Dancing for the Lord: The Academy (6 page)

“We are in need of someone to fill Helen’s position in the ballet,” Mme Renault said frankly.  “Do you think you will be able to learn the steps in time?”

“Sure.”  Danni shrugged.  “Um…snowflakes, right?  I’ve been one in
The Nutcracker
before.”

The older woman’s face tightened ever so slightly.

Danni winced, realizing her mistake.  “I mean, I’m sure the choreography is completely different,” she said quickly.  “And I, um…I look forward to learning it.” 

“See that you do so with all due haste,” the older woman warned her.  “Now, carry on.”

Danni nodded and hurried quickly back to the floor.  She put herself at the back of the room, where she would be able to see the other girls, and allowed herself to simply watch for a few moments. 

Lost in the choreography, for several minutes, she didn’t even look at faces.  On the second repetition, she joined in, determinedly reproducing the movements exactly as she had seen them in spite of the fact that if she had been at home, she probably would have suggested a couple of changes.

That grand jeté is in the wrong place for most of those girls.  I can land it, but they’re flubbing it right and left.
  She had just had the thought as she went into the jump; when she came down, it was right in front of….

Oh, no.

It was the girl from the hallway—the one who had looked at her with such disdain.  Danni winced.  She had really been hoping that she wouldn’t have to encounter this girl again, at least for a little while. 
Why, Lord?  Couldn’t I have at least had a chance to settle in before I had to confront someone who hates me?

“What are you doing?” the girl demanded.

Danni tried to make her face as calm as possible.  “Um…dancing?” she suggested.

“Oh, is that what you call it?” She sneered.  “Well, I suppose you’ll just have to make do for now, won’t you?  But trust me when I say that you won’t make it long around here if you keep going like that.”  She was gone again before Danni could reply. 

Huh.  Ego problems, if she can’t even handle an answer to her needling,
Danni decided.  She was trying hard not to let the other girl get to her; but in spite of those efforts, she had to admit that the barbed words hurt. 

“What bile was she spewing?” Madalyn was at her side in an instant, somehow sensing that there was a need.

“Oh, it’s nothing.” Danni waved it off.  “She didn’t like the way I landed my grand jeté, I think.” 

“Oh.”  Madalyn rolled her eyes.  “Well, that’s Katarina for you.  She thinks she rules the school and everything and everyone in it.”

“Huh.”  Danni didn’t want to encourage gossip, but….  “So it’s nothing personal, huh?  She dislikes everybody, not just me?”

“Pretty much.”  She made a face.  “Fancies herself the next prima ballerina for the company, if you can believe it.  They’ve got a spot for her in the chorus line when she graduates, but if she doesn’t straighten up her attitude, Androv is probably going to take it away from her.”

“That doesn’t seem entirely fair,” Danni said softly.

“Maybe not.”  Madalyn looked surprised to even consider the possibility.  “But personally, I hope she gets kicked out soon.  Her attitude really irritates me.  And you know what’s worse?”  She continued on in spite of Danni’s efforts to return to the dance.  “Half of the girls in the school, like, worship her or something.” 

“She’s good?” Danni asked softly. 

“Yeah—good at being a—“ The word Madalyn used then was one that Danni wasn’t sure she’d ever heard thrown out in casual conversation before, and it reminded
her of exactly how sheltered she had been, living back home.  She’d known that girls talked like that—some of the cheerleaders had done it, for one thing—but they never talked like that to
her
.  If they had, Michael would have put a stop to it. 

Michael
.  She missed him more and more fiercely all the time. 

“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” Madalyn continued, completely oblivious to the fact that her use of that word had made her new friend very uncomfortable.  “I’d give anything to be able to dance like she does.  She’s, like, grace in motion or something.”  Which was exactly what Danni wanted to be, now that she thought about it.  “But it’s like she sold her soul to be able to dance or something.  And, um, no thanks, you know what I mean?”

Danni made a noncommittal noise and let the conversation go.  She had a dance to learn, and a very short time in which to learn it—and besides, she had never felt that gossip was an adequate use of her time.  She danced her heart out, giving it everything she had; and by the end, she was sure that she had at least the first quarter of the dance ready to go. 

“You looked good in there!” Madalyn told her, grinning, as she jerked her jeans back on over her leotard and tights.  She would have loved to take the time to change; but she had to hurry if she was going to be on time for math class as it was.  Besides, she hadn’t thought to throw an extra leotard in her bag for later, and when she came back to help teach the kids’ class, she wouldn’t want to put on a sweaty leotard.

She had an hour.  She could go back to the dorm and pick up a clean leotard then.  It was very tempting—as was the idea of falling face-down on her bed for an hour before she had to return for the kids’ class.  Probably it would be better all the way
around if she did, actually.  That would give her a chance to regain some of her inner calm before she tried to deal with a room full of kids.  And how old had they said these kids were, anyway?  She’d worked with the kids before—it had been one of the ways she helped to pay for all the extra dance classes—but some ages were a lot better to work with than others.

You could spend that hour getting some of your schoolwork done.
  That still, small voice spoke directly to her heart; and Danni already knew better than to ignore it.  She had been listening to that voice for too long to set it aside now.  She just wished—suddenly rather desperately—that she could put it aside, ignore what it was telling her.

But she wouldn’t.  No matter how much she might
like
to ignore what that voice was telling her, she knew that it was right.  She was really going to have to work hard if she was going to get ahead in these classes, especially since she did want to have the chance to devote her senior year entirely to dance.

Work hard now, do what you want to do later.
  With a sigh, Danni spread her materials out on a table in the commons area after her math class, staring down at her English book as though she had never seen one before. 
All right, Lord.  Help me to do this well, because the last thing I want is to end up having to do it again.

