Katarina Ballerina

by Tiler Peck

  FOR OUR MOTHERS, OUR GRANDMOTHERS,

  OUR MENTORS, OUR TEACHERS,

  WHO TAUGHT US THAT OUR WORDS ARE

  ONLY MATCHED BY THE POWER OF OUR DREAMS.

  TO EVERYONE WHO’S EVER BEEN

  AFRAID TO TAKE THE FIRST STEP.

  LEAP, AND THE NET WILL APPEAR.

  —T. P. AND K. H.

  Chapter 1

  “DAD!” KATARINA CRIED. She’d been battling her hair for so long that her arms were starting to go numb from holding them over her head. No matter what she did, she couldn’t get her curls under control. “I need your help!”

  “Never fear, Dad is here!” he said in the deep, silly superhero voice of his that always made Katarina laugh. He squeezed into the tiny bathroom behind her and kissed the top of her head. “What’s up, buttercup?”

  “Can you put my hair in a ponytail?” She handed him the comb and hair tie. “A nice smooth one with no bumps on top?” That was how the other girls at school did their hair. Stef and Darci had started it, and now everyone wore their hair in the tightest, slickest ponytail they could manage. Too bad Katarina’s cloud of curls didn’t want to cooperate.

  “I can try, sweetie,” her dad said, getting to work. He’d gotten a lot better at doing her hair over the past couple of years. “But why not just wear it down today? You have such beautiful hair.”

  Katarina sighed. He would never understand. He was always telling her she was extraordinary, which was really sweet and exactly the kind of thing a good dad should say. But all Katarina wanted, just for once, was to fit in.

  “I think that’s the best I can do,” he said after he’d wrestled her hair into a ponytail. It was still bumpy on top—not like the smooth, glossy ponytails Stef and Darci wore—but it was probably as good as it was going to get. “Come on, breakfast is almost ready.”

  Katarina gave herself one last look in the mirror before the heavenly smell of cooking bacon made her forget her hair and sprint for the table. Her dad went back to the stove, poking at the bacon with a spatula. Their dog, Lulu, a fluffy Maltipoo with big brown eyes, was sitting at his feet, trembling with concentration as she watched his every move, hoping he’d drop one of the bacon strips.

  “Oops!” he said, deliberately dropping a piece onto the floor like he always did. Lulu pounced on it, gobbling it up with glee. Katarina laughed. She liked bacon too, but Lulu loved it more than anything else in the world.

  “How can you even taste it when you eat that fast, Lulu?” she asked. The dog just cocked her head and blinked up at her.

  “Here you go, sweetie,” her dad said as he handed her a plate containing the Dad Special: a smiley face made of two eggs over easy for eyes, a strawberry nose, and a ribbon of bacon for a smile.

  “Yum!” Katarina said, diving in.

  “How can you even taste it when you eat that fast?” her dad teased.

  Katarina grinned and rolled her eyes. “Ha ha, very funny.”

  Katarina had eaten only one wobbly egg when she glanced at the clock on the stove and dropped her fork.

  “Oh man!” she said. “I’ve got to go!” She hadn’t realized how much time she’d spent doing battle with her hair.

  “What’s the hurry?” her dad asked. “You’ve still got plenty of time before school starts. You haven’t even touched your mouth!” He gestured at the strip of bacon on her plate.

  “I want to get there early,” she said, swinging her bag onto her back and wrapping her scarf around her neck. She grabbed the piece of bacon to take with her and eat on the walk to school. “Love you! Come on, Lulu!”

  “Have a good day!” her dad called after them as Katarina and Lulu dashed from the apartment.

  As usual, her neighborhood of Sunnyside was humming with activity. Pigeons pecked at the sidewalk, buses rumbled along the streets, and the smell of fresh doughnuts being made at the shop on the corner wafted through the air. Katarina waved at her neighbor Mrs. Morris, who was watering the pots of daisies on her stoop, and Lulu barked at the orange tabby cat who was always sitting in the window of the apartment across the street. It was an ordinary day, except that when she got to the end of the block, where she was supposed to turn left to head to school, Katarina turned right.

