Dancing for the Lord The Academy - By Emily Goodman Page 0,30

Katarina—or at least a way to avoid another of her tirades. All Danni had to do was hide in the back of the room and not call attention to herself—which she did.

She and another girl were paired together, as she had expected. As the newcomer to the class, she would have to wait for awhile before she managed to get a male partner to dance with—and that was exactly as it should be, Danni decided. She would dance with the other girl—whose name happened to be Kaitlyn—until the teachers assigned her elsewhere.

By the middle of class, Danni had been moved over to dance with Josh. Mlle Kirby, as it turned out, was the pairs instructor, and she was absolutely delighted to see that Danni worked better with Josh than Allie, his previous partner, had. By the end of the session, Josh actually knew the dance that he had been doing; and Danni had even managed to correct his hand placement so that he wasn’t wobbling so much when he caught her in the middle of a turn.

“You’re good at this,” he told her intently.

“Not bad,” she said, shrugging. “Allie seemed a little upset, though—don’t you think you ought to catch up to her and make sure everything’s okay?”

He made a face. “Honestly? No. I think I ought to leave Allie to her own devices until she cools down and remembers that as compensation for not dancing with me, she gets to be Clara.” He grimaced. “Not to mention the fact that Clara has that lovely pas de deux with the prince.” There was an odd bitterness in his voice as he said it.

“And…who’s the prince?” Danni asked, intrigued in spite of herself.

“Nicholas, of course!” Josh looked at her as though she had two heads. “Katarina’s partner? And she’s having a fit about him practicing with Allie, let me tell you. But since she’s Sugar Plum, she can hardly complain much.”

The Sugar Plum Fairy. For a moment, Danni couldn’t even speak as a wave of longing washed over her. That was her dream role—the one she had always wanted.

She’d danced in half a dozen different ballets, not to mention countless recitals. She’d done Christmas performances every year with her ballet school; and she had danced in The Nutcracker with the local company since she was nine years old. She had never, however, been able to dance the part of the Sugar Plum Fairy. That was always reserved for the company’s prima ballerina—and she hadn’t been old enough to audition for the company.

She had years ahead of her in which she could dance that role—she knew that. She hadn’t really worried about it, most of the time. God would give her the role when and if He was ready—and if He never was, then so be it. But if she could have that dream here….

“Josh…does the Academy do The Nutcracker every year?” she asked, almost breathless.

He nodded, confused. “Yeah. It’s in all the paperwork—didn’t you read it?”

She’d read a lot of paperwork for a lot of ballet schools. The truth was, she had forgotten what each of them said. The Nutcracker. Oh, she’d known that was what they were doing; but somehow, she had assumed that the company associated with the school would be dancing the main roles.

Except that they weren’t. Katarina—who was just her age—was dancing the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy. That meant that next year, it could be her!

Danni had first known that she wanted to be a ballerina when she was five years old and saw The Nutcracker with her mother for the first time. Since then, she had been a mouse; a solider; a snowflake; one of the Arab dancers; one of Mother Ginger’s children; and a flower. The Nutcracker was, corny or not, her favorite ballet.

And she was desperate to be the Sugar Plum Fairy. It would be an absolute dream come true.

Next year, she promised herself fiercely. Next year.

She was full of excitement and bubbling over when she talked to Michael that night, though she tried to keep it under wraps. His knee was still bothering him—she could hear it in his voice. He wasn’t going to dance class that night—and for Michael, that meant that it was bad.

“Are you taking care of yourself?” she demanded. “I mean really taking care of it, Michael.”

“I’m really taking care of it, Dragonfly,” he promised her tiredly. “I just twisted it better than I thought, that’s all.”

She wasn’t comforted. “But you’d tell me if it was really