Dancing for the Lord The Academy - By Emily Goodman Page 0,22

healthy dose of disappointment. Every class she’d worked with so far absolutely loved to dance, and none of them had been pressured into being there.

Instead, she was faced with two of the guys that she thought were in her English class. Josh and…what was the other guy’s name? Logan, she thought.

“See? There’s nobody in here,” Logan told his friend cheerfully. “Which means I can walk you through that dance again in peace.”

“There’s going to be a room full of kids here in twenty minutes,” Josh argued. “Which is not, I might add, enough time for me to learn the choreography. Face it, Logan, I’m going to have to go Mlle Kirby and admit that I don’t know it yet.”

“Which is just going to get you booked extra practice time and a black mark. Give it a shot my way. Wouldn’t you rather have the practice time without the black mark?” Logan cajoled.

“If it were that easy? Sure. But it’s not. I’ve tried this piece over and over, and I’m just not getting it.” Josh sighed. “Besides, I love ya, Logan, but you’re never going to be a girl.”

“No, but there’s one right over there in the corner.” Logan gestured grandly.

Danni jumped, surprised. She had been trying her best to ignore them, burying her head in her science book again and pushing ahead with her usual zeal. Couldn’t they see that she was busy?

“Danni, right?” Logan was right in front of her then, and there was no way to politely ignore him anymore. She looked up at him and nodded.

“Well, Danni, I’m Logan, and this is Josh.” He gestured to his friend with the same grand, sweeping motion he had used to indicate her earlier. “And we would be terribly, terribly indebted to you if we could borrow just a few short minutes of your time.”

“Shouldn’t you all be in class?” she demanded.

“Ah, that we should.” Logan winked. “But Mlle Kirby was called away to the phone, and we were dismissed early today. Thanks to that, we have no choice but to practice on our own—and Josh, here, is having the worst time with part of this sequence.”

“And you think I can help you with that?” She was frankly skeptical.

“I think you’re better equipped for it than I am. Look.” Quickly, Logan outlined the steps he wanted her to do—nothing so complicated, really, but difficult enough that Josh was having trouble absorbing them. Actually, it was similar to what she had danced in The Nutcracker a couple of years ago—part of the duet between Clara and her prince.

“And you can’t practice this with your partner because?”

Josh sighed; and now he was the one who was being overly dramatic as he dropped to one knee, pleading. “You don’t understand, Danni,” he told her pathetically. “If I admit to Allie that I’m having this kind of trouble, she’ll never let me live it down. She’s vindictive, you see. Before the day was over, everyone in the Academy would know. So I beg of you, please, please, won’t you help me?”

Danni sighed. They’d already used up five minutes whining at her. Fifteen minutes—what could it hurt? “All right,” she said grudgingly. “But I’m still not sure what help I’ll be.”

Fifteen minutes. It was no time at all to learn a complicated dance; but with Logan calling the steps, Danni discovered that, as always, her feet took over and her mind completely let go of all the worries of the mundane world. She just danced, and gave herself over to it.

If she had stopped to critique, she would have realized immediately that Josh wasn’t half the partner Michael was—and there was a great deal lost due to the fact that they had never danced with one another before, not to mention the simple reality that there was no music. Still, Logan kept fairly good time with the simple use of a heavy foot on the floor; and before she knew it, they were simply dancing—no, practically flying.

He lowered her to the ground, and she gasped, breathless with the exhilaration of it. Dancing with a partner…there was nothing like it. She had forgotten how much she hated to be alone out there, never touching anyone else, never going through that simple exchange of cues that told her when she was supposed to shift her weight a certain way.

“Bravo.” Applause from the door startled her, and she spun, staring, as Mlle Kirby moved toward them. “Much better, Josh. I was beginning to wonder if you were going