I dropped the bottle, but that was okay. I was done. My hand was trembling, but I had done it all by myself!
Trinity came back, looked over my shoulder. “Melody!” she exclaimed, her voice full of wonder. “You painted fireflies!”
I nodded yes, but in my heart, it was no. What I had painted… was friends.
CHAPTER 44
“There, I think you’re all set,” Trinity declared as she put the finishing touches on my hair.
My curls looked bouncy, my red rhinestone earrings were perfect, and a couple of well-placed flamingo-shaped clips made me look like, well, almost like a teenager!
“So, are you ready to kick it? The sky is full of stars, the night is warm, and the stage is set,” she said in a low, fake-movie-star voice.
I ignored her, trying to suppress a grin as I rolled over to the only mirror in the cabin, hung crookedly near the door. I gotta admit, the red dress that Mom insisted on packing was absolutely perfect. It had cap sleeves, a rounded neck, and a skirt that spread out over my whole lap and down past my knees. I twirled myself around and watched the fabric ripple. I felt… I felt… almost magical.
And then I realized that tonight was the last time we would all assemble around the fire! I was really gonna miss the songs and the stars and the flames.
Last night’s storm had blown away all the bad weather, and tonight was crystal clear. This week we’ve covered just about every activity that a bunch of kids can do around a blazing fire at night. Except for one. A real dance!
Instead of trying to imagine how that would work for me, I just rolled with it. Because nothing I’d done over the past few days had been a disaster. In fact, it’s all been pretty awesome.
The fire-pit area looked different as we rolled closer. Counselors had laid down several sheets of wood, like what Dad used to nail against the windows during tornado season, and it looked like… uh, I guess it was… a dance floor! A dance floor with a campfire for lighting. What could be better? Better than a movie set! Even the fire somehow seemed to spark and shimmer more brilliantly tonight, as if it were dancing itself. Ramps on either end easily smoothed out the problem of wheelchair and walker access.
I heard oohs and aahs as groups of campers who we’d only seen at meals or waiting for their turn on the zip line or the pool filed in. An artist could not have painted a better backdrop for the dance than what the sky already provided. Swaths of the last of the burgundy sunset ran through it, and stars, high, high up, gemlike, dotted their own sparks here and there. I heard an owl hooting in the distance. And yep, teeny little lightning bugs weren’t going to miss this party—they flickered on and off above our heads.
I settled in, wondering exactly what would happen next. Cassie and Charles fiddled around with their phones, making sure they were connected to the speakers, I guess. With a thumbs-up, Cassie walked into the middle of the dance floor.
“Are you all ready for my personal favorite night of the camp?” she called out, doing a little shimmy.
As we all roared YES, one kid, one of the Badgers, I thought, shouted, “How we gonna dance if we can’t walk?”
“Great question!” Cassie shouted out. “We dance with our hearts. We dance with our minds. We dance with our souls. We dance for fun. So tonight, that’s just what we’re gonna do.”
Lulu, joining Cassie on the floor, then suggested, “Maybe some of you would like to come up first and show the others how it’s done. One at a time, or in a group—”
Ummm… nah… I’m good.
But before Lulu could even finish her sentence, Athena stood up and cast off her blanket, revealing a ruffly peach-colored dress, then ran to the center of the stage. “I love to dance!” she announced.
All right, Athena!
Cassie flicked through her phone, probably looking through her playlist. A moment later and—ohhhhh, Penny loved this one—on came “Let It Go” from Frozen.
Athena moved to the music as if it had been composed just for her. I could tell those dance classes she’d taken had taught her a lot. While her movements were solid and deliberate, at the same time they were intricately delicate and lovely. Her pink hair clips sparkled as they caught the firelight.
She closed her eyes as she moved to the sound, to the moon and the stars and the breeze, and she danced. And she looked so happy. And I felt a swell of happiness, just watching her.
When Athena finished, she bowed, of course, like nineteen times. We all clapped and cheered—all nineteen times!
Once she was off the floor, Harley announced that Santiago wanted to go next. “He’s practiced and rehearsed for, uh”—Harley checked his watch—“a full four minutes. So he is ready!”
Santiago rolled to the center of the stage and nodded at Harley, who was whispering to Cassie, and “Electric Slide” boomed from the speakers. Dad always sang this in the car: “It’s electric! Boogie woogie woogie!” He told me that he killed it on the dance floor with that song in high school. I’d always laugh, because there was no way I could imagine him dancing to anything!
Hands gripping the rims of his wheels, Santiago managed to hit every spin, every turn, every circular zoom. He had serious wheelchair dancing skills! A bunch of kids started dancing on the sides as well. When the song finished, he clasped his hands together and shook them over his head in victory. We burst into applause.