“That’s true,” said Dawn. “But what can we do that would be new and exciting?”
“Are you ready for this?” asked Kristy, grinning. “We’re going to have — a pet show!” She looked around the room. “I was remembering that Louie was in a pet show once,” she continued. (Louie was this great collie that Kristy used to have. I never met him, though: He died before I moved here.) “It was at the library, and it was really fun. Louie won second prize! I was so proud of him.”
Everybody loved Kristy’s idea.
“The kids are going to think this is the greatest,” said Mallory. “It’ll be a chance to get together and show off their pets. But where should we have it? We need lots of room.”
“I was thinking it could be in Dawn and Mary Anne’s backyard,” said Kristy. “It’s one of the biggest yards, and their house is pretty close to a lot of the kids’ houses.”
“Sounds great!” said Dawn. “I’m sure my mom won’t mind.”
“How are we going to let everyone know about this?” asked Stacey. “It’s going to take a lot of planning.”
“I’ll make invitations,” said Claudia. “We’ll send them out to all our clients to let them know the time and place. We’d better pick a date a few weeks away, though — everybody’s going to need time to get ready for this.”
“We’re also going to need prize ribbons, refreshments, and all kinds of other stuff,” said Mary Anne. You could practically see the gears turning as she considered the details. She’s a great organizer.
We worked on plans for the pet show for the rest of the meeting (between phone calls, that is). And I got so caught up in the whole thing that I almost forgot about my horrible rehearsal.
Almost.
When the time came for the second rehearsal of The Sleeping Beauty, Princess Aurora was Princess Prepared. As I unpacked my dance bag in the dressing room, I almost had to laugh. I’d brought not just my spare toe shoes, but a spare dance outfit. The entire thing.
Two pairs of pink tights. Two black leotards. Two hair-ties (it wouldn’t do to have my hair-tie disappear and have to dance with my hair in my face — Mme Noelle would be furious). Two pairs of leg warmers (one white, one purple) and two baggy old gray sweat shirts, for warm-ups. I wasn’t taking any chances.
As I changed, I watched my stuff like a hawk. When I walked across the room to check my hair in the mirror, I kept looking over my shoulder to make sure nobody went near my bag. I must have looked pretty paranoid. But I didn’t care. Knowing that I had everything I needed for class made me feel safe. I was sure that everything would go smoothly that day.
“Coming, Jessi?” asked Katie Beth. “I see you brought your toe shoes this time.”
I gritted my teeth. Sometimes Katie Beth can be really irritating. “For your information,” I answered, “I brought them last time, too.”
“Sure, Jessi,” said Katie Beth. “Anything you say.” She ran on ahead, into the studio. I walked behind her, giving her dirty looks.
“Why zee cloudy face, Mademoiselle Romsey?” asked Madame as I walked into the room.
I changed my frown to a smile, in a flash. “Good afternoon, Madame Noelle,” I said, trying to sound happy. By then she was busy picking out the records for the day’s practice, and she just nodded at me.
“All right, mademoiselles,” she said. “Let us begin zee warm-up.”
We took our places at the barre and began to work through the familiar exercises that I could probably do in my sleep. Sometimes I wonder just how many pliés I’ve done over the years, rising and falling to the sound of tinkly piano music.
When I was younger, taking beginner’s classes, we used to play fun little games. For example, the teacher used to let us guess what the music was after each exercise. The records were always classical arrangements of simple songs like “Three Blind Mice,” and we were very competitive about seeing who could guess right most often.
But games like that are out of the question now. Mme Noelle’s class is serious. We don’t giggle, we don’t whisper, and we don’t ask questions like, “What’s fifth position, again?” But you know what? Even though the early days were fun, I like this ultraserious kind of class even better.
I like to work hard. I like to concentrate. And I love the fact that all the painstaking, repetitive work I do is worth it. You know why? Because it lets me fly. That’s how I feel sometimes; when I’m in the middle of a tour jeté (toor jet-tay — that’s just a big jump), I feel like I’m flying. And then it doesn’t seem like work at all — it feels effortless, and graceful, and … just wonderful.
