by Sarah Rubin
“Well, aren’t you gonna unpack?” I say, opening my suitcase on the bed and pulling out my bundle of folded belongings.
“I guess,” she says, quiet and slow.
It only takes me three minutes to empty my suitcase and put everything away in the dresser at the end of my bed. I look over at the Priss, but she’s only managed to unpack one dress. She looks at me, all hopeful. I heave a heavy sigh and start to help her. I hang up the dresses but let her deal with her own underwear, because there is no way I am touching those.
“Thank you,” she says quietly, and sits down on the bed.
I want to shake her by the shoulders and give her face a slap. We did it! I want to yell. We’re here in New York City! Stop acting so humdrum and smile!
Instead I just sigh again. “Come on,” I say. “Let’s go find the bathroom.”
The bathroom is at the end of the hall.
“We have to share?” The Priss looks like she found a bug in her breakfast.
“Of course we have to share — it’s a boarding house,” I say, but she still looks so lost I let her come in and brush her teeth with me. I can see her staring at me in the mirror, and it makes me uneasy. Back in Warren, I knew what was what. Miss Priss was the meanest, no-good brat in town, stuck-up and spoiled as month-old whipped cream. But in New York City, she is wobbly as Gran’s Jell-O.
I spit hard in the sink and rinse out my mouth. It isn’t fair. Ann-Lee has been nothing but nasty to me, and now she wants me to make her feel all better. I refuse. I stalk down the hall and into our room, and put on my pajamas without a word. I can feel the Priss behind me, wanting to talk, wanting to be my best friend. She can go jump in a lake. I pull the covers all the way up to my nose, and peep out at the window.
“Good night?” Priss Ann says.
I don’t say anything, and the bedroom light goes out with a click.
Outside, the street is full of life. I can hear the cars driving past, and their headlights flick up through the window and move across our wall. There’s another sound, too, a sort of low snuffling coming from Ann-Lee’s bed. I know without listening too hard that she’s crying. It makes me feel a little sorry for her, but I don’t want to feel sorry. Not for the Priss. Not for anyone. I close my ears to the crying and listen to the sounds of the city.
I wake up early, and for a minute I don’t know where I am. The sound of footsteps outside my door and cars rushing past on the street make me sit up bolt straight. And then I remember. I am here. I am in New York City. I smile wide as wide can be and sit up, as awake as my smile.
The Priss is snoring in the next bed. How can anyone sleep in on a day like this? I get dressed quietly, dancing from foot to foot and trying not to let the floorboards creak under my feet. There is a deep well of worry in my stomach, because today is the first day at my new high school, but I swallow it away. I am Casey Quinn, and nothing is gonna stop me now. Besides, in her last letter Andrea promised to meet me near the school so we could walk in together. I wonder what it will be like to go to school and have someone to sit with. Just thinking about it makes me smile even more.
Downstairs, the kitchen is full of elbows and legs pushing to get to the stove, where a big pot of porridge is bubbling. But it’s still too warm for porridge, and my stomach isn’t in the mood for food. I see Ann-Lee’s feet on the wooden stairs and I scoot out the front door. I am not walking to my first day of new school behind Her Majesty. No way. I close Mrs. Everton’s front door behind me. Then I take a deep breath and start walking.
I walk hard and fast, keeping my eyes open for the street signs. I’ve practiced this walk in my head with my map a million times, but now that I’m actually doing it, everything is different from how I imagined it. The streets are bigger and full of people shoving their way to work. And no one spares a second to look at me, even with my ratty-tatty high-tops slapping along the sidewalk.
Everyone looks like they know where they’re going, and it makes me feel lost right away. But when I look up, I can see the street signs clear as you please, and I follow them past the big brown houses on Mrs. Everton’s block, past the park, and toward the center of the city, where the buildings are so high I can hardly see the sunshine.
I am so busy watching the signs that I don’t see Andrea until she is right in front of me.
