My Life as the Ugly Stepsister (21 page)

“I know she works for the U.N.I.V.E.R.S.E., and I know she’d recognize me for what I am.”

I tapped my foot impatiently. “What are you doing here? What do you want with my mother?”

“Not your mother. You. My dad’s in trouble, and I need your help.” His deep voice made my brother’s seem prepubescent.

“I don’t even know your dad. How could I possibly help?” Not that I wanted to.

“Would you sit down, please? And listen?”

With a grunt, I folded my legs and sat on the wooden slats. “I’m listening.” The cold from the wood immediately permeated my jeans and made me wish I’d grabbed a coat.

Better prepared in his leather jacket, Leo turned to face me. “My father is on trial with the Oversight Committee. In two weeks, he’ll be banished to the other realm for crimes he didn’t commit.”

Banishment to the other realm was irreversible. Leo would never be able to communicate with his father again. From what I knew about the trials, his father didn’t have much chance of being found not guilty. My dad could rant for weeks about the lack of civil rights for genies. “What crimes?”

“The last five people my father granted wishes to have all had their lottery tickets cloned. Half the winnings went to someone else.”

I nodded. When people asked for a million bucks, or more frequently, a billion, we delivered winning lottery tickets to them. My mother’s office handled most of the deliveries. In the past we’d used a lot of inheritances or forgotten stock certificates, but with a lottery in every state, we’d started going with the lottery angle.

“You’ve heard about the thefts?” he asked.

“No. Nobody tells me anything.” Mom shared just enough information to allow me to do my job. “Was it only the tickets delivered to his clients?”

Leo nodded. “Just his. And he didn’t do it.”

“He’s your father.” I tugged my sleeves over my hands. The thin sheen of sweat had turned icy. “Would you really admit it if he had stolen the tickets?”

The glow in Leo’s eyes flared with his intensity. “Yes. My father isn’t an angel. But he’s not a thief. He’s been framed.”

God, he was beautiful. I know it was partly that whole genie animal magnetism thing, but he was more than eye candy. He was like soul candy. Just sitting there with him made me feel good. Focus, Jen. Focus.

“Why would anybody frame him?”

“I don’t know. The people who claimed the winnings, the ones with the cloned tickets, all had ties to my father's past. None of them remember claiming the money, and none of them have the money now.”

“How in the world do you think I can help?” I braced myself because he could only be here for one thing—access to my mother’s office.

“I need to know who’s framing my father. I need to find out who had access to the information about those deliveries.”

“I don’t have that information.”

“No.” He closed his eyes for a moment before opening them. “But your mother does. You could slip into her office and tap into those files.”

I stared at him like he was nuts. My mother would see that as the worst sort of betrayal. “You think I’ll do that for a complete stranger? Just because you’re an older, sexy guy?”

A hint of color rose in his cheeks at my inadvertent compliment.

“I don’t even go for the bad boy type.” I’d had a minor crush on Derek, but he just wanted to be a bad boy. Leo was the real deal, from the wrong side of the tracks. Forbidden. And smokin’ hot.

“All I’m asking is that you think about it. Don’t bust me to Ian. Let me hang around and do the Armpit Hostages thing until you’re ready to help.”

“And if I’m never ready?”

He glanced down at his hands. “At least I tried.”

He wouldn’t just let it drop. We both knew it.

“Think about it, Jen. If someone is dirty, your mother could be the next one he targets. Or you. Wouldn’t it be better to know what’s going on?” He paused for a moment to let that sink in. “At least ask your mother who has access. What could that hurt?”

“I don’t know.” I was curious about who was monitoring me. I could probably find a way to ask.

“What are you doing after school tomorrow?” Leo asked.

“Why?” Now, I was starting to shiver from the cold.

“I want to show you something.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said. I may as well let him plead his case. I’d already agreed to let him hang around, and that alone could get me in huge trouble.

“Thanks,” Leo said. Then he stood, and squeezed his large form through the hatch.

I watched him walk to the front of the house and then slipped down the ladder.

