Chapter 5

Al, Brenda, and Terrel are sitting on the bench in the waiting room when Jessica, JoAnn, Mason, and I walk into the Nutcracker School.

“What is he doing here?” Terrel asks, staring blankly at Mason.

“Mason’s coming to class with us for a while,” Jessica says.

Terrel continues to stare. She’s younger than the rest of us, so she’s actually only a year older than Mason. But she seems like a grown-up already, because she’s so good at telling everyone what to do.

“What’s he going to do while we’re in class?” I ask Jessica quietly. “There’s no way he’ll just sit there and draw for an hour.”

“I don’t know,” she says. “We may need to take turns playing with him. It won’t be so bad, since there are three of us.”

As if I can afford to miss a third of every ballet class when I’m terrible already. I wonder what two-thirds of “terrible” would look like. I’m sure it would not be pretty.

Some of the other girls in the class gather around Mason. “You’re so cute!” one of them says. He gets a big grin on his face as they coo at him.

“Are you going to be a basketball player when you grow up?” one asks.

“Yup,” he says, casually spinning the ball around on his finger, a new trick he just learned.

The girls giggle and clap. Mason’s smile gets bigger and bigger.

“I thought he’d hate being around a bunch of girls,” JoAnn says to me. “Sheesh.”

Epatha arrives, and Mason dashes over to her. “Hi, Epatha,” he says. “Hey, Mason,” she says, pulling off her fuchsia sweater. “What’re you doing here?”

“Epatha has a bo-o-oyfriennnd,” says Tiara Girl, who has been observing the fuss over Mason from the corner of the room.

“You bet I do,” Epatha says, patting Mason’s hair. “Right, Mason?”

He nods vigorously.

Tiara Girl, disappointed that she’s not getting a rise out of Epatha, goes back to applying glitter lip gloss.

Mr. Lester appears in the doorway. He’s tall and handsome, almost like a movie star. The only non-movie-star-like thing about him is that his teeth are not quite straight. They are very shiny and white, though, so if they were straight they would be perfect.

“Go on upstairs, girls,” he says. “And boy,” he adds, grinning at Mason.

Ms. Debbé is waiting in the dance studio. She is wearing a flowing orange and magenta tunic, her hair swathed in a matching turban with glinting sequins.

“Ah. This must be Mason,” Ms. Debbé says.

Mason stares at her in awe. “Are you a genie?” he asks.

“Am I…pardon me?” Ms. Debbé says.

“Come on, Mason,” Jessica says quickly. She takes him over to the corner, pulls a book out of his backpack for him, then slips back into place beside me.

“Sit, please, ladies,” commands Ms. Debbé.

A basketball silently rolls into the center of the room. Ms. Debbé’s eyebrows rise up to her turban. Mason stares goggle-eyed at the ball, not knowing what to do.

JoAnn quickly grabs the ball and rolls it back to him.

“We will try to keep the ball-rolling to a minimum, yes?” Ms. Debbé says to him.

I don’t know if Mason knows what minimum means, but she keeps staring at him until he nods.

For the first part of class, we do the normal things. We go to the barre and do our warm-ups: pliés and grand battements.

I stand between Jessica and Al at the barre.

“Other way,” Al whispers as I turn in the wrong direction.

“Outside foot, not inside,” Jessica says as I try to kick with the foot that’s closest to the barre.

“Turn toward the door,” Terrel barks at me as we move on to our floor work.

Ballet wears me out.

But it’s going to get even worse. It’s almost time to start learning our dances.

“You all know Mr. Lester,” Ms. Debbé says as he enters the room. “He will be working with some of you on your dances for the recital,” she says. “Some girls with him and some with me. As we did for the summer show, yes?”

Last summer, Ms. Debbé taught some of the girls their dances and Mr. Lester taught the others. All my friends and I were with Mr. Lester. Between Al’s disastrous spins and my disastrous everythings, he had his hands full.

Mr. Lester takes half the class to another studio, while the Rainbow dance girls and we Three Princesses stay behind with Ms. Debbé. I guess Mr. Lester needed a break from us, or at least from me. I don’t blame him.

I look over at Mason. He seems to have given up on reading his book and is staring at Ms. Debbé, probably still trying to figure out if she’s a genie who might grant him a wish.

“All right. First, our Rainbow dance girls.”

Al, Epatha, Terrel, and Brenda gather beside her.

“Now, as you know, you will be making a rainbow, a beautiful rainbow.”

Thump.

“Each of you, you will be one of the rainbow colors—”

Thump, thump.

“…and you will dance around the—”

Thumpthumpthump.

She stops. “Mr. Mason.”

Mason looks up.

“You must please stop that bouncing.”

Mason stops.

“Perhaps you should watch instead,” Ms. Debbé says. “Ballet is good for the basketball players. It makes them graceful. You perhaps will even decide to be a ballet dancer when you grow up.”

Mason looks skeptical. But he sits on his basketball, hands propped under his chin, and watches.

