by Sarah Rubin
Finally, the next station flashes into sight and the train jerks to a halt. I tumble against the door but stay on my feet, and when the doors open I am free. No polite after you for me. I am off the train and pushing my way to the front of the crowd.
I press myself against the wall as people push past. This time my feet listen when I tell them to keep still, and I wait for the crowd to die down. There is a roaring behind me, and the train is gone. The last of the people disappear up the steps and my heart pounds out loud in the empty cavern under the city. The subway smells like moldy bread and old dishwater. I look around.
I can see a small square of blue at the top of the stairway, and I make my way toward it on shaky legs. Blinking hard when I come up into the sun. All around me I can see green, trees and grass, and a large golden statue that shimmers in the early morning sun. I can hear the breeze rustling the leaves just like back home, and birds chirping from high above me. My heart leaps up into my mouth. How far has the train taken me? This doesn’t look like New York City at all. Tears sting my eyes.
I run forward, feet flying over the ground, looking for a way back to the city. A flock of gray birds scatter as I run through them. They spiral up above me, and then land again once I am gone. I could get back on the train, but that might take me even farther away, and I shudder, imagining going back down those steps.
People walk past me, but slow and calm, not like the people in the city at all. Women push big black strollers under the trees, and older boys and girls saunter hand in hand.
I wander forward, farther into the green, until I find a bench, and then I sit down. I feel very small and very lost, and I wonder how will I ever get back to New York City, and if I can’t get back there, how will I ever get home to Mama and Gran. I miss them, sudden and fierce, and a teardrop splashes against the back of my hand.
“You all right, kid?” someone asks from above me.
I look up and see a boy. He’s sixteen or seventeen — not much older than me, and just as freckled. He’s sitting on some sort of a cart hitched up to a beautiful bay mare. The cart is sleek and black with soft red seats on the inside, and large silver bells running along the harness. And now I know for sure I’m not in the city. Who ever heard of a horse in New York? The tears bubble up again, and I bite my lip hard to keep them down. I will not cry, no matter what.
The boy jumps down from the cart. Mama warned me not to talk to strangers in the city. It’s a mean place, she said. But the boy doesn’t look mean, and I’m not in the city anyway.
“What’s the problem?” he asks, scratching the mare with one lazy hand.
I take a deep breath and look at his face. He doesn’t look like he’s up to no good, or a dressed-up devil trying to steal my soul. His clothes look worn and patched but clean, and his face is shaded by a gray wool cap. I hold that breath in, and my toes start tapping. I don’t really have a choice. I need to tell someone, and maybe this boy can help. I let my breath out and the words come tumbling with it.
“I came to New York City to audition for the ballet school, but I got caught in a crowd and pushed underground and” — I fight hard to keep my voice strong — “and when I got off the train, I was here.” I look around at all of the plants. “And I don’t know how to get back.”
The boy’s freckled face cracks open into a smile, and then he starts to laugh. A great rolling sound that gathers speed like a wave. My face goes hot to the tips of my ears, and I’m not scared anymore. I’m mad. I stand up.
I walk away fast and then start to run, moving uphill, farther into the trees. I’ll find my own way back to the city. Even if it means getting back on that train. I can hear him crashing after me, but I don’t care. I will not stand still and listen to someone laughing at me, not for all the corn in Kansas. My face is red from running now, but I don’t stop. I’m heading back to the stairway underground. Back to my audition and back to New York City.
“Wait!” the boy calls after me, but I don’t listen. I didn’t work for weeks in that smelly old hospital and come miles and miles on a bus to be laughed at. My feet tear at the ground like mad dogs, but the thorns and branches keep slowing me down. The stairs aren’t where I remember, and now I feel more lost than before.
I need to stop and think, but he’s still following me. I wish that Mama and Gran were here. I wouldn’t even mind seeing Miss Priss, I think for a moment, and then I step down hard on that. If I never saw the Priss’s crocodile eyes again, it would be too soon.
