Dancing for the Lord The Academy - By Emily Goodman Page 0,5

demanded, sticking her tongue out at her older sister as she scraped her own chair back.

“Elizabeth!” Mrs. Wilkerson’s voice was angry.

“Sorry, Mama.” But Lizzie stuck her tongue out at her sister again, when she was sure their mother wasn’t looking.

Danni just rolled her eyes and ignored it. This kind of behavior was normal for Lizzie. Most of the time, it irritated her more than she could put into words; but as she’d gotten older, she had started to understand it, at least a little.

Danni had gotten their father’s quick metabolism and their mother’s innate grace. Lizzie had been blessed with neither. And with her practice schedules, rehearsal schedules, and shows, sometimes, it must have seemed as though the entire household revolved around ballet.

Oh, Lizzie had tried to join in. When she was seven, she had joined the ballet class at the same school Danni attended, desperate to start learning the grace that her then-twelve-year-old sister had displayed so naturally.

She had quit within a year, convinced that she would never be able to get anywhere near Danni’s natural grace—and the truth was, Lizzie probably wouldn’t.

Danni was naturally slender, petite. Lizzie was heavier, and she was going to be tall—she could already see it. At eleven, Lizzie was already nearing five feet tall, and she still had several years to keep growing. Danni, on the other hand, had settled at five one and intended to stay there. Lizzie weighed more than her sister did, too, and that in spite of the fact that she tried to limit what she ate to mostly healthy things.

Danni had just been blessed—or called, as she had told Lizzie once, during a heart-to-heart shortly before her sister gave up on ballet once and for all. God wanted her to dance for him, and that was what she intended to do. He had given her all the tools she needed to get there.

She was also very young to know her calling; and it must have frustrated Lizzie to no end that she had no such talent to be nurtured, no calling that was so obvious.

“Hey, look at it this way,” Danni suggested to her sister. “With me gone, you have one fewer person to pester for a ride when you need to go somewhere. Won’t that be a loss?”

Lizzie rolled her eyes. “With you gone, Mom might actually have time to take me places,” she shot back.

Danni prayed for patience and did her best not to snap back at her sister. It wouldn’t get her anywhere, she knew. Lizzie was deeply resentful of the time and energy that the family poured into developing Danni’s talent.

At least that was one thing that she wouldn’t have to worry about anymore.

Danni lingered over breakfast, taking a long time to eat a very little in the hopes that her mother wouldn’t think that she was unappreciative. She did appreciate everything that had been done for her, up to and including this breakfast; she just couldn’t bring herself to eat with her usual enthusiasm.

“It’s a long trip,” her mother reminded her softly. “And you know your father won’t want to stop. You’d better eat up.”

Danni did her best to smile. “I’m trying, Mom,” she said quietly.

“Nervous?” Her mother’s warm, perceptive brown gaze locked with her own.

“Terrified,” Danni admitted. “And…and it’s harder than I thought, leaving everyone behind.”

“Oh, you won’t even miss us after a week,” her mother told her—though it was clear from her eyes that she hoped that wouldn’t be entirely true. “You just wait—you’ll be so busy that summer will come, and you won’t even realize that the time has passed.”

In a sense, that was probably true. Danni had read all the material for the Academy. Students weren’t accepted until their junior or senior years—not into the Academy itself—and if they were accepted as juniors, then their academic goals became simple: to finish all of the coursework necessary for them to graduate by the end of the junior year, so that the senior could be devoted entirely to dance.

She was going to be busy—but she thought she would have more than enough time to miss her family.

It seemed an eternity before her father finally came down for breakfast. Danni tried to make conversation with her mother; but everything she said just came out sounding like “goodbye,” and this wasn’t, not really. She would be able to call, to speak with them often; and she’d write, and email, and all of the things that people did to communicate even when physically, they