No One's Watching (12 page)

I faced the wall. Would Blake say anything to me tomorrow about the missed rehearsal? Maybe he hadn't shown up either and I'd saved myself the embarrassment of being stood up. I'd had enough humiliation for the week. Yeah, that was what most likely happened. He probably played computer games all evening and it would be dropped.

No such luck.

I withered. Mr. Sean popped into the room, beaming. “Good morning, class.” He tapped a CD. “I've got some new music here.” He fussed with the CD player. “It just arrived from Ireland.”

I sank to the floor, pulled my
ghillies
out of my dance bag and slid them on my feet, trying to remember the complicated way to bind them. The ties wound up in a messy tangle.

Lindy took pity on me. Me, the dumb five-foot-eight giant. “Here, let me help you.” Such a soft voice. She kneeled and disappeared behind my enormous dance bag. Her curly ponytail bobbed as she worked on my shoes.

I was Gulliver in the land of Lilliput, which was fitting, as Jonathan Swift, who wrote Gulliver's Travels, was Irish. Irish dance. Irish writer. Random, I know, but it kept my mind off my problems for a second.

“Thanks. Good job.” I stood at the
barre
behind her.

I didn't have the energy to lift my arms, which worked out well for me, since we kept them at our sides. Mr. Sean reminded me about eighty times to stand tall and pull up. Instead, I wanted to melt into the cracks in the wood floor. I'd acted like such an idiot. Blake was right. I had to give one hundred ten percent of whatever type of dance the directors asked me to do, no matter how hard it was. In Irish dance class and, especially, in repertory class. That was my last chance to convince Mrs. Ricardo I could perform a ballet solo. I was determined to perform each variation Mr. Jarenko taught to perfection. I lifted my head and spirits, feeling renewed.

“Good. That's the energy we need.” Mr. Sean motioned us away from the
barre
s. “Let's move to our circle in the center of the floor.”

Lindy took my hand as the class made a giant O. “I take a while to wake up in the morning, too.” She giggled.

By the end of class, even Megan forgave me. I'd totally ignored Blake after the embarrassing chat in the beginning of class. He drifted over to the three of us stuffing our shoes into our dance bags.

“Are we going to try seven thirty again for rehearsal?” Megan asked.

I nodded.

“I'll bring the popcorn.” Lindy high-fived Blake, her ponytail bobbing.

Popcorn?
Wasn't that a little dangerous. Eating popcorn and dancing?

“Inside joke. I described exploding from one of the hops like popcorn.” Megan held up her hands and let her fingers burst from her fists. “Pow.”

“As long as you don't bring caramel popcorn.” Blake high-fived everyone again.

They all laughed as I slipped out the door. Alone. They already had inside jokes, and they'd only been together for one rehearsal.

I dragged myself to character class where Candace was ending her rehearsal. Everyone was laughing in there as well. The girls swished out, still in their knee-length skirts.

Riley came out with Danilo. “Hi. Candace wasn't sure if Jupiter fixed Shelly's cell phone. Do you know?”

“I'm kind of avoiding Shelly.”

He nodded. “It'll work out. If she needs to use a cell phone, I'm sure she'll find someone who has one.”

“Right.” Great. I scanned both ways down the hall. “Do you know anyone with a cell phone?”

He shrugged. “Naw. Maybe.”

Candace came out the door from her character class. “Hi. We have another graduate dance student for ballet this morning.”

I made a face.

“It's a guy. Cute.”

Candace was right. The guy who taught our morning ballet class was cute. And class was lyrical and dance-y. I hoped we had him again.

After lunch, Riley caught up with us as we got off the elevator and came alongside Candace. “Hi.”

Candace started, then composed herself. “Ready for Labanotation class?”

“Sure.”

Did Riley have a cell phone? He sort of hinted earlier he knew someone who had one.

He walked close to Candace. “What exactly is Labanotation?”

“Using symbols to show dance movements. Like notes and such on a musical staff.” Candace blushed.

We sauntered into the smallest studio down the hall and stepped over a bunch of other dancers on the floor. We parked ourselves close to the mirrors in the front of the room.

Shelly was leaning against the wall, under one of the
barre
s, filing her nails. She worked on them so furiously, her fingers might catch on fire. Amy glared at us from Shelly's side. Somehow, between her first dance class and Labanotation, she'd found her green, bucket hat.

“Got your steno pad?” Candace pulled out her top-bound spiral notebook.

I pulled mine out. “Not too sure what this is all about.”

Candace flipped hers open from the bottom and drew her finger down the red line dividing the page. “This is the staff, like with music. All the symbols, the little squares and triangles and such, attached to the right-hand side of the line reflect the right side of the body. Those to the left side of the line, show the left side of the body.”

“How do you know so much?” Riley drew his lanky frame close to her.

Her head bobbed. “I had this when I went to a ballet conference in Atlanta.”

Riley ogled Candace as if she were a piece of Southern fried chicken and he was a starving man. Ugh.