When we’d finished our warm-up, we left the barre and stood in the middle of the room, while Mme Noelle changed the record. Soon, Tchaikovsky’s music filled the air. It was beautiful.
Madame stood in front of the room, working out the step she was about to teach us. She made motions with her hands, and whispered words like glissade and pique to herself. While I waited for her to be ready, I looked into the big mirror that covered one wall of the studio.
I checked my posture. Good, but not good enough. I pulled up my head (“Like there is a string from the ceiling, holding you up,” as Mme Noelle always says) and pulled in my stomach. I held out my right arm and arranged my hand as gracefully as I could. There! That looked good.
You might think that the other girls in class would think I was weird for looking at myself that way, but no. They were all doing it, too. Ballet students are always checking their form, because their form is important. You’ve got to be “just so,” all the time.
“Mademoiselle Romsey,” said Mme Noelle. “And Mademoiselle Steinfeld and Mademoiselle Jones. Attention, please.”
She was ready to show us our steps. I paid close attention — you don’t want to have to ask Mme Noelle to go over the steps more than once.
She gave us the whole routine in a flurry of French words. We followed along, practicing without doing the steps full out. Just as she was getting to the last arabesque, Carrie lost her balance, knocked into me, and fell down.
“Jessi, you klutz!” she said loudly.
Me? I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t had anything to do with it! Carrie was the klutz, not me. I looked up at Mme Noelle and opened my mouth to defend myself. But when I saw the look she was giving me, I decided to forget it. She clearly had not forgotten the episode of the toe shoes, and I was better off just keeping quiet.
So instead of sticking up for myself, I helped Carrie to her feet. Did she thank me? Three guesses.
“Again, mademoiselles,” said Madame, barely pausing for Carrie to catch her breath. “And one, two, three …”
We went back into the routine. I was fighting to regain the concentration I had lost when Carrie knocked into me. We worked through the steps, counting carefully as we leaped and spun. It was beginning to feel good — but I knew we had a long way to go before it would look good.
But then, once again, on the final arabesque, Carrie knocked into me — hard. This time she didn’t quite fall, but our collision definitely drew Mme Noelle’s attention. She frowned at me.
“But I didn’t —” I began, and then I just stopped. I sounded like a baby, back in the beginner’s ballet class. That kind of excuse didn’t belong here. If Carrie — and Mme Noelle — wanted to blame me for what was happening, there was no point in trying to turn that blame around. It would only make me look worse.
This time, instead of speaking out, I put all my energy into the steps we were learning. I became more and more focused on what we were doing and just tried to steer clear of Carrie Steinfeld. It wasn’t easy at first, but after awhile I forgot about everything except how it felt to dance.
There were no other major catastrophes for the rest of the rehearsal. And when it ended, Mme Noelle nodded at me approvingly. I think she must have sensed how hard I was working.
After rehearsal, I collapsed onto the bench in the dressing room as I pulled out my dance bag. I felt tired, but in a good way — and I felt sa
tisfied with my dancing that day. I took my hair out of its ponytail and shook it out. Then I reached into my dance bag and I knew right away that something was wrong.
My jeans and my shirt were still in there, and so were my sneakers. But my whole spare outfit was gone. No black leotard, no pink tights. No leg warmers (I’d worn the white ones, so it was the purple ones that were missing) and no sweat shirt. No spare toe shoes, either.
“Oh, my lord,” I said, under my breath. (That’s one of Claudia’s favorite expressions, and we’ve all picked it up.) I looked around to see if anyone was noticing me noticing my empty bag. They were all busy with their own stuff.
I shrugged. What was I going to do about it? There was a thief in our midst (as they would say in a Nancy Drew book) but I wasn’t going to catch her that night. I was too exhausted even to think about it.
I pulled on my school clothes and bent over to tie my shoes. Then I saw it. Once again, a note was tucked into the laces of my left sneaker. Only this time, the note was written in blood!
