“I’ll call her right back.”
We stood up, both of us seeming unsure of how to bring our talk to an end. Then, because I didn’t want to regret not doing it later on, I threw my arms around him in a hug. “Thank you,” I whispered. “For being a great boyfriend. And for being my first kiss.”
His arms tightened around me. “We’ll stay friends.”
I nodded, even though I knew there’d be a while when we kept our distance, not out of any hard feelings, but to let each other breathe and figure things out. We’d come back to the friendship eventually.
I pulled away, turning toward the conservatory’s door. “See you at school.”
Ethan headed down the sidewalk, already refocused on his phone, probably dialing Eve’s number. Then, just as I was about to step inside, he called my name, making me stop.
“Don’t give up on Lanz,” he said, making me blush all over again. “He’s into you.”
I wanted to believe him. But I didn’t know what to think.
Two hours later, I walked out of the conservatory, dripping with sweat. Rehearsal tonight had been grueling, and Signora Benucci had been especially unrelenting, demanding that I practice the grand jeté portion of the final dance over and over again, until my legs were shaking from the effort. I was performing several dances with my pas de deux partner, Will, and coordinating our timing and movements proved challenging, even though it was exciting, too. Will had already mastered each of our lifts, but my extensions and form still needed honing.
“You must stretch yourself,” Signora Benucci told me. “It’s not simply a jump. You are taking flight.”
It was hard to take flight with Violet glaring at me from the corner of the room, whispering to her friends. She wasn’t happy about me being cast as Cinderella, but with each passing rehearsal, I kept hoping she’d get over it. So far, that hadn’t happened, and her hard stares were taking their toll on my dancing.
As I walked down the street, my earbuds in, I was so preoccupied that I nearly slammed into Tilly.
“Malie,” she told me, arms crossed. “We have to talk!”
“Tilly,” I breathed in exasperation, and removed my earbuds. “I’m guessing you know that Ethan and I broke up.”
She tapped one foot against the concrete. “You bet your leotard I do. What are you doing?”
“It wasn’t just me who made the decision.” I started walking in the direction of the parlor, and she followed. “Ethan wanted it, too. We’ve been heading that way for a while.” I gave her a sideways glance. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed. He’s fallen for Eve, and I’m—I’m—”
“Well, he can unfall for her,” she countered. “What about our foursome? It doesn’t work without you two.”
I stopped, taking in her creased forehead, her downcast eyes. “It’s not like we’re not going to hang out with you and Andres anymore. It’ll just be … different.”
She shook her head. “You should’ve left it alone. Things could stay the way they are.”
I stiffened. “You and Andres have each other, and you’re happy. Ethan and I have to find our ways, too. If Eve comes on board, we’ll be a fivesome, and if—if I find somebody else, then—”
“Lanz,” Tilly blurted. “You mean Lanz, right?”
“Lanz and I aren’t even talking right now!” I threw up my hands. “But you should be happy for me, no matter who I end up with. Or if I end up with nobody at all!”
“Maybe I would be, if you would actually talk to me, instead of keeping everything to yourself! You don’t say boo for weeks on end, and now I have to find out from Andres that my two best friends are breaking up.” She glared at me. “I always thought you could tell me anything.”
I stared at her, floored by the hurt in her face. “I—I’m sorry. But I didn’t know what I felt for the longest time. Or how to talk about it.”
“You could’ve tried me.”
“Tilly, come on. You know what you would’ve said.”
Tilly nodded. “What I’m still going to say! That you and Ethan belong together.”
I sighed. “You’re saying that because you don’t want anything to change.”
“Of course I don’t!”
I rubbed my temples. “What about what I want? What’s right for me? I’m so sick of everyone telling me what I can and can’t do!” I yelled these words loud enough that some people passing by on the sidewalk moved to give me a wider berth. “This is why I didn’t tell you before,” I added, trying to speak more quietly. “Because I was afraid of this happening. I—I can’t deal right now.” My voice broke, and I turned away.