  This was why Katarina had been leaving for school early. Last Saturday, when she and her dad had been walking home after picking up Indian food from their favorite restaurant, Katarina had spotted it. The electronics store on Forty-Third Street had two big-screen TVs in its windows that would play the same thing on a loop for weeks. It had been a nature documentary about whales last month, but Katarina had nearly dropped their dinner when she’d seen what the video had changed to. Ever since that night, she’d been walking two blocks out of her way every morning on her way to school in order to spend a few minutes watching.

  Katarina stopped in front of the window of Electro-Land, staring at the image on one of the giant screens. Four beautiful ballerinas floated across a stage, their hands linked together as they jumped and moved in perfect unison. Their tutus looked like shimmering cotton candy, and on top of their hair—which was pulled back into the sleekest, shiniest buns Katarina had ever seen—they wore sparkling feather headdresses. They were so strong and graceful, and more than anything Katarina wanted to be like them one day.

  As she watched, she mimicked their moves. She stood as tall on her toes as she could and tried to flutter her feet when she jumped the way the ballerinas did. She wasn’t as good as they were, but she’d been practicing in secret in her room at night and she was getting better. She’d asked her dad if she could take ballet lessons about a thousand times, but he’d always said no, that lessons were expensive and they couldn’t afford them. Katarina could tell it made him sad to have to tell her no, so she stopped asking and starting practicing on her own. Sometimes she danced along with lessons on YouTube, and other times she just put on a song and moved in whatever way the music made her feel. It might not be real lessons, but she was sure all the practice was paying off anyway. She’d almost broken a lamp the first time she’d tried to spin all the way around on one foot, but now she could do it without falling over. Sometimes when she closed her eyes, she could imagine herself dancing in front of a huge crowd of people. She’d leap and twirl across the stage, and everyone would jump to their feet to clap for her when she was finished!

  “Coo-coo!”

  Katarina jumped, her eyes flying open. She hadn’t even realized she’d closed them, but while she’d been imagining dancing for an adoring audience, a group of pigeons had gathered on the sidewalk next to her. No doubt they were eyeing the half-eaten strip of bacon she was holding.

  “Go! Shoo!” she said.

  But they didn’t move. The biggest and bravest one even hopped a little closer to her on his thin pink feet. Katarina looked down at the pigeon’s spindly toes, which curved inward toward his body, and then down at her own. She had pigeon toes too. Whereas most people’s feet pointed straight ahead, hers had always turned in a little bit, like her big toes were two magnets, always being pulled together by some invisible force. None of the perfect ballerinas in the video had toes like that.

  The big pigeon squawked again, but Katarina imagined he was actually laughing at her.

  You want to be a real ballerina? she imagined him saying. Good luck when you have toes that look just like mine!

  Suddenly Lulu barked at the crowd of pigeons, scaring them away in a flurry of feathers. Katarina laughed and knelt down to hug Lulu around the neck.

  “Thanks, Lu,” she said. Lulu wagged her tail hopefully, and Katarina gave her the last bite of her bacon.

  Katarina’s watch buzzed, and she jumped up. It was the alarm she’d set to make sure she didn’
t accidentally watch the ballet for so long that she was late to school, like she’d done yesterday. She’d better get moving!

  She used the rest of her walk to school to get in some more practice. She leapt down the sidewalk and worked on her spins while she waited at crosswalks. In her mind, she was wearing a snow-white tutu and feathers, standing with the ballerinas from the video, dancing in perfect sync with them. Someday, she was sure, she would be a real ballerina, no matter what any pesky pigeon said!

  Chapter 2

  KATARINA TWIRLED UP to the steps of her school as the last of the stragglers headed inside. She bent down to scratch behind Lulu’s ears.

  “Have a good day!” she told her. “I’ll see you later.”

