Shingaling (5 page)

I walked back inside the performance space as Mrs. Atanabi finished unwrapping herself from all her wintry layers. Her coat, her scarf, and her sweater were all scattered around her on the floor, which was wet from the snow she had brought inside with her.

“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh!” she kept saying over and over again, fanning herself with both hands. “It's really starting to come down now.”

She plopped onto the piano bench in front of the stage and caught her breath. “Oh my gosh, I do hate being late!”

I saw Ximena and Summer exchange knowing looks.

“When I was little,” Mrs. Atanabi continued, talking in that chatterbox way of hers that some people loved and some people thought made her seem crazy, “my mother actually used to charge my sister and me one dollar every time we were late for something. Literally,
every
time I was late—even if it was just for dinner—I had to pay my mom a dollar!” She laughed and started redoing her bun, holding a couple of bobby pins in her teeth while she talked. “When your entire allowance for the week is only three bucks, you learn to budget your time! That's why I'm conditioned to
hate
being late!”

“And yet,” Ximena pointed out, smiling in that sly way of hers, “you were still late today. Maybe we should charge you a dollar from now on?”

“Ha-ha-ha!” laughed Mrs. Atanabi good-naturedly, flicking off her boots. “Yes, I was late, Ximena! And that's actually not a bad idea. Maybe I
should
give all three of you a dollar!”

Ximena kind of laughed, assuming she was joking.

“In fact,” Mrs. Atanabi said, reaching for her pocketbook, “I think I'm going to give
each
one of you girls a dollar bill
every
time I'm late to a rehearsal. From now on! That'll force me to be on time!”

Summer shot me a quizzical look. We started to realize that Mrs. Atanabi, who had pulled out her wallet, was serious.

“Oh no, Mrs. Atanabi,” said Summer, shaking her head. “You don't have to do that.”

“I know! But I'm going to!” answered Mrs. Atanabi, smiling. “Now, here's the rub. I'll agree to give each of you a dollar every time
I'm
late to a rehearsal if you agree to give me a dollar every time
you're
late for a rehearsal.”

“Are you allowed to do that?” Ximena asked incredulously. “Take money from a student?”

I was thinking the same thing.

“Why not?” answered Mrs. Atanabi. “You're in private school. You can afford it!
Probably more than I can.
” This last part she muttered. And then she started cracking up.

Mrs. Atanabi was kind of famous for laughing at her own jokes. You pretty much had to get used to it.

She pulled three crisp dollar bills out of her wallet and held them up in the air for us to see.

“So, what do you girls say?” she said. “Is it a deal?”

Ximena looked at both of us. “I know
I'm
never going to be late,” she said to us.

“I'm not going to be late, either!” said Summer.

I shrugged, still unable to look Ximena in the eyes. “Me, neither,” I said.

“Then it's a deal!” said Mrs. Atanabi, walking over to us.

“For you,
mademoiselle,
” she said to Ximena, handing her a spanking-new dollar bill.

“Merci!”
said Ximena, shooting us a quick smile, which I pretended not to see.

Then Mrs. Atanabi walked over to me and Summer.

“For you, and for you,” she said, handing us each a dollar bill.

“God bless America,” we both answered at the same time.

Wait. What?

We looked at each other, our mouths and eyes open wide. Suddenly everything that occurred in the last half hour seemed to lose any importance—if what I
think
just happened
did
just happen.

“The accordion-man?” I whispered excitedly.

Summer gasped and nodded happily. “The accordion-man!”

It's funny how you can know someone your whole life, but not
really
know them at all. Here, this whole time, I've been living in a parallel world to Summer Dawson, a nice girl I've known since kindergarten who I've always thought looked like the Lavender Fairy. But we'd never actually become
friend
friends! Not for any particular reason. It just worked out that way. The same way that Ellie and I were
destined
to be friends because Ms. Diamond had sat us next to each other on the first day of school, Summer and I were
destined
not to get to know each other because we were never in the same classes. Except for PE and swim, and assembly and concerts and stuff like that, our paths never crossed in lower school. Our moms weren't really friends, so we never had playdates. Sure, I invited her to my Flower Fairy birthday party once. But it really was because Ellie and I thought she looked like the Lavender Fairy! And sure, we'd hang out a bit at other people's bowling parties and at sleepovers and stuff. We were Facebook friends. We had lots of people in common. We were totally
friendly.

But we were never actually
friends.

So, when she said “God bless America,” it almost felt like I was meeting her for the first time in my life. Imagine finding out that there was someone else in the world who knew a secret that only you knew! It was like an invisible bridge had instantly been built connecting us. Or, like we had stumbled onto a tiny door in the back of a wardrobe and an accordion-playing faun had welcomed us to Narnia.

Before Summer and I could say anything else on the subject of the accordion-man, Mrs. Atanabi brushed her hands together and said it was time to “get to work.” We spent the rest of the rehearsal time, since there was only half an hour left, listening to Mrs. Atanabi give us a quick overview of the dance while also periodically checking the weather app on her phone. We didn't really do any actual dancing: just some basic steps and a little rough blocking.