Jupiter strode between the other dancers grouped on the floor and smooshed himself between Shelly and Amy, who had stuffed her hat in her dance bag. My stare lingered on Amy, her short hair flipping out all over her head. She scowled at me. She was one of those friends who hated whoever their friend hated. Now I had two enemies at camp.

Dira and Nicki followed Jupiter into the studio and sat by us. Dira had sleeked her hair in a French twist. Nicki had her hair up in the usual armor of clips stapled to her head.

I strained my ears toward Jupiter and Shelly's conversation. It was a bunch of
shhhs
,
zzrrrs
, and
hrrsstts
.

Candace kept teasing Nicki about her mystery date, so I scooted back, hoping to decipher Shelly's wild animal noises.

Mrs. Ricardo popped in the room, fluttering her hands like butterflies. “I'm afraid your Labanotation teacher, Mr. Hutchinson, is running late. Please be patient.” She bobbled her head at us and trotted out.

The silence broke and conversation burst open again. I glanced in the mirror and pretended to dig in my dance bag, inching backward. I kept my legs straight, hoping to connect visually with Candace's group.

“That's so messed up,” Jupiter said, like he did when Candace and I came into the hot tub room.

Were they talking about me? Was Shelly telling them she was going to call Mom about the Irish dance using someone else's phone? I couldn't bear it. Mom had worked so hard to make a living at what she loved. The Othersen Studio was a family tradition. I couldn't let her and Grandma down. Especially when Mom had given up her career to raise me.

“It serves her right.” Shelly tugged at her leotard.

Blood drained from my face. Other dancers were stretching on the floor as they waited for the teacher. I pushed back into a straddle and stretched over the floor. When I sat upright, I knocked into something.

Or someone.

“Going somewhere?” Blake must've returned to his room to drench himself in aftershave. Not a bad thing. Why hadn't I smelled him before I bumped into him?

I drew my legs in front of me and crossed them like a kindergartner, which was my mental age when he was around. “Sorry.” I was always apologizing, too.

Lucky for me our teacher, Mr. Hutchinson, hurried into the room, carrying an easel and white board.

“Greetings and welcome to Labanotation class. My apologies for my tardiness. We'll start as soon as I set this up.” He stood the easel in front of the mirrors and leaned the white board against it. As he zipped open a bag of markers and an eraser, he surveyed us. He was younger than Mr. Jarenko and had an aura of niceness about him. Like he'd make a good dad.

Mr. Hutchinson's eyelids opened wide, as if his contacts had ridges around them and he couldn't close his eyes. While he took out a black marker and drew a line down the middle of the board, I edged my way back to Candace's group in the front of the room.

The scent followed me. I propped my elbow on my bent knee and rested my chin in my hand, tucking my other leg around me like a cat with his tail.

“Labanotation is an ingenious method of recording movement, developed by Rudolph Laban.” Mr. Hutchinson passed out booklets with geometric figures, exactly how Candace described them. He drew his finger down the board. “This line represents the center of the body.”

I took the pile of booklets from Riley and swiveled, shoving the stack into Blake's chest. The class was crowded, but who knew he was so close? I gasped and nearly inhaled the heap of paper.

Blake plucked them from my hand. “Thanks.”

I flipped around, not believing what was in the mirror. Blake had mimicked my position. He was as close as my shadow. I shivered.

Candace caught my eye in the mirror and raised an eyebrow, a smile teasing the corner of her mouth. I'd have to ask her about all this with Blake later. It couldn't just be because the small studio was so crowded with sprawling dancers. A girl could pretend, right?

Meanwhile, Nicki's mouth dropped open. She jabbed Dira in the arm. I must have been near an air vent because I was caught in Blake's cologne cloud and debated whether he actually shaved. Probably. He was sixteen.

Everyone around me raised hands in response to something Mr. Hutchinson had asked. Probably who had never studied Labanotation before? Mine glided up.

“Good. You.” Mr. Hutchinson leaned over Candace to read my nametag with his bug-eyed laser vision. “Kitri.” He pointed to this figure, 
, sitting outside the rectangle. “A quick test. Do you remember what this represents?”

Remember? We'd just started class.

I frowned.

“Take your time.” Mr. Hutchinson tapped the marker against his hand. “We haven't offered this class before at summer camp. You're lucky your dance teachers introduced you to Labanotation in your home studios.”

“Home studio?” I whispered as I stared at the mirror. Mom had mentioned it, but we'd never studied it.

Shelly rolled her eyes and shook her head.

Behind me, Blake cupped his hand over his mouth and coughed. “Direction.”

Made sense. I pointed to the right.

Mr. Harrison nodded. “Good.” He scribbled more symbols on the board and alternated between pointing at them and demonstrating what they meant.

“Let's stand and see if we can follow the symbols on page three.” Mr. Hutchinson flapped his booklet. He pressed it open and creased the page down then nodded toward the walls. “Why don't you all slide your dance bags out of the way so no one trips?”