Chapter 8: Second Position

Annie's studio was on the second floor over a shoe repair on upper King Street.

A painted sign in the window said Garner Ballet, Ages 4 to 10.

I'd stood across the street for twenty minutes before I went up.

The stairs were steep and narrow.

At the top was a big bright room with a mirror wall and a wooden barre.

Eight little girls in pink tights were in a row at the barre, holding on with one hand.

Annie sat in a straight chair at the front with her cane across her knees.

"Second position," she said. "Heels together, toes out, now slide. Purple socks, that's fourth. That's a whole different country."

The girls giggled.

She saw me in the mirror.

She didn't stop the class.

I waited on the bench by the door with a row of tiny sneakers.

When it was over, the girls ran past me down the stairs to their mothers in the shoe shop below, shrieking about juice boxes.

Annie stayed in her chair.

"You're not supposed to be here," she said.

"I know."

"Bryce has a friend in the police department. He says so a lot."

"I'll be quick."

She looked at me in the mirror instead of turning around.

"I read them," she said. "All thirty-one. I sat on my kitchen floor until four in the morning."

I didn't say anything.

"You wrote me a joke about the prison meat loaf in the middle of the one from the day you were sentenced."

"It was very bad meat loaf."

"It was a terrible joke."

"You laughed, though."

"I did not."

She was smiling a little at the mirror.

She stood up, using the cane, and walked to the barre and rested her free hand on it.

For a second I saw her the way she was at twenty-three. On a stage, in a line of girls, the only one I could look at.

"I used to be able to do this without thinking," she said.

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