My Life in Dioramas (21 page)

I only had three weeks to get ready!

There were usually some old people in another room—the library—playing cards or talking but they didn't seem to mind that I was in the common room with all the tables and chairs pushed to the side. There were no mirrors on the wall, which took some getting used to. I had to go with my gut and trust myself from the inside out. After two days of rehearsing on my own, I asked my mom to come with me so we could video the whole thing and send it to Miss Emma for pointers.

“Oh, Kate,” she said, when I started the music. “Not
this
song.”

“Why not? I love it.”

I started it over.

She filmed me.

We did this once, then again, and Miss Emma sounded encouraging. My mother actually did, too. This was the most involvement she'd had in any of my routines—ever—and she morphed into a pretty good dance coach. I had no other
feedback coming in so I had to trust that she knew what she was seeing, knew where I looked good and not.

When my mom said she had to drive back to the college for something that weekend—the last one before Dance Nation—I asked if I could come along and try to see Stella. I knew Stella was rehearsing with Miss Emma every Saturday morning so maybe we could meet up after.

Then I had a better idea.

If I could have one actual in-person class with Miss Emma, it would really help.

I could surprise Stella at the studio, and tell her about my solo in person.

So I asked my mom, and she called Miss Emma. And it was set. We'd have to get there early to practice before Stella's session, but my mom agreed.

27.

When “Semi” filled the studio
—the very place where I'd
learned
to dance—I felt confident, ready. Like I'd inherited whatever gene had allowed my parents to get on-stage and be rock stars even if only for a little while.

“I'm impressed,” Miss Emma said when I was done.

“Me, too,” my mother said. I hadn't realized she'd been at the door watching.

I did the routine again.

And again.

And Miss Emma told me to do this with that arm and that with this arm, and we worked on a sort of bow/curtsy move that felt natural to me and then we did it all again and again some more.

“Awesome,” Miss Emma said, the tenth and last time through.

“Kate?”

I turned. Stella was at the door next to my mom.

“Stella!” I ran and gave her a hug. She felt cold.

“What are you doing here?” She pulled away.

“Surprise!” I said.

“Seriously,” Stella said. “What's going on?”

Our moms drifted off to talk and Miss Emma had answered the studio phone.

“I'm doing a solo!” I said. “I mostly choreographed it myself with Miss Emma's help and I've been practicing in my grandparents' basement and—”

“What category?”

She was focusing on the wrong thing.

“Contemporary lyrical,” I said.

“That's
my
category.”

“I know! Hopefully we can hang out backstage.”

Miss Emma ended her call and appeared beside us.

“I didn't know Kate was competing. You know,
against
me.”

“I really wish you didn't see it like that,” Miss Emma said. “You're all there to do your best. You're not competing against anyone but yourself. And you should be cheering each other on.”

Stella just stood there, staring at us for a minute. “I need to go clear my head before my practice.”

“Good luck!” I called out as she walked off.

“Stella's just nervous,” Miss Emma said, watching her go.
“Send me one more video? Wednesday?”

I nodded, gathered my things, and went to leave but stopped. “I'm sorry you had to reblock the whole troupe routine. Because of me.”

“I know you are, Kate,” Miss Emma said. “But have you told
them
that?”

28.

My father was making
pancakes on Wednesday morning. And whistling.

“
You're
in a good mood,” I said.

“I am!” He pointed at a letter on the table. “I sold my ‘Big Red' song.”

“That's amazing!” I gave him a high five and a hug. “Congratulations, Dad.” At the table, I read the letter and said, “Hey, I think I've actually heard of this show!”

“My network debut.” My dad turned from the stove and slid some pancakes onto a plate on the table. “
And . . .
we also sold the real Big Red. We have another buyer. We have a new closing date.”

I grabbed a pancake that was too hot—“Oh”—I had to put it down.

“Do you remember that woman at the garage sale?” He turned back to pour more batter. “With the two little girls?”

“Sure,” I said.

“It's them!”

I pictured those two little girls running around the house, playing in the yard by the weeping willow, tossing flower petals into the stream. I pictured them hiding in the closets in my bedroom and taking a bath together in the claw-foot tub, maybe pretending it was going to walk away and take them to where the wild things are. I imagined they'd start looking for Pants every day like I did; they'd rename her something cute and name the kittens, too.

“I know it's crazy to think about a house that way”—he stopped midflip, with a pancake balanced on the spatula—“to think that Big Red deserved better. But that's how I felt.”

“Me, too.” I gave him a hug. “But now what?”

“Now I let you and your mother in on the plan.” He went about his flipping. “Eat up and get dressed, we've got appointments. Tell your mom.”

I laughed. It seemed ridiculous. “What about school?”

“School schmool,” he said.

I bolted upstairs and got dressed and woke my mom up and told her Dad had someplace to take us. Then we all had pancakes together.

We drove for about an hour, all the way back toward Big Red, but in town we took some different turns and soon I
lost track of where we were. After a bunch of random turns, we pulled into the driveway of a little yellow house sort of set up on a hill. Bernie was standing beside her car, waving and smiling.

