Maybe One Day Page 7

  “Whipped much?” I teased him.

  Laughing, he spun around in a full circle, pausing in my direction just long enough to give me the finger. “Just meet us back here after, okay?”

  I shook my head, laughing also. “My dad’s getting me. I think he thinks we need some father-daughter bonding time.”

  “Got it. See ya later.”

  “Later.”

  The girls literally swarmed Jake, and I watched him be engulfed by them. Emma managed to nuzzle in closer than all the rest, and when I saw him put his arm around her, I wondered if she felt triumph or just relief.

  Stacy waved enthusiastically in my direction, but I just shook my head. It wasn’t until she called, “Calvin,” that I realized he was standing almost next to me.

  “See you inside,” he called back. Then he started walking toward the entrance.

  Watching him go, I thought about how he’d barely talked to me in the car. It started to make me feel a little uneasy. Maybe what he’d said about how everything was going to be okay was idiotic, but it had been a little bitchy of me to laugh at him like that. I flashed forward: If when Livvie got better she still liked Calvin and they started going out, the last thing I needed was my best friend’s boyfriend thinking I was a total asshole.

  “Hey!” I shouted.

  Calling after him made me feel a little like one of the cheerleaders.

  He stopped and turned around. But he didn’t say anything or walk over to me. I covered the distance between us.

  “So,” I began. “I . . . uh.” I chuckled nervously. “I feel kinda bad about how I acted when you came over to me. You know. The other day. At my locker.”

  “Okay,” he said. His arms were crossed over the word Wamasset on his gray T-shirt.

  “That’s it?” I crossed my arms also. “Okay?”

  “Gee, Zoe, I’m sorry. I mean, I want to be good for a laugh. I just don’t know if we have the same sense of humor.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the cheerleaders head into the rec center, Jake holding the door for them. Stacy and one of the Bailor twins had their arms around each other’s waists.

  I thought of Olivia and how before she got sick, I’d told her I wouldn’t teach the dance class with her.

  All at once I felt incredibly tired. “Just . . . just forget it, Calvin. Whatever.” I took a step toward the building, but he put out his hand to stop me.

  “‘Whatever’? You’re kidding me, right?” He gave an incredulous laugh. “Let me get this straight—Tuesday night, I’m at Jake’s house. His phone is ringing off the hook. Aunts, uncles, grandparents. Fucking Emma alone calls, like, fifty times. And I’m just hanging out, watching him talk to the ten million people who are checking up on him, and suddenly I’m like, ‘Wow!’” He made his voice thoughtful, reenacting the realization itself. “‘I’ve never been in this house without Olivia and Zoe being here.’ And then I’m like, ‘I wonder if anyone is calling Zoe,’ because it seems to me that you two don’t hang out much with other people, and I don’t know if you have a lot of other friends or anything. So Wednesday morning I decide to find you and see if you’re okay, and the next thing I know, you’re making me feel like a total dick.”

  “Look, I said I was sorry, all right?”

  “Actually”—Calvin held up his index finger—“you didn’t say you were sorry.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry. I’m very, very sorry.” I threw my arms wide. “Please, Calvin, will you forgive me?”

  He cocked his head to the side and looked at me for a count of three. Then he smiled. “Yes. Zoe, I accept your apology.” With that, he turned and walked into the building.

  And even though there was objectively nothing left to say, I felt somehow that our conversation wasn’t over.

  Small letters on a plaque by the front door read THE REGINALD B. HARRIS COMMUNITY RECREATION CENTER. Inside, the walls were painted a creamy yellow, and there were black-and-white artsy-looking photos of Newark hanging everywhere. Next to the entry foyer was a sitting area with comfortable-looking overstuffed couches and armchairs. I could have been standing in the lobby of one of the swanky apartment buildings the girls at NYBC lived in.

  I followed the signs to the main office, and when I explained who I was to the secretary there, she directed me to a door with a small black-and-white plaque that said RUTH JONES, DIRECTOR. I knocked, and a woman’s voice told me to come in.

