Shimmy

Shimmy
Kari Jones

ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Acknowledgments

One

“O
oh la la,” I say as Amala holds a silky turquoise mermaid skirt up to her waist. The girls in the dance troupe laugh.

“Exactly. We’ll wear them at the festival, with mirrored hip scarves over them and colored lace tops. You girls will look so elegant!” Amala smiles broadly as she speaks, and the girls in the room shimmer with happiness. She lifts an orange hip scarf from a pile at her feet and wraps it around the skirt. Fingernail-sized mirrors in the scarf sparkle in the lights.

“It’s awesome,” Angela says. She takes the skirt and scarf from Amala, holds them to her body and twirls. The panels flare out around her feet, and the rest of us clap.

“Let’s go through the choreography one more time, and then we’ll break for the day,” Amala says. “Try the skirt on for size sometime during the week and decide on a color, and I’ll put in the orders on Friday.”

We strike our starting pose: arms up, palms facing out, head down and away from the audience, body turned slightly to the left. I glance at Angela behind me and roll my shoulders back and down. She copies me, and her posture straightens. I nod and settle back into pose.

Amala moves the pile of scarves and the skirt to the side of the studio and takes her place in front of us. She presses the remote, and the drums start.

We hold the pose for eight beats, then turn slowly, snaking our arms around our bodies so we make a wave of motion on the stage. The music gathers speed as the violin and cello sing out a rhythm over the beat of the drums, and we slip into a traveling step layered with hip shimmies and chest lifts. With a roll of drums, we twirl. Oh, I can already imagine the burst of color a line of girls in mermaid skirts and mirrored scarves will make when we’re crossing the stage.
The accordion picks up the melody, and we follow along with some classic belly-dance moves. I’m grinning, because I can see how the mirrored scarves are going to sparkle as we drop our right hips and kick, and the lace tops will show off our chest circles.

We all gather in pairs, and Angela and I dance into the center of the room. This is the part I love, when Angela and I dance next to each other. The music takes over as all the instruments fall into one melody, and it becomes one with my body. The scarf mirrors are going to dazzle the audience during this sequence of slow turns and undulations, and the skirts will swirl around us. The audience will go crazy. We’ll be the stars of the show. It’ll be my first step on the way to becoming a professional belly dancer.

There’s a pause of one count in the music, and I close my eyes to feel it, then raise my arms above my head and sink into a hip drop. The music builds from slow to fast, and we pick up a shimmy starting at our hips and working up to our shoulders so that our bodies quiver.

The sound of the violin fills the room, and our arms catch the mood and snake around our
bodies again for a count of eight. Energy radiates from our fingertips as we swirl one last time, lift our arms and finish.

My fingers tingle, and I whirl around and pull Angela into a hug.

“Well done, girls. We’re getting there,” Amala says. She opens the studio door, and early spring air from the lobby wafts in. We all head to the edges of the studio for our water bottles, which Angela and I always leave by the door so we can be the first ones into the lobby after class. Everyone is laughing and smiling at each other. That was a great class.

“You looked fantastic, as always,” I say to Angela.

“I felt okay, but I still want to work on that sequence with the hips. I get the right half of the figure eight, but my left hip never wants to do it properly,” Angela says.

She’s wearing a blue tank top and deep-purple pants with a gathered fringe around her ankles. With her long dark hair and thick eyelashes, she looks like a belly dancer even without costume or makeup.

Angela and I have been friends since our moms signed us up for dance classes at the Oak Bay rec
center when we were five. We’ve been dancing together for ten years now, and we’ve been
BFFS
all that time, so I know that even though Angela did the whole dance absolutely perfectly, she’ll work on her moves and correct herself until the moment we walk onstage. Angela loves to dance, but performances make her nervous.

“You were perfect.” I take a swig from my water bottle and head to my cubbyhole for my shoes and coat. I never take Angela’s doubts too seriously. She’ll be fantastic once she gets onto the stage.

She shrugs and shakes herself from head to toe. “We’ll see.”

“The festival’s going to be amazing. We’re going to be fantastic. Everything’s going to be awesome!” I say. The spirit of the dance is still in me, and it makes me jump around the room. Nini and Sarit laugh beside me.

“You’re really looking forward to the festival, aren’t you?” Sarit says.