My feet stop fast. I am breathing hard. She is standing on the other side of the street, waving at me. I wave back and my heart flip-flops in my chest, because part of me thought she wouldn’t really be here. That it was too good to be true. But she is here.
The lights finally go red and the cars stop, and we run into the middle of the street.
“Casey!” Andrea shouts. Her smile is bright and wide, like a crescent moon, and her brown curls bounce around her face. “You made it!” She wraps her arms around me, and I laugh because I don’t know what else to do.
“You’re here!” I say.
“Of course I’m here. I said I’d be here, didn’t I?”
I nod, but I still can’t believe it, not really. The lights change and a taxi blares its horn. Andrea grabs my arm and pulls me out of the street and back onto the sidewalk.
My heart is still hammering as Andrea slips her arm through mine. We walk down the sidewalk together. It seems like the whole city is alive. Gusts of hot steam shoot out at us from the subway vents, making me jump. Andrea laughs, but she isn’t laughing at me. And I laugh, too.
Andrea tells me about living with her big sister and her husband and their new baby in a tiny two-bedroom apartment, but she says it doesn’t matter, because when she’s a famous ballerina she will have her own penthouse and a bathroom all to herself so she can soak in the tub as long as she likes without her brother-in-law’s smelly socks hanging from the shower rail.
“My sister’s impossible,” Andrea says, rolling her eyes. “And all she thinks about is the baby. I wish I could live in the boarding house with you. We’d have so much fun.”
“I wish you could, too,” I say. “I have to share a room with Miss Priss Ann-Lee.”
“That stuck-up girl from the audition? Don’t worry, I’ll give her snake-eyes at ballet lessons for you.”
Andrea grins at me, and I grin back— a bit uneasy, because I’ve never had a friend before, not really. I’ve had Mama and Gran, but they’re family. This is different.
“Oh, I forgot! Show me your class schedule, the one the school sent you,” Andrea says.
I open my bag and pull out the folded piece of paper that was mailed to Mama.
Andrea holds up a piece of paper just like it and looks at them together. Then she crows.
“See, we’re in the same homeroom, and in English and math together. They split us up for science, but we have the same lunch period and everything!” She smiles at me, and her curls seem to bounce with joy.
“Come on, we’ll be late,” she says, and pulls me faster along the sidewalk.
New York City is so different from Warren I can hardly believe it. Back home I stuck out like a sore thumb, but New York is too full of people for anyone to notice me at all. It makes me feel good, like I fit in, but it makes me feel kind of lonely, too. Like no one in the world would notice if I slipped and fell into a subway grate. It makes me glad to be walking to school with Andrea.
As we turn a corner, I see a big brick building with “Lincoln High School” carved in stone on the front. There must be hundreds of other students streaming in through the doors. Andrea and I join them. Everyone is moving fast, shoving books and bags into lockers.
“Come on,” Andrea says. “Looks like the first bell already rang. We don’t want to be late on our first day!”
The halls are enormous, and there must be fifty doors to choose from. I look down at my schedule.
“Where do you think we need to go?” I ask, feeling dizzy with the smell of bleach and old shoes.
Andrea looks around. “This way.”
We tumble through the door of our homeroom, laughing.
> The whole room turns to look at us, and I choke the sound back into my mouth, but Andrea doesn’t stop moving. She pulls me to the back of the room, and we sit side by side in two empty desks.
A second later the door opens again. The teacher comes in. Her name is Miss Spitz and she looks sour as a pail full of crab apples, with pointy cat-eye glasses on a long chain. There is a buzz and crackle as the loudspeaker turns on, and it makes me jump in my seat. Andrea puts her hand over her mouth to hide her giggle, and I can feel the laugh bubbling up inside of me, too, but one look from the front of the room and I pinch my lips together and keep quiet.
“Can you believe her glasses?” Andrea says as we head to our first class. She crosses her eyes, and I laugh. “We have math next. I think that’s upstairs.”
