My Seventh-Grade Life in Tights (10 page)

He looked over at me, eyebrows pinched together. “I smell bad or something?”

I froze mid-scoot. “No. You smell fine.”

DeMarcus let out a weak-sounding laugh and sat up. “You still freaked out about the other day?”

“Yeah. I guess. Like maybe I feel bad for making you think I was calling you—”

“Whoa, easy.” He swept his eyes around the sidelines really fast. “You can’t just go throwing that word around, you know?”

“Um, not really.”

“Guys don’t like to hear it. Especially guys who have to change in the locker room with other guys. Even if—even if it’s not true. You know?”

I sort of understood what he was saying. But at the same time totally didn’t. “I was trying to say I know you’re not. I mean, you’re dating Sarah.” I added that in more for me. Because I had enough to deal with. The thought of DeMarcus sending lovey-dovey texts to Kassie would just make me feel worse.

He sighed, staring out onto the field. “I don’t know, man. It’s…tough.”

“Trust me, I know.”

DeMarcus swiveled his head toward me. “You
do
?”

“Yeah. But I’m starting to get there. Or at least I think I am.”

“So…” DeMarcus slid closer, his voice slipping into whisper mode. “How do you deal with it? Like, do you ever talk to your parents or anything?”

“Not really. I just sort of tell myself that I’ll either get better or she’ll lose her voice.” I smiled at the thought of Sarah trying to bark out commands, but only managing a bunch of wimpy wheezes.

“Hold up.” DeMarcus shook his head. “What’re you talking about?”

“Sarah. How tough she is. I’ve been screamed at more these past few weeks than ever in my life.”

His head fell forward. I thought he was going to pop back up and say something like
I feel you, man,
but instead he just sat there with his eyes closed and sighed. Maybe he liked my idea of Sarah not being able to talk and was praying that could happen for him, too.

“Are you okay?” I said.

He lifted his head. “I’m fine.”

He wasn’t. That much was obvious. What I couldn’t get was why. “Hey, if you need to talk about something—”

“I said I’m fine,” he snapped, and stood up, shaking out his hands. “I gotta get ready to go back in.” He grabbed his helmet and walked toward the other first-string players, who were milling around on the sidelines.

I sort of wanted to go stand by him. Maybe try to get him to talk. If anything, maybe he could give
me
some pointers on how to survive Sarah. But I stayed put and tried to focus on the rest of the game.

Which we lost. By over thirty points. That was the bad news.

The good news was that practice was at my house on Saturday, so I got to sleep in later than usual. After we ran through our routine a few times, we sat down to get real-life zombified by Austin. He’d brought a makeup kit that he’d found online.

Carson sat on the edge of the end table, already halfway to undead as the YouTube video played back. He commented a few times, saying how much he liked some of the moves Sarah had taught me.

Kassie, though? Not so much.

“I’m not saying they don’t look good,” she said, shrugging. “Your lines really are looking better, but they’re just not your style.”

“They
could
be! I could just mix them in with my old stuff. I could be like a contemporary ninja or something.”

“Ooh, you could call it Kungtemporary Fu!” Carson said.

Austin snorted out a laugh, accidentally drawing a streak of green across Carson’s forehead.

“Yes!” I said. “Kassie, think about it. It still works.”

“But all you’re doing is copying her moves. That’s not what dance is about.”

I plopped down on the couch beside her. I wanted to make sure she knew exactly how unfair I thought she was being.

She must have gotten the message. She sighed and leaned close so our arms were touching. “I just want you to be yourself. Because
that’s
who I think is so awesome.”

The frustration balled up on my face faded away and a smile broke through.

“So how bad is it?” Carson asked. “Working with the Wicked Witch of Sunnydale?”

“Like ninety percent of the time? Beyond awful.” I didn’t say how much I was actually loving all the stuff she was teaching me, though.

“Yeah, but she’ll find a way to get you into the top three.” Kassie pulled her feet up on the couch. “She’s sneaky like that. Still not sure how she figured out I never sent in a video, though.”

“Because she’s a demon and has evil mind-reading powers,” Carson said.

“Dude, stop moving before I poke you in the eye with this thing.” Austin waved the little purple makeup stick in front of Carson.

“Well, she must not totally believe you didn’t, because she’s still helping me,” I said.

Kassie nodded. Carson drew in a slow breath. “Ooh, if Sarah can read minds, I wonder what dirty thoughts she’s picking up from Austin right now.” Carson laughed, raising his hands like he was ready to block whatever Austin was going to throw at him. Kassie started making kissy sounds and I had to force myself not to stare at her lips while she did it.

“Okay, new rule.” Austin set the tube of fake blood down. “No talking about Sarah or the plan or anything like that during the makeup test.”

Carson rolled his eyes. “I’m really starting to worry about you, Austin. There are better girls at Sunnydale to crush on than Sarah Middleton.”

“You know what? Maybe I don’t care. Sarah’s hot. She’s got the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen and I think she smells good.”

“She smells good?” Kassie asked, laughing behind her hand.

“Yes! She smells like ice cream. And I’m sort of tired of hearing you all talk about how nasty she is. She’s never been nasty to me.”

“She’s never been
anything
to you,” Carson said. “I’m not sure she even knows you exist.”

“She will one day. She’ll look right at me. And she’ll say hi.”

Kassie shook her head, still smiling. “You’re a freak, Austin. Which is why we love you. We won’t talk about it when you’re around, but I don’t think we’re changing our mind.”

She looked at me like she was asking permission. I nodded. How could I stop after she’d admitted my lines were getting better? Sarah had said there’d be pain. I guess she meant it’d be going a lot deeper than just my muscles.