If she called my name, I didn’t hear it. All I heard was Tchaikovsky booming through my earbuds, drowning out every other sound but my hammering, hurting heart.
The moment I walked into Once upon a Scoop, I knew something was terribly wrong. Mom’s face—pale and angry—was enough to tell me.
She knew. She knew everything.
I glanced at the line of customers, hoping that she’d have to deal with them instead of me. No such luck.
“Ladies and gentlemen.” Her voice, on the surface, seemed calm enough, but I could hear the current of fury underneath. “The shop will be closed to customers for the next ten minutes. My sincerest apologies and gratitude for your patience.” She ushered them out the door, issuing coupons for free ice cream cones. “We’ll reopen as quickly as we can.”
My skin turned clammy as she flipped the sign on the door to CLOSED. Then she faced me, her eyes full of disappointment. She let loose a string of Hawaiian—something she only did when she was absolutely beside herself.
“How could you?” she said, switching to English. “All these weeks I believed you were going to Tilly’s. Doing schoolwork. And—and now I learn that you’ve been dancing? Behind my back?”
“I was going to tell you,” I started helplessly.
“Instead I find out from this Violet girl I’ve never met!” She put her head in her hands.
So it had been Violet who’d told Mom. I shouldn’t have been shocked, especially with Violet peeved over losing the Cinderella part. Now I had no defense, no excuses. Not that it mattered. I was wrong to lie, and now I was going to pay the price.
“It was humiliating,” Mom continued. “She came into the shop to congratulate me, she said, on your great accomplishment. ‘What accomplishment?’ I ask. And she says, ‘Don’t you know?’ And then she tells me about Cinderella.” Her eyes bored into me, stabbing my chest with regret. “I have to hear all of it from a stranger! Because my own daughter has been lying to me!”
“Violet shouldn’t have told you. It wasn’t any of her business—”
“You had no business disobeying me!” Mom cried. “Violet can’t be blamed for your poor judgment.”
Suddenly, the frustrations of the day, of the past weeks, exploded from my mouth in a torrent of words. “What was I supposed to do? You told me I couldn’t dance anymore. I tried to talk to you about it, but you wouldn’t listen! You didn’t care how much it hurt me to give it up! All you care about is this parlor with its lame ice cream!”
Mom held up a warning finger to my face. “The source of our livelihood is not lame. We couldn’t live here without this shop and the income it gives us—”
“I know that! But it will never be what I want.” My chest was burning, my eyes welling. “My dancing at the conservatory wasn’t costing us anything! Signora Benucci was teaching me for free. And you had Lanz here to help! You weren’t stressed about the business anymore. I arranged everything, and I thought—”
“You thought only of yourself.” Mom’s voice was thick with distress. “You disrespected me by disobeying.”
“I’ve tried so many times to get you to understand, but you never will.” I leaned toward her, reaching for her hands. She pulled them away. “Makuahine, I’m so sorry I lied to you. I was wrong. Please, let me show you what I can do. Come watch me at rehearsal. See how far I’ve come. I’m on pointe now. I’m the principa
l ballerina—”
“Not anymore you’re not.” The words, thorny and brutal, wedged in my heart. “The conservatory will find a replacement for you.”
I froze, stunned. “No.” It came out quietly but firmly. “You can’t take it away from me.”
“I can,” she said simply. “I will.”
My eyes filled with tears. “Why would you do that to me?”
She turned toward the kitchen. “Because you put dancing above all else, even your family. Reality is responsibility and work and school. Reality is not following a fantasy that can never last. It is not hurting your family with dishonesty.”
My tears spilled over my cheeks. “Don’t do this—”
“Malie. It is done.” She paused in the doorway to the kitchen to glance back at me. “Open the shop now, please.”
Then she disappeared into the kitchen, leaving me with my tears, and customers peering through the shop’s front window, waiting for their ice cream. I sucked in a shaky breath and opened the door, as my dream of being Cinderella melted away.
“Malie?” Ethan touched my shoulder and I jumped, dropping my binder on the floor.