I gasped. Oh, how creepy. Hiding my toe shoes was no big deal. Stealing my extra dance clothes was worse, but it still wasn’t a federal offense. But a note written in blood! Ew. For a minute I thought I was going to pass out.
Then I looked closer and saw that it wasn’t blood at all. It was just red ink. But this time, it didn’t say BEWARE. It said: WATCH YOUR STEP. As I read it, I shivered. Then I crumpled it up and stuck it into my bag. This was getting scary. Somebody was really out to get me. But why?
I left the dressing room as quickly and quietly as I could. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. My dad picked me up, and I barely spoke to him during the ride home. He didn’t try to get me to talk, even though I could tell he’d noticed that something was wrong. He’s pretty sensitive that way.
As we pulled into the driveway, I made a real effort to forget all about the disturbing events of the day. I just didn’t want to think about the note, or what it might mean, for awhile.
Fortunately, Becca had something besides The Sleeping Beauty on her mind that evening. The minute I came into the house, she came flying down the stairs, waving a piece of paper in the air.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she yelled happily. “I can’t believe you kept this a secret.”
“Tell you what?” I asked. I really didn’t know what she was talking about. “What secret?”
“The pet show!” she shrieked. “It’s going to be great!”
I’d forgotten all about it. “Let’s see the invitation,” I said. Becca handed it to me, and I unfolded it.
CALLING ALL KIDS! it said, in big red letters. Each of the letters had little animals climbing all over it — puppies and kittens and monkeys and all kinds of other beasts. Claudia is so talented.
The reason it said “all kids” instead of “pet owners” was that we’d decided to invite all of our regular customers — whether they had pets or not. That way, a kid like Jamie Newton, who doesn’t have a pet, could still come to the show and have fun.
Underneath the headline were more pictures of animals, and then the information about the pet show: where it was going to be held, and when, and what kinds of pets could be entered. (“Bring your goldfish! Bring your pony! Bring any pet you have!”)
Becca was nearly beside herself. “It came in the mail today, Jessi!” she cried. “It had my name on it! I’m invited!”
I didn’t want to spoil things by telling her that everyone was invited. “That’s great, Becca,” I said. “A pet show will be fun, won’t it?”
She nodded. Then her smile faded.
“But we don’t have a pony. We don’t even have a dog! All we have is Misty.” She looked worried.
“Misty’s a great pet,” I said. “She’s friendly, and clean, and she knows her name —”
“But she’s just a hamster,” said Becca. “There’s no way she can win a prize at a big pet show like this.”
I thought about all the other pets that would probably be entered in the show. Nobody had a pony, at least as far as I knew. But there were a lot of dogs in the neighborhood — dogs that knew how to do all kinds of tricks. There were a lot of beautiful cats, too. Would a boring little hamster be able to compete? Becca might have a point, there, I thought. But I didn’t want her to worry about it.
“Winning a prize isn’t everything, Becca,” I said. “Just being in the show will be fun.” I thought I sounded very grown-up and reasonable.
A tear ran down Becca’s cheek. “I wish we had a dog,” she said. “Then I could give it a bath, and put a ribbon around its neck, and teach it some really great tricks. Then it would win first prize!” She sniffed. Obviously, she wasn’t convinced by my reasonable little speech. “Dumb old Misty is just going to sit there, wiggling her nose.”
“C’mon, Becca,” I said. “You love ‘dumb old Misty.’ Remember when we got her, how excited you were?”
Misty was born during one of my craziest sitting jobs. I’d been pet-sitting for this couple, the Mancusis. They don’t have any kids, but boy, do they have a lot of pets. They have three dogs, five cats, some birds, two guinea pigs, lots of fish, a snake (ew!) named Barney, a bunch of rabbits, and an aquarium full of turtles.
The Mancusis also have hamsters, and when I was sitting, one of the hamsters got sick. It was awful! I didn’t know what was wrong with him, and I had to miss an important meeting of the club to take him to the vet.
Well, you’ve probably guessed the rest of the story. “He” was really a “she” — and she was pregnant. She was going to give birth very, very soon. And not long after the babies were born (there were a lot of them!), the Mancusis came home. They were very happy with the way I’d handled the whole thing, and they offered me a baby hamster of my own.
