Perfectly Prima

by Whoopi Goldberg

  “And you get crowns, too,” Al says, pulling sparkly circlets out of a bag.

  I can barely speak. “It’s so beautiful,” I breathe, touching the skirt.

  JoAnn doesn’t share my reaction. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” she says, shaking her head. I haven’t seen JoAnn in a dress since our fifth birthday party. The last time Mom bought her a dress, she cut the skirt into two pieces and stapled them up the middle to make pants. Mom gave up after that.

  Jessica elbows JoAnn. “Shhh,” she says. “I think it’s just lovely.”

  Al’s mom comes up behind us. “I’m glad to hear it,” she says, smiling. “I think it’s pretty nice, too.” She picks up the dress by the hanger and twirls it around. The tulle drifts through the air dreamily. “Let’s try them on.” She examines a tag in the dress. “Jerzey, this one is yours.”

  I take it and go into the makeshift dressing room, which is a curtain they’ve hung up on one side of the room. JoAnn and Jessica join me, carrying their dresses. I pull off my pink ruffled T-shirt and slip on the dress, then take my jeans off underneath. There’s no mirror in here, so I can’t see what I look like. But the dress fits perfectly.

  We step past the curtain. Our friends gather around and admire us.

  “You guys are the lucky ones this time,” Al says, sounding the teeniest bit jealous. She got to be the Sugar Plum Fairy at the last dance recital, and her mom made her a gorgeous dress. But this one is just as nice. Even better, because it’s pink, my very favorite color.

  Jessica looks so pretty. She spins around and the skirt wafts out, then drifts gracefully down again. But JoAnn looks at her dress in horror.

  “You gotta find your inner ballerina, girlfriend,” Epatha says to her. “She’s in there somewhere.”

  “She’s probably drowning in all this pink stuff,” JoAnn replies, picking up the top layer of tulle and dropping it experimentally, as though it was some substance that aliens just brought to Earth.

  “Beautiful!” Al’s mom exclaims. “You ladies all look terrific. Did you get to admire yourselves?”

  I’d almost forgotten we’re in a ballet studio—one of the walls is covered with mirrors. I race over, with Jessica right behind me. The dresses are perfect. We look like twin princesses—well, almost twins, since I’m skinnier and Jessica has her special ballet shoe on.

  “I can’t wait,” I say to her as we face the mirror together, with matching grins on our faces.

  “Me, either,” she says.

  The other girls come up behind us in their brightly colored outfits. “It’s gonna be a good show,” Terrel says, smiling with satisfaction.

  A little Ballet One girl comes in. “Are you guys the Princesses?” she asks.

  “Yes,” says Jessica.

  “Mr. Lester wants to see you outside. He was afraid to come in on account of there maybe being girls in underwear here.”

  JoAnn snorts as we walk out.

  Mr. Lester is waiting by the stairs. “Great news, girls,” he says. “Ms. Debbé was so impressed with your dance that she’s moving it to the very end of the program. That’s sort of the place of honor, you know.”

  “Even after the big kids?” asks Terrel.

  “Even after the big kids,” Mr. Lester says. “You’ve done a really good job—especially you, Jerzey. Ms. Debbé told me your sisters didn’t even help you. It’s just amazing how things could fall into place like that for you.”

  Once again, I feel a little guilty, but I try to push it out of my mind. And once Jessica and I start talking about how good our dance will be, I manage to forget it completely.

  That night, I sit in my room, under my pink canopy, and think about how different I feel now from the way I felt a week ago. I would have never believed there could be such a big change in a person in such a short time. The old me would have been sitting on my bed now, too, but she’d have been worrying about doing everything wrong in the recital. The new me knows the steps. To prove it, I get up, do the first part of the dance, and finish with a spin (or a spinning jump shot). I smile. Nothing’s going to go wrong now.

  Then a sharp yell echoes down the hall—it sounds like JoAnn—followed by a crash. Then there’s nothing but silence.

  Chapter 15

  I race out of my room, nearly crashing into Jessica, who’s doing the same thing. We run to JoAnn’s room and find her lying on the floor, moaning softly. Mason comes in, eyes wide with worry.

