The lawn behind the school has that fresh-cut–grass smell, and when the tree branches above it shift and flutter, sunlight and shadows play across the field like a swarm of butterflies. The smell of hot asphalt in the parking lot burns in my nose in a nice sort of way, and my lungs fill with this feeling of hope. I close my eyes and concentrate on breathing in and out, and for exactly thirteen seconds I can almost imagine that I’m back in my old elementary school.

But then this crazy music blares from out of nowhere—a trumpet and a full orchestra.

“Okay. What is happening right now?” Devon asks, even more confused than I am.

“Oops!” We hear a woman’s voice. “Sorry, everyone! Hold on …”

The teacher with the blue shimmer to her hair cuts right through the middle of our circle without looking up from the remote in her hand.

The music gets louder.

“Just—one moment,” she says. “Or two.”

Clanging sounds come through the ancient, blown-out loudspeakers in the pavilion—flutes and oboes and xylophones and violins. It’s like something you’d hear at a carnival, if that carnival was taking place in a sewage treatment plant.

“Okay! Think I’ve got it now,” she says, and aims the remote like she means it. “Cease this madness!”

The music changes to a mariachi band.

Everyone laughs, but Deadeyes takes pity and sighs. “You want me to try?”

The teacher gives him the remote and when her sleeve lifts I can see those tattooed feathers running up her forearm. Almost as soon as the kid touches it, the music squawks and stops, with one last echo in the silent morning air.

“Whew!” she says. “Much better. Thank you, Mr…. ?”

“Jeremy,” says Deadeyes.

“Thank you, Jeremy.” She smiles and sees us all in a circle around her, staring back at her. “Good morning, everyone! I am Ms. Fitzkopf—Ms. Fitz for short—and I will be your instructor for your first rotation in the discipline.”

She continues across the lawn.

“Don’t be shy now!” She summons us toward the big wood-planked pavilion and smiles. “We’re gonna have fun today.”

“This is some weird new definition of fun that nobody else is familiar with, isn’t it?” Ash asks me.

I take in the scene at the pavilion, which is pretty alarming. There are girls traipsing up and down the length of the planks in rhythm with each other. “You see that?” I ask.

“Oh yeah.”

“What are they doing?”

“I don’t know,” says Ash, “but it’s pretty alarming.”

This is why we’re friends.

Mark is the first to figure out what’s about to happen. Because Mark has a sister who takes ballet lessons. “Hey, guys? You’re not gonna like it.”

“No,” says Devon. “They can’t do this to us.”

“Devon, don’t panic,” says Mark. “We’ll get through this.”

“She can’t be serious,” Devon repeats, not really hearing Mark’s words. “They’re already embarrassing us with these!” He holds his pink arms out at his sides, straight as airplane wings, like they’ll contaminate anything he touches.

Ash and I look at each other uncertainly, and turn back to see that Ms. Fitz’s eyes have become very bright—filled with a fierce joy that she has stolen right out of our hearts.

“Welcome to the first day of dance class, m’dears!” she says.