  Lulu barked and ran for Mr. Rajan’s bodega on the corner. He loved her and would have a bowl of water and a dog treat waiting for her, just like every morning. Lulu would spend the school day greeting his customers with her wagging tail or snoozing on a pillow next to the refrigerator that held the sodas and bottles of water. Katarina used to try to leave Lulu at home when she went to school, but Lulu didn’t like to be that far away from her and would whine and cry. Once she’d even taken a divot out of the front door, scratching to get out, so this arrangement worked better for everyone.

  Katarina was out of breath from dancing all the way to school and running down the halls when she slipped into Mrs. Piskin’s class just seconds before the late bell rang.

  “Close one, Katarina!” Mrs. Piskin said as she closed the classroom door behind her.

  “Thanks,” Katarina said, panting, and went to take her seat. She sat right behind Darci and looked with envy at her ponytail as she sat down. It was so tight and sleek, slicked back into a ruffly hair tie with some kind of glitter gel that made her hair sparkle, her red tresses falling as straight as a pin halfway down her back. It was beautiful. Katarina would never be able to get her hair to look like that.

  “Morning, Darci,” she said. “I really love your ponytail.”

  Darci slowly turned in her chair to look at Katarina, and Katarina held her breath as Darci cast her eyes over Katarina’s own ponytail.

  “Yours is, um, nice too,” she said, giving Katarina a half-hearted smile. Then Darci’s eyes met Stef’s from across the room, and they both started to giggle.

  Katarina’s heart sank. Mrs. Piskin began calling the roll, and as soon as she got to Katarina’s name, Katarina shot her arm up in the air.

  “Yes, Katarina?” the teacher asked.

  “Can I have a bathroom pass, please?”

  Mrs. Piskin frowned, because school had started only a couple of minutes ago, but she gave Katarina the pass anyway and told her to hurry back. Katarina dashed to the girls’ restroom down the hall and pulled out her hair tie, letting her curls loose. She wet her hands in the sink and then used them to pull her hair back into the slickest, tightest ponytail she could manage. Her head ached a little from how tight it was, but that seemed like a small price to pay.

  * * *

  After long division and history, it was time for recess and lunch break. Katarina and her friends started a game of freeze tag on the playground, chasing one another up the big plastic slide, weaving around the swings, and dodging past the monkey bars. With just a few minutes of recess left, Katarina snuck away from the game. There was an old wooden balance beam between two parts of the playground structure that hardly anyone ever used, and it made a perfect barre for practicing dance moves. Katarina stood beside it, laying a palm on the faded wood and letting the other hang at her side. She put her feet into first position the way she’d learned from a ballet video on YouTube, turning her turned-in toes as far out as she could, making her feet into a wide V shape. She hummed the piano tune that accompanied the video and began to go through the movements she’d practically memorized by now, bending her knees and lifting her arms as gracefully as she could into the air. She imagined herself in pretty pink toe shoes with ribbons that wove up her legs, wearing a floating white tutu like the ballerinas in the video at Electro-Land, a rapt audience watching her every move.

  “Whatcha doing?” a voice suddenly asked.

  Katarina spun around, but she breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that it was just her friend Grant, a sandy-haired boy who always seemed to have a smile on his face, even when it was raining and he had a sniffle and he’d lost his homework. Katarina had been keeping her dancing a secret because she didn’t want anyone to know about it until she was really good, but she thought it would be okay to tell Grant.

  “I’m practicing my ballet,” Katarina said.

  “Cool!” he said. “I didn’t know you took ballet lessons.”

  “I don’t.” She stood up on her toes and reached her arms above her head in an oval. “My dad says they’re too expensive, but I’ve been teaching myself from lessons on the internet.”

  “Can you teach me, too?” he asked.

  “Sure!” Katarina said. He put his hand on the barre next to her, and she showed him how to position his feet and move his arms.

  “Wow, this is harder than it looks!” he said as he struggled to keep his balance while standing in fourth position.

  “I know, but it gets easier the more you do it,” she said. “And so far I’ve only almost broken one lamp trying to learn how to spin.”

  Grant laughed. “I broke a lamp last week playing soccer in the house!”

  “I guess no lamp is safe,” Katarina said.