  Mom and Dad thunder up the stairs at the same time. “What happened?” Dad barks—it’s a huge change from his usually dreamy demeanor.

  “Tripped…” JoAnn says. “Leg hurts. Bad.” She grimaces, closing her eyes in pain.

  “I’ll call nine-one-one,” Mom says, running from the room.

  It seems to take hours for the paramedics to arrive, but later Dad says it was really only five minutes. A short, pudgy guy and a tall, lanky woman come upstairs with a stretcher. The woman gingerly examines JoAnn’s rapidly swelling leg and announces that it’s broken.

  JoAnn’s skateboard is lying two feet away from her. It’s obvious that she tripped on it. But Mom doesn’t say anything. I guess part of being a good parent is knowing when not to say, “I told you so.”

  “What can I do?” Dad asks. “Can I get her anything?”

  The guy says no, they just need to get her to the hospital.

  “You all stay here,” Mom says to Dad, Jessica, Mason, and me. “I’ll ride in the ambulance and let you know what’s happening.”

  The woman gently lifts JoAnn’s shoulders while the man moves her hips onto the stretcher. JoAnn hollers, blinking back tears. Jessica, frozen by the door, looks very scared.

  My stomach is doing flip-flops. “Is she going to be okay?” I ask the man.

  He looks over his shoulder. “She should be fine,” he assures me. “She just won’t be doing any skateboarding for a while.”

  Mom walks beside the stretcher, holding JoAnn’s hand. We watch as the paramedics carry her out the door and down the stairs, to where the ambulance is waiting. It’s dark, chilly, and damp outside. It must have just stopped raining. The reflections of the ambulance’s flashing red lights gleam in the puddles. It would be pretty if I weren’t so scared.

  The paramedics push JoAnn into the back of the ambulance. Mom ducks and climbs in beside her. Dad, Mason, Jessica, and I stand there motionless as the ambulance pulls away, sirens blaring. It’s stupid, but I want Mom to turn around and wave good-bye to us, because that would make things seem like they were going to be okay. But she doesn’t.

  We go inside in silence. Dad seems at a loss. He’s still holding the newspaper he was reading when JoAnn fell. He’s twisted it up into a little tube, and just keeps twisting and twisting it. “Well,” he says, “why don’t you go play, and I’ll let you know when your mom calls with any news?”

  Play? Like we’re going to play when our sister’s in an ambulance. I love Dad, but, like I said, he can be a bit clueless.

  “Can we just stay in your study with you?” Jessica asks.

  He stares uncomprehendingly at the paper in his hands, as if he’s wondering how it got there and why it’s twisted up. “Ah,” he says. “Oh, yes, of course. Of course you don’t want to play now.”

  We all go into his study. The walls are covered with masks Dad has collected during trips to Africa with his students. Usually, I think they’re exotic and cool, but right now they look menacing, glaring at us through their empty eyeholes.

  Dad sits in his chair at the desk. Jessica slouches on the burgundy-upholstered bench against the wall. I sink into the thick oriental carpet.

  Mason comes over to me. “Can I sit by you, Jerzey?” he asks.

  He collapses onto the floor beside me, and I put my arm around him.

  “It’ll be okay, Mason,” Jessica says.

  Mom doesn’t call. And doesn’t call. “These things take time,” Dad says, as if trying to explain things to himself as well as to us. After a while, Mason falls asleep
against me, and Dad carries him upstairs and puts him to bed.

  Finally the phone rings. JoAnn’s going to need surgery to have the broken bone set. “You girls might as well get some rest,” Dad tells us. “I’m sure everything will be fine in the morning.”

  As I lie in bed trying to go to sleep, I play the whole thing over again in my head. “She just won’t be doing any skateboarding for a while,” the paramedic had said.

  And then I realize JoAnn won’t be doing any dancing for a while, either.

  Chapter 16

  “That’s an extreme way to get out of wearing a frilly costume, girlfriend,” Epatha says. “Excellent cast color, though.”

  We’re in the hospital two days later, next to JoAnn’s bed—Mom, Dad, Jessica, Mason, Epatha, and me. JoAnn has an enormous, lime green cast covering her leg from thigh to ankle. It was a pretty bad break, the nurse said, and they had to put some metal pins in the bone to set it. “So I’m part human, part machine now,” JoAnn tells Epatha with pleasure.

