Last Wishes

by Victoria Schwab

  Gold, she told herself, glancing down at her shimmery leotard. This was everything she’d worked for. Everything that mattered.

  As Mikayla pushed the doors open, she noticed the Drexton Academy motto carved into the wood.

  EAT SLEEP BREATHE DANCE.

  In her head she heard, Every moment of the day. Every day of the week.

  Only gold girls go to Drexton.

  Make us proud.

  You don’t want this.

  I don’t have a choice.

  You always have a choice.

  She carried the voices — Drexton’s and Miss Annette’s and her parents’ and Aria’s and her own — with her, all their hope and expectation. Mikayla felt it all wrap around her, weigh her down.

  Beyond the doors was a dance studio, wood-paneled floors and a mirrored wall. The admissions committee — the thin woman and the man with the cane, as well as a young man with a mustache and an older woman — sat behind a large table, waiting.

  Mikayla padded into the center of the room and introduced herself, and the committee stared at her over their papers.

  She could hear her pulse pounding in her ears as she went to the speakers, plugged in her iPod, and hit PLAY, then retreated back to her place and took her pose.

  After a few seconds that felt like forever, the music finally started.

  But Mikayla didn’t.

  In that moment, her whole mind went blank. Her body froze.

  She knew the routine backward and forward and upside down, but standing there, in front of the admissions committee, her limbs went numb. The hesitation only lasted a moment, but it was a moment too long.

  By the time Mikayla started dancing, she was off-tempo, a step behind the music.

  She couldn’t catch up.

  She faltered on a kick.

  She fell out of a turn.

  She felt every inch of her body, and knew it wasn’t working.

  When the song finally ended and Mikayla toddled to a stop, she felt sick.

  She had performed hundreds of times — hundreds — in front of thousands of people, and she’d never, ever choked. Why did she have to choke today?

  She’d messed up, beyond repair. She could see it in the admissions committee’s crossed arms. Their tight mouths. Their hovering pens.

  Mikayla stood before them breathless, hopeless, heartbroken.

  “You can go now,” said the woman with the bun.

  “Have a nice day,” said the man with the mustache.

  “We’ll be in touch,” added the man with the cane.

  “Next!” called the older woman.

  Mikayla gave a single, tight bow, and backed out of the room.

  It was over.

  She’d failed.

  “Well?” asked her mom excitedly when she came outside.

  “How’d it go?” asked her dad, opening his arms for a hug.

  But Mikayla said nothing, only shrugged.

  “Mikayla?” pressed her mom, looking worried. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered.

  “I’m sure you were fine,” said her dad.

  Mikayla shook her head. She felt her eyes burning.

  “It’s okay, honey,” said her mom.

  “It’s okay,” echoed her dad.

  But it wasn’t okay. How could they think it was okay?

  She’d failed. Failed them, failed Miss Annette, failed herself.

  On the subway ride home, she kept her lips pressed together. She could hear her parents whispering, but she pretended not to hear.

  “I just need some time alone,” she said as soon as they got home, and they let her go.

  She went straight to the basement studio and shut the door.

  It was over.

  It was all over.

  She’d had her chance, and she’d ruined it.

  She looked at herself in the mirrored surface, eyes puffy from held-back tears, a wall of gold at her back.

  And then she turned, picked up one of those trophies, and threw it against the ground as hard as she could. It broke into several pieces, skidding across the floor. She took up a medal and chucked it at the mirror, splintering the glass. And then she picked up and threw down another trophy, and another, and another, until everything else was ruined, too.

  Aria found Mikayla sitting on the floor, surrounded by her broken trophies.

  She’d cleared the shelves in the room of every single prize.

  Aria had seen everything, of course (being invisible had its perks). She’d watched the audition, which was pretty disastrous, and Mikayla’s sullen reaction to her parents. She could feel the breakdown coming like a wave, and she’d let it break.