I’d never kept anything important from my mother. Helping Leo would be a really bad idea. So why was I thinking about doing it anyway?

Chapter One of The Pointe of No Return

Book Two in the Dani Spevak Mystery Series

by Amanda Brice

CHAPTER 1

Normally it would be pervy for a middle-aged man to touch a teenager’s rear. But there hasn’t been anything
normal
about my life ever since I moved to Arizona earlier this fall.

“Miss Spevak, your lines are a disgrace.”

“Point your toes!”

“Posture, Miss Spevak! Lift your carriage and lengthen your body!”

“You ladies dance like apes!”

“How many times do I have to tell you to tuck your buttocks?”

That last one might be cause for sexual harassment complaints anywhere else, but not here. I’m a student at Mountain Shadows Academy of the Arts, majoring in dance. I divide my days between ballet and Biology, tap and Trigonometry, hip hop and History, latin and Latin.

“Well, Miss Spevak?” Grigor Dmilov, the legendary principal dancer from the Phoenix Ballet, towered over my five-foot-three frame. His dark eyes bored into me as he pretended to wait for an answer that didn’t really matter since the question was rhetorical anyway – dancers aren’t allowed to talk in class. He used to intimidate me when I first came here.

Oh, who am I kidding? He still intimidates me. I just don’t cry in the shower after class anymore.

Much.

The difference now is that I know corrections are an important part of the process. We spend six hours every day in the studio, striving for perfection. Sometimes it felt like our teachers loved to torture us, but they were just trying to get us to live up to our potential and beyond. Getting corrections was a compliment because it showed that the teachers wanted to nurture your talent.

Not being noticed at all was far more damaging to your career. Nobody wanted to be invisible.

I stood straighter, lifting my rib cage and tucking my
derriere
under as I prepared to bend my knees and lower myself to the ground in a
grand plié
. I have a natural tendency to slouch, so even though I’ve been dancing for years, I still have to consciously remind myself not to. It may be more comfortable, but it definitely doesn’t look very nice. Monsieur Dmilov pushed on the back of my thigh to verify that I’d engaged my gluts, then satisfied that I had readjusted my alignment, moved on to his next victim.

The class raced through the positions – first, second, fourth, fifth – skipping third since it was useless, finally finishing with a
grand port de bras
to stretch our bodies. As I leaned forward, dropping to the ground with a graceful sweeping motion before straightening back up again, I caught the accompanist’s eye and smiled.

It was a standard
barre
exercise, just like the start of class on any other day. Only it wasn’t any other day. Today was Nutcracker audition day.

The nervous energy in the theatre was palpable. The next ninety minutes would determine how we’d spend the rest of the fall semester. What roles would we dance? A soldier or a soloist?

I looked around the stage at a sea of clones. In their black leotards, pink tights, satin toe shoes, slim physiques, and hair pulled back into a tight bun, the other girls looked almost identical to me, like a genetic experiment gone awry. At first glance, the only way to tell us all apart was by skin tone and hair color.

I wondered whether this was intentional. By tamping down our individual fashion sense in class, the underlying message was that we were not prima ballerinas. Yet. Most of us would be dancing in the
corps
, where our only responsibility was to perform choreography in a large group, nothing more. Standing out in the
corps de ballet
would mean you were doing something wrong, since the group was supposed to move as one body. The only time you wanted to be invisible.

A tall order for a group of girls who all had been the star back at home.

Would I be assigned to dance in the
corps
this year? Probably. I was just a freshman. The soloist roles were generally reserved for upperclassmen. Except for the boys, of course. Guys were lucky, because nobody really expected too much from them since they were few and far between. Girls were expected to be perfect, but as long as a guy could point his toes, jump, and make a reasonable effort at turns, everyone got excited and turned a blind eye to any deficiencies in his technique.

And if he was both cute and straight it was just a bonus.

It wasn’t fair.

But nothing in ballet was fair, so I would just have to suck it up and deal, otherwise I would spend every waking hour making rug angels of despair for the rest of my life.

Jealousy was the disco-dancing, neon pink gorilla in the middle of the stage that nobody wanted to talk about. But we all felt it, of course.