The hallways are full of students, the sound of hundreds of feet and voices louder than I could ever have imagined back in Warren. New York City high school kids seem older somehow, too. I feel very small.
Math is the worst, but the class is so big, it’s easy to find a seat in the back. The teacher is young and pretty, but I don’t think she likes being a teacher very much. She just looks tired as she hands out our textbooks and tells us to start reading from page one.
Andrea and I get split up for science. Being split up is awful, but the science class isn’t so bad. Mr. Eisner is a balding old man, but he spends the class demonstrating different-colored explosions behind a big glass plate. The room is so filled with smoke by the end, we can hardly breathe. I can’t imagine ever getting to do an experiment in Warren.
At lunch, I am lost for a minute. The cafeteria is bigger than the whole school building back home, and it is buzzing with too many people to count. But I won’t let them scare me. Besides, they hardly even notice me. I stand up straight and head toward the line for lunch.
“Casey, up here!” Andrea is already in line, and I scoot in behind her.
“What is this?” I say, looking at my lunch for the first time as we sit down at a table in the concrete school yard.
“I think it’s supposed to be macaroni and cheese.”
But it don’t look nothing like Gran’s, or Mama’s. The cheese is wet and runny, and the pasta is so hard it’s crunchy. But I’m hungry. I skipped breakfast at Mrs. Everton’s. My stomach rumbles. I wrinkle my nose, and shudder as I eat.
Suddenly I see the Priss. She’s eating macaroni and cheese, too, but she’s sitting alone, her eyes big and red like she’s been crying. For a moment, I feel sorry for her. And then I make myself remember all the times she tripped me at lunch, sitting with her ballet bunch and sneering at me ’cause I ate all alone. Serves her right, I say to myself.
“What are you looking at?” Andrea asks, turning around.
“Nothing,” I say, and I don’t look in the Priss’s direction again.
After school, Andrea and I skip away quick. We’re both excited about why we’re really here: to dance.
“That was awful. We already have ten tons of homework, and it’s only the first day.” Andrea pretends to stagger under the weight of her books.
We walk together, talking about our day, until we get to the end of the street.
“Well, this is where I go left and you go right,” Andrea says.
I stop and look at my feet. They are pointing toward the dance studio, but seem stuck to the sidewalk. I look back at Andrea. My lungs are so full of words, none of them can get out. I can only manage the most important question.
“I’ll see you tomorrow?” I ask.
Andrea just rolls her eyes. “Of course, silly. Same place, same time, rain or shine! Good luck at dance class!”
“You, too,” I say. Then my feet pull free, and I turn around and skip the other way, dancing my joy to the beat of other people’s feet, and not caring one bit who looks my way.
It’s only two more blocks to Miss Martha’s studio. I push through the door with a flourish. I want to bow, because here I am. But the woman behind the desk doesn’t even look up. I walk over to her and wait.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m Casey Quinn,” I say. “I start the scholarship program today.”
The woman looks at me, from the top of my head to of the bottom of my scruffy old high-tops.
I wait for her to sniff, or maybe even scowl. But she doesn’t.
She smiles.
“Up the stairs. Changing rooms are on the right.”
As I walk up the stairs, the air is already filled with the sound of music looping through it like a crooked spinning top. My heart jumps up, ready to join in.
In the changing room I wriggle out of my school clothes and pull on the dance outfit Gran made me. It’s a good thing I made holes in my tights, because I’ve grown another inch this summer.
There are two other girls in the changing room. They both look shy and nervous, sitting on either end of a long bench.
“Hi,” I say, because Andrea has made me brave. “I’m Casey.”
They look up all jittery, like startled rabbits.
I think back in Warren I would have worried they didn’t like me, but in New York I don’t care. “Well, I guess I’d better go in,” I say.
I waltz my way into the dance studio, the two other girls close behind me. There is a woman at the front, stretching herself out on the floor. I recognize her from my audition. She’s the one who showed us how Miss Martha wanted us to move. She is long and lithe as a willow tree bowing its branches to the river.