  Ruth Jones—if this was she—was an older African-American woman a little bit shorter than I was, and she was standing at a filing cabinet, holding a manila folder. Her office was small and neat, with two straight-backed chairs facing a desk covered in relatively organized-looking stacks of papers and folders. The walls were covered in color photos of smiling kids of a variety of ages.

  “Can I help you?” Mrs. Jones’s question had an edge to it, as if she thought I might be there to ask for a favor or something.

  “Hi,” I said, eager to disabuse her of the notion that she was somehow expected to help me. “Are you Mrs. Jones? I’m Zoe Klein. I’m Olivia Greco’s friend. I’m going to be taking over the dance class while Olivia’s having her treatment.”

  She didn’t exactly jump up and down for joy. In fact, she just said, “Mmmmm-hmmm,” and slid the filing cabinet drawer shut. Her lips were pressed tightly together. Once the drawer was closed all the way, she walked around to the front of the desk. I now saw that she was wearing extremely high heels. In her bare feet, she probably wasn’t taller than about five feet. “Like I told Olivia,” she said, “I’m not so happy with this entire . . . situation.”

  And what situation might that be? My friend having cancer? Because I am just soooo happy about that situation.

  “This situation?” I repeated. “Do we have a situation?”

  Even though I’d tried to keep the sarcasm out of my voice, her eyes narrowed slightly. “Yes, we do have a situation, Miss Zoe Klein.” I heard the slightest hint of a southern accent. “And the situation is this: You did not apply for this position. No one interviewed you. I have no letters of recommendation from your teachers. I can’t just have people walking in off the street to work with my girls. I told Olivia that I needed to take someone who’d gone through the application process, but she got upset. She said you were the only person she could work with. And I know she’s sick. And our girls just love her, and she said if you did the class, she would be working with you. So what exactly am I supposed to say?”

  And what exactly was I supposed to say? Olivia had made Mrs. Jones hire me? And what was all this talk about hiring, anyway? It wasn’t like I was going to be getting a paycheck at the end of the month. This was just a stupid community service thing.

  I stared at Mrs. Jones. Mrs. Jones stared back at me. Neither of us said anything, and I felt myself growing furious. My face burned and my fingers twitched.

  It wasn’t the first time I’d felt this way since Olivia’s diagnosis. Just about anything could set me off these days—a seat belt that wouldn’t snap shut, a bathroom stall with a broken lock, stupid Skype this morning on my stupid phone. Lately it felt like if I wasn’t mad about something, I was about to get mad about something.

  Olivia had gotten cancer and I’d gotten an anger-management problem.

  I was seriously about to lose it at Mrs. Jones, but just as I opened my mouth, I saw Olivia, sitting in her hospital room, crying because she couldn’t teach the girls ballet. Then I imagined calling Olivia up to inform her that I’d just told Mrs. Jones where she could shove her dance class.

  I took a deep breath, squeezed my hands into fists, and managed to give Ruth Jones a wide and relatively sincere smile.

  “Mrs. Jones,” I said calmly, “I truly hope I’ll be able to gain your confidence.” My phone vibrated with an incoming text. I ignored it, keeping my eyes glued to Mrs. Jones’s. Over and over as we stared at each other I repeated silently, I am someone you can trust. I am someone you can trust, willing her to get my telepathic me
ssage.

  Finally, reluctantly, Mrs. Jones moved her eyes from mine. “I won’t have my girls disappointed. They have to know they can depend on this place. The rest of the world lets them down. We lift them up.”

  When she said that, I knew I’d won. She was going to let me teach the class for Olivia.

  “I won’t disappoint them,” I promised, almost adding ma’am at the last second and then deciding it would be overkill.

  Out in the hallway, I checked my phone. The text was from Olivia.

  Don’t be scared of Mrs. J. She is OK.

  I dialed her number. “That’s information I could have used a little earlier,” I hissed. “And she’s not ‘okay,’ and nice of you to tell me she doesn’t even want me teaching the class. I thought I was doing her some big favor.”

  “You are doing her a big favor,” Olivia assured me. “As soon as she sees what you can do with these girls, she’s going to realize that.”