“Wait!” he calls again, closer this time.
I turn on the heel of my foot, so fast the world spins.
“What?” I say, hands on hips, feet forward in a fighting stance.
“I’m sorry I laughed,” he says. And his face does look sorry. “But, miss — you still are in New York City.”
I stare at the trees, and the green grass, and the bright flowers that run along the side of the path. Then I look at the boy and roll my eyes. “I may only be from Warren, South Carolina, but I’m no dope,” I say.
“No, honest. This is Central Park,” he says. “It’s in the very middle of the city.”
I keep my face disbelieving, because I won’t be teased. But I go all light with hope just the same.
“Come on,” he says. “I’ll show you.”
He grabs my hand and pulls me toward his carriage. I’m part angry, part relieved, part something else altogether. No one’s ever held my hand before, not counting Mama and Gran. Especially not a boy.
He helps me up onto the front of his cart and climbs up on the seat next to me, nudging the mare with a gentle click of his tongue.
“My name’s Mike,” he says.
“I’m Casey,” I say softly. I know I shouldn’t be going with him. But at least in a cart I can see where we’re headed.
“Pleased to meet you, Casey,” Mike says.
The cart moves quickly along the path through the trees, and I struggle to take it all in. One moment we’re riding quietly in the park, and the next moment we leave the trees and I see it. New York is there. Cars rush past us, coming oh-so-close, but the mare doesn’t seem to mind at all, and now that there is no roof over my head I can look up and see the tops of the buildings, higher than high in the sky.
We stop at the edge of the park, and I stare across the road to the other side, where the buildings seem to block out the sun.
“Your first time in the city, huh?” Mike says.
I just nod. I don’t have any words left.
“Where are you headed?”
“I’m going to the School of American Ballet,” I say, reciting the address I memorized from the audition notice, my fingers dancing the words as I say them, toes tapping ’cause I can’t keep them still.
“All right,” Mike says. “It’s not far from here, either. I can take you there for twenty-five cents.”
My heart skips a beat and my face goes blank.
“I don’t have twenty-five cents,” I say. My voice feels small. Is everything in the city so expensive?
“Well, I might be able to do it for twenty . . .” He makes a face like he would be doing me a big favor. I can feel the two dimes Mama gave me tinkling in my pocket, but I don’t reach for them, not yet.
Mike scowls. Another horse and cart is clip-clopping toward us, driven by a man with greasy hair slicked back from one ear to the other.
“What are you doing here, Mikey?” the man says, his voice as greasy as his hair. “This is my patch.”
“I’ve got a fare, Cooper,” Mike says. “Picked her up back on my patch, so don’t try to pull anything fast.”
Mike goes to snap the reins, but I’m too quick for him.
“How much would you charge to take me to the School of American Ballet?” I ask the man.
The man smiles all slow and slithery. “Well,” he says. Part of me wants him to say something low, because Mama would have my hide if she found out I spent my twenty cents on a ride to the audition. But the other part of me wants him to
say something high, because I don’t want to get in his carriage, not one bit. “For a pretty thing like you, I could do it for ten cents . . .”
My heart sinks into my sneakers. But before I can get out of the cart Mike is shouting, “That’s highway robbery, Cooper, and you know it! Anyway, she’s my fare and that’s that.”
Mike snaps the reins and the bay mare moves forward at a trot, leaving the greasy man in the dust behind us.
Mike glares straight forward like his eyes are glued to the road. I stare at him hard, trying to make him turn around with my eyes. He won’t budge.
“You tried to charge me twenty-five cents,” I say, arms crossed.
Mike keeps looking straight down the road like he didn’t hear me at all, but I’m having none of that. I didn’t come to the city to be laughed at, and I certainly didn’t come here to be cheated. I eyeball him hard until he starts to squirm.
“Aw, don’t be sore, Casey. I’m just trying to make a living.”
I keep glaring.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he says. Then, “Fine, I’ll do it for ten.”
