Where Dance Fits In

Chapter 13: Ready, Set, Dance

Reagan

We are called for an emergency family meeting in the practice room.

Miss Laurie tells us all to sit in a circle. It didn't matter if we recalled or not. "Starting with Joe, I want you to say one positive thing about the person on your right." Miss Laurie says. Joe looks to his right. It's little Madison. She's such an amazing dancer.

Joe adjusts his body so he's facing her. "Maddy," he says, "you have an amazing turnout." The compliments keep coming in a circle. When it lands on me, I turn to to my right. Joe is there. After me, the meeting is over.

"I think your a great dancer." I am tempted to stop there but I keep going anyways. "Joe, your so sweet and like family to me. We may have had our differences, but you're a great guy. Not to mention your amazing comebacks."

Everybody laughs and Joe smiles at me. "Thanks." he says and we all pile out of the room, just in time for sets.

I put on my shoes on and warm up with Brooklyn and Maeve. As we are doing some walks, these two girls that I recognize from our competition walk past us. They seem to be whispering about something, and they always look at me. They finally walk up to me.

"Hey," one says to me. "Aren't you that girl who goes to school with Kyle Gray?" "Yeah." I reply kind of like a question. "I'm so sorry." The other one says with a laugh. I try to say something but they have already walked away.

I am backstage waiting to dance. I am so nervous. I have never been this nervous about my set but today I'm just not feeling right. I am sitting next to the snooty girl who wouldn't respond to me earlier. "You know, I'm surprised I'm even competing against you. You're not competition for me."

Now she wants to talk.

"Excuse me?" I say. The nerve this girl has to say something like that is mind blowing. "I happened to think that I'm competition. In fact, I happened to think that all these girls here are competition!" I say that a little louder than I had planned to. "The point is," I say a little softer, "that if your part of the competition, than you are competition." I'm not sure if that made sense but the girl seemed to look a little taken back.

The first girl goes and looks and sounds amazing. They are going to be tough to beat. Then Brooklyn goes. It's not her best, but she looked pretty good.

When Maeve goes, she looks better than half of us here, and she's only in prelim! She ends with a confident 'bang', bows, and walks off the stage. Boy did she look good.

Soon Ms. Snooty pants goes. She's not even that good. 'Serves her right', I think.

Then it's me.

My body is shaking so hard I think I might be sick. I pray one last prayer to God in my head and walk up the steps. Everyone looks so much different than before. Some girls look in awe, wishing that could be them. Some are still crying into their mom's shoulder. Others look plainly like they want to hurt me.

My music starts. And then I start to dance. I don't even know what I'm thinking about. I try to remember all of the pointers that Ms. Laurie has been giving me. Turn out, arms, crossover, straighten legs. I feel pretty good. I bang out the set part and end with a thud, but at least it was an impact. Everyone claps and I head off the stage.

Maeve sprints up to me. "Holy cow!" She squeals a little too loudly. Her face is red but she is smiling from ear to ear. Conner must have finished his set because he comes over and picks me up, swings me around, and hugs me."You were awesome, the best I've ever seen you dance, really." "You saw?" I say, touched. "You kidding? I rushed off that stage like it was about to blow up!" We both laugh.

Miss Laurie finally comes up to me. "Great job, Reagan." She says and I know she means it because she looks at me and smiles. "What?" I say. "I'm just so proud of you."

I still can't get what those girls said to me out of my head. What was so wrong about Kyle? Did he do something bad? I don't know. Maybe they're just jealous.

Kyle comes up to me. "Hey! I heard you danced your best ever!" He says and hugs me. "Thanks." I say. "I just hope it's enough for me to recall." "It will be." He says.

We meet up with Joe, Maeve, Brooklyn, and Conner. We run across the street and get Ice cream because there is a McDonalds. Everybody stared at us, with are huge wigs and makeup, but that's just part of the fun.

You can tell there is some tension between everyone and Kyle, but I just block it out of my head. Kyle keeps trying to pull me away from everybody, but I say let's just stay hear. He seems to be getting mad at me. I'll I want to do is hang out with my friends. I sort of wish he wasn't here.

When we get back to the hotel, Brooklyn's mom is looking for her. "Brooklyn," her mom says. "We need to talk about some important decisions." "Mom, can't we do this later?" Brooklyn says back. I don't know what they need to talk about, but Ms. Laurie looks annoyed.

Conner, mom, and I all go back to our hotel room to hang out. Dad is sleeping with his mouth hanging wide open and me and Conner stick goldfish in until he wakes up.

"Hey guys!" He says with a mouthful of goldfish. He looks confused but just chews and swallows. "Hi dad." We say. "Reagan danced amazingly." Conner says. I roll my eyes but blush. "Really." Dad says. "Do you think you qualified for worlds?" "I hope." I say.