“We'll start getting into it next time!” Mrs. Atanabi assured us. “I promise I won't be late! See you Friday! Stay warm! Be careful going home!”

“Bye, Mrs. Atanabi!”

“Bye!”

As soon as she was gone, Summer and I came together like magnets, talking excitedly at the same time.

“I can't believe you know who I'm talking about,” I said.

“God bless America!” she answered.

“Do you have any idea what happened to him?”

“No! I asked around and everything.”

“I did, too! No one knows what happened to him.”

“It's like he just vanished off the face of the earth!”

“It's like
who
vanished off the face of the earth?” asked Ximena, looking at us curiously. I guess the way we were squealing and carrying on, it did seem like something major had
just
happened.

I was still kind of keeping my distance from her because of before, so I let Summer answer.

“This guy who used to play the accordion on Main Street,” said Summer. “In front of the A&P on Moore? He was always there with his guide dog? I'm sure you must have noticed him. Whenever you'd drop money into his accordion case, he'd say, ‘God bless America.' ”

“God bless America,” I chimed in at the exact same time.

“Anyway,” she continued, “he's been there for
forever,
but a couple of months ago, he just wasn't there anymore.”

“And no one knows what happened to him!” I added. “It's like this
mystery.
”

“Wait, so this is a
homeless
person you're talking about?” asked Ximena, kind of making the same
eww
face Savanna makes sometimes.

“I don't know if Gordy's homeless, actually,” Summer answered.

“You know his name?” I asked, completely surprised.

“Yeah,” she answered matter-of-factly. “Gordy Johnson.”

“How do you know that?”

“I don't know. My dad used to talk to him,” she answered, shrugging. “He was a veteran, and my dad was a marine, and was always like,
That gentleman's a hero, Summer. He served his country.
We used to bring him coffee and a bagel on the way to school sometimes. My mom gave him my dad's old parka.”

“Wait, was it an orange Canada Goose parka?” I said, pointing at her.

“Yes!” Summer answered happily.

“I remember that parka!” I screamed, grabbing her hands.

“OMG, you guys are totally geeking out,” Ximena laughed. “All this over a homeless guy in an orange parka?”

Summer and I looked at each other.

“It's hard to explain,” said Summer. But I could tell she felt it, too: our connection over this. Our bond. It was our version of the Big Bang.

“Oh my God, Summer!” I said, grabbing her arm. “Maybe we could track him down! We could find out where he is and make sure he's okay! If you know his name, we should be able to do that!”

“You think we could?” asked Summer, her eyes doing that little dancing thing they did when she was super-happy. “I would
love
that!”

“Wait, wait, wait,” said Ximena, shaking her head. “Are you guys serious? You want to track down some homeless dude you barely know?” She acted like she couldn't believe what she was hearing.

“Yes,” we both said, looking at each other happily.

“Who barely knows
you
?”

“He'll know me!” Summer said confidently. “Especially if I tell him I'm Sergeant Dawson's daughter.”

“Will he know you, Charlotte?” Ximena asked me, her eyes narrowing doubtfully.

“Of course not!” I answered her quickly, just wanting her to stop talking. “He's blind,
stupid
!”

The moment I said it, everything got quiet. Even the radiator, which had been making all these loud banging noises in the performance space until then, suddenly fell silent. As if the performance space wanted to hear my words echo in the air.

He's blind, stupid. He's blind, stupid. He's blind, stupid.

Another vomit of words. It's almost like I was
trying
to get Ximena Chin to hate me!

I waited for her to hit me with a sarcastic comeback, something that would slap me like an invisible hand across the face.

But, instead, to my utter and complete amazement, she started to laugh.

Summer started to laugh, too. “He's blind,
stupid
!” she said, imitating the way I had said it exactly.

“He's blind,
stupid
!” Ximena repeated.

They both started cracking up. I think the horrified look on my face made it even funnier for them. Every time they looked at me, they laughed harder.

“I'm so sorry I said that, Ximena,” I whispered quickly.

Ximena shook her head, wiping her eyes with the palm of her hand.

“It's fine,” she answered, catching her breath. “I kind of had that coming.”

There wasn't a trace of snarkiness to her right now. She was smiling.

“Look, I didn't mean to insult you earlier,” she said. “What I said about Auggie. I know you're not
only
nice to him in front of teachers. I'm sorry I said that.”

I couldn't believe she was apologizing.

“No, it's fine,” I answered, fumbling.

“Really?” she asked. “I don't want you to be mad at me.”

“I'm not!”

“I can be a total jerk sometimes,” she said regretfully. “But I really want us to be friends.”

“Okay.”

“Awww,” said Summer, stretching her arms out to us. “Come on, guys. Group hug.”

She wrapped her fairy wings around us, and for a few seconds, we came together in an awkward embrace that lasted a second too long and ended in more giggles. This time, I was laughing, too.

