by Sara Leach
“We’ll block it out today, and then we’ll go through the fine-tuning on Saturday.” Miss Carina showed them what they had to do. It started with Jasmine raging alone in the middle of the stage while Shira slowly approached her, tapped her on the shoulder and mimed asking to be friends.
Jasmine’s eyes widened as she watched Miss Carina. Her part of the dance was fast and difficult. It involved a lot of whipping herself around, with a few back rolls and laybacks thrown in.
After Shira approached her, things got easier. They spun around together, holding on to each other’s arms, which looked like fun, and then they ran around the circle of townspeople, as though Shira was introducing Jasmine to all of them.
“I don’t expect you to remember all of the steps today.”
That’s good, Jasmine thought, since you haven’t taught them to us yet.
Miss Carina called the rest of the team back to the center of the room. “Run through the part I taught you a few minutes ago so that you all get your spacing down. Start with the ending pose of the traveling section when you are in your partners, go through the section when you dance around Shira and Jasmine, and finish with the two of them running around you.”
Jasmine went to the far right front of the stage where she and Felicity were to finish the partner work.
Felicity stood with her arms crossed, waiting for Jasmine. “You sure you can handle the spotlight?”
Jasmine took a step back from her. “Yeah.” She wasn’t sure at all, but she wasn’t about to give Felicity the pleasure of hearing her say it.
“It’s impressive that she chose you, it being your first year on the team and all.”
Jasmine shrugged.
“All I’m saying is, you’d think she’d have chosen someone who’d put in the years of work.”
“It’s only a ten-second part, Felicity. It’s not like I’m playing the Sugar Plum Fairy or anything.”
Felicity sniffed.
“Five, six, seven, eight,” Miss Carina called.
The girls jazz-ran into their next formation. Jasmine moved to the center of the stage and curled herself into a ball. That was about all she remembered from Miss Carina’s demonstration. That and a back roll. She tried to do one while everyone else danced their moves, but she got stuck halfway through it. Shira came to tap her on the shoulder, and she had to scramble to her feet.
They hugged. Then they tried the spinning move, but their arms slipped apart and they landed on their butts. Shira started to laugh.
“Girls! Stop!”
Everyone stopped.
“What was that?” Miss Carina was looking at Jasmine and Shira, furious.
“Um, we were trying to do what you did,” Shira said.
“Well, don’t. You’re wasting everyone’s time. I’ll teach it to you on the weekend. Just stand there for now.”
Jasmine bowed her head. Her cheeks flushed. So much for trying to keep up. She could feel the eyes of all the dancers on her and was sure they were asking the same question she was. Why had Miss Carina picked her, the worst dancer on the team?
They ran it again. This time, Jasmine didn’t try to remember any of the moves. She just stood there, feeling like a dork, until Shira tapped her on the shoulder and pulled her by the arm and they ran around the circle.
“Better. Let’s move on to the ending.”
Finally. They were at the end. They had three classes left after this one. Three classes for her to learn the steps well enough that she could forget them and focus on the emotions of the dance.
“I haven’t decided if this is what the ending will be exactly,” Miss Carina said, “but we’ll give it a try.”
Jasmine pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose. How many times was Miss Carina going to change the dance?
“We’ll keep the last move the same, with the group layback. The judges liked that. And we’ll finish with the same ending pose.”
Jasmine nodded. That was good. Even though the layback hurt and was hard to do, at least it was a move they all knew.
“Before that, you’re all going to dance together, in a staggered line across the stage.”
More good news. Nobody had to fight for the front spot if they were in a staggered line.
“This is a celebration,” Miss Carina said. “It should be happy and exciting. It’s also our chance to wow the judges. Jasmine and Shira, you’ll lead the circle into a line. You’ve already run around the inside of the circle. Now, go through the space between Robyn and Darveet and to the left side of the stage. Everyone else follow. Space yourselves out.”
They did as Miss Carina said. “Like that, but move the line farther back.”
Everybody shuffled back.
“We’re going to do a turning sequence. Triple pirouette, double chaînés, then an axel.”
Jasmine could barely do a triple pirouette. And she hated axels. They involved doing chaînés, then jumping off one foot, doing a full turn in the air and landing on the same foot. As if that wasn’t hard enough, you had to tuck both feet up to your butt and whirl your arm around your head at the same time. Jasmine could never get all the pieces together.
“Try it,” Miss Carina said.
They ran through the sequence.
“Jasmine, you’re slow on your pirouette, and you didn’t tuck your legs on the axel. Try it again.”
The next time, Jasmine finished her triple pirouette, but she was so dizzy she almost ran into Melanie on the axel.
“Watch it!” Melanie said.
“Sorry!”
“One more time,” Miss Carina said.
They did it over and over. Miss Carina was never satisfied, and they still had ten seconds of dance to choreograph before the final move.
When class time was up, Miss Carina said, “We’ll have to stop there for today. I’ll see you Saturday. I want you all to practice the choreography we learned today so that I don’t have to reteach anything on the weekend.”