“Oh!” was all I could manage as I slipped my earbuds from my ears, remembering where I was. It was Monday, exactly one week since Mom had banned me from dance. I was at school. Standing in the hallway at my locker. That’s right. At least, I was physically at school. Mentally, I was in a colorless, mind-numbing world without dance. “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t see you before.”
Ethan peered at me with concern, and I noticed Eve standing beside him. In some distant corner of my mind, I registered that they were holding hands. “I—we—wanted to make sure you were okay.” Ethan glanced at Eve. “We heard about what happened with your mom and Cinderella. It’s lousy.”
“Let me guess. Violet told you?” She’d wasted no time telling the entire student body that she’d reclaimed the Cinderella role for herself.
“Actually, Lanz told us.”
“Oh.” Another pain shot through my heart. So he knew, but he still wouldn’t talk to me.
“How are you? Really.” Ethan’s voice was so full of compassion that I nearly started crying right then and there. What could I say? I was breathing. I was eating. Sleeping. Going to school. I was scooping ice cream every day, wearing a plastered-on smile. I was existing. But each day that passed without dance dragged slower than an adagio battement fondu. There was a void inside me that nothing could fill.
“I’m surviving.” I strove to give my voice some brightness. “Mom pretty much grounded me for life.”
“What about your dad?” Ethan asked. “He understood, right?”
I shook my head. “He pulled the ‘united front’ card on me and backed Mom.”
I remembered what he’d said to me when I’d FaceTimed with him, hoping for sympathy. “Your punishment isn’t about you dancing or not dancing,” he’d said. “This is about you breaking our trust.”
It brought a fresh scarlet shame to my cheeks, just thinking about it.
“Maybe Lanz’s mom could do something?” Eve suggested kindly. “Talk to your mom, maybe?”
“No.”
Each afternoon, I walked home from school past the conservatory to watch the rehearsals through the window. Signora Benucci always paused in her instruction to nod at me through the glass, her expression mirroring my own—disappointed, helpless. Telling her that I wouldn’t be dancing was one of the toughest things I’d ever had to do. I admired her so much, and I was failing her. But she’d told me she wouldn’t get involved in a family matter like this.
“You have such talent,” she’d said. “It’s a waste to let it slip away.”
Her words were what I’d always dreamed of hearing, but knowing that they’d stay words, that they’d never translate into performances, or a chance at joining a dance company—that made them salt in an open wound.
“There’s nothing anyone can do,” I said to Ethan and Eve now. “But … I’m still dancing.”
Ethan gave me a questioning look. “What? How?”
“During lunch in the gym.” It wasn’t even close to the same as the conservatory, but I didn’t care. It was all I had. “I need to.”
Ethan nodded in understanding. “I know.”
I swallowed thickly, wanting to be done with this topic. But, since I was already in the throes of torment, I decided to ask the question that had been gnawing at me since Ethan had mentioned his name. “How’s Lanz doing?” I didn’t even try for subtlety. There wasn’t any point, and I was too out of sorts to fake anything right now anyway. “I haven’t seen him around school lately.”
“Um,” Ethan and Eve said in unison, and the distress on both their faces made my pulse skip with dread.
“What?” I whispered.
Ethan sucked in a breath, then blurted, “He left town.”
I’d been fidgeting with my books and schoolbag, trying to make it through the conversation without my eyes filling, but now there was no stopping the tears. “What do you mean ‘left town’?”
“He went back to Italy.” Ethan and Eve exchanged another worried glance. They were so in sync with each other, they already seemed natural as a couple. “Last Thursday. I—I figured he told you?”
“No.” The air left my lungs. “I haven’t had my cell.” Mom had taken it away when she’d grounded me. “We—we haven’t talked since our fight. Why did he go back?” And for how long? I wanted to ask. Forever? The thought made me cold all over.
Ethan shrugged. “He didn’t say. But …” He pulled a small box out of his backpack. “He asked me to give you this. Sorry it took me a few days to get it to you. I …” He looked sheepish. “Forgot to pick it up from the conservatory.”
I nearly smiled. That was so Ethan-ish of him to forget.