The room fills up with the rest of the class. They all seem nervous, too, looking around the room with wide eyes.
Then the door to the classroom opens. Miss Martha doesn’t just walk into a room. She arrives, and everyone knows it. It’s like the air changes around her and we can all feel it. We stare at her. Even if I was blindfolded, I think I would know she’d arrived. She sweeps in, wearing a long-sleeved black leotard and full black skirt. With one clap of her hands, the entire room lines up.
“Welcome, class,” she says. Her voice is strong and fills up the room. We have no choice but to listen. “This is Edith. She is a member of my dance company and she will be helping me teach the beginner class. It will be hard work and I expect you all to keep up. We will start with basic drills. First you will observe Edith.” She nods to the pianist, and he starts playing.
Edith steps to the middle of the floor and sits down. Her back is to the room, her long black hair hanging over it like a curtain, but I can see her face in the large mirrored wall in front of us. Her eyes are open, but she isn’t looking at herself. She’s looking somewhere far away.
The music shifts and Edith begins. First with bounces like we did at the audition, sitting with our soles together and bobbing our bodies toward our feet. I try to memorize each movement with my muscles, just so I can do it better than before. After bounces, Edith sits straight up and begins to twist, her arms out at her sides, sweeping though the air. Then she shifts again, onto her knees. I recognize this movement from my audition, too, and it makes me think of Gran, but it doesn’t hurt so much this time, because I know Gran would be proud to see me here.
The music stops, and Edith returns to her original position.
“Now you will try,” Miss Martha says.
The entire class spreads itself over the floor. I am sitting right behind Edith. The music swells and away we go. I sat behind Edith so I could follow her if I needed to, but I don’t. I can remember the moves like they live inside of me. Tumble. Curl. Leap. Dive. Stretch up. Higher. Up to the sky. My stomach muscles start to shake and my face is slick with sweat. But Miss Martha isn’t going to let us stop now. Oh, no. We just got started.
“Again.” Miss Martha claps. “This time I want you to feel the movement, feel it extend out of your body and fill the room.”
The music starts again. My thighs wobble and I grit my teeth, because I will not quit. Not on my first day, not ever. I tell my legs to stretch, and picture myself as tall as the sky, filling the room with my movements.
“Now Edith will demonstrate falls.”
Miss Martha barks out the counts and Edith curls slowly to the ground, coiling gracefully around her hip until she is flat on the floor, and then reverses the motions until she is standing tall and proud.
“Now the rest of you.”
My arms and legs tremble, and the muscles along the edge of my spine feel like hot flames. Miss Martha counts and I crumple in a heap on the floor. My hip crashes into the wooden floor and I wince.
“Don’t hold your breath.”
I look up, and Edith is standing behind me.
“Use your breath to help you.”
“Again,” Miss Martha calls.
I breathe in on the way down so that I am soft and full of air, and then out on the way up, pushing me away from the earth. Miss Martha nods and walks past without a word. I try again and again.
“Enough. Enough!” she shouts. “This is enough for today. We will start every class with these basic drills. They are the foundation of everything I do, so I expect you to practice them. Edith will run your Wednesday class and I will see you on Friday, when we will be working on moving across the floor.”
Miss Martha nods her head and sweeps out of the room. What Gran would call a grand exit.
I’m hot and sticky but I am happy. I sit on the floor and lean against the cool wall to catch my breath. I am breathing so hard my lungs burn like the air is on fire. Across the room, Edith smiles at me, and I blush through my already flushed skin. But I’m too tired to smile back. I close my eyes and wait for my heart to stop hammering.
As I sit there, the other dancers slowly file out of the studio.
“Bye, Casey.” The girls from the changing room are standing next to each other now, nervous. They introduce themselves as Trudy and Robin, but I don’t yet have the breath to reply. Instead I smile and wave good-bye, even though my arm feels weak as a baby’s.