Everybody nodded and headed for their water bottles and clothes.
“You better practice those triples, Jasmine,” Felicity said. “We don’t want you to make any mistakes in the competition.”
Shira jumped in before Jasmine could say anything. “You’re the one who made all the mistakes in the last competition! You told us so yourself!”
“It’s okay, Shira,” Jasmine said. “I do need to practice my triples. And my axels.” She looked straight at Felicity. “I always practice. I always worry about being the one that will let down the team.”
Felicity dropped her eyes to the floor. “Good,” she mumbled, then grabbed her things and ran down the stairs.
“How can you be so calm and nice when she’s so awful?” Shira asked as they walked out a few minutes later.
Jasmine shrugged. “We used to be a team. I want us to be one again.”
Chapter Eight
On Friday, Jasmine sat slumped in her chair, waiting for homeroom to start. Will came in and stopped at her desk.
“What’s up? You look miserable,” he said. “Dance?”
Jasmine sighed. “Yeah. Miss Carina moved me to the front and gave me a duet with Shira.”
Will’s forehead wrinkled. “But that’s what you’ve always wanted! What’s the problem?”
“The problem is that I got what I’ve always wanted, and it sucks. Miss Carina picks on me all the time, she’s giving me harder and harder stuff to do, and the only person on the team who’s still nice to me is Shira.”
Will smirked. “It’s lonely at the top.”
Jasmine sat up in her desk. “I’m serious! I don’t even know why Miss Carina picked me! I danced well once, and she seems to think that means I’m some amazing dancer. But now I can’t keep up. I’m going to let the whole team down.”
<
br /> “No, you’re not. Why don’t we go to the drama room at lunch and you can practice with me?”
“You’d do that?”
“Of course.”
Jasmine smiled for the first time since the practice the night before. “Thanks.”
After math class, she went to find Will. As she neared the drama room, she heard music with a heavy drumbeat blasting from inside. She opened the door a crack and saw Will dancing by himself, unaware that she was watching him.
She cracked the door open another few inches. He didn’t seem to be practicing a set routine—he was just goofing around, trying out moves. He jumped, crossed his legs, spun in a circle to uncross them, then took a wide step to the right and dragged his left foot across the floor before stepping together with a pop of his upper body.
Jasmine pushed the door open farther and strutted toward him, doing her best imitation of a hip-hop dancer, bent over toward the floor and bouncing to the lyrics.
Will looked up in surprise, then smiled and grabbed her hands, pulling her into the dance. They faced each other, snaking their shoulders and ribs back and forth in opposite directions. On the last beats of the music, they came face to face in the center of the room. Will reached around and gripped Jasmine in the small of her back and stepped toward her. Jasmine fell back onto his hand in a layback as the music ended.
“I feel like I’m doing the tango or something!” Jasmine laughed as Will pulled her back up to standing.
“Not quite the same beat,” Will said, his green eyes staring at her from inches away.
Jasmine swallowed and twirled out of his arms. “Thanks for helping me with this. Wanna see my moves?”
“Yeah. I always want to see your moves.”
Jasmine felt herself blush. Did Will mean something more than that? No, he was just Will, and he always would be. She showed him the choreography they’d worked on the day before.
“Not bad,” Will said. “But you need to work on your triple.”
“I know! That’s why I’m here.”
“I thought you weren’t supposed to do stuff like that in lyrical anyway,” Will said.
“So did I,” Jasmine said. “But Miss Carina wants to make the dance flashier and more difficult.”
“I don’t think you’re getting enough power from your preparation,” Will said. “Try doing a deeper plié.”
Jasmine pliéd more deeply.
“No, even deeper.”
“But I feel like I’m in some kind of squat. It must look ridiculous.”
“Doesn’t. And it’s what will get you around three times. Trust me.”
“How do you know about pirouettes?”
“I told you, I used to take ballet when I was younger. Besides, we turn in hip-hop. Just not up on our toes and all pretty.” He popped up onto the ball of his foot and waved his arms around like an octopus dancing.
Jasmine giggled and fell out of her plié. “Stop! That’s not what we look like!”
“Oh, sorry.” He sucked in his cheeks and straightened his back. “Is this more like it?”
Jasmine laughed again. “Better.”
“Then show me your triple.”
Jasmine pliéd so deeply she thought she might drop to the ground, then popped up, straightening her supporting leg, tightening her core muscles and whipping her head around. Once. Twice. Three times.
“You did it!” Will called. “That was way better!”
Jasmine stopped to center herself. “It worked! You’re amazing!” She lunged toward him to give him a hug, then reached up a hand for a high five instead. “You sure you won’t join our team?”
Will shook his head. “We’ve been through this before. Besides, I don’t dance to compete. I dance because I love it.”
“You can compete and love dance,” Jasmine said.
“Doesn’t sound to me like you’re loving it,” Will said.
Jasmine turned away from Will and started chewing on her thumbnail. He was right. But she’d already decided that she was going to see it through to the end of the competition. And she had felt that love for dance, especially when she’d been too angry to think about the steps.
