Spin the Sky

by MacKenzie, Jill;

  Then I think of what they’re going to say when they hear it. Not just Rose, who’s always cheered for me through school and dance and everything I’ve ever wanted in life. And not just Mrs. Moutsous, who’s loved me through lying and through this.

  But them. Summerland. The only other people I’ve known for as long as I can remember. I can almost hear their voices, passing through Main Street. Mad Mags. At the Pic ’N’ Pay. She’s crazy. At Xanadu Mini Golf. Both of them are crazy. Just like her mother.

  “At this point, all of it seems like a long shot. Don’t you think, Mad Mags?” Olivia shoots me a look. She knows I’ve tuned her out.

  I close my eyes. Not because of Jacks’s sucky nickname or because I could be on my way home, away from these palm trees and women whose boobs don’t move, away from Crayola-colored oceans and chatty roommates who seem to like me for some strange reason. But because in six weeks—six weeks max—I’ll either be famous, the best thing that’s ever happened to Summerland, or I’ll be the same as I was before. Except without George by my side. Without Rose by my side, either. Mad Mags.

  Without a reason to go back home at all.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Backstage.

  Black wooden floor.

  Camilla’s tapping foot.

  Fedora, upside down, in her hand.

  Pursed lips.

  I see it all in pieces, like flashes in a movie. One I’ve been wrongly cast in. The other ten contestants are already here and murmuring to each other, but we’re late and rude and bursting in all sweating and heaving because Olivia just had to apply thirty layers of mascara before she could leave our room. She told me to go without her if I didn’t want to wait, but in the end I stayed. Olivia’s all I’ve got at the moment and having something is better than having nothing, so they say.

  I apologize like crazy as we scramble for spots on the floor—as far from George and Rio as we can get—but Olivia doesn’t. Which doesn’t really surprise me.

  The cameras are on, so Camilla’s got that smile plastered on her face. When we’re settled she says, “Aren’t you all so excited to work with our choreographers? I know that every one of you will benefit so much from their instruction.”

  Olivia jabs me in the ribs and whispers, “Yeah. She knows everything about everything. And nothing about dance.”

  I stare at her, incredulously. For one, I have no idea what she’s talking about. And for two, I really wish she wouldn’t loud-whisper like that when we’re supposed to be quiet and supposed to be listening. Doesn’t she see the cameras behind us and above us? While I’m sure she sees them, she doesn’t know how it feels to have the second-lowest moment of your life blasted on YouTube for the world to see.

  On the other side of the circle, Rio and George ignore us, but Liquid, who’s sitting on the other side of George, glares at Olivia with the slittiest of eyes and Jacks makes a gun with his finger and thumb and pretends to shoot Olivia in the head with it. Olivia doesn’t seem to notice any of it. Or if she does, she doesn’t seem to care. “Did you hear she’s never taken a dance class in her life?”

  Since I know about Google and I know about tabloids, I don’t ask her where she’s heard it. More than anything, I’m sort of surprised Olivia’s bothered to research Camilla Sky at all. It’s not like she’s one of the contestants. Or the judges. Not like she’s anyone we need to impress to get through this. I squint in Camilla’s direction. Then again, Olivia knows way more about this show than I do. So maybe she also knows something important about the impenetrable Camilla Sky that I don’t, too.

  I lean over to Olivia. “Are you sure? She really can’t dance at all?”

  “Not one single tendu. Look at her. She’s like a giraffe.” Olivia licks her lips and tosses her hair in what’s actually a pretty impressive Camilla Sky imitation. “A girl just knows that kind of thing,” she says, which cracks me up and causes the real Camilla Sky to send us both beady-eyed glances.

  Olivia whispers, “If you ask me, she probably boned Elliot Townsend to get this gig to begin with. Everyone knows the quickest way to any guy’s heart and wallet is through his pants.”

  I almost laugh again. But then my mind flashes to Rose and her “extra income” from Urban Outfitters. To Mom, somehow always managing to scrape by. And then I see that cop’s face and the cameras, pointed at me and my face, and all the joy I felt a second ago with Olivia plus Camilla the giraffe is sucked back to the place from which it came. Camilla’s legs are long, and toned, and beautiful. I don’t blame her for using them to get her where she needs to be if where she needed to be was here. It’s no laughing matter.