He set the box in my palm and my fingers instinctively closed around it, as if hoping it might still hold some warmth from when Lanz had held it. “Thanks.” I suddenly wanted to be alone, with the box, with my thoughts. “Um …”
“We should get going, Ethan.” Eve offered me an empathetic smile.
I returned it gratefully, glad that she understood what I needed at that moment.
She waved and started down the hallway, but Ethan stayed behind, motioning to her that he’d be right there.
I mustered up a smile for him, to let him know I was okay with him and Eve being together. “It’s working out with you two?” I asked.
He grinned and nodded, then grew serious again. “And Mal, this thing with you and Tilly. She likes Eve; she’s just pulling her ‘don’t rock the boat’ routine. She’ll come around. You’ll see.”
“She hasn’t said a word to me all week.” I sighed. “Seems like everybody’s mad at me right now.”
“Not everybody. And whatever happened with Lanz, I’m sorry.”
I bit my lip to keep it from trembling. “Thanks. Me too.”
I watched him and Eve walk down the hallway together, falling into a matching stride. Well, at least one good thing had come out of the colossal mess I’d made: Ethan was happy. And what he’d said about Tilly had given me a small measure of hope.
But what about Lanz? Why hadn’t he told me he was leaving? Maybe he’d tried my cell before he left, but I had no way of knowing.
And the worst thought of all: What if he wasn’t coming back?
With shaky fingers, I opened the box in my hand. Every doubt I’d had about my feelings for Lanz, every ounce of anger I’d felt toward him since the night on the beach, rushed out of me in a trembling breath.
Nestled in the box was a thin silver necklace with a delicate glass ballet slipper charm. A note was tucked behind the necklace. I unfolded it and read:
My heart hit the floor. The boy who’d made me fall for him despite every logical reason I had not to … was gone for good. And I’d pushed him away, told him I couldn’t make time for him and ballet. Why? Because I was scared of losing ballet? Scared I couldn’t balance everythi
ng in my life that I loved? What an idiot I’d been. I collapsed against my locker, not wanting to finish the note but knowing I had to.
I stared at the note until the five-minute warning bell rang, and I was forced to grab my books for class. Then I tucked the necklace away. It was beautiful, but I didn’t want the painful reminder of what I’d lost. First Cinderella, and now Lanz. He was thousands of miles away, and I was stuck here, hanging on to thousands of things I wanted—needed—to say to him.
“One scoop or two?” I asked. I watched as the customer struggled to rein in her tantruming toddler.
“What? Oh … two. With extra crushed pineapple.” No sooner had the words left her mouth than her little boy knocked two containers from the counter onto the floor, spraying fruit preserves and M&Ms in every direction. “Liam! Naughty!” She gave me a helpless shrug. “I’m so sorry. He missed his naptime today …”
Outwardly, I managed a monotone, “Don’t worry. I’ll clean it up.” Inwardly, I screamed. If Lanz had been here, he would’ve turned this moment into fun with some good-natured jokes or an entertaining clean-up dance routine. He would’ve had everyone in the shop laughing, including me. There was no laughter this afternoon.
I checked my watch. It was only four o’clock. Another four hours to go till closing time, and right now I was manning the shop solo, while Mom went over the month’s profits with Mr. Sneeves in the back office.
I had nearly finished sweeping up the last of the mess when a familiar voice made my stomach turn to sludge.
“Wait until you see my tutu,” Violet gushed as she stepped through the door along with a group of her friends. “All the costumes were donated from the American Ballet Theatre. They performed Cinderella last season. I’m telling you, it’s gorgeous!”
I focused my attention on the floor, but then I heard, “Oh, Malie!” followed by Violet’s tinkling laugh. “I almost didn’t see you down there.”
I stood up, gritting my teeth. “What can I get for you today?”
Violet slid into a chair by the window and her friends followed suit. “The works! Four Fairy-Tale Ambrosia sundaes and four banana splits. You’ll bring them to the table, right?”
Sundae My Prince Will Come Page 12
