“Okay, we’re bailing,” says Heather.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” I say quickly.
“I’m afraid if I breathe too hard the stairs will cave in under us.”
I reach the top before she does, stubbornly opening the door to “Farrah’s Dance Studio” before she can get another word in edgewise. I skid to a stop, stricken by what I can only call aesthetic whiplash—the creepy staircase has given way to a sweeping, gorgeously lit studio with immaculate hardwood floors and walls with giant spotless mirrors. There’s a little prep area on the side for dancers to leave their stuff and change their shoes, with pretty pale pink painted benches, fairy lights, and a hand-painted glittery message that says DANCE YOUR HEART OUT.
“Wow,” says Heather. “It’s like walking into a Pinterest board.”
“Well, thank you. Or, I guess—thank my mom. She’s an interior designer and did this one on the house.”
We both turn to see a woman in a bright yellow leotard with fluttery sleeves and built-in shorts and a pair of worn-out beige LaDuca dance shoes, the kind with the flexible soles that I’ve mostly seen only on well-trained, serious dancers. Her strawberry blond hair is pulled up into a bun spilling with thick tendrils and wisps that frame her face, still glowing with sweat from the class that must have just let out before us. There isn’t a speck of makeup on her, but with her striking brows (thick like mine) and the pop of freckles that fan out across her pale cheeks (just like I get in the summer), she radiates all on her own.
“I’m, uh … my name’s…” My aunt clears her throat, evidently winded from that one flight of stairs we just walked. “Heather,” she finally says, extending her hand.
“Heather,” Farrah repeats, taking Heather’s hand between both of hers and squeezing it warmly. “Welcome. Is this your first dance class, or—”
“No. Oh, god, no, I’m—an aunt. Millie’s aunt. This is Millie,” she says, laughing this nervous laugh I haven’t heard since that time we saw Anne Hathaway on the sidewalk in the East Village. “I can’t dance.”
Farrah lingers for a beat before letting Heather’s hand go. “Well, I’m sure that’s not true.”
The laugh again. And oh. My god. Oh no. I know what that laugh is, because it’s the same laugh from when Jade first came to the Milkshake Club and started flirting with Heather when she was working the ice-cream bar. The laugh that means she is supremely, irrevocably, in one fraction of an improbable second in love.
“Millie, right?”
Farrah has turned her gaze over to me, and for a moment I forget that Heather has thrown an incredibly awkward wrench into this “Are You My Mom” plan. There’s this pulsing energy in Farrah’s eyes that makes me certain she’s one of those people who will be every bit as energetic in her nineties as she is right now in her thirties—something almost birdlike about her, in her sprightly steps on the floor and the light way she carries herself.
I recognize that energy. That tirelessness. It’s electric in my own bones, even if mine aren’t half as nimble as hers.
“Right,” I say. Teddy signed me up with a fake last name so it wouldn’t give me away. Thank god she doesn’t remember it and say it in front of Heather, or I’d be sixteen thousand kinds of busted.
Farrah purses her lips into a sly smile. “You’re the last-minute sign-up!”
I smile back broadly, trying to make it look like I’m not inspecting her head to toe looking for every potential similarity between us. “That’s me.”
Heather steps forward and nearly trips. “Glad you could, uh…” The moment Farrah turns to look at her again, Heather seems to forget that she started a sentence in the first place, let alone that it needs finishing. I accidentally-on-purpose step on Heather’s foot. “Fit her in!” she manages.
“Of course!” says Farrah brightly. She leans in closer to Heather. “There are still a few extra spots, you know. Plenty of space.” She gestures out to the studio.
Heather’s cheeks turn pink. “I…”
“Have to get back to Manhattan,” I remind her, before she mom-blocks me. As thrilled as I am that she’s looking at any living thing that isn’t Jade, this is decidedly not the time, profoundly not the place, and extremely not the woman.
“That I do,” says Heather. She rocks back on her heels, angling herself toward the door but still lingering near Farrah. She does, at least, remember to look at me when she says, “Pop into the Milkshake Club after so I know you’re back?”
“The Milkshake Club?” Farrah asks, her face lighting up.
And just like that, Heather’s not angled at the door anymore. “You’ve been?”
“Nah, I’ve only ever seen it on Instagram. It looks sick.”
“Heather’s the owner,” I say for her, partially because I am proud as hell of her for running it on her own, but partially because her tongue looks too tied to say it herself.
“Get out!” says Farrah, hip checking Heather. “A club owner, huh? And you say you can’t dance?”
“Well—uh…”
I blink, hard, because if I don’t then I am going to think about things like the fact that my biological mom might be flirting with my aunt and I’m pretty sure there isn’t a type of therapy in the whole world that could cure me from it. I clear my throat loudly, which prompts Farrah to look at the pretty blue clock on the wall.
“We’ve got day classes, too, if you ever want to give it a spin,” she tells Heather. “As for us…” She pauses to clap her hands, the other dancers’ heads turning at attention. “Two more minutes until warm-ups, my stars!”
Oh, right. I actually have to dance.
Shit.
My relationship with dancing is—well, not complicated. It’s actually pretty simple: I suck at it. I have impeccable rhythm when I sing, but it’s like my bones never got the memo. I’ve managed to compensate by videotaping the student choreographers for our shows and then doing the routines at home so many times that our downstairs neighbor is one sloppy jeté away from calling the police. But that’s high school theater. You have time to fake it. Time that you definitely don’t have in dance calls in the real world, where you can get cut before you fully buckle your character shoes.
It’s not like I haven’t tried to get better. I’ve taken dance classes the same way I took classes for acting and singing. It’s just in the other classes, I started out bad and then I got better. Dancing … I started out bad and stayed bad. And if there’s one thing in this world I’m worse at than dancing, it’s being humiliated in public.
Hence, why I have avoided taking any dance classes this past year.
I know. I know. There’s no way to make it in musical theater these days when you’re not a triple, if not quadruple threat (mental note to self: learn how to play the guitar at some point). So really, these classes are long overdue. I’ve just been too busy clinging to my last shred of dignity to pencil it in.
“All right, my stars, I’m so happy to be seeing all your beautiful faces for the next few weeks!” says Farrah, beaming at all of us in turn. She stays at the front of the room but paces back and forth across it, occasionally giving a little skip. Only now that it’s quiet do I hear “Voulez-Vous” from Mamma Mia in the background. “A little bit about how these classes will go: every day we’ll do a dynamic warm-up and get our blood pumping, and then we’ll learn a full routine from a Broadway number. The first week of classes will be modern musicals, then jazz, then ballet, then tap, then a MegaMix week where we infuse all of them into different numbers.”