She worked straight through the hour, pausing only once, to get up and drink down a few ounces of water.  By the time she was done, she had a respectable pile of completed work in front of her—enough that she thought she could be proud to turn it in on Wednesday, at any rate.  She’d read several of these stories before, in her English class back home. 

Math.  I’ll have to do some math tonight.
  Math wasn’t exactly Danni’s favorite subject.  She preferred science, if it came to that, and maybe history—but those wouldn’t be until the next day, and she knew that if she wasn’t careful, she would end up putting off the less-favored subject until she had to take it her senior year.

She desperately didn’t want to end up in that position. 

With a sigh, Danni slid her work into a folder and repacked her backpack, then hurried away again.  Kids’ class.  Well, she’d always enjoyed them before, right?

As it turned out, this was one of the best kids’ classes Danni had ever been in.  The students were old enough that she could be sure that the majority of them actually wanted to be there, rather than being thrust there by parents with high expectations, but young enough to still believe that dance was supposed to be fun. 

A room full of ten-year-olds had never been Michael’s favorite way to spend an afternoon; but Danni had to admit, if she was going to teach, this was definitely the age group that she preferred.

She threw herself into the afternoon with gusto, showing the students new moves, teaching them everything they needed to know and even showing them some of the tricks she had learned over the years, things that made the steps look even more graceful than before.  By the end of the hour, she felt as though she had done her absolute best for all of the girls involved. 

“They’re absolutely enchanted with you,” Mlle Kirby told her quietly.

Danni jumped.  She had been staring blankly after the last of the dancers, thinking about…actually, even she wasn’t sure what she had been thinking about.  The intrusion of another voice into her private world had been startling.

Mlle Kirby laughed.  “How has your first day gone?” she wanted to know.  “Feel like packing up and heading for home on the next bus out yet?”

Danni laughed along with her.  “Not quite yet,” she told her, surprised to realize that it was true.  “It’s going to be challenging, but there’s a lot of good here, too.”

“I agree,” the teacher admitted, lowering herself to the floor and beginning a round of stretches designed to keep her muscles limber even as she cooled.  “I wouldn’t teach here if I didn’t believe it—though I do think they push you girls too hard, sometimes.” 

Danni joined her in the floor.  “I get the feeling that all of the push this year is to see whether or not we’ll even make it to next year,” she admitted.  “Tell me honestly:  how many people wash out before Christmas—or just don’t ever come back after the holidays?”

“A lot of them,” Mlle Kirby confessed, her voice slightly muffled due to the fact that her torso, bent over an extended leg, was pressed all the way to the floor.  “The ones who don’t truly love it never make it, I’m afraid—though to be fair, those who have made it this long do usually stay through Christmas.”

“The performance.”  Danni didn’t even have to think about that one.  Anyone who had any love for dance at all wouldn’t dream of leaving in the middle of preparations for a big performance—which, now that she thought about it, made it all the stranger that Helen, the girl whose place she had taken,
had
left. 

Mlle Kirby nodded.  “Even these little girls will be in it.  I think this group is going to make up most of the mice, actually.”

“Oh, they’ll be so good at it!”  Danni could see them scampering across the floor in their little mouse costumes—and they had been very good at scampering, as she had proven just a little while ago. 

“I think so.  Androv still hasn’t brought me the full choreography, though—and you know as well as I that if we don’t start teaching it to them soon, they’re never going to remember the steps.” 

“They’ll remember.  We just have to find a way to cement them in their minds, that’s all,” Danni said cheerfully.

Both women, content with the cool down, got to their feet at the same moment.  Danni pulled on her jeans over her leotard for what she very much hoped would be the last time that day, frowning as she realized that yes, she was definitely going to need to keep an extra leotard in her bag.  She was going to have to visit the campus store and see if they had any others in stock—maybe a couple of pink, like the ones the older girls had been wearing that morning. 

She almost hated to put her jeans on over the sweaty leotard—but there wasn’t any sense in changing now. She needed a hot shower and her bed…after she did an hour or so worth of math. 

Danni grimaced.  Math. 

“Oh—Danni.”  Mlle Kirby stopped her before she could leave.  “I just wanted to tell you, you did very well today.  I think I’m going to enjoy having you as my assistant.” 

Danni glowed.  “Thank you,” she said quietly, well aware that her voice had gone soft and hesitant.  “That’s…very kind of you.”

“Kind, nothing!” Mlle Kirby informed her.  “Usually, the girls I get in here hate working with the kids—they’re just doing it to keep their scholarships.  You seem like you really enjoy it.”

“I do.”  Danni shrugged into her sweater.  “I used to help Carolyn—my teacher back home—with the kids’ classes all the time.  She said that if I ever got tired of performing, I could come back and teach with her.” She grinned at the memory.  Neither she nor Carolyn had ever dreamed that she would do it any time soon, of course—but the offer had been a genuine one.  If she ever found herself in need of work, just as long as she could dance at all, she would be more than welcome at the Carolyn Richards School of Dance.

The reminder was reassuring.  No matter what happened here, Danni knew that she still had somewhere to go.  That was good. 

Mlle Kirby smiled.  “Well, I hope you’ll think about staying with us this summer, then,” she offered, to Danni’s astonishment.  “We usually have a good crop of kids coming in for camp—I think you’d really enjoy them.”

“Oh…I don’t know.”  Danni glanced down uncomfortably.  “I’ll have to…I mean, my mom is really wanting me to come home for the summer.  She’s not so sure about me being so far away, you know?”

“And you’re fresh enough that you’re still homesick just thinking about it.”  Mlle Kirby looked sympathetic.  “Well, the offer remains on the table, all right?  Don’t worry that it will disappear just because you aren’t sure right now.  If you keep up the good work, I’ll even write you a recommendation personally.”