  Now she stood in the studio, visible again, while Mikayla sat on the floor, staring at her splintered reflection in the broken mirror. Her smoke swirled heavy and blue around her shoulders.

  “What do you want, Aria?”

  “To help,” she replied, stepping carefully around the mess of broken trophies and cast-away medals.

  Mikayla looked up, her eyes red. “I choked,” she said. “After everything, all that work, all that worrying … it was all for nothing.”

  “I doubt that,” said Aria, sitting down beside Mikayla with her back against the wall, so their shoulders and knees bumped together. “Nothing is for nothing.”

  Mikayla shook her head and looked down at the years of trophies littering the floor. “I just thought … if I could get through the audition … but I saw the motto and I panicked.”

  “Eat, Sleep, Breathe Dance,” recited Aria.

  Mikayla tipped her head back and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “You were right. Going to Drexton was a bad idea. But I couldn’t not go, either. There was no way to win.”

  Aria leaned her shoulder against Mikayla’s. “Not everything in life can be divided into win and lose. Which is probably a good thing. But it means having to make choices. Some of them hard.”

  Mikayla looked around. “When did everything get so messy?” she asked, and Aria knew she wasn’t talking about the trashed studio.

  “It’s going to be okay,” said Aria. “We can fix this.”

  “How?” whispered Mikayla, and Aria knew she was finally ready to listen.

  Aria got up and picked up two pieces of a broken trophy. Then she knelt in front of Mikayla. “Anything can be fixed,” she said. “If you know how to put it back together.”

  As she said it, she fitted the halves of the trophy together, one into the other. There was a small flash of light, and an instant later, the trophy was whole again. She held it up for Mikayla to see.

  Mikayla’s eyes grew wide with disbelief.

  “How — how — did you …” she stammered.

  “I told you,” said Aria with a bright smile. “I’m here to help. But I guess I should explain….”

  Mikayla’s face was frozen in shock. “A guardian angel …”

  Aria nodded. “Your guardian angel, specifically.”

  Mikayla shook her head so hard her bun loosened. “Come on. You actually expect me to believe that?”

  “You told me that you used to believe in lots of things,” Aria pointed out.

  “When I was a kid. And then I grew up and realized they weren’t real.”

  Aria gestured to the repaired trophy. “I’m real.”

  “But that doesn’t mean you’re an angel.” Mikayla blinked, and hugged herself. “Maybe I’m going crazy.”

  “You’re not,” Aria assured. She was making her way around the studio. She held up another broken statue, and fixed it with another flash of light. “You saw me do that, right?”

  “I guess. I have no idea. How did you do it?”

  “Magic.”

  “Magic doesn’t exist,” said Mikayla flatly.

  “Of course it does,” said Aria, setting the mended trophy on the shelf. “I told you, the world is big and strange and full of wonder. Is it really so hard to believe in me?”

  “Actually, yeah,
it kind of is.”

  Aria brought her hand to the broken mirror, and the cracks across the front traced backward. It was pretty cool — Aria hadn’t been totally sure she could mend things until she’d magicked the trophy back into one piece (it would have been awkward if that hadn’t worked).

  Mikayla watched silently, her head tipped to the side. “How am I supposed to believe you’re my guardian angel?” she challenged.

  Aria wasn’t surprised that Mikayla was resisting her. She thought of the best way to explain.

  “Think about it, Mikayla. I just …” She made a poof motion with her hands. “… appeared in your life, right when you needed me. At the competition, at the school, at Filigree. I wasn’t here, and then I was. Do you honestly think it’s a coincidence?”

  Mikayla made a noncommittal hmm sound. And then she squinted at her.

  “I guess it kind of makes sense,” she said at last.

  “Really?” said Aria, brightening.

  Mikayla gave a wan smile. “No, I mean, it’s still totally crazy, but I guess it makes sense in a crazy kind of way. It makes you make sense. The way you just showed up in my life. The way you always know what to say. And the way you dance. I guess we really were supposed to cross paths.”