  “Now I feel like she’s just waiting for me to fail so she can fire me.” Irritated by what I’d just said, I slapped the wall. “Listen to me. How can she fire me? I don’t even work here.”

  “Is this fun?” asked Olivia. “Are we having fun yet?” As Mrs. Jones had directed me to, I headed down the hallway and up a well-lit flight of dark wooden stairs.

  “Your having cancer is a complete pain in my ass, Olivia Greco,” I told her.

  “Tell me about it,” she agreed.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  10

  Walking into the dance studio at the Reginald B. Harris Community Center was perhaps the strangest experience of my life.

  Not because it was weird, but because it wasn’t.

  When I got to the second floor, I’d called Olivia back, this time with Skype, which we’d never used before.s Her face filled the screen, which was so weird that I immediately cracked up. “Okay,” I said, finally getting myself under control and making my voice deep and serious. “We are now walking down the hallway.” I held the phone out in front of me and moved it around so she could see the hallway, then turned it back so we were looking at each other.

  “Copy that,” she answered, trying to keep a straight face and failing.

  “Houston,” I said. “We do not have a problem. I repeat: We do not have a problem.”

  “Roger, Captain,” she squeaked, before totally losing it.

  I was laughing so hard I could barely push the studio door open, but when I finally got myself more or less collected and crossed the threshold, the room looked identical to all the other dance studios Olivia and I had ever been in—a wall of full-length mirrors, a barre underneath the windows on the opposite wall, the floor a pale wood. The only difference between the studios Olivia and I had danced in at NYBC and this one was that this one didn’t have a piano.

  I had never been in this room before, but I knew it perfectly. The sensation made me shiver slightly, as if I’d somehow stepped into my own past.

  The dozen or so girls clustered at the far end of the room and staring at me as I walked in were a welcome distraction.

  “So, um . . . hi. I’m Zoe.” I gave a little wave. Most of the girls were probably around eight or nine. One or two might have been a little older, and one girl was so tall I was sure she was at least twelve or thirteen. A couple of the smallest girls waved back at me. I put my phone down, reached into my purse for the bag with Olivia’s ballet shoes, sat down, and slipped them on. The whole time, the girls watched me, not saying anything.

  “Where’s Olivia?” asked the tall girl finally.

  “Ta-da!” I picked up the phone and held it out to them. From their squeals of amazement, you would have thought Olivia had just materialized in the middle of the room. All traces of hostility gone from their faces, they gathered around my phone, calling out and waving hello to Olivia. A couple of them actually reached up and touched the screen shyly. Finally the same tall girl who’d asked me where Olivia was now asked Olivia where she was.

  “Everybody sit down and I’ll tell you.” Olivia’s voice was tinny and a little distorted, but word passed from one girl to another and soon they were huddled in a tight group on the floor. I held my phone directly in front of me. To the girls it probably looked as if Olivia’s face was on my body.

  After all these years, I was finally getting to be a blonde.

  “I’m really sorry I’m not there,” Olivia began once they were quiet. “But last week I went to the doctor, and it turns out I have an illness that has to be treated with an IV. See my IV?” The girls nodded, their faces serious. “I’ll be better soon, but I have to take this medicine for about a week, and then I have to recover from taking this medicine, which is kind of crazy when you think about it.”

  “What do you have, Olivia?” asked an adorable girl with short, tightly braided hair and a high-pitched voice.

  “That’s a good question, Imani,” said Olivia, and I realized I was going to have to learn all their names. I’m terrible at names. A person can tell me her name and I forget it five seconds later. While Olivia described what was wrong with her without once uttering the word cancer or leukemia, I watched Imani, trying to think of a mnemonic that would help me remember Imani. Sounds like salami. Nothing about her hair said salami to me. A few freckles. Freckles had nothing to do with salami either. I kept staring at her, noticing only when she reached up to scratch her chin that she was wearing a necklace that said Imani.

  “But when are you coming back?” asked the tall girl suspiciously. She was so not falling for this whole Olivia-has-to-be-in-the-hospital-for-an-unspecified-period-of-time-but-everything’s-fabulous routine.

