Dancing with the Devil ✔️

9

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D A N C I N G
WITH THE
D E V I L
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Finally it was the weekend. I jumped out of bed early on Saturday morning eager to have breakfast and be ready when Millie arrived to pick me up.

Our week had been very hectic! Since the incident in the Performing Arts building, we were forced to do our rehearsals in a small adjoining room while the damage to the main area was being repaired. And unfortunately, it wasn't free very often so we had to make the most of the limited amount of time that we were given to use it.

Sara's hero status had escalated and as I had predicted, everyone wanted to be her friend. Although I sat next to her in class and she was always polite and reasonably friendly, it seemed that she didn't have time for Millie and I during breaks anymore. She was too preoccupied with all the new friends she had made, including of course, Blake Jansen.

Meanwhile, Millie and I continued to work with the other dance groups and the younger kids whose dances we had to coordinate and choreograph, which kept us pretty busy ourselves.

But now that Saturday had finally arrived, I looked forward with enthusiasm to the day ahead. After a couple of days of heavy rain, the sun was shining and it promised to be a beautiful day. Jackie, one of the girls in our class had invited a group of friends to her house to celebrate her birthday. She lived on a large property that was situated on the outskirts of town. Most of us lived in the suburbs and never got the chance to do all the fun things that are possible when you own lots of land, so we were all really excited about it.

I had been there once for her birthday party years before and I remembered vividly, the amazing day I had experienced. One of the highlights had been a trailer ride that her dad had taken us all on. He had hooked up their open box trailer to the back of his four wheel drive and everyone had climbed into the back. Even two of our teachers had hopped in with us. I remembered thinking how lucky Jackie was to have our teachers at her birthday party but now that idea seems pretty ridiculous.

Having our current teacher, Mrs. Jackson at a birthday party is not something I could imagine anyone in my class wanting to arrange. It would be different if she were young and cool like Miss Fitz, our drama teacher, but Mrs. Jackson is pretty old now and I don't think that she'd enjoy it either!

There were about twenty kids at the time as well as the teachers, all squashed into the back of that trailer. Although I guess because the kids were quite small, we managed to fit in reasonably well. Everyone had been screaming and cheering as Jackie's dad drove around and around this huge grassy area and up their dirt driveway then back down again. The excitement we felt when he went over bumps on the road or the grass was so intense that none of us had wanted him to stop.

That trailer ride really was a highlight of my childhood and back then, I thought that Jackie was the luckiest kid alive to grow up on a property like that. And reminiscing about that day made me wonder if they still had that trailer because I thought it would still be a pretty cool thing to do!

When I jumped into the back of Millie's car later that morning, I was filled with excited anticipation about what lied ahead. Blake, Jack and Alex had also been invited and it was pretty much all that everyone had been able to talk about at school the day before. Sitting alongside Millie, we chatted about how much fun the party was going to be as well as how we were looking forward to giving Jackie her birthday present. We had gone shopping at the mall after school one day earlier in the week and were so happy with what we had bought. The light blue jacket studded with silver sequins and a cool design on the collar and cuffs of the sleeves had definitely stood out on the rack.