  Aria nodded. “I thought you’d be excited,” she said. “I mean, I’m basically proof that magic is real! Score one for Young Mikayla.”

  “Does that mean monsters are real, too?” Aria could see the flicker of light in Mikayla’s eyes, some old part of her shining through the skepticism. “Dragons and fairies and stuff like that?”

  Aria chewed her lip. “I have no idea. I’ve never met one. But who knows? Maybe one day I will. Or you will.”

  Mikayla frowned. “Why didn’t you just tell me what you were?”

  Aria set another trophy back on the shelf. “Would that have made you listen?” Mikayla bit her lip. Aria smiled. “You couldn’t see past Drexton until you got past Drexton.”

  At the mention of the academy, Mikayla groaned. “Ugh, I can’t believe I bombed the audition.” She looked up sharply. “Wait, if you’re really my guardian angel …”

  “I am,” said Aria, suddenly nervous. She’d seen that kind of excitement before, and it was usually followed by a bad idea.

  “Then can’t you use magic to go back and change it? Make it so I didn’t mess up?”

  There it was. Aria laughed. “I’m an angel, not a time-traveler,” she said. “And even if I could change the past,” she went on, “I wouldn’t.”

  “What about my dad?” asked Mikayla, urgently.

  “What about him?”

  “Can you help him? Can you use your magic to get him his job back?”

  Aria’s heart sank. “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s not the one who needs my help,” she said. “You are. And I can’t fix people’s problems.” Mikayla looked devastated. “Not even for you. Only you can fix your problems. But I can help you.”

  Mikayla drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, but she nodded. “Okay.”

  “Okay.” Aria was quiet, watching Mikayla. She could see that some part of the other girl was starting to believe in her. “So, the question,” said Aria, “the smallest, biggest, simplest, hardest question is this: What are we going to do about dance?”

  Mikayla put her head on her knees. “I honestly don’t know.”

  Aria put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “I think you do.”

  Mikayla sighed and wiped her eyes. “I guess I’ll have to quit. I don’t want to,” she said. “But without the Drexton scholarship, my parents can’t afford to keep paying for my classes. So it doesn’t make sense.”

  “What if money weren’t a factor?”

  “Money is always a factor.”

  “But what if it weren’t? What if dance were free, and it was just about whether or not you wanted to do it? Then what would you do?”

  Mikayla’s eyes went to a set of photos on the wall by the door. In among the more recent pictures were a few older ones from the album she’d found, in which a young Mikayla posed with a group of girls, all in matching blue outfits. The young Mikayla beamed, not a fake smile, but a real, delighted one.

  “I meant it when I said that I missed dancing,” she said, “the way it used to be. Back when it wasn’t about hitting every mark, or being the best, or winning gold. It was just … fun. Freeing.”

  “Okay,” said Aria, standing up. “So we need to make it about the dance again.”

  “You make it sound so easy.”

  “Maybe it is,” said Aria. “Maybe it can be. If you’re willing to give it a try.”

  Mikayla’s smoke tangled around her, but Aria could see, woven through it, a tired but persistent hope. Her eyes had lit up when she’d talked about dance the way it used to be.

  For once, Aria had to help someone back instead of forward.

  “I have an idea,” Aria said. “You only have to do one thing.”

  “What’s that?” asked Mikayla.

  “Will you trust me?” Aria asked.

  Mikayla hesitated, gazing around the studio, now put back together as if nothing had happened. And then she nodded. “I trust you.”

  “Okay,” Aria said. “I’ll come back here tomorrow to pick you up. And you’ll see.”

  “I don’t know about this, Aria.”

  “Come on, Mikayla. You said you’d trust me.”

  They were standing on a sidewalk in front of a building marked PARK SLOPE COMMUNITY DANCE CENTER.

  “I did say that,” said Mikayla. “But I didn’t say I’d join another dance academy.”

  “This isn’t a dance academy,” Aria said. “It’s a community dance center.” She accentuated every word. “And my advice is to try it. One class. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to go back.”

