Chapter 1

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Take deep breaths in and out on eight counts the way she taught you too. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Now take one last deep breath and begin.

"I met Peta Jane Murgatroyd at 10:00 on August 15 of 2016 and instantly I fell in love. Not in a romantic way, but the sort of platonic love you would feel for an older sister. She was one of Miss Kym's old students who had just moved to New York City from Perth. Even from her first demonstration at boot camp, you could tell that she was technically flawless. She could easily have gotten any job she wanted, a prima ballerina or a rockette or a lead on broadway, yet something brought her to our studio, something I'm not sure I'll ever be able to understand. She had a passion for something beyond dance, a passion for humanity. She wanted to impact the world, but as a person not as a legend. And that's exactly what she did.

Once boot camp ended and our normal schedule began, I only saw her three times a week, on Wednesdays for Conditioning and Technique, on Thursdays for Tap, and on Saturdays for team rehearsals. In the studio versus out in the real world, Peta was a completely different person. Most of the other dancers only saw her as the bad cop because they didn't really care to know her outside the studio. As nice as she normally was, her teaching style tended to lean towards that of Abby Lee Miller. While the yelling worked with the other students, she soon realised it didn't resonate with me. Being the scaredy cat I was, I would jump every time she gave a command. So with me she wouldn't yell and instead spoke in a calm, encouraging tone, leaving the other kids baffled. That was the way she was in our Conditioning and Technique class, Mr. Hyde. There were about twenty kids, and she knew what she had to do to command their attention and respect, even if it came from a root of fear. In our tap class, however, there were only two students, Kurt and I, and she was a completely different person. She knew she didn't have to yell for us to pay attention to her.

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