Even Hadley Taylor.

Mountain Shadows’ current star, Hadley was a junior and everyone’s prediction for this year’s Sugar Plum Fairy. She was also a certifiably unpleasant person to be around.

Look up the B-word in the dictionary and they have a picture of her right under the definition.

Or they should.

Hadley commanded the place of honor at the front of the
barre
. It wasn’t an official position or anything. She just grabbed it on the first day of class and nobody was brave enough to challenge her for it.

A sharp clap broke my reverie and brought me back to the here-and-now. “
Grands battements
. Four front, four side, four back, four side.
Á la seconde
, you will close front first. Front, back, front, back.”

Monsieur Dmilov briefly marked the pattern of the exercise, using his arms to substitute for his legs since we were supposed to understand simply from the names of the steps. “Crisp movements, ladies. At the end of each one, bring your feet back together in a tight fifth. If I try to squeeze a credit card between them, I should not succeed.” He nodded at our reigning teen queen. “Miss Taylor, please demonstrate.”

Hadley didn’t even attempt to suppress her smug smile as she effortlessly kicked her leg high in the air. She had exquisite extension, each movement fluid. She was born to dance.

And she knew it.

But so was I. And I was going to show them.

An hour later, sweaty and feeling the burn of the workout tingling in every inch of my muscles, I dropped to the floor with the rest of the girls in
grand révérance
to our instructor and accompanist. I’d done this at the end of every ballet class for years, but today the curtsy was almost a prayer. An offering sent up to hopefully ensure a role. If I knew an Indian rain dance I’d probably try that, too.

We could use the rain in Arizona.

I just had to dance a solo. Clara would be great. Or Snow Queen. Or even one of the life-sized dolls. I wasn’t picky.

Normally we would exit as quickly as possible, rushing to get back to the dorms, but today we all lingered, hoping to catch a glimpse of the cast list as soon as it was posted.

“You looked great today, Dani,” my friend Maya Sapp said as I untied the satin ribbons of my toe shoes.

“You, too.”

She laughed. “Now you’re just being nice.”

“No way. I saw that triple
pirouette
during the
adagio
. It was gorgeous. So smooth you almost hung in the air.”

“Well, I fully expect I’ll be dancing Snow again.”

“Snow Queen?”

She shook her head. “One of the snowflakes in the
corps
. I think Ana’s got that solo in the bag.”

I had to agree. Our friend Analisa San Miguel was the epitome of elegance and grace. She’d make a beautiful Snow Queen. She hadn’t come backstage yet, but had instead climbed into the orchestra pit to chat with the accompanist and practice her Spanish.

Well, that was one solo down. No, make that two. Hadley would definitely be Sugar Plum.

“Who do you think will be Clara?” I asked.

Me, me, me, me, me
, I silently chanted, as if that could actually make it come true.

Maya shrugged. “I don’t know. I think you’re probably a strong contender. Or maybe Kat?”

“But she’s a triple threat. Why would she want to be Clara?”

“Just because she wants to sing and dance on Broadway doesn’t mean she wouldn’t want a lead in a ballet.”

I wrinkled my brow. “I thought she was a senior. Isn’t that too old to dance the part of a twelve-year-old?”

“Not on stage. Kat’s short. She could pull it off. Besides, pros do it all the time in the companies, and they’re in their twenties.”

Crap.

She was right. And Kat would be perfect for the part. She had such an innocence about her when she danced. A natural actress. I could almost picture her skipping around the stage in the party scene with the wooden nutcracker, a present from her weird Uncle Drosselmeyer.

Okay, back to the drawing board.

Maybe I could dance Arabian? Or Chinese? The around-the-world dances in the Land of Sweets were always a crowd pleaser. Arabian would be super hot.

I shoved my toe shoes in my bag and was standing up to leave when Analisa joined us.

“Good class today. Easy,” she said, tucking an imaginary stray wisp back into her tight bun.

Easy? My legs hurt way too much for a supposed
easy
class. But no way was I about to admit that. Especially not with Hadley within earshot.