  “Okay,” Camilla says and the cameras swoop down close to her face. “The crew wants to get you kids on film—only you kids on film—for this next part. That means I need all parents, guardians, groupies, whatever, to go wait outside.” She points to a row of television sets on both sides of the auditorium. “You can watch your kids live from those TVs over there. Got it?”

  Instantly, Olivia’s gaze shoots toward her mom. And I’m almost positive I see her mom glare back at Olivia.

  But she gets up along with all the other moms and dads and non-contestants and follows them out of the room, leaving us alone backstage. Just us. The contestants. The judges. And Camilla.

  The cameras zero in on Elliot’s face. He perks up, but it’s not the same as when Camilla does it. “Okay, who would like to choose their dance style first?”

  Olivia shoots her hand up as fast as she can. Too bad for her, because Rio is quicker, which makes Olivia sink into her seat on the floor, heavy and fast, like quicksand.

  “You’re up, Ms. Bonnet,” Elliot says, putting emphasis on her last name.

  Rio’s face darkens, but then she reaches into the hat, sifts around in the sea of folded up papers, and pulls her hand out. She unfolds her piece of paper and hollers “Hip-hop!” Her eyes get all glowy and she smiles this wry little smile—one I didn’t know she was capable of when I met her back in Portland.

  Next to me, Olivia whispers, “It’s probably rigged. They’re giving her special privileges because of who she is. Everyone here knows she’s awesome at hip-hop, too.”

  I stare at her but I don’t say what I’m thinking. Which is, yeah, everyone. Everyone but me.

  Elliot tells Rio to pick the person to go next. And of course, she chooses George. George steps forward. Olivia doesn’t protest. I hold my breath while his hand brushes past the brim of Camilla’s fedora. The cameras get closer to his steady hand. He pauses and pauses while they circle him, zooming in, zooming out. He must be loving this.

  But then he finally does pull out a paper and opens it, his face spreading into that wide grin that makes me think of Wick Beach, of Summerland, of home. “Jazz!” he shouts. “It says jazz!”

  I lean back on my hands. Of course George got jazz. Along with our thousand hours in ballet and contemporary training at Katina’s, we’re also pretty solid in jazz, since jazz dance has some of its roots in ballet. Of course he got it. No way he’d bomb out and pull something horrible, like the fox trot, the pasodoble, or tap. That kind of thing’s always been my luck, not the luck of He Who Was Born With Horseshoes Up His Ass.

  Hayden chooses next. Elliot makes her wait until the cameras are ready and rolling, but it’s not like it matters. Hayden’s ear-to-ear grin is there and on whether there’re cameras around her or not. Her hand quickly digs into the hat. She pulls out her paper. Her smile never droops, but her face sort of pales, draining of all that shininess she had a second ago. “Classical ballet,” she whispers and then covers her eyes with the backs of her hands for six whole seconds. But then she lets her hands drop down to her sides and her color is back and her perkiness is back and I wonder what she hides behind her hands, behind her smile.

  After Hayden, Liquid chooses Broadway, and the cameras shake because the cameramen are laughing, struggling to film Liquid while he pools around the floor as if he’s paint. I think of what Olivia told me about
Liquid and drugs. I wonder if it’s the drugs that make Liquid like this, like actual liquid instead of human, or he’s always been this way and if he’s like this—more worm than warrior—even on the street.

  Jacks picks next. He thrusts his fist into the hat and pulls out krumping, which makes him leap in the air and pump his fist around like a maniac for several seconds before he realizes that only one of the cameras is even on him. Nobody even cheers for him because he is a douche, and it seems that Olivia and I aren’t the only ones who’ve noticed. Elliot’s jaw gets tight and a few of the other dancers roll their eyes. Jacks stops jumping. He sits back down, his fists shoved under his chin.