“I am.” There’s no use pretending—I’ve wanted to be a professional dancer for at least the past three years, and they all know it. This is the first festival we’ve been invited to, and it makes me feel like shouting with happiness.

“Let’s go before we miss the bus,” Angela says.

Girls are packing up around us, and Angela and I pull on our shoes and coats, but before we’re finished, Amala comes into the doorway and says, “One last thing, girls. I have a surprise for you.” She takes a deep breath. “Dana Sajala has asked me to choose three girls from my classes to join her studio.”

The lobby goes silent. We stand frozen, water bottles partway to our lips, shoes half pulled onto our feet, coats hanging off our arms, as the news sinks in. Then Sarit says, “Dana Sajala?” and the spell is broken. My heart pounds so loudly I can hear it in my ears.

“You mean to perform with her troupe for the festival?” Nini asks.

“Yes—and continue on as one of her students.” Amala’s smile is super wide, because she knows the opportunity she’s offering. Dana Sajala is one of the best-known belly dancers in the world. A chance to dance with her would be the perfect start to any career.

“Who have you chosen?” Nini asks. It’s what we all want to know, and I can almost feel everyone sucking in their breath.

“I haven’t yet. I’ll tell you next week.” Amala holds up her hands and laughs as the noise level rises. “No, don’t ask me now. I’m not saying anything more until I’ve spoken to Dana and made my final decision.”

When Amala heads back into the studio, leaving us girls alone, it takes a minute before we start moving again. The fabric of my coat brushes roughly against my arms, and my feet feel squished in my Toms. There’s murmuring all around me, and Sarit says something to Angela as we walk out the door, but I don’t hear what it is, because a voice in my head is shouting,
Dana Sajala! Dana Sajala!

It’s a chance of a lifetime!

Two

“S
he has to choose us!” I say to Angela as we wait for the bus home. The tangy ocean air fills me with energy, and since the music from class is still in my mind, I bust out a few hip circles in time to the beat. Two boys standing behind us laugh. Angela glances back at the boys and shuffles her feet.

“Ignore them. Dana Sajala is taking on students, and we are going to be two of them!” I grab Angela’s hands and swing her around, but she resists and pulls her hands away. “What?” I ask.

Before Angela can respond, a bunch of kids from a nearby school’s basketball team crowd into the bus shelter. Then the bus pulls up, and we all jostle on. I head for a free seat, but there is
an old lady behind me, so I step aside and give it to her. The aisle is crowded, and somehow Angela ends up halfway down the bus from me. The basketball kids call to one another along the aisle, and one at the back says something that makes all of them laugh. It’s infectious, and I laugh with them, though I don’t know what’s funny. I’m just happy, that’s all.

The driver pulls into the road, and we make our slow way down the hill toward home. The bus route takes us along the ocean, where the sound of the waves mingles with the laughter and chatter bubbling around me, and it’s easy to slip into daydreaming. I can see it now: we’re onstage in the signature costume of Dana’s studio—multi-tiered ruffle skirts in bright colors, with tassel belts and matching midriff tops called cholis. The music starts, and we begin our dance. We are like birds flocking, each girl so in tune with the others that we look like one being. Our movements are graceful, and our timing is perfect. Dana watches, and as we twirl around to the front, she catches my eye and smiles, and I know she’s seen me.
Me
. When the music ends and we walk off the stage, she pulls me over and says, “I’m glad
Amala chose you to come to me. You’re going to be one of my star students.” A shiver tingles down my spine.

The bus stops and a bunch of kids get off. It’s rush hour, and the lights and noise of downtown Victoria jolt me out of my dream. At the far end of the bus Angela is staring into space, a frown on her face. There’s something about her mouth and the way her body sags a bit into the seat next to her that makes me wonder if she’s upset.

As we near our stop, I push my way down the aisle until I’m standing next to Angela. The bus hits a bump and jostles us, and she says, “There you are.”

“You okay?” I ask.

“Of course.”

“Sure?”

Angela smiles and flips her hair over her shoulder like she does when she’s happy. The bus pulls up at our stop, and Angela and I push past the basketball players to the door and step off. In the sudden quiet of our neighborhood, Angela and I shimmy our way down the sidewalk. We swing around cherry trees, shaking them as we pass so their pink and white petals spray over us.