C U Soon Anya texted Alexei. As she packed her suitcase, she daydreamed about hitting the waves with her big brother.
Her brother read her mind. Surfrider Beach first? he replied.
“You almost forgot your pointe shoes,” her mom said, coming into her bedroom and tossing them on top of her pile of clothes.
“Why? I thought this was supposed to be a dance-free vacation?” Anya asked.
“Just in case you want to go pay Miss Natalya a visit,” her mom replied.
Until Toni, Anya had never met a dance teacher as tough as Miss Natalya. She made Anya practice for hours at the barre, until every muscle ached and she was drenched in sweat. She remembered how demanding her ballet teacher was, but also how she pushed her to be a better dancer.
“Your frappé—it is no good!” Miss Natalya would scold her. “It needs to be like a match, striking the floor, yes?”
Anya had tried to picture how she would swipe a match to light it: the action was fast, firm, direct, explosive. She did the same with her foot, flexing it then extending it out in front of her. This time, her frappé was quick and strong.
“Da! Da! Yes! Yes!” Miss Natalya cheered.
All Anya ever wanted to hear was those words, so she worked her hardest to please her. When Anya decided to give up ballet for competitive dance, Miss Natalya had been very disappointed.
“We spend all these years together and then you leave your studio for what? Some team?”
“It’s not just a team. It’s a competitive dance team,” Anya had tried to explain. But she didn’t expect her ballet teacher to understand how excited she was to showcase her talent somewhere beyond the barre. “They go all over the country! Last week they were in Baltimore.”
Miss Natalya hung her head. “And Baltimore is exciting to you? When you could be a prima ballerina one day? You throw that away?”
Anya was determined. “I am not throwing my ballet away. I’m just expanding my horizons.”
Her teacher turned her back and walked away, muttering some words in Russian that Anya couldn’t make out.
“I’m sorry, Miss Natalya,” she called after her, “but this is what I want to do.”
During her first few months with the Shooting Starz team in L.A., she had won a handful of Teen Solo trophies. Then Justine spotted her at a competition and asked her to join City Feet in Long Island.
“It’s really a no-brainer,” the dance coach had told Anya and her parents. “My team wins. All the time. Do you want to dance with the winners or the losers?”
It meant quickly relocating to the East Coast and getting a tutor. But from the moment she met the rest of the City Feet girls—Addison, Phoebe, Mandy, and Regan—she understood why they racked up so many first-place trophies. They were that good and that determined.
“I can’t even do a cartwheel,” she complained, watching Mandy, the team’s “Tiny Terror” execute a flawless acro combination without even breaking a sweat.
“Well, you better learn,” Justine insisted. “Everyone on my team is expected to toe the line.”
“She means either keep up or drop out,” Addison translated. “No excuses.”
So Anya worked day in, day out, learning to master City Feet’s trademark moves. In only six weeks, she was performing explosive hip-hop routines, whirling fouettés, and flawless back handsprings. She even picked up a perfect chin stand.
“You’re catching on,” Miss Justine complimented her. But she also knew that Anya was their secret weapon when it came to the Solo division.
“I’m going to have you do a classical ballet routine en pointe,” she told her. “Should be a breeze for you, right?”
What she didn’t tell Anya was that she was entering her in a category that was below her age. When the judges found out that she was thirteen and not twelve, Anya was disqualified, points were deducted from City Feet’s score, and Justine was issued a warning for “unsportsmanlike behavior.” It was embarrassing but also a wake-up call: Anya realized that City Feet would stop at nothing to win.
“This isn’t what we signed up for,” Mrs. Bazarov told Justine. “We don’t teach our daughter to be dishonest.”
Justine shrugged. “It was a misunderstanding. These things happen.”
But her mother stood her ground. “Maybe, but not to us. We’re going back to L.A.”
That’s where she was when Toni first flew out to meet with her. Her parents had called Toni shortly after the City Feet fiasco and begged her to put Anya on her team.
“Please let me join the Divas,” Anya pleaded when she met with Toni. “All I want to do is help you beat City Feet.”
“Really? Because if that’s all you want to do, then my answer is no,” she said.
“What? I thought you hated Justine?”
“Hate is a strong word,” Toni insisted. “Let’s just say I want to win just as badly as Justine does—but I won’t sink to her level. Is that clear?”
Anya nodded. “I don’t want to lie or cheat either.”
“What do you want to do?” Toni asked.
Anya thought for a moment. “I want to dance. I love it more than anything, and I want to be the best dancer I can be.”
“Good,” Toni said, extending her hand to shake. “Then we have a deal. Welcome to the Divas.”
It had taken several weeks to convince Scarlett, Liberty, Rochelle, Bria, and Gracie that she wasn’t just a spy for the opposing team. But eventually, she won them over. Now, none of them could imagine the team without her—and she couldn’t imagine being without them.
Anya looked miles away in thought, so her mother waved a hand in front of her eyes. “Did you hear a word I just said?” she asked.
“Uh-uh,” Anya answered. “I was thinking.”
“Well, I was thinking, too. I was thinking you owe it to Miss Natalya to stop in. Your father says she can’t wait to see you again.”
Anya raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean? How would Dad know that?”
Her mother continued folding clothes into her suitcase. “Oh, he just ran into her at Vons supermarket.”
She tried to picture Miss Natalya pushing a shopping cart down the frozen-food aisle. She didn’t think her teacher had any life outside of the ballet studio.
“Seriously?” Anya asked. “What did she say?”
“Oh, nothing,” her mom said. “Just that it would be nice to see you in class again.”
Anya rolled her eyes. “Well, I don’t take classes with her anymore. I’m a Diva now, remember?”
Her mom nodded. “You may be a Diva but you don’t have to act like one. There’s no harm in visiting your old ballet studio.”
Anya had a sinking feeling that there was more to the story than her mother was telling her. But she was too excited to be going home to argue with her. “Fine. I’ll stop in and say hi. But these . . .” She took the pointe shoes out of her bag. “Stay here.”