grinned at her and made his selection. He thanked the girls before leaving with the food under his shirt.
As soon as he was ready, Julian went out into the kitchen. Mr. Yu was already there, eating his breakfast. Julian watched him in amazement. He didn’t even seem to taste what he was eating. Suddenly he stood up and said, “Okay, go now.”
Everyone trudged after him to the van and shoved into the vehicle, trying to make room among all the costumes.
“Where are we going?” Julian whispered to Keiko as they headed downtown.
“To the academy to pick up everyone else,” Keiko whispered back. Julian groaned. Of course, the other dancers needed a ride. But it seemed like an impossible number of people to fit in the van. The others got into the van with a chorus of “Ohayou,” and “’Morning,” and then they all lapsed into silence.
When they finally got to the school, a custodian let them into the gym where they would be performing. Everybody started stripping down to their dance clothes and putting on their warm-ups. Julian stopped moving.
“What’s wrong?” Kageki asked curiously, noticing Julian’s horrified expression.
“I forgot my warm-ups. And my non-costume dance clothes!”
Kageki laughed. “Sorry, man, that sucks,” he said, trying to be sympathetic. “I write a list of everything I need to bring every day, and then I check it all off,” he told Julian as they both went to get chairs to use as a barre.
“What? Like, everything?”
“Yes, everything. Cellphone, dance belt, lunch, pencils …”
“You are really weird,” Julian said shaking his head. Kageki grinned. He didn’t deny it.
Mr. Yu yelled, “Hurry!” impatiently, and began to leading the exercises before they had finished setting up their chairs. Julian reached down to hold his chair and realized that it wasn’t going to be any help at all. It was way too short and light to support him. He moved over to the wall and tried to find a surface that he could grip onto. It was all very smooth, so he gave up and just touched the wall lightly to get his balance. He tried to stand in first position in preparation for the exercise as Mr. Yu tried to find a good piece of music, but his feet immediately slid out of position on the slippery floor. He looked over at Tristan and Kageki, who just smirked at him.
“Got any rosin?” he asked hopefully.
“Nope,” Kageki said, looking forward as Mr. Yu glared at him.
“Sprinkle some water on the floor,” Tristan whispered.
“I forgot my water bottle,” Julian whispered back. Tristan rolled his eyes and passed his over.
When Julian was done sprinkling the floor, Tristan happily grabbed his bottle from Julian and started to spray the rest of the floor, too.
“Ahh! Too much!” Aiko wailed, as Kageki narrowly missed splashing her pointe shoes.
“Enough,” Mr. Yu said impatiently. They all went back to their chairs and walls, the girls glaring at the boys as they attempted to avoid the puddles of water and grumbled about it ruining their pointe shoes. They got through pliés without incident. Mr. Yu actually just stood there, staring into space, as they did the exercise.
He snapped out of it and started to give a tendu exercise, but stopped suddenly and ordered them to take their clothes off. They groaned and began shedding layers. They did the rest of the barre in a hurry and had no centre practice as Mr. Yu suddenly realized what time it was. The second they finished, they changed into their costumes in a panic, and the girls began fixing their pointe shoes and trying to warm their feet up a bit more. The boys went into the centre of the gym and began testing out their pirouettes.
“I love this floor!” Julian said as he went around five times. “It’s so awesomely slippery!”
“Yeah, but wait till jumps,” Tristan said. He turned six times and then fell on his side, one hand on his chest, the other stretching to the sky.
“Bet I can do seven!” Kageki said.
“Bet you can’t,” Tristan said. Julian and Tristan watched as Kageki prepared, and then just as he started Tristan yelled, “Jinx!”
Kageki gave up on doing a proper pirouette and turned into a spiralling spin, both hands clutched onto his heart. “I hate you,” he informed Tristan and prepared again.
“Don’t wind up,” Tristan said, laughing at him. Kageki stopped, looked at Tristan, and then prepared with exaggerated care. He went around one … two … three … four … five … he started slowing down at six, but just as he was about to stop, he twisted his body and managed to get around another time.
“Nice!” Julian said admiringly.
“Cheater,” Tristan said. “Now me.” He did the first three pirouettes normally, then hunched his shoulders and grabbed his crotch for four more.
“It doesn’t count if you do it that way,” Kageki argued. But Tristan defended himself.
Julian did a few pirouettes off to the side. He could do five max, grabbing his crotch or no.
The show went pretty well as far as Julian could tell. The children liked the national dances, tolerated the waltz and contemporary dances, yawned through Aiko and Dmitri’s pas de deux from Le Corsaire, and were wildly enthusiastic about Tristan, Julian, and Kageki’s version of the Russian dance taken from The Nutcracker.
“I need a drink,” Dmitri said later, as everyone unloaded themselves and the costumes out of the car.
“Me too,” Julian said. Dmitri looked at him in surprise.
“We have costume fittings today,” Tristan reminded him.
“You want to go to No. 5?” Dmitri asked Mr. Yu.
He nodded, continuing to unload. Everyone began to go inside, but Mr. Yu called the boys back to help.
“Where’s No. 5?” Julian asked, as they pulled out a trunk of costumes.
“Downtown. It’s a good bar,” Dmitri told him.
“No it’s not,” Tristan said quietly, wrinkling his nose in disgust. “It just has strippers,”
“You want to come with us?” Dmitri asked Julian, ignoring Tristan.
“Sure!” Julian said. “Uh, actually I can’t. I don’t have any I.D.”
Dmitri grimaced. “Too bad, man. You find some I.D. and I’ll take you. They used to have Pam Anderson stripping there before she got famous.”
“No, it was Courtney Love,” Mr. Yu said. “Come on, let’s go.”
Dmitri rolled his eyes and whispered “Pam!” to Julian. He got in the van and they drove away, leaving Julian, Tristan, and Kageki to carry the costumes into the academy.
The whole hall was filled with people waiting to get into the studio, which was full of precariously