“What's
she
doing here?” I asked. I sort of partly blamed her for all of this, which I knew was unfair but I felt it anyway.

“She's the one showing us the houses, Kate.”

“We're
looking at houses
?” my mom said.

“Come on,” Dad said. “I'll explain later.”

We got out and everyone said hi—even me, though I was embarrassed enough to die. Luckily, Bernie didn't seem to be holding a grudge. She took us inside like nothing had ever happened.

“Now,” my father said, “you have to really use your imagination on this one. Like imagine the wallpaper gone and the rugs and all.”

He'd been here before. He'd been disappearing to look at houses.

We walked in to a small kitchen and I hated everything about it. The color of the cabinets was too dark, all wrong; the floor was a bad yellow; their furniture was like cheap dollhouse furniture that someone had made big. I kept my mouth shut as Dad talked about easy ways to fix various things and followed them into the living room, where brown wall-to-wall carpets covered the floors.

“We'd go back to the hardwood in here,” my dad said.

The room was already crowded with the four of us in it.

Upstairs we went into a bedroom and off of that was another room, where there was a crib. It wasn't really big enough to be anything other than a baby's room.

“What would we use this for?” I asked.

My mom shrugged. She seemed about as excited about this house as I was. If we were broke, why were we even looking at houses?

I said, “I'll be outside,” and went downstairs and out a back door. There was a yard that was pretty big but it had one tree and no character whatsoever. There was a church as the back neighbor and not even a pretty one.

“So, what did you think?” my dad asked when we got into the car.

“I hated it,” I said.

“Not good enough. Explain why.”

“I don't know. It just didn't make sense. None of the rooms were the right size. Everything seemed misshapen or shrunken out of proportion. Just bad flow. Bad design.”

“I agree completely,” my mother said.

“Okay, fine,” he said. “But that's the cheapest one by far, just so you know.”

Mom said, “For good reason.”

“Okay then.” My dad reached over and squeezed my mother's knee.

“When did you even do all this?” she asked. “See these houses?”

“When you were, you know, at your . . . appointments.”

I hoped that meant what I thought it did.

“On to the next!” he called out his open window to Bernie.

We drove and drove and I kept looking for landmarks I recognized but I wasn't having any luck. “Where are we, exactly?”

“Rosendale,” my dad said.

“That's like twenty minutes from home,” I said. We'd been to the movie theater there. And to street fairs and farmers' markets.

“Indeed it is.”

A few days ago this would have been really exciting. But now I wasn't sure I even cared about being near Stella anymore. Naveen, yes. Miss Emma, of course. But it was all messed up in my mind now. I rested my head back and closed my eyes.

“Here we are,” my father said as the car came to a stop a few minutes later.

I opened my eyes.

It was a small red brick house with a white front door and two peaked windows on the second floor. For some reason, it looked like it should be a pediatrician's office, or maybe a bank. I couldn't imagine wanting to live there.

Bernie had arrived first and was standing at the open front door, waving.

I stepped into a living room and dining room area that was more modern than I'd expected from the outside. The
paint was all light and bright—barely detectable hues of lavender, maybe, and peach? And the kitchen looked shiny, all new.

Bernie said, “They really did such a nice job with this reno.”

It was nice, for sure. Almost too nice, if that makes any sense. Too nice for my parents. Looking at them standing next to that refrigerator, so shiny, and these supersleek cabinets was like looking at two teenagers who'd stumbled into some rich old guy's house.

“Kate?” my dad said. “Thoughts?”

“It's nice,” I said. “Almost too nice. I don't understand why we can afford this but not our house.”

“It's called a short sale,” Dad said. “The owners defaulted on their payments and the bank seized the house so we'd be buying from the bank. The price is way below market value.”

“That's depressing,” I said. “What happened to them? Where are they going to live?”

“I don't know, Kate,” he said. “Right now, these short sales are our only option.”

“All of the houses we're looking at are houses other people lost to the bank?”

My dad nodded.

So we were all just part of some weird real estate food chain, looking for our happy ending in someone else's sad tale. It seemed impossible that would ever work out . . . except that it happened that way all the time. People got
jobs that other people wanted. People won competitions that other people lost. Some people's bands got famous and other people's didn't. For winners, for losers, for everyone in between, the world just kept on spinning with no rhyme or reason.

We finished the tour, going upstairs to look at three perfectly nice, perfectly lifeless bedrooms, then went out to the backyard and looked at a perfectly landscaped little yard.

“What's the verdict?” my dad asked.

“It's perfect,” I said. “Perfectly boring.”

“Kate.”

“Sorry. But you asked.”

“Olivia?” He turned to my mom, who only shrugged.

“I'm sorry, I'm just not feeling it,” she said. “And we'd still need a down payment that we don't have.”

My dad said, “I've worked out a small loan from Joe.”

“Joe?” My mother did not look pleased.

“Yes, Joe. Zero interest. We have a payment plan figured out.” Dad sounded more confident than he had in a long time. “And I'm going to be there on weekends for a while, painting and doing yard work and stuff. He's thinking about selling, too, but the place needs work.”

Mom just nodded.

“We good?” my father said.

“We're good,” she answered.