With a feeling of dread, she took the paper she’d just printed out and searched for her mom. Bethany found her in the laundry room folding sheets.
She looked up when Bethany peeked in. “I’m so glad to see you. Grab all your laundry and take it to your room.”
“I will. But I need to talk to you about something first.”
“It sounds serious.”
“It is.”
Looking concerned now, her mother finished folding the sheet and placed it on top of the dryer. “Where do you want to talk?”
“Here’s fine.” Ready to get it over with, she held up the Nutcracker schedule. “Miss Shannon emailed everyone the rehearsal schedule for the ballet.”
“Good. We’ve been waiting for it. What’s the problem?”
“The first full company dress rehearsal is next Saturday night.”
“On a Saturday night?”
“Something about it was the only time that week that she could have the theater for four hours.”
Her mom groaned. “Four hours. You know it’s going to get stretched out until five. Those things never end on time.” She sighed. “Well, I guess we’ll make the best of it, right?”
“Mom, next Saturday night is the dance! The Christmas dance!”
“Oh dear.”
Oh dear was right. Placing the schedule on the dryer, she pointed to her teacher’s note. “Look at what she wrote.”
“All performers have to attend. No excuses . . .” She sighed. “Students who miss will be cut from the cast . . .” She whistled softly. “This is pretty harsh for a bunch of kids, don’t you think?”
“Yes.” Then, remembering just how many people tried to get out of stuff, Bethany added, “I guess she doesn’t have a choice, though. I mean, otherwise, half the cast would be gone. The other day before class I overheard a mother tell Shannon that they had a special shopping trip planned so her daughter was going to miss practice.”
“I feel for both the mom and Miss Shannon. Christmas is a tough time to have a dance recital. But I have to side with your teacher on this one. It’s impossible to fine tune dances when people are missing.”
“Yeah.” Bethany hated even agreeing that much.
Looking worried, she said, “I think you know what you have to do.”
“I have to call Jeremy and tell him that I can’t go to the dance.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid so. You’ve made a commitment and you have a role that you’ve been working hard for, for years. You can’t ignore that.”
“I know.”
“Plus, we’ve already bought the costume. It wasn’t cheap, Bethy.”
“I know. I guess we can return the dress. The tags are still on it.”
Her mother nodded slowly. “That would probably be best . . . though maybe you could try to do both?”
“How could I?”
“Meet Jeremy at the dance? You’d be late, but better late than never, right?”
As good as that sounded, she couldn’t imagine that being okay with him. “Mom, that means he wouldn’t be able to ask anyone else and he’d have to show up there by himself. He’s not going to want to do that.”
“You don’t know that for sure, dear. He might. You should ask him.”
Ask him if he’d want to do all that for her? “I don’t know. You don’t understand, Mom. He’s really cute. Half the girls in the junior class probably have a crush on him.”
“He asked you. Maybe he has a crush on you.”
Her mother always made everything seem like a Disney movie—with everyone’s problems vanishing by the end of the night. “I don’t know about that.”
“You need to be positive! Try to think that way when you talk to your teacher tonight too.”
“Mom, I don’t have anything to talk to Miss Shannon about.”
“Believe it or not, she was once a high school girl taking dance classes herself. I know you have to be at the practice, but maybe she’ll work with you so you can leave a little early.”
“I don’t think she’ll do that.”
“You won’t know until you ask.”
“Fine. But first I have to talk to Jeremy. I’m not going to ask to leave if he wants to take someone else.”
Her mother looked pointedly at the clock. “You have an hour before we leave for your class. You better go give him a call.”
Picking up the sheet of paper, she turned around.
“Bethany, get your laundry too.”
She turned on her heel, grabbed her laundry basket, tossed the schedule on top, and headed back to her room. This was horrible. Why did everything good always have to happen at the same time?
By the time she put away half her laundry she felt better and knew that she couldn’t put it off any longer. She picked up her phone and, with a shaking hand, called Jeremy.
He answered on the second ring. “Bethany?”
“Yes, it’s me.” Boy that was stupid! She cleared her throat. “Um, sorry. Is this a bad time to call?”
“No. What’s up?”
“I have some bad news.”
“What happened?”
She loved that there was so much concern in his voice. She was pretty sure that he really did care about her. “Um, there’s no other way to say this, but I don’t think I can go to the dance with you after all.”
“You’re backing out?”
“No! I mean, it’s not like that. I’m in The Nutcracker and one of the big rehearsals is the same night as the dance. I can’t skip it.”
He didn’t respond for a full two seconds. “That’s why you’re canceling? For a dance rehearsal?”
“I don’t have much choice. If I skip one of the dress rehearsals then I’m kicked out of the ballet. She means it too.”
“Oh.”
But everything in his tone said that he didn’t believe her and that he didn’t understand. She felt like crying. “I’m so sorry. I just found out about an hour ago. I went and talked to my mom but she agreed that there wasn’t any way I could get out of the rehearsal.”
“Okay. Well, bye.”
She opened her mouth, ready to tell them her mother’s plan about how she could go late and meet him there. But . . . what was the point?