“You said ten was highway robbery,” I say. “I’ll give you a nickel. Take it or leave it.”
Mike is quiet for a moment, then he shakes his head and sighs. “All right, you’ve got a deal.”
We both look back at the road, but I can feel him staring at me out of the corner of his eye. I’m sure he’s looking at my knobbly knees bouncing along to the horse’s hooves clip-clopping on the hard sidewalk, and thinking, This girl is no match for the ballet. His stare itches at my skin until I can’t stand it anymore.
“What?” I ask, all sour and sharp.
Mike smiles slowly, like I am some sort of odd joke. “You sure this is your first time to New York?” he asks.
“Of course I’m sure. Don’t you think I’d know if I’d been here before?”
“Calm down there,” he says, raising his hands like he’s protecting himself. His eyes twinkle at me. “I’m just saying you fit right in.”
I’m quiet. I think it must be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. I can feel a smile growing inside me, somewhere way down deep where it doesn’t show. I am Casey Quinn. I am in New York City. And I belong.
Mike whistles and the mare turns right, and left, and right again, taking us down the wide street among the streams of cars. In front of us I can see a tall building, crystal-blue and shining in the afternoon sun. It rises up and up, high above the buildings around it, and at the top it gets narrower and narrower until it looks like a needle threading the clouds.
“That’s the Empire State Building,” Mike says when he sees me staring. “It’s the tallest building in the world. You can pay to go to the top, you know.”
My insides wobble just thinking about being that far away from the ground, and I wonder if there is a railing to keep you from falling over the side.
The cart keeps moving and now I look to the left and the right. We are going by shop after shop. Each one has a big glass window and a fancy display inside. And each display is miles bigger than Willy’s General Store. I lean out of the carriage, looking in the windows, and Mike laughs, but I don’t care.
The cars around us are slowing down, and when I look ahead I can see why. Two enormous roads are coming together, and all the cars in the world seem to be driving through. Buildings covered in posters and lights stretch up and up, and the sidewalks are so thick with people I can’t even see the pavement. The air is filled with the smell of exhaust, which makes me splutter and cough. We’ve got cars in Warren, but not enough to fill the street with gray smoke.
“This is Times Square,” says Mike. “And that’s a subway station.” He points at a set of stairs leading down beneath the ground, and I can hear the rumble of the deep-down train coming up at me. “They’ll take you all over the city, if you know where you’re going.”
I know he’s teasing and I should be mad, but I am too busy looking at Times Square to care. I think my eyes will burst trying to look at everything all at once. The picture shows advertised in lights, the billboards for Admiral Television Appliances and Chevrolet, Canadian Club Whisky and Pepsi-Cola. Women in fancy fur coats walking through the street, their hands heavy with bright paper bags from the department stores and hatboxes held shut with colored twine. Men in blue and brown suits tipping their hats as the ladies pass.
And the sound. The city seems to be a drumbeat. Honking horns, the clatter of carts rolling by, and the chorus of the vendors selling pretzels and hot dogs and hot roasted peanuts that smell like summertime. It wiggles inside my ears and travels down to my toes, making my feet hip and hop along the floor of the cart. Tapping along to the beat of the street, dancing the city. Everything is fast and loud, and I love it all.
My heart spins inside me, leaping like the ballerina I’m going to be. I will be back in New York City in no time flat. One day my name will be lit up in lights.
Mike drops me off at the corner.
“Go straight down that street and don’t let anyone push you onto the subway,” he says, winking at me. “You’re supposed to pay for that, too, you know.”
I scowl, but I don’t really mean it. I say thank you for the tour, and then I give him one of Mama’s dimes. I want to give him the whole ten cents after all, but he insists on giving me a nickel change. “A deal’s a deal,” he says.