  I had to respect her unwillingness to buy the bullshit we were selling.

  “Charlotte, what do you mean, when am I coming back?” asked Livvie, her voice upbeat. “I’m here now. And you’re really lucky, because you not only get me, you get my very best best friend in the entire world. We’re like the . . . super dynamic duo.”

  Even though Livvie said the thing about our being best friends and a super dynamic duo in this really light, funny way, to my surprise I felt my eyes getting damp. Fabulous. Just when Livvie had reassured these girls that everything was going to be fine, I was going to start blubbering.

  Way to inspire confidence, Zoe!

  “Now,” Livvie continued, “I told Zoe all about what incredibly hard workers you are, so don’t make me a liar, okay?” A few of the girls nodded. A few others said, “Okay!” I made a mental note of how Olivia was talking to them—nice but firm.

  I went across the hallway to an empty classroom, got a chair, and put my phone on it while the girls lined up at the barre. I turned on the CD player, and soft piano music filled the room as Olivia told the girls to stand in first position and then plié. For a minute I watched her face on my screen. She was smiling widely, totally in her element.

  Meanwhile, I felt like I was being tortured. How could I be in a dance studio and not dance? My body ached to move, to bend and stretch with the music.

  This isn’t about you, I told myself firmly. This is about them. I took my eyes off Olivia and turned to look at the girls.

  I’d always wondered how NYBC and other elite dance schools made their decisions about who to accept and who to reject, who to promote and who to cut. After dancing with the same girls for years, I definitely thought I knew which ones were the best, but it seemed to me that in just a few minutes of an audition, it would have been impossible to judge a dancer’s true ability unless someone majorly fucked up.

  Watching the girls follow Olivia’s instructions, I immediately understood how it worked. All the girls stood in first position, facing the barre, bending and straightening their legs as Olivia told them to. But you definitely would not have used the word graceful to describe most of them. They kind of threw their knees out when they bent down, and they were almost all je
rky in their movements, grasping the barre in a death grip as they stuck their butts out each time Olivia asked them to do a plié. A couple of the girls were okay, gently bending at the knee and holding their backs straight like they were supposed to. Still, if I’d been a scout sent to choose potential NYBC dancers from this group, I would have known at a glance to reject all of them.

  Only one—the tall girl who’d kept asking questions earlier—had any real talent. Her arms were draped gracefully, and her fingertips rested lightly on the barre. When Olivia told the class to move to second position, she did a battement tendu so perfect I wondered if she’d studied ballet before Olivia had taught her. Because it wasn’t just her skills. The whole way she carried her body was more expert and professional than any of the other girls. Once upon a time that had been me and Olivia—standing out from the crowd of girls who wanted to be ballerinas but didn’t have the goods.

  Until we didn’t have the goods either.

  After the girls were warmed up, Olivia had them move to the center of the room, and later she asked them to line up in pairs and had them chassé across the floor. Some of the girls definitely got better and more relaxed as class went on, but the tall girl was still the only one worth watching.

  “Okay, guys,” Olivia said when class was nearly over. “We only have a few minutes left, but let’s try doing some chaînés. You may remember them from last week, but let’s review. Zoe, can I ask you to demonstrate?”

  “Sure,” I said, glad to finally get out of my head and be useful.

  I headed to the center of the room. I hadn’t been actively avoiding looking at my reflection, but when I met my own eyes in the mirror, I realized I’d managed not to see myself in the mirror for the whole time we’d been in class.

  The funny thing was that my reflection, when I finally saw it, was the only strange thing in this otherwise familiar setting. At NYBC, girls wore pink tights and black leotards. Always. No exceptions. Since I was no longer in possession of either of these items of clothing—what with my having chucked my entire dance wardrobe—I’d put on black leggings and a cropped blue T-shirt to lead the class. Even though I was wearing ballet slippers, the image reflected back at me wasn’t the one I’d watched for years. I could have been doing yoga or joining my mom for one of her exercise classes.