  Next, Zyera picks Bollywood and the ballroom couple choose a pas de deux. Lawrence gets breaking; Juliette, clogging. I relax a little. Whatever I get, it can’t be worse than clogging. Finally, Elliot calls Olivia’s name. She steps up, eyelashes fluttering, looking exactly like the Olivia me and George and Rio met outside the Heritage Building. Composed. Polished. No M&Ms stains anywhere in sight. Her hand searches inside the hat and then settles on one crumpled paper. We lock eyes. I give her a thumbs-up. She pulls the paper out, unfurls it, studies the word. “Contemporary!” she shouts. “I got contemporary!” Olivia leaps off the floor and spins around and around in front of the cameras, waving her triumphant paper in front of the lenses, just as her mom bursts through the door.

  “Are you sure? Let me see that thing. We need to be absolutely sure. I can’t read it from those pathetic little TV screens you guys have out there.”

  “I got it, Mom.” Olivia holds the piece of paper out and her mom grabs it. “I did it!” Her voice is shaking.

  Olivia’s mom takes her by the elbow and whooshes her to the far corner of the room, which is not at all out of earshot. “You better not screw this up,” she says. Olivia’s face is crumbling, her mom’s claws digging into Olivia’s forearm. I’ve never seen a mom like hers before. The only ones I really know are my own mom and Mrs. Moutsous. Neither one of them wanted things for me bad enough to dig them into my skin.

  When I peer back at the group, Elliot Townsend’s totally staring at me. He adjusts his jacket, purses his lips. I wait for him to say the words I’ve been dreading hearing him say since the second we got backstage and I saw him here amongst us: We know who you are, Magnolia. We know what your mom did. You aren’t fooling anyone.

  But he doesn’t. Instead he tells me it’s my turn and then shoos Olivia’s mom out of the room so Olivia can reclaim her space next to me. He nods to the cameras. They zoom in on my face. Olivia told me to put foundation on, at least powder or blush or something, but I didn’t. Suddenly I’m very aware of my visible pores and shiny nose.

  “We’re waiting,” Elliot says.

  My hand lingers over the hat. Hovering above it. Not touching it.

  I can feel about a gazillion eyes swarming me. My fingers won’t do what my brain tells it to. Grab a paper, Magnolia. Just grab one.

  Someone coughs. Rio. The cameras turn to film her. Liquid scoots away from her.

  Someone else sighs, real loud. Loud enough to make sure I know they’re all waiting for me. George. My face gets hot. It’s not just the cameras. Or maybe it is. This will all be online and on those millions of TVs in Portland and maybe even the TVs in Summerland.

  “How long can she stand there before they kick her off for holding us up,” Jacks says.

  “It’s not like it’s hard. Pick one,” Hayden says.

  And they’re right, it’s not that hard. Or at least, it shouldn’t be. George doesn’t seem all broken up over that YouTube video, and I bet he’s seen it. I stare down at the papers. Maybe they’re the reason I’m sweating bullets. Most of the good styles have already been taken, which leaves only three left in Camilla’s hat: African. Lyrical. And tap. Two that are possibly okay. One that is very, very bad.

  “Ms. Woodson,” Elliot says, and the sound of my name makes my hand plummet inside the hat. My fingers settle on one paper that calls my name.

  I uncurl my hand. No. No. This can’t be happening.

  “What does it say?” Olivia’s voice.

  “Read it!” Jacks’s voice.

  “Tap.” My voice comes out small, more like a whimper, a whisper than a real voice.

  “What?” someone says. “What did she say?” Liquid. I heard him loud and clear.

  “I can’t hear her.” Jacks. “Her voice is like a squeaky little rat’s.”

  “We didn’t catch that either,” one of the cameramen says.

  “Tap.” I say it louder and I hear it reverberate off these floors. Out of all the styles I could have pulled, two very doable and one inconceivable, tap is not what I wanted. A death sentence for me. I take a deep breath. It’ll never be enough air. “I got tap. With Thomas Scandalli.”

  “Okay, everyone!” Elliot shoos us away with a wave of his hand. “Go find your choreographers. You’ve got seven days to learn and perfect your routines. This is the most time you’ll have during the competition. I suggest you use your time wisely.”