Jessica, JoAnn, and I watch too as Ms.

Debbé begins to teach the dance. Terrel picks up the steps fastest. She looks like a little windup doll, doing each step perfectly and neatly. Epatha also does the right steps, too, but they look wilder when she does them. It’s as if she were throwing her whole heart into every little move, even though we’re just practicing.

Brenda and Al take a little longer to get the steps, but they both dance well. Brenda’s always been good. And now that Al’s got the turn thing down, she’s great. Which means everyone can dance just fine. Everyone but me.

Jessica pokes me. “Look at Mason,” she whispers.

Mason is staring at the dancers. To my surprise, he’s not fidgeting at all.

“Maybe he likes ballet,” Jessica says.

JoAnn snorts. “He’s just looking at Epatha.”

“All right, ladies,” Ms. Debbé says after they’ve been working for about fifteen minutes. “Very good. Alexandrea, your turns, they are splendid. I maybe need to put even more turns in this dance.”

The other girls come over to the side of the room where we’re sitting. Al is glowing.

“That looked great,” Jessica says. She stands and brushes off her tights.

“Yeah,” says Mason. “Epatha, you were the best.” He waits till she sits down, then relocates his basketball, rolling it across the floor so he can sit by her.

“Gracias, Mason.” Epatha smiles big. “You should take ballet. Then we could dance together.”

“Uh…maybe.” He squirms. “Or you could play basketball,” he says, brightening.

She laughs. “Sí. That would work, too. But if you really want to marry me, you’re gonna have to learn to dance, ’cause I’m definitely dancing at my wedding.”

Mason is obviously taken aback by this news.

“Now. Princesses, please,” says Ms. Debbé.

JoAnn, Jessica, and I walk to the middle of the room. Question: what could be worse than trying to learn a dance when you don’t have any talent? Answer: trying to learn a dance when you don’t have any talent and your friends are staring at you and your little brother is, too.

“Now. First, I will show you the basic steps,” Ms. Debbé says. “Then we will work together on them.”

The dance starts with us holding hands and walking in a circle, which even I should be able to manage. But then there are chassés, where you kind of gallop (unless you trip and end up sprawled on the floor, like I do). Then it continues with some pirouettes, where you flick your leg out as you spin around (unless you turn the wrong way and whack Jessica with your leg, like I do). Then there are some grand jetés, where you leap forward (unless your foot slides out from under you as you land and you stagger around trying to keep your balance, like I do). I get more frustrated with every move. And that makes me dance even worse. My scalp starts to tingle the way it always does when I can’t do something right.

Ms. Debbé watches as we practice. When she looks at me, she has the same look on her face that people get when they’re listening to someone sing out of tune—they try to be polite and keep smiling, but really, they want to hold their ears and run screaming out of the room.

She taps her stick on the ground. “Miss Jerzey. Do not worry so much about having the steps exactly right,” she says. “Watch your sisters. Just try to go in the same direction.”

“But I want to get the steps exactly right,” I say.

She nods. “Yes, yes. But you are worrying too much about them. Just try to relax. Worry does not help. Dancing, it should be fun. Now. Again, please, from the beginning.”

We do the dance from the beginning.

I do not have fun.

I especially do not have fun when, at the end of class, Miss Debbé says, “Work hard, girls. Miss Camilla will be coming by to visit our class next Tuesday.”

“What? I thought she was just coming to the recital,” Epatha says.

“Also the recital. But she would like to observe some classes, too,” Ms. Debbé replies.

All the girls are excited—except me, of course.

After class, it takes me a long time to get my sneaker-shoelace loops exactly even. Learning the dance by Thanksgiving seemed sort of possible, in the way that people using space pods to fly to the grocery store someday seems sort of possible. But learning the dance by next week?

I must look as miserable as I feel, because Jessica says, “Jerzey, don’t worry. JoAnn and I will help you learn the dance.”

Okay. I know Jessica is trying to be nice, but this gets my hackles up anyway. (Gets one’s hackles up was a phrase in my advanced reading-vocabulary class last week. Although I am annoyed, I am pleased to be able to use the phrase perfectly, even if it’s only in my head.)

I stuff my ballet slippers into my bag.

“That’s okay. I can learn it by myself,” I say.

“Ha!” JoAnn says.

Terrel and Epatha exchange a skeptical look. Al stares at the ceiling, as though something very interesting has suddenly appeared up there. Brenda coughs (forward, not backward). Jessica looks at me sympathetically, which might be the worst thing of all.

Epatha says, “Remember the show two years ago? When Jerzey fell off the stage into that old lady’s lap?” She turns to me. “I’m sorry, Jerzey, but it was pretty funny.”

“We may be headed for a repeat performance,” JoAnn says. “Jerzey, try to fall into someone else’s lap this time, so the poor old lady doesn’t think we’re picking on her.”

Everyone laughs.

Even Jessica!

That’s when I decide that I am not going to ask any of them for help. No matter what.