That night I dream of dancing again. This time I’m wearing the right costume, but when I walk onto the stage, the bra snaps open and falls off, and I’m left topless in front of everyone I know. I wake with a start. My sheets are all tangled at the bottom of the bed, and I’m drenched in sweat. My heart is racing. It only takes me a second to scroll down to Angela’s name, but then I stare at my phone for a while before turning it off and lying back down. I want to talk to Angela more than anything. I’m not sure if she’ll want to talk to me.
In the morning I get up in time to catch the bus, and I sprint to the stop and hop on a second before it pulls away. I make my way down the aisle and wait for Angela to get on at the next stop.
“What are you studying?” I ask as she pulls out her books. Her stuff spills across the seat, so I have to squish myself in next to her to sit down.
“English,” she says.
“Oh no! I totally forgot about the English test. Something more to worry about.”
Angela sighs. “What are you worried about?”
Now that she’s asked, I’m not sure I want to talk about it, so I say, “Dance.”
“I figured, but what specifically?”
She still sounds grumpy, almost like she was expecting me to complain, so I don’t say anything until she says, “Lila? If you don’t have anything to say, I’m going to get back to studying.”
“It’s the costume,” I say. “I hate it.”
“I thought you always loved Dana’s costumes,” Angela says.
“Usually, yeah, but this one’s different. It’s all white and gold. It’ll make me look like a ghost. Plus, the skirt has a huge slit up the side, and”—I take a deep breath, because this is really the part I have a problem with—“the top’s a bra.”
I expect Angela to gasp or something, but she blinks and says, “A bra?”
I nod.
“Ouch,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“I like Amala’s costume better,” I say.
“Yeah. I love it,” Angela says. “It’s not really professional-looking though.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Forget it,” she says. She points her nose back into her book, and I am left staring at the top of her head.
Angela isn’t sympathetic in the least. How’d she feel if she had to wear a stupid white skirt and a bra?
* * *
The English test is hard, and I know I haven’t done well. When it’s over I head to the garden to wait for Angela to join me, but today when she comes, she’s with Jonas and Nini. So I guess she hasn’t said anything to Nini yet.
“You finished quickly,” Jonas says to me.
“Yeah.” I don’t want to talk about the test, because I know I failed, so I don’t pay much attention as Nini and Angela and Jonas go over the answers they gave. Besides, Jonas spends the whole time trying to make Angela look at him, Angela spends the whole time looking at everyone except him, and Nini spends her whole time looking at him and trying to get him to look at her. Lovely. I so don’t want to be part of that.
After a few minutes of trying to ignore the conversation, I give up and leave. I’m halfway across the courtyard when I spot Robin and Alex. “Hey, Robin,” I call, jogging to catch up with them. “Where are you two going?”
“Alex wants samosas,” Robin says.
There’s a bakery down the street that sells French bread, Danish pastries and Indian samosas.
“Can I come?” I ask.
“Sure,” Robin says, and we head out of the courtyard and onto the street. “Did you hear about Bea?” she asks.
“What about her?”
“She told Dana she quit.”
“What? No way! How come?” I ask.
“Are you really surprised?” Alex says. “Dana picks on her all the time. Bea told Dana she feels like she’s not good enough to dance for her.”
“What did Dana say?”
“She said Bea has promise, but she’s not applying herself.”
“That’s so unfair!” I say. I know both Alex and Robin have practiced a lot with Bea in the last couple of weeks.
“I know,” says Robin.
“So she quit?”
“I guess Dana tried to convince her to stay, but Bea said her mom wants her to go to another studio,” Alex says.
We reach the bakery and walk inside. The air is warm and smells of fresh bread. I inhale deeply.
“Wow,” I say. Bea’s quitting is big news. I’ve always liked Bea, and though she has a hard time learning the moves, she’s really a beautiful dancer. Her movements are fluid and graceful. It’s not her fault Dana rides her so much that it makes her nervous and then she messes up. Quitting though. That’s big.
The bakery is busy with kids from our school, and I lower my voice so only Robin and Alex can hear. “Which studio is she going to?”
“Probably Amala’s,” Robin says.
“Yeah, that’s where Angela dances. Bea’ll love it there!” I say.
For some reason, my voice catches as I say it, but neither Robin nor Alex notices, and Alex says, “I hope she does. I’m going to miss her.”
Robin reaches the front of the line and orders three samosas. It takes us a minute to figure out the cash, and once we’ve paid, we stand over to the side to wait for the samosas to be heated up.
“The truth is that she wouldn’t have been performing with us anyway,” Robin says after a long moment. “She was bound to be one of the girls who got cut. This way she makes it her choice, not Dana’s. So good for her.”
“Maybe Dana wouldn’t have cut her,” I say.
Both Robin and Alex raise their eyebrows at me, and I shrug in agreement. Bea was going to be one of the girls cut.
“Who else is going to get cut?” Alex asks.
“Not you,” Robin says. “Or you, Lila.”
The bakery lady hands us our samosas, and I quickly bite into mine and head for the door so I don’t have to respond. When Robin and Alex catch up with me outside, I say, “What do you think about Bea’s brother, Jonas? He’s in my English class.”
“H. O. T.,” says Alex, and just like that, we’re talking about boys. We slow down as we go over all the boys in our grade, and by the time we get back to school, I’m feeling more relaxed than I have all day.