How It Feels to Fly by Kathryn Holmes Page A

paragraphs will do.” She crosses her legs, giving me a keen look. “Do you want to go ahead and get started, or would you rather keep talking to me?”
    An easy choice. “I’ll take the extra writing time.”
    â€œAll right. But I need you to take this assignment seriously. And I think you need you to take it seriously too.” She motions to the door. “I’ll let you get to work.”
    I SET UP camp in the gazebo Andrew and I explored yesterday. I lean back into a corner, legs extended out on the wooden bench, ankles crossed, with the notebook in my lap. There’s a breeze blowing. I feel it rustling my ponytail. And while the sun is blazing down, it’s cooler in the shade of the gazebo’s roof. I can see waves of heat radiating in the distance, but I’m not even sweating.
    I doodle a flower in the margin of the paper. I add some swirly spirals around it and then shade in the petals.
    I don’t know what to write.
    Andrew and Dominic come out the back door. Dominic has a football in one hand. He laughs at something Andrew says and then gives Andrew a friendly shove. Andrew shoves him back. Then they go to opposite ends of the lawn and start passing the ball back and forth. I watch the way Dominic launches the ball into its smooth arc. I watch it spiral through the air. I watch Andrew jump to catch it, cradling it close. It’s like a choreographed dance: pas de trois for two men and a football.
    You’re stalling.
    â€œI know,” I tell my inner voice.
    So get on with it. Write out each and every humiliation. Live it all over again.
    I tap my pen on the page, thinking. Remembering.
    Then I start to write about the day the cast list went up for our spring performance. At my studio, we do a mixed-rep show in the early fall, Nutcracker in December, and then alternate between a full-length story ballet and a mixed-repshow every other spring. This year we did the variations from Paquita , a Spanish-infused classical tutu ballet, along with two new ballets by guest choreographers.
    I got a solo in Paquita . The variation that begins with all the leaps from the upstage left corner and has the arabesque and attitude pirouettes in the middle. My favorite, the one I’d always dreamed of performing.
    I wasn’t so lucky with the other ballets. I was cast in the corps de ballet in one and was an understudy in the other.
    This was mid-February—my body was already well on its way to being the disaster it is now—but I was still surprised. Still hurt. And then I went upstairs to the lobby, where I found my mom talking to Tabitha’s mom.
    â€œAre you disappointed?” Mrs. Hoyt asked.
    â€œOf course. Samantha and I had obviously hoped for more this spring,” my mom said. “But Giorgio’s piece is going to be in unitards.”
    It took me a second to realize what she was really saying: that the choreographer didn’t want my body, in a skin-tight costume, dancing his work. But did Mom know for a fact that that was why I wasn’t chosen? Or was she guessing?
    Both options hurt—just in different ways.
    â€œIn the meantime, I’ve already adjusted Samantha’s diet,” Mom went on. “We’ll have her unitard-ready by the next show.”
    â€œIt’s great that Sam has you on her side, with all of your experience,” Mrs. Hoyt said. “Tabitha looks up to you so much.”
    â€œThat’s so sweet. Your daughter is a beautiful dancer with a bright future. And—” That’s when my mom noticed me standing there. “Samantha!” She stood up. “A Paquita variation! Well done! I danced that one in school too.”
    â€œThanks.” Better to pretend I didn’t hear a thing. Otherwise I’d never make it out of here without falling apart.
    â€œAre you ready to go?” Mom asked.
    â€œAre you?” This was before Mom had started working at the studio, but it still felt