  “Yeah, right. More like part human, part paper clip,” Epatha says. We’re all in much better moods now that we know JoAnn is going to be okay.

  Mom stands up. “We’re going to need to let our patient get some more rest,” she says. “It’s been a very social afternoon.”

  Al, Terrel, and Brenda have already been here. Al’s mom brought them all by right after school. Brenda was very interested in all the beeping medical equipment surrounding JoAnn. She wanted to know exactly what type of fracture JoAnn has and exactly how they fixed it. When the doctor came in to examine JoAnn, Brenda grilled her with so many questions that the doctor said she felt as if she were back in medical school. Then Epatha and her big sister, Amarah, came two seconds after the other girls left.

  We all stand up to go—all except Dad, who’s going to stay with JoAnn. “Hey, guys,” JoAnn says to Jessica and me, “I’m sorry about the dance show. I guess I wrecked it for you.”

  “Oh, goodness!” Mom says. “I’d completely forgotten. I’ll call Mr. Lester the minute we get home.”

  As we walk out into the gray late afternoon, I think about the dance. I’m trying really hard not to be disappointed about it, because the important thing is that JoAnn’s okay. But I feel tears start to form in the corners of my eyes anyway. I was finally going to get to wear a pretty costume. And I was going to be a good dancer, for the first time in my life.

  A snowflake drifts down from the sky as we walk home.

  “Snow!” Jessica says. It’s the first snow of the season.

  We all stop and look up. The streetlamps have just come on, and the snowflakes dance in their light—first just a few, then more and more.

  If only there were a way to do our dance without JoAnn. But it’s definitely a threeperson dance. It would look stupid and unbalanced with only two.

  “I caught one on my tongue!” Mason says, spinning around with his mouth hanging open, trying to catch another. “Look!”

  That’s when I have my idea.

  Chapter 17

  “Oh, no. No way,” Mason says, arms folded defiantly.

  As soon as we got home, I’d grabbed Mason, pulled him upstairs, shut the door behind us, and explained my plan. If he does the dance, the show can go on. And I can also come clean about not learning the dance by myself, which I’ve been feeling worse and worse about as everyone continues to treat me like some ballet miracle girl.

  “But it’ll be fun!” I say. “You’ll get to be onstage in front of a whole bunch of people! Just like…” I grope for some comparison that will entice him. “Just like an NBA player.”

  Mason exhales. “I’ve never seen an NBA player dressed like a stupid princess,” he says. “And you haven’t, either. Besides, you promised you wouldn’t tell anyone I could do that dance.”

  I bounce up and down on my toes. “I haven’t told anyone. But you could save the day. You could be a superhero, like Superman.”

  Mason shakes his head violently. “Superheroes do not dance,” he says.

  “Oh, yes, they do,” I say, thinking quickly. “They have to learn to dance, in case they need to spy on bad guys at fancy balls.”

  He looks as if he may be considering this. “Even if they do, they don’t wear dresses.”

  Oops. He’s got that right.

  “What if…” I stop and think desperately. “What if the dance isn’t the Three Princesses? What if it’s Two Princesses and a Handsome Prince? Or a Handsome Knight?”

  I’ve got his attention.

  “A Robo-Knight?” he asks.

  “A Robo-Knight,” I say firmly. “A very handsome Prince Robo-Knight who wears a cool costume.”

  He contemplates this. “What kind of costume?” he asks.

  “Something really great,” I say. “Girls love knights,” I add, to distract him from my lack of concrete costume ideas. “And they love dancers. Remember how Epatha says she wants to dance at her wedding?”

  I can tell he’s wavering.

  “I’ll bet she’d think you were really handsome in a Prince Robo-Knight outfit,” I say.

  “Really?” he says.

  “Really,” I reply firmly.

  He thinks for another minute. “Okay,” he agrees. “I’ll do it. But no stupid frilly things. And nothing pink.”

  I race down the stairs, Mason at my heels. “Mom!” I yell. “Don’t call Mr. Lester yet!”