Of course, we didn’t take Misty home until she was old enough to leave her mother. The Pikes got a hamster, too, and so did one of the kids we sit for, Jackie Rodowsky. Becca was thrilled to pieces when we got Misty — but now the thrill seemed to be wearing off. There was nothing I could say to convince her that winning a prize didn’t matter. Maybe this pet show wasn’t such a hot idea after all.
Kristy must have been feeling really overwhelmed. For her to admit that one of her ideas might not have been totally and completely perfect — well, let’s just say that I’ve never heard her come close to admitting anything like that before.
That Saturday afternoon, Kristy was sitting for her brother David Michael; her adopted sister, Emily Michelle; and her stepsister and stepbrother, Karen and Andrew. Kristy had her hands full.
It was a beautiful, sunny day, and they were all sitting on the back-porch steps. Well, actually, they weren’t just “sitting.” David Michael was hanging over the railing, making burping noises, while Karen shrieked at him to stop. Emily was zooming her Tonka truck around Kristy’s feet, screaming with glee every time she made a sharp turn. And Andrew was off in his own little world, examining an ant that he’d found crawling on the porch.
In between burps and shrieks and screams, they were all talking about — guess what — the pet show. All except Emily Michelle, that is. She doesn’t talk much yet.
“I wonder who will get second prize,” David Michael said. “Maybe one of the cats.”
“What do you mean, second prize?” asked Karen. “What about first prize?”
“Well, I don’t need to wonder about that,” David Michael answered. “I know which pet will get first prize. Shannon will. And I’m going to enter her, so I’ll get to keep the blue ribbon.” He paused to think for a moment. “I wonder where I should hang it in my room,” he said.
“What makes you so sure that Shannon will win?” asked Kristy.
“Well, she’s the biggest pet that’ll be in the show,” said David Michael. (Shannon is pretty big — she’s a Bernese mountain dog, and she’ll be the size of a Saint Bernard when she’s fully grown.) “And she’s got the best personality, right?”
Kristy had to admit that Shannon was pretty
sweet — not to mention clever and loyal.
“And she’s the best-looking!” finished David Michael triumphantly. “Mega-Dog!”
Kristy raised her eyebrows. “Well, we’ll see,” she said vaguely. She was thinking that it might not look too good if a dog from her own family won first prize in a pet show that had been her idea to begin with.
“I don’t think Shannon’s so great,” Andrew said. He’d gotten bored with the ant and had started to listen to David Michael’s boasting. “Midgie’s cuter and smarter than her any day. Midgie’s gonna win. I just know it.”
Midgie is this little mutt (he is cute and smart, but he is definitely a mutt) that belongs to Andrew’s stepfather, Seth.
“Did Seth say you could enter Midgie?” asked Kristy.
“Yup!” said Andrew proudly. “And I’m gonna give him a bath, and put ribbons in his hair. He’s gonna look great!”
“If you put ribbons in his hair, he’s going to look like even more of a wimp than he already is!” said Karen.
“Wimp?” asked Andrew.
“Yeah,” said Karen. “Midgie’s a wimp. He’s afraid of his own shadow. He’ll never win a prize — not unless you train him to do some tricks or something. And you don’t have time for that.”
Andrew looked downcast, but Kristy put her hand on his shoulder and gave him a squeeze. “Don’t worry, Andrew,” she said. “Midgie’s a fun little dog, and you’ll have a good time entering him in the pet show. And that’s all that matters, right? Having a good time?”
(Does that sound familiar? Kristy and I had come up with the same reasonable, grown-up-sounding line. I only wished that some of the kids would start to agree with it.)
“Well, I’m going to have a good time,” said Karen.
“Great!” said Kristy.
“Because my pet is definitely going to win first prize,” Karen finished.
Kristy rolled her eyes. “What pet are you entering?” she asked.
“Well, that’s the only problem,” said Karen. “I can’t decide between Rocky and Emily Junior.”