  It wasn’t just the thought of dancing in the wake of yesterday’s failure that made Mikayla’s stomach twist. It was Filigree. If Miss Annette found out that she was taking lessons somewhere else —

  As if she could read her mind — was that a thing guardian angels could do? — Aria said, “It’s Sunday. You wouldn’t be at Filigree anyway, so it’s not like you’re cheating.”

  Aria started up the steps, but Mikayla still hesitated. Aria looked back.

  “You told me you miss the way dance used to be. No pressure. No expectation. That’s what this is. So give it a shot. You might enjoy it. Besides, it’s free!”

  Mikayla took a deep breath. She did want to get back to that kind of dancing that made the world fall away. She wasn’t sure if she could find her way back, but she knew she could try. She owed Aria that much.

  “Trust me,” said Aria with a mischievous grin. “I’m your guardian angel, after all.”

  Mikayla laughed — she’d been up most of the night, seesawing between belief and disbelief about Aria — but she climbed the steps. Aria held the door open for her, and the two went in.

  Inside, the dance center was alive with noise and motion.

  A man at the front desk smiled warmly. “Morning, girls. Here for the one o’clock class?”

  Aria nodded. “We’re new here. I’m afraid we don’t know where to start.”

  The man produced two small slips of paper. “Start with these. Your passes,” he said. “You’re both under thirteen, right? So you get four free classes a week.” He punched a hole out of each card. “Just keep these with you. The studio is through these doors.”

  “Anything else we should know?” asked Aria.

  The man smiled. “Just have fun.”

  Mikayla quickly discovered that the Community Dance Center was very different from Filigree. Different from any dance class she’d ever taken. First of all, the dancers ranged in age from nine and ten to late teens, and in experience from beginners to, well, Mikayla. She didn’t recognize any of the dancers from competitions, but she supposed that made sense. A handful of adults lounged in a low
set of wooden bleachers at the side of the studio, but everyone else was on the floor, casually warming up.

  The instructor, Miss Rask (“Just call me Phillipa,” she said), was middle-aged, with long hair coiled in a loose braid around her head. She was tall and lithe, built like a prima ballerina, but there was a relaxation to the way she held herself.

  “Hello, everyone,” she said when it was time to start. Mikayla’s heart fluttered nervously. “I see we’ve got a couple new faces.” She nodded at Aria and Mikayla. “Welcome.” She held a remote in one hand, and when she pressed a button, the room filled with soft music. “Let’s get started….”

  The warm-ups were easy: basic stretches, calisthenics. Mikayla did each movement quickly, almost automatically. She noticed Aria stretching and looking content. My guardian angel, Mikayla thought, observing her. No wonder Aria seemed to give off light wherever she went. It all added up now.

  Next, Phillipa began teaching everyone a routine. She demonstrated a handful of steps, linking one into the next, and then everyone would repeat them back a few times until they got the hang of them. Meanwhile, Phillipa would walk around and help.

  Mikayla picked the steps up within her first two tries, so she was surprised when Phillipa stopped beside her.

  “Did I do it wrong?” asked Mikayla, nervously.

  Phillipa smiled. “No,” she said. “But you dance like you’re afraid of messing up.” She took her by one arm, and shook the limb slightly. “Relax,” she said kindly. “Don’t worry about it. Just let go.”

  Phillipa held on to Mikayla until she physically felt her shoulders loosening, her breath moving more smoothly. When the instructor let go, and Mikayla did the move again, it came easily. It wasn’t perfect, but it felt right. Good.

  Mikayla’s heart raced, but this time with excitement. How long had it been since dancing felt good?

  Phillipa had everyone dance the segment, then moved on to a second, and a third, stringing them together each time, slowly building something bigger.

  More than anything, stressed Phillipa in between segments, you had to listen to the music. “Every single time you dance, it’s going to be different, but as long as you move with the music, instead of against it, you’ll be fine.”