I wave good-bye to Mike and watch him whistle his horse and cart away. Then I turn and walk up the street in the direction he showed me. All along the sidewalk, hot puffs of smelly steam burst up through metal grates, and I can hear the subway rumbling beneath my feet. My stomach flips thinking about the thousands of people down there, racing underground across the city. I walk carefully around each grate, just in case I might fall through. I don’t think I’d like being that far away from the sun again; it would make me feel pinched in and nervous.
But I don’t feel nervous now. I can see the numbers on the buildings, counting down to the School of American Ballet. I’m only ten buildings away, then eight, then six. My feet dance beneath me with glee. I’m almost there. Five buildings left. The world seems to slow down as I move faster, people slipping by me like in a dream. Four.
It’s a dream, all of it, but it isn’t. I’m really here.
Three. Two. One.
Casey Quinn has arrived.
I am an hour early when I burst through the doors of the ballet studio. So are a lot of girls. I’ve only ever pressed my nose up against the window of Vicky’s Ballet Studio, but I already know this is ten times as grand. The lobby alone is bigger than Vicky’s whole building. And it is full of other girls in pink ballet gear, stretching their legs and pointing their toes and practicing perfect spins in front of a marble wall so shiny it could be a mirror. It seems like every girl in New York is here.
The floor in the lobby is clean white marble, and there are pictures of beautiful dancers hanging on the walls, leaping through the air like they’ve never heard of gravity. I crane my head back to look at the ceiling. It is higher than high, it must be miles up, and the sound of all of the girls getting ready echoes back and forth. For a moment, I feel very alone. So many girls. The ballet can’t possibly take us all, and we’re just the early ones.
Then I take a breath. I sit down on a bench and fold my arms. I will not be intimidated. I am one Casey Quinn. I was born to dance and I did not come all the way from Warren, South Carolina, to run away crying.
I take my lunch out of my bag. Mama’s made me peanut butter and jelly, and it squidges inside my mouth. All around me girls are primping and preening. Some even put on lipstick, like that will impress the judges. I finish my sandwich in five greedy bites and swallow it down. I smile on the inside, because it makes me think of Mama and Gran, like they’re here, cheering me on.
I’m sitting close to the big glass door at the front of the lobby, so I have plenty of time to get out of the way when I see Miss Priss Ann-Lee and her mother come up the steps. Mrs. Ryder gi
ves Prissy a hug and waves good-bye as she watches her walk through the big glass door. But I don’t keep watching after that. Of all the things I don’t want to deal with today, the Priss is number one.
I walk down the hall, past the changing room, and find a small shop run by the school. Inside the window, I can see they sell books and bags and other things about ballet. There are also tights and leotards. And shoes. There, right in the window, is a brand-new perfect pair of ballet slippers. Creamy pink leather with split soles. I sigh as I press my nose to the glass, fogging the window.
“They’re pretty nice,” a voice says. Standing next to me is a girl with frizzy brown hair and blue eyes. “I’m Lily,” she says, and her smile is warm.
“I’m Casey,” I say.
“That’s an unusual name.” I start to get angry, but then she says, “It’ll be great when you’re famous. Actually, my name is really Andrea, but that’s too boring for a ballerina. I thought I’d try Lily today, but I can’t really get used to it.”
“I think Andrea is a nice name.”
“That’s the problem. No one remembers a nice name. I want a famous name.” She sighs dramatically, like an actress. Then she smiles. “Are you here by yourself?”
“Yeah.”
“Me, too.” Andrea takes my arm. She just slips her hand into the crook of my elbow. No one’s ever done that before, and it feels a little strange. But Andrea doesn’t seem to notice and just steers me toward the changing room, talking to me about other auditions she’s been to, like we’ve been friends all our lives. It’s good to have a friend here. I don’t need one, but it’s nice.
The changing room is so full it is hard to move. Everywhere legs are stretching into tights, and arms flash out suddenly as girls loop leotards over their arms. I have to duck twice to avoid being hit. The air is filled with chatter and the sound of people rushing to and fro. Andrea drags me through the room, smiling and waving to people she already knows.