She needed to find a way to make her group a team again and enjoy dance at the same time.
The next day, Jasmine was no closer to solving that problem by the end of her extra practice with Shira. They lay stretched out on the floor, resting for a few moments before the second part of rehearsal began. Miss Carina was in her office. They had spent an intense two hours with her, learning their parts. Jasmine’s head was reeling, and her body ached.
The door opened and Melanie came in.
“Hi, Melanie,” Jasmine called.
Melanie nodded to them but didn’t say anything.
“Here we go again,” Shira said.
Miss Carina came out of her office, her face pinched and pale. “Where is everybody?”
“It’s only five to eleven,” Shira said.
The door opened, and the rest of the team filed in.
“Girls, move it. The clock is ticking. We need to get this dance finished.”
The girls put their stuff down and moved into the studio, still chatting.
“Faster!” Miss Carina said. “And no talking today. We need to get down to business!”
The talking stopped immediately. Jasmine and Shira jumped up to join the group.
Jasmine grimaced. It hadn’t exactly been fun spending two hours almost alone with Miss Carina, but she hadn’t been this mean.
“I want to get the dance finished today, so that we have one class to clean it and a final rehearsal before the competition. No wasting time. Got it?”
Everyone nodded.
“Right. I’m assuming you’ve all practiced your partner work, so we’ll move right into the ending sequence. Show me your triples into axels again.”
They formed their line, Miss Carina counted them in, and they did their triple pirouettes and their axels.
Miss Carina nodded. “Okay. I can live with that. Jasmine, you still need to tuck your foot more on your axel.”
Jasmine’s cheeks burned. Couldn’t Miss Carina at least say something nice about her pirouette?
“We only have three bars of music to finish before you go into your layback together. This is the celebration sequence. I want it to be happy, and to be something that you all do together. I have an idea, but I need to see what it looks like first.” She stared at them, one after the other. It looked like she was doing calculations in her head. “Make a circle.”
“Hasn’t she ever heard of the word please?” Shira muttered in Jasmine’s ear as they moved into a circle.
“Shira!” Miss Carina said. “I said, no talking, no wasting time! Get into the circle or you’ll be doing crunches later!”
Shira flinched beside Jasmine. Jasmine gave her hand a squeeze.
“Stand shoulder to shoulder,” Miss Carina said. “Thread your arms behind the person beside you. Now grab the hand of the next person over on either side.”
It took them awhile to figure that one out, but eventually all the dancers were holding hands.
“Now, chassé to the right.”
They started to move slowly to the right, but each girl kept tripping on the feet of the dancer next to her.
“Ouch!” Darveet called out. “You stepped on me!”
“Sorry,” Shira said. “Hey, Felicity, you kicked me.”
“Girls!” Miss Carina shouted. “Watch where you put your feet.”
“But our legs are too close together,” Melanie said. “We can’t help it.”
“Stop,” Miss Carina said.
The girls came to a standstill with much jostling of shoulders.
“We’ll try something else. Dr
op your hands.” Everybody did as she instructed. “Turn and face outward. Now put your right hand on the shoulder of the person next to you.”
Jasmine put her hand on Felicity’s shoulder. Shira put her hand on Jasmine’s.
“Now,” said Miss Carina. “I want you to do the grapevine step in a circle. Step right, behind with your left, step right, in front with your left.”
The girls moved in a circle, doing the grapevine.
“I’m pretty sure I did this dance at my cousin’s wedding last month,” Shira said.
Jasmine held back her giggle. This was the big showy ending Miss Carina was looking for?
“Stop!” Miss Carina called.
What now?
“I don’t like it,” Miss Carina said. “We’re going to try something else.”
The afternoon dragged on. By the end of the day, they’d tried four more endings, and Miss Carina wasn’t happy with any of them.
“Class dismissed,” she said. “We’ll finish it and clean it on Tuesday.”
“What a waste of time,” Shira said as they pulled on their hoodies and sweatpants.
“Don’t let her hear you say that,” Jasmine whispered, “or she’ll flip.”
“She can’t make me do crunches now that class is over,” Shira said.
“I wouldn’t bet on it.”
Chapter Nine
On Tuesday, Miss Carina greeted the girls at the door by saying, “No warm-up today.”
“Hi, Miss Carina,” Shira said.
The teacher gave Shira a confused look. She had completely missed the sarcasm in Shira’s voice.
“We have to finish the dance today,” Miss Carina said.
Jasmine tried not to roll her eyes. They’d heard that one before. They were supposed to be cleaning the dance today, not finishing it. Why couldn’t Miss Carina pick an ending and stick with it?
“Get into your circle,” the teacher said.
For some reason, it really grated on Jasmine that Miss Carina never said please. Did she think they didn’t deserve to be treated with any respect? Didn’t she understand that they might work harder if they got praised occasionally? Jasmine knew Miss Carina was stressed about getting the dance finished, but didn’t she also realize that the girls deserved to be treated nicely once in a while?