  Everyone cheers and then splits up into little groups and then the cameramen follow each contestant. I hang back. There’s no point rushing off to meet super-tapper Thomas Scandalli, known in the nineties for his work on Broadway and in another hundred-plus movies that all involved outrageously skillful tap routines. It doesn’t matter that he’s some kind of tapping miracle worker. Not even a miracle can save me now. I bend down and fiddle with the laces on my left shoe. Tying. Untying. Tying. It doesn’t untie my thoughts. Any way I think about it, there’s just no way I can do this. And worse, I know I’m going to disappoint Thomas Scandalli with what I don’t know about tap, which is everything. I know I’ll only get to dance the first week, because once America sees me tap, I’ll be sent home, and that’s a fact.

  In front of me, someone clears his throat. My head snaps up.

  It’s George. Staring at me. “I know you.” His eyes shoot left. Right. A camera’s coming toward us, but Elliot waves it away. “You can’t tap. And you’re scared to death to try.”

  I stare at my shoes. “You don’t know a thing about me.”

  “Yes, I do. I know you don’t know a good thing even when it slaps you across the face. I know you don’t know what you’ve lost by acting like this. And what you’re about to lose permanently if you keep this up.” His face softens. “Come on, Mags. Why can’t we just forget the whole thing?”

  I stand up straight so that we’re eye level. “And what about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “You think you know me. But I’ve never known you.”

  “How can you say that? You’ve always known me. Right from that first day on the beach. With our moms.”

  “You betrayed me. You betrayed me then and you’ve betrayed me now.”

  “I have no idea what you’re—”

  “I thought you were gay, George. All this time you let me believe that you didn’t like girls and that included me and now”—I shake my head—“now I don’t know what you are.”

  George flinches. “I didn’t let you believe anything. You’re the one who decided I was gay. Not me.”

  “I saw you. I saw you that day at the beach with Sammy Baker. And what about Liquid? What about all that stuff with him?”

  George studies his feet. His eyebrows are furrowed together and the rest of his face is all muddled, which isn’t a look I’ve seen on him often. “I guess I’m just not like you. Not into labels the way you are.”

  “I’m not into labels.”

  “Yes you are. In your world, people are either good or bad, nice or evil. You’re way more concerned about what people think than actually forgiving yourself. At least I’m true to myself.”

  I snort. “Yeah, right. You can’t even say what you are out loud.” I shake my head. “I just don’t get you.” A second cameraman comes toward us. Elliot’s nowhere in sight to make it back off so he stands between us, equipment on his shoulder. The camera’s red light
blinks at me. It’s like a warning. A warning George doesn’t heed.

  “You’ve got it all wrong,” he says. “You’re more like me than you’ll ever admit. We all have our shadows. We all have things we run from. You’ve got your sad little reputation. And I—”

  “Have your glowing one.”

  George’s jaw tenses. “If you already made up your mind that I was gay a long time ago, what else about me is there to get?”

  The cameraman waves over another. “Sexuality issues,” he says to the new guy with a camera on his shoulder. “This is great stuff. Start rolling.”

  George glares at the guy with so much hate, and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen George that mad, especially in front of a camera.

  I glance at the cameraman to make sure he’s watching. Why should I be the one with the tragic story? Why should I be the one with the mortifying nickname while George gets nothing but glory? I raise my voice. “No. I only thought I was right about you being gay. One minute you were all hot for those lifeguards and the next you’re calling that freshman girl”—I cringe, remembering that brief (albeit painful) second at Deelish—“hot. And what about that call from Mary?” My voice gets quieter. “You were so weird and giggly when she called. Like you were in love or something.”

  George’s head snaps up. “Who’s Mary? I don’t know any Mary.”

  “I saw it. I saw her name on your phone.”

  George opens his mouth to presumably deny his obsession over anyone with that name, but then he bursts out laughing. Which seriously catches me off guard.

  “The name on my phone that you saw? Not Mary. Mark.”

  “What? No way. I saw the letters, George.”

  “Uh-huh.” George whips his phone out of his pocket and scrolls through his calls until he finds what he’s looking for. He flips the phone around and shows me his screen. “M. A. R. K. With a K on the end, not a Y.” He grins at me. “Pretty easy to mix the two up when you’re spying upside down, I guess.”