That
turned out to be the biggest surprise of the day. Not finding out that people have
noticed
me. Not finding out that Summer knew the accordion-man's name.

But realizing that Ximena Chin, under her layers and layers and layers of snarkiness and mischief, could actually be kind of sweet. When she wasn't being kind of mean.

The next few weeks flew by! A crazy blur of snowstorms, and dance rehearsals, and science fair projects, and studying for tests,
and
trying to solve the mystery of what had happened to Gordy Johnson (more on that later).

Mrs. Atanabi turned out to be quite the little drill sergeant! Lovable, in her own cute, waddly way, but
really
pushy. Like, we could
never
practice enough for her. Drills, drills, drills.
En pointe!
Shimmy! Hip roll! Classical ballet! Modern dance! A little bit of jazz! No tap! Downbeat! Half toe! Everything done her way, because she had a lot of very specific dance quirks. Things she obsessed about. The dances themselves weren't hard. The twist. The monkey. The Watusi. The pony. The hitchhike. The swim. The hucklebuck. The shingaling. But it was doing them exactly the way she wanted us to do them that was hard. Doing them as part of a larger choreographed piece. And doing them in sync. That's what we spent most of our time working on. The way we carried our arms. The way we snapped our fingers. Our turnouts. Our jumps. We had to work hard on learning how to dance
alike
—not just together!

The dance we spent the most time working on was the shingaling. It was the centerpiece of Mrs. Atanabi's whole dance number, what she used to transition from one dance style to the next. But there were so many variations to it—the Latin one, the R&B one, the funk shingaling—it was hard not to mix them up. And Mrs. Atanabi was
so
particular about the way each one was danced! Funny how she could be so loosey-goosey about some things—like never
once
getting to a rehearsal on time!—and yet be so strict about other things—like, God forbid you do a diagonal
chassé
instead of a sideways
chassé
!
Uh-oh, careful, the world as you know it might end!

I'm not saying that Mrs. Atanabi wasn't nice, by the way. I want to be fair. She
was
super-nice. Reassuring us if we were having trouble with a new routine: “Small steps, girls! Everything starts with small steps!” Surprising us with brownies after a particularly intense workout. Driving us home when she kept us rehearsing too late. Telling us funny stories about other teachers. Personal stories about her own life. How she'd grown up in the Barrio. How some of her friends had gone down a “wrong” path. How watching
American Bandstand
had saved her life. How she'd met her husband, who was also a dancer, while performing with Cirque du Soleil in Quebec. “We fell in love doing arabesques on a tightrope thirty feet in the air.”

But it was intense. When I would go to sleep at night, I had so much information bouncing around my head! Bits of music. Things to memorize. Math equations. To-do lists. Mrs. Atanabi saying in her smooth East Harlem accent:
“It's the shingaling, baby!”
There were times when I would just put my headset on to drown out the chatter in my brain.

I was having so much fun, though, I wouldn't have changed a thing. Because the best part about all the crazy rehearsing and Mrs. Atanabi's drills and everything else—
and I don't want to sound corny
—was that Ximena, Summer, and I were really starting to get to know each other. Okay, that
does
sound corny. But it's true! Look, I'm not saying we became best friends or anything. Summer still hung out with Auggie. Ximena still hung out with Savanna. I still played dots with Maya. But we were becoming friends. Like,
friend
friends.

Ximena's snarkiness, by the way, was completely put-on. Something she could take off whenever she wanted to. Like a scarf you wear as an accessory until it starts feeling itchy around your neck. When she was with Savanna, she wore the scarf. With us, she took it off. That's not to say I didn't still get nervous around her sometimes! OMG. The first time she came over to my house? I was a complete wreck! I was nervous that my mom would embarrass me. I was nervous that the stuffed animals on my bed were too pink. I was nervous about the
Big Time Rush
poster on my bedroom door. I was nervous that my dog, Suki, would pee on her.

But, of course, everything turned out fine! Ximena was totally nice. Said I had a cool room. Offered to do the dishes after dinner. Made fun of a particularly hilarious photo of me when I was three, which was fair because I look like a sock puppet in it! At some point during that afternoon, I don't even know when it was, I actually stopped thinking
Ximena Chin is in my house! Ximena Chin is in my house!
and just started having fun. That was huge for me because it was a turning point, the moment I stopped acting like an idiot around Ximena. No more word vomits. I guess that was when I took my “scarf” off, too.

Anyway, February was intense, but awesome. And by the end of February, we were pretty much hanging out at my place every day after school, dancing in front of the mirrored walls, self-correcting, matching our moves. Whenever we'd get tired, or discouraged, one of us would say in Mrs. Atanabi's accent, “It's the shingaling, baby!” And that would keep us going.

And sometimes we didn't rehearse. Sometimes we just chilled in my living room by the fire doing homework together. Or hanging out. Or, occasionally, searching for Gordy Johnson.