waves her arms and yells, “Shine on, you crazy diamond!”
You volunteered to do this because the dance is in you. And then I think of something my mom used to say, about how as scary as it is to go after dreams, it’s even scarier not to.
“Are you ready?” Caroline doesn’t sound as super-friendly this time.
“Yes,” I say. And then I shout, “Yes!”
For my audition song, I chose “Flashdance … What a Feeling” by Irene Cara, in honor of my mom, in honor of me. As I wait for the music to begin, I tell myself, Too many people in this world think small is the best they can do. Not you, Libby Strout. You weren’t born for small! You don’t know how to do small! Small is not in you!
And then the song takes off and so do I.
Shimmy shimmy kick kick. Shake boom boom.
It takes me about twenty seconds to forget about the staring faces and all that shiny, pulled-back hair and which of the girls on the bleachers may or may not be a better dancer than I am and the fact that I’m twice as big as anyone in this room. After that first thirty seconds, I disappear into the song. I become one with the music, one with the dance.
Kick. Bend. Twist. Flick flick. Shimmy. Shake shake shake. Boom. Kick kick. Pop. Twist. Bend. Flick. Shimmy. Shake. Kick. Boom boom boom.
I’m carried away on the notes, across the gym, high up into the rafters, out the doors, and through the school, all the way to Principal Wasserman’s office, until I’m outside in the sun, under the sky.
Twirl twirl twirl …
And then I’m in the sky. And now I am the sky! I sail over Amos, across Interstate 70, over into Ohio, and from there to New York and the Atlantic, and then to England, to France … I’m everywhere. I’m global. I am universal.
I end, out of breath, suddenly back in the gym. The girls on the bleachers are standing up and whistling. They clap and stamp their feet, and my friends are the wildest of all. Over by the entrance to the court, I see Jack Masselin, paint-spattered and beaming like the sun. He’s slow-clapping, and then he taps his forehead in a salute before vanishing. He and the rest of my fellow delinquents are painting the bleachers today.
Heather Alpern says, “Libby, that was wonderful.” And for the first time, I look directly at her.
Caroline goes, “How tall are you?”
And something in her loud, flat voice makes my stomach drop. The girls on the bleachers fall quiet and settle back into their seats.
“I’m five six.”
“How much do you weigh?”
“One hundred twenty pounds.”
Everyone stares.
“I’m sorry, did you mean my physical weight or my spiritual weight?”
The girls on the bleachers giggle. I am dripping, but I dab at my upper lip and the back of my neck as demurely as Queen Elizabeth.
“The weight that determines what size costume you would need.”
I say, “Is there a weight limit for this squad?”
Caroline starts to speak, but Heather Alpern interrupts her. “Technically, there is not a limit. We don’t discriminate against size.” But they do. I can hear it in the careful way she’s picking her words and I can see it in the tight corners of her smile.
“So why do you need to know my weight?”
Caroline sighs. Loudly. Like I’m as dumb as a rock. “For costume size.” Then she smiles this slow movie-villain smile. “Would you be willing to lose weight if you were wanted?” The word echoes across the court. “You know. If you were to make the team?”
Ms. Alpern shoots her a look. “Caroline.”
I say, “How much weight are we talking about?”
Caroline says, “A hundred pounds, probably more. Two hundred-fifty, maybe.” Which is ridiculous, because that would mean I’d weigh about the same as my aunt Tillie’s dog, Mango.
Like that, I’m a kid again in ballet class, and Caroline is my teacher, frowning at me in this same exact way, a way that tells me I don’t belong here, even though I probably belong more than any of them because the dance is in me, and there’s a lot more of me than there is of them, which means there is a lot more dance in there.
“Would you?”