  Chapter 18

  Mason shows Mom the dance. She’s astonished at how good he is and calls Ms. Debbé immediately. It takes some convincing to get Ms. Debbé to agree to the last-minute personnel change for our dance, even after she learns that Mason taught me the steps. It’s a good thing Mom’s career as a lawyer gives her lots of practice at talking people into things, because that’s what gets Ms. Debbé to agree.

  But that isn’t the only problem. Getting a Robo-Knight costume together in one day is not going to be easy.

  After school the next day, all the nonhospitalized Sugar Plums meet at Al’s house. We stand in the sewing room, and Al’s mom gives us instructions. I cut fabric, because I am neat. Terrel organizes. Brenda analyzes the best way to cut up the silver plastic sheeting we found in order to make knight armor. Al runs and brings supplies to each of us, because she knows where everything is. Jessica helps with the hand-sewing because she is careful and doesn’t mind doing repetitive things like making tiny little stitches. And Epatha keeps Mason out of our way until it’s time for his fitting.

  Finally the costume is ready. Al’s mom helps Mason into his leggings and his armor with the built-in robot control panel. She places his helmet, complete with antenna, on his head.

  “Wow,” he breathes, as he admires himself in the mirror.

  “Can you dance in that, Mason?” Al’s mom asks. He executes a neat pirouette. She laughs and shakes her head. “Amazing.”

  That night, when we’re supposed to be in bed, I realize that this is the second time Mason’s saved me. Without him I wouldn’t know the dance. And without him, we wouldn’t be able to dance in the recital.

  I tiptoe into Mason’s room. His lights are off, and I wonder if he’s already asleep.

  “Hey, Mason,” I say.

  “What?” he says sleepily.

  “Thanks for saying you’ll do the dance. It means a lot to me.”

  “You’re welcome, Jerzey,” he says, rolling over.

  In just a few seconds I hear his even breathing. He’s asleep already. In the dim light I can just make out his chest gently rising and falling as he breathes.

  “I love you,” I say, really quietly, so he won’t hear.

  The form in his bed shifts. “I love you, too,” he replies.

  I freeze, then smile and tiptoe out of the room.

  Chapter 19

  “Please hurry, Mason. We’re on in just a few minutes,” Jessica says.

  It’s the night of the recital, and we’re in one of the classrooms getting our costumes on. Well, getting Mason’s costume on. Jessica and I have
been dressed for ages, but Mason insisted on going out into the audience to watch the other girls do the Rainbow dance.

  “She was great,” he says as he struggles with his shirt buttons. We don’t have to ask: we all know he means Epatha.

  The Rainbow girls join us. “Good luck, you guys,” Al says.

  Jessica turns to me. “Ready?” she asks.

  I nod.

  “How about you, handsome Robo-Knight?”

  “Yup,” Mason says.

  “Then let’s go.” Jessica leads us out the door, down the hallway, and to the area behind the stage. We can see out into the audience. Mom, Dad, and JoAnn are in the front row. JoAnn’s cast is sticking out in front of her, so green that it nearly glows in the dark. Miss Camilla is in the front row, right beside them.

  Onstage, the older girls who are dancing in the number before ours are nearly finished. When their music ends, they curtsy and leave the stage. Mr. Lester walks on, looking a little discombobulated.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he says, “thank you again so much for joining us here tonight at the Nutcracker School of Ballet. There’s been a slight change in the program. The final dance, instead of the Three Princesses, is going to be Two Princesses and Prince Robo-Knight. Mason Deene will be dancing the part of the prince.”

  Backstage, Mason gives a satisfied nod.

  Jessica, Mason, and I walk onstage and join hands. Our music begins. We do chassés and leaps, turns, and jump shots—well, ballet jump shots. We move in a circle, our right hands joined, as if we’re dancing around a maypole. Mason has a huge grin on his face, and Jessica winks at me.

  Before I know it, the dance is over. As applause fills the room, Jessica and I curtsy, and Mason executes the manly bow that we taught him last night. Ms. Debbé looks a bit faint, but happy, and Mom, Dad, and JoAnn are clapping so loud I think their hands may fall off.

  When people start to leave, we go out into the audience.

  Miss Camilla nods at me, a big smile on her face. She doesn’t say a word. She doesn’t have to.