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What is she saying?
“You don’t have to offer anything,” I whisper. “Everything is already hard without you trying to give me something.”
“Yes, I do have to do this,” she replies, reaching out to grip my hand. “Iwantto do this for you. It will help me feel less guilty for all the lost years.”
“You’re sure this will help you?” I ask her.
“Yes.”
I can see the sincerity in her eyes.
“But what do you mean, Mom? What can you offer me?”
She locks in on me. “Something that will make you happy. You tell me what, and I will do my best to make it happen. Anything in the world.”
I immediately think back to downstairs in the movie room - to the filmed dancers on the stage with the swelling music and the amazing costumes. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about them, even with Alda’s intense intervention.
I think of the unparalleled joy I experienced watching those dancers.
To how I wanted to soak through the screen and be with them.
That would be a wish I would really, really want.
“I want to be a dancer,” I mutter quietly.
The words float in the air between us.
Mom freezes. “A dancer?”
“Like the ones in Swan Lake,” I clarify. “The ones that spin and look so beautiful in costumes.”
“You mean ballet dancers?”
“Ballet?” I ask. “That’s what it’s called? Yeah, I want to be a ballet dancer, then.”
“You want ballet lessons?” Mom asks me seriously. “Actual ballet lessons?”
“Yep. If that’s what it takes to be one. I want to be a ballet dancer.”
She nods.
“Okay, Emma. Let’s get you ballet lessons, then.”
7
EIGHT MONTHS LATER
EMMA
“Do it again.”
Like good loyal soldiers, all of us girls diligently perform the exercise in perfect choreographed unison, just as we are commanded to do so by the tough little woman standing - with dead-straight posture - in front of us.
Like the rest of the girls in the class, I’m struggling hard to follow the teacher’s strict directives. It’s difficult to maintain concentration when your whole body is aching after hours of practice. But, still, I push through the pain and try to focus on why I’m here - I know all too well how incredibly lucky I am to be in the dance class instructed by none other than the famous Russian former ballet dancer Irina Volkov.
She’s only teaching in a small insignificant American town like Crystal River because of a generous cultural foundation set up and paid for by none other than the Penmayne family –of courseit’s them. I have come to realize over the last few months that Crystal River, as an entity, is practically completely funded by that family of seven brothers and the scariest power couple on the planet.
“Stop.”