  Then Mrs. Piskin, standing at the door of the school, began ringing her big brass bell, which signaled the end of recess. Katarina and Grant, along with everyone else in their class, ran toward the door to line up for lunch. If you weren’t near the front of the line, there was a chance all of the chocolate milk would be gone by the time you got through the lunch line and you’d have to settle for regular milk.

  “Will you show me some more moves sometime?” Grant asked as they ran through the grass.

  “You bet!” Katarina replied. She couldn’t remember why she had ever wanted to keep her dancing a secret in the first place.

  Katarina and Grant snagged two of the last chocolate milks and sat with the rest of their friends to eat their soggy, square slices of pizza and some mysterious lump of vegetables Katarina thought were green beans. Or maybe asparagus. Well, at least she hadn’t gotten stuck with plain milk!

  “Hey, where did you go during recess?” her friend Amelie asked her. “You and Grant disappeared!”

  “Oh,” Katarina said. Should she tell Amelie she was practicing her dancing? She felt suddenly nervous for everyone to know. “Well, um, my ring slipped off my finger while we were playing tag. Grant was helping me look for it. Right, Grant?”

  “What? Oh… yeah!” he said. “It fell in the gravel and was practically invisible. It took us forever to find it.”

  Katarina gave him a grateful smile.

  At the front of the cafeteria, Principal Hernandez stepped onto the small stage that overlooked all the tables. Every day at lunch he made announcements using a microphone that caused the speakers to squeal whenever he turned it on.

  “Here we go,” Katarina said.

  “Assume your positions!” her friend Michael added.

  They all put their fingers in their ears and braced for the high-pitched sound.

  Squeeeeak!

  Immediately the roar of kids talking and laughing died down as everyone else clapped their hands over their ears.

  “Good afternoon, everyone,” Principal Hernandez said. “Here are the day’s announcements. The science club meeting after school has been moved from Wednesday to Thursday. A lost backpack found in the boys’ bathroom on the second floor has been turned in to the office. The third-grade field trip to…”

  Katarina’s mind started to wander. There was just something about Principal Hernandez’s droning voice that made him almost impossible to listen to for more than about ten seconds. Sometimes her dad had trouble sleeping, and she thought if she could just make a recording of
the principal’s voice for him to listen to, he would never have that problem again.

  But then Principal Hernandez said something that suddenly made him the most interesting man in the world.

  “And finally, next Friday night we’ll be holding our annual fall talent show,” he said. “If you can sing, dance, play a musical instrument, or anything else, I invite you to come and sign up to take part. The talent show will be held in the auditorium, and this year the winner will receive a prize of one hundred dollars!”

  Katarina gasped, and the cafeteria erupted with whoops and cheers. The talent show had never had a prize before! Katarina imagined herself up on the stage in the auditorium, the lights on her as she danced, and her heart started beating faster.

  “A hundred dollars!” Grant said. “Do you have any idea how much candy that would buy?”

  Or maybe, Katarina thought as the idea hit her, it could buy some real ballet lessons.

  “The sign-up sheet will be available in the front office starting tomorrow morning,” Principal Hernandez continued. “I hope to see lots of you signing up!”

  “Do you have a talent, Grant?” Amelie asked him.

  “Hmm, not really. But for a hundred dollars I’ll come up with one!” he said. “What about you?”

  “My mom’s been making me take piano lessons since I was six,” Amelie said. “Maybe I’ll play a song for the show.”

  “I can juggle!” Michael said, grabbing the apple off of Grant’s lunch tray and the uneaten banana from his own backpack and tossing them into the air.

  “Ooh, you could do a clown act!” Amelie said. “I think you’d look great with a big curly wig and some giant shoes.”

  “Ha ha,” Michael said, grinning. “What about you, Katarina?”

  This was it! This was Katarina’s chance to become a dancer just like the ballerinas she watched in the Electro-Land window. She would dance in the talent show, and everyone, including her dad, would see how good she was. She’d win the grand prize, use the money to pay for real ballet lessons, and become an amazing dancer who performed for sold-out audiences every night!