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ChapterSix
“Anna! Anna! Get your ass up.” I hear Andrea's voice break through the wall of sleep. “Damn it Anna. Get up!” She says again, shaking me violently.
“What?” I bite out, smacking her away as I roll over and bury my face into the pillow.
“We are late. Shit. Shit. Shit. So late.” I hear her bounce around the room as her words settle over me. Suddenly, everything becomes clear and I shoot up in bed, frantically searching for the time.
“Our English final starts in fifteen minutes.” Andrea continues on, stopping for a split second to throw a pair of jeans at my head. “Get dressed. Come on!” She urges, having no patience for my still waking mind.
Pulling myself from the bed still foggy with sleep, I try to gain some sense of what is happening around me. Quickly slipping on the jeans Andrea got out for me, I run to the dresser and pull out the first shirt I can find, a royal blue v-neck fitted t-shirt. Throwing it over my head, I grab my gray bag and start shoving in books and notes that are still sprawled all over the floor from me and Andrea's late night study session. Being the only class we have together, we made a night of it with pizza and wine. Clearly we are paying for that decision this morning.
This is my last final of the semester and leave it to me to oversleep. And even though I am rushing around in a half panic with my toothbrush hanging out of my mouth, I am also so very excited for this semester to finally be coming to an end. This is the first summer that I have opted to not take any classes and instead of staying on campus, I will be staying with my adopted mom Patty. I only have a year left and I really want to focus on making some extra money this summer. Have some savings when I finally venture out into the real world.
Josh agreed to let me have an extra night at the club. Thankfully things have pretty much returned to normal these past couple of weeks and Josh has all but let go of the little incident with Bentley. I just wish I could let it go.
Hopefully keeping busy this summer will help me refocus. During the day I will be helping Patty teach her five to nine year old summer ballet program atPW Dance Studio. It's the studio where I learned to dance and spent years training in.
Patty was the only person I had after my grandma passed, and had she not stepped in an adopted me after my knee injury, who knows where I would be today. Only she could understand what I had lost when I lost my ability to dance. I will forever be grateful for her and am so excited to get to spend the summer with her.
She lives just twenty minutes outside of the city so commuting to the club and the studio wont be an issue. Well, as long as my car holds up that is. One day at a time I guess.
“You ready?” Andrea pulls me from my thoughts as I stuff the last book in my bag.
“Ready.” I say, quickly following her out of our dorm.
****
“So you think you passed then?” Patty asks, after having to hear the drama of how my day started as we sit across the table from one another.
“I feel good about it.” I say, feeling more than a little relieved to have finals behind me and an open summer laying out before me.
“How's work? Everything good at the hotel?” Patty asks, taking a bite of her famous homemade chili.
Obviously Patty has no idea what Ireallydo. I guess part of it has to do with being ashamed, but more than anything I just feel like she wouldn’t understand. “Everything is great. They have agreed to let me pick up an extra shift through the summer so that's good.” I say, taking a bite of my own chili.
“That's wonderful dear. I am so happy to see how well you are doing. So you think you are up for the summer program then?” She asks, clearly still hesitant to push the dance issue with me, knowing how hard it was for me to walk away from.
“Of course.” I reassure her with a smile. “I am really looking forward to it actually. I think it will be fun. I haven't been to the studio in ages and honestly, I miss it there.”
“Well we miss you, that's for sure.” She gives me a warm smile. For never having children of her own, Patty is the epitome of what it means to be a good mom. She's tough when she needs to be and soft when she needs to be. But most importantly, she cares. She cares beyond what her caring benefits her. She cares simply to care. She loves simply to love.
“Your room is just as you left it.” She says, standing and making her way across the kitchen to put her bowl in the sink.
Her footsteps are light and drift across the floor like only a dancers would. Even though she just turned fifty-three, she doesn't seem a day over thirty. Her shoulder length auburn hair is always perfectly in place and her makeup is perfection. But more than that, her body is ridiculous. Years of dancing and she is so tone, I doubt you would find one inch of fat on her 5' 6'' frame.
Patty has owned her own studio since she was twenty-five. She spent the inheritance she got when her father passed away to buy the building and nearly thirty years later, business is better than ever. She claimed she never wanted to dance professionally only teach. And while she is a natural teacher, I have always felt like there was more to the story.
“Now if you are good, I am going to head out. The junior dance recital is tonight and I need to get there early to make sure the set up is done properly.” She says, patting me on the shoulder as she passes me.
“Sounds good.” I say, trying to mask the twinge of disappointment I feel that recitals are a thing of my past. That used to be my favorite part of dancing. Being on stage, performing in front of everyone. “I have to run back to the dorm and pick up the last of my things, then I will probably just turn in early.”
“Well be careful.” She says, turning and exiting the room, leaving me sitting in the eery silence of the house that I spent some of my lowest moments in.
The space isn't much. A two bedroom ranch that sits on a decent plot of land just a few minutes from the city. It's the perfect area for having the convenience of the city but the peace of the country. I remember the first time Patty brought me here. It was just after my knee surgery. I had dropped into a severe depression and was in the process of being sent to yet another foster home.
My situation at the time was cramped. The mom had four children of her own and I don't think she realized what she was signing up for when she took me in. I wasn't a bad kid by any means. But I think the addition to her already large family was more than she bargained for.
When Patty learned that I was being assigned to my third foster family in four years, she finally stepped in. I will never forget what it felt like when I learned that she wanted to adopt me. She had been the only constant in my life for years and there was no one in the world that I would have rather lived with than her.
