Dancing for the Lord The Academy - By Emily Goodman Page 0,9
not even see the outside of the grounds for weeks!”
“I thought as much.” Her father grinned. “But of course, she’s eager to start looking around, see where she’s going to be living.” He faked a grimace. “Truth be told, I’m a bit eager for that, myself. All these bags of hers, you know.”
Danni made a face at him. The bags weren’t that heavy—but her father was right, now that she was here, she did want to see her bedroom.
“Oh, of course!” The woman smiled broadly. “Now, I’m Mrs. Baxter, dear. I’ll be your house mother for the next two years, as long as you stay here—and there’s not usually a lot of moving around. Too much trouble, you see.”
Danni could believe it. Moving once was trouble enough; she couldn’t see going to that much effort just to change dorms.
“Now, Danni, you’ll be on the second floor, first room on the right. I’m afraid it’s the smallest in the house—the other girls have already had their pick, you see—but I think it’ll serve you well enough.”
“Thank you.” Danni was afraid that her voice emerged as a squeak. Shrugging that off—it wouldn’t do her any good to dwell on it, after all—she followed Mrs. Baxter over to the stairs.
“I’m just going to see if any of the boys are here tonight.” Mrs. Baxter’s eyes sparkled. “They can make themselves useful and carry some of those bags, hm?”
Danni just nodded, too overwhelmed to protest as she should have, and made her way up the stairs with her father right behind her.
Mrs. Baxter had been right: the room was one of the smaller ones. While most of the rooms were at least twice the size of her room back home—with enough space, the girl who had shown her around commented, to at least stretch out and warm up in the mornings—this one was only a quarter again that size, and a great deal of that space was taken up by the full-sized bed, desk, and dresser. Two slender bookshelves covered what wall space wasn’t taken up by several large windows; looking around, Danni realized that there wasn’t really any good place to put posters, especially since she planned to put another shelf over the desk.
On the other hand, the small room felt cozy, Danni thought. In a bigger room, she would have felt like she was rattling around in all the space. It was strange enough that at a boarding school, girls would get rooms to themselves. The materials the Academy had sent home had indicated that this was to help with adjustments and to prevent rivalries from developing in quarters so close that they couldn’t get away from one another. Every student at least had their own private space.
The room was also beautiful, Danni thought. Sheer curtains hung in front of the windows, dancing merrily in the breeze from the vent; a gorgeous, rose-colored comforter covered the bed; and there was a cozy, rose-colored chair in the corner that looked just perfect for curling up in with a good book. The more she studied it, the more she found to like. And…yes, those were blackout curtains hanging alongside the gauzy ones, so that if she wanted to block out the sun, she would be able to do so.
Not, Danni thought, that she expected to have a great many opportunities to sleep in, not with the new life that she had ahead of her.
Her father dropped the bags he carried on the ground and looked around. “Well, it’s not too bad, Danni-girl,” he said lightly.
She turned, letting him see her smile. “I love it!” she declared.
“I’m glad.” He squeezed her arm. “Why don’t you start unpacking while I bring the rest up, hm?”
Danni didn’t argue with him. Her father was the old-fashioned sort, believed that women should let their men do the heavy lifting; he would be insulted if she implied by so much as the flicker of an eyelash that he couldn’t handle it, and anyway, she wanted to start making her mark on the place.
The first thing she did was tuck her dance bag down beside the reading chair. That, she thought, was probably where it would stay. The closet, as she studied it, didn’t look big enough for her to use it for the bag; probably she would end up burying it under something and being late to class. Next, she reached for the bag her father had brought up—not so incidentally the last one she had packed that morning. She