When I got to the gym on Monday for my next private lesson, Sarah was sitting on the bleachers, texting. The little clicks rattling from her phone sounded like a machine gun. “Change out of your dance gear.”

“We not having practice?” A little tiny bubble of disappointment swelled in my chest. I’d actually been looking forward to showing her how much I’d practiced the routine.

“Not today.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’ve been thinking about what you said about studios. And it’s time you got un-brainwashed. So call your parents. Tell them you might be late today.”

Sarah stood up and shoved her phone in her back pocket.

“We’re taking a field trip.”

Me:
ive been kidnapped by sarah HELP!

I was sitting in her dad’s SUV and waiting for Kassie to text me back. When Sarah had told me where we were going, my stomach had turned to a lump of lead.

Dance-Splosion.

Where
real
dancers were made.

But it wasn’t all the bad kind of nervousness. I’d always wanted to see the inside of a studio. Even more now that I was going to be sabotaging one of their contests. Thankfully, my parents needed some extra time to meet with some of their clients and had decided picking me up a little later wasn’t a bad idea.

“So, Dillon, are you learning a lot working with Sarah?” Mr. Middleton asked.

Sarah stiffened up in the seat beside me like she was expecting me to make her look bad.

“Um, yeah. She’s a pretty good teacher, I guess.” I glanced at my phone again. No response. So I sent another message.

Me:
she’s taking me to dance-splosion what am i supposed to do?

“I’m better than pretty good, Dad,” Sarah said. “Before he came to me, he didn’t even know what a plié was, and now he’s got an entire routine.”

All he said back was, “Hm.” Not like he was interested in what she’d said. More like someone had poked him in the gut and it just popped out of his mouth.

When I looked at Sarah, she was drawing something on a folder.
Arts eMotion
in big bubble letters. It reminded me of the Dizzee Freekz logo Kassie had made. “What’s that?” I asked.

A big smile zipped across her face, then instantly disappeared when she glanced up toward the front seat. “Nothing.”

“Is it like a crew name or something?”

She scooted over in her seat toward me. “It’s the name of my studio.” She was whispering, grinning while she did it. “Or it will be when I open it. After I graduate, of course.”

“Cool. But you should put
Motion
in a different color.” Right as I said it, she shushed me.

Her dad’s eyes flashed in the rearview mirror. “Sarah,” he said calmly. But it was enough to send her sliding toward the other side of the SUV in a huff. “We talked about this. You’re too good a dancer to work at a studio.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“It makes perfect sense. You’re not going to waste your skills—”

“It wouldn’t be a waste, Dad!”

“Please don’t interrupt me.”

Sarah’s mouth clamped shut. A miracle. But I couldn’t celebrate. Not when I was sitting in the middle of the most uncomfortable situation ever.

“We’ve invested way too much time and money for you to just throw everything away. In a couple of years you’ll be in a brand-new age group. You’re going to have to buckle down if you want a shot at nationals at that level. So no more talk about teaching. That’s not what you’ve been trained for. Understand?”

Sarah nodded.

“Good.” Mr. Middleton pushed a button on his Bluetooth headset and started up a conversation with someone on the other end.

Sarah’s face was solid stone. Emotionless. Like she’d sat in front of the mirror for hours practicing the
I’m Sarah and there’s nothing at all wrong
look. As she stared out the window, I couldn’t help but think how normal she looked when she was just sitting there not yelling at me. Almost like she was a totally different person than the Sarah I always saw walking with her Barbies and hanging off of DeMarcus. And then I wondered if she knew about what DeMarcus had asked me.

“What?” she asked, turning her head toward me like she was reading my mind.

“Oh, I— It’s nothing.”

“You were staring at me.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“I saw you in the window reflection.”

Oops—busted. “I was just—” I checked to see if her dad was watching, but he was busy laughing with some invisible person. “I was just wondering how you and DeMarcus were doing.”

Sarah’s eyes flashed, surprised. It was quick, but I noticed. She looked back down at her phone. “We’re fine. Why?”

“I don’t know. I was just asking.”

“Well, it’s none of your business, so don’t ask.”

“It’s my business if he talks to me.”

She spun in her seat so fast I thought she was going to rip the seatbelt in half. “When did he talk to you? What’d he say?”

I shoved any thought of telling her the truth toward the back of my mind. The last thing I needed was a ticked-off quarterback
and
a ticked-off dance tutor. “Just football stuff. You know, games and plays and stuff. Nothing about you.”

“You better not be spreading any rumors about him to your dork friends. You’re not the only one who’s got an image to protect, you know.”

My head rocked backward like she’d just slapped me across the face. “I’m not! And his image is, like, perfect. He’s the quarterback and he’s dating
you.
He’s basically the hero from every eighties movie.”

Either she didn’t hear me or didn’t want to. She just went right back to her phone, scowling and texting a million miles an hour.

I didn’t have to sit there for long, though. We pulled into the Dance-Splosion parking lot and my breath caught in my throat. The place was awesome. And way more intimidating in real life.
DANCE
was printed inside a big triangle that looked like a bloodred Dorito, and
SPLOSION
was in bright yellow letters on the brick.

A breathy “Whoa” escaped my lungs. Sarah shoved her phone back into her backpack and got out without saying a word. We were halfway to the building before I realized Mr. Middleton was still in the SUV. “Is your dad not coming in?” I asked.

She shook her head and pushed open the front door. “We won’t be that long.”

The inside was even fancier. The place had this warm glow to it like everything had been carved out of gold. I passed by a poster that advertised the Heartland Dance Challenge. The same one where I was supposed to tear Dance-Splosion a new one. Just thinking about it sent a nervous tingle through my body.

“Hey, Sarah,” the girl at the front desk said. She looked like she was probably in college. “You’re here early.”