The Kayla Chronicles Read online

  Then a scary encounter. In a near-breach of confidentiality and security, Angeline, the girl entrusted to protect my dance secrets, and I stumbled upon the first finalist to sign in.

  “No one else is allowed back here, Angeline! You can’t be here!” the girl’s chaperone yelled.

  “Karla, you’re in the wrong place. Look at the map!” Angeline shot back. Neither girl looked ready to give in. Angeline wore tough-looking black leather high-tops. So you just knew she wasn’t going to back down.

  They both raced over to a notebook tossed casually on the floor and produced a colorful map with the fierceness of government agents battling foreign fashion-label knockoffs. My mind raced back to those emergency distress training days of elementary school. Should I stop-drop-and-roll or hit the floor and cover my head?

  I tried to avoid eye contact with the other finalist. Could she look in my eyes and see that my freestyle would be riddled with a combination of flips and spins or that my secret weapon—a swing dance step, in high heels—ended in a back walkover and a split?

  Angeline stood, hands on her hips, and blew out a huge sigh. A photo my mother took of a triumphant wildebeest set against the vast skyline of Kenya popped into my head. That wildebeest had looked radiant, masterful after its kill. I knew the black high-tops were not to be played with.

  Chaperone One and her charge slunk away in defeat. Angeline turned to me, hands still on her hips. “Well, don’t just stand there. You’ve got thirty minutes, girl. Get it together.”

  And with that, I began to move to the rhythm pounding in my heart.

  Time to dance

  Angeline got a call on her cell, then told me I’d be in the first group.

  Downstairs, I joined seven other girls onstage. Miss Lavender and four former dancers, all graduates, sat in the front row of the auditorium. All of us looked terrified, and for a moment we were stumbling over one another.

  But when the music started, something happened. It was like everything else went out of my head. I just knew what to do. We did the same formation, same steps even though they changed the music three times.

  When they were done with us, we were panting—at least, I know I was. But my knees weren’t shaking.

  When it was over, I was getting up out of a split and the judges, Miss Lavender included, were on their feet applauding.

  I couldn’t believe it. My freestyle was so down, so on-point, I was afraid I might have to go into some sort of Dancer Protection Program for fear my skills were just too lethal for the rest of the world. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  We were all led into the auditorium and we sat in the plush cranberry-red seats while the judges went up to a long table that had been placed on the stage. Janet Jackson’s “Pleasure Principle” played in the background. Ah, yes. An old-school ode to dance-team routines worldwide.

  They’d debate for a minute, then they’d look at us; debate, then look at us. It was surreal. When my mom was still in the jungle taking pictures of elephants, JoJo would tell me that whenever my heart raced or thumped in my chest, I should think about the rhythm of the African drums. When I was eight or nine, Mom brought home a drum for me for Christmas. She showed me how a tribal elder had taught her to play.

  Instinctively, my fingers fluttered over the spot in my chest where my grandmother’s words lived and my mother’s drum played.

  “Are you all right?” the girl next to me asked.

  When I looked at her, I felt the itch of tears and blinked several times. Afraid one word might set free a dam, I just nodded.

  The girl grabbed my arm and squeezed gently. “You’ll be fine. No matter what happens, whether you make it or not, you’ll be fine.”

  I nodded again; then she moved down to another group of girls. She thought I was getting emotional about the tryouts, about making the squad.

  Nope. Well, not exactly. I mean, I was nervous, but something in me also felt . . . afraid.

  What would JoJo think about me doing this? I squeezed my eyes shut and this time felt the warm trickle of a single tear on my cheek. My mother had tried to reassure me the other night, but I chased her away. It was so hard all of a sudden, knowing what was right and what was wrong. What was real and what was surreal.

  The drum in my chest played louder, with more intensity. Even the pulse in my neck thumped a beat. So many things were racing through my mind. I was terrified these girls would think my butt was too big or my breasts were too small, even though, according to Rosalie, that was what I was here to prove. Then I was terrified I’d become the kind of girl who cared if other girls thought her butt was too big or breasts were too small.

  I was changing, I could feel it. I didn’t mention it, didn’t want to talk to anyone about it, but I was, I knew I was. And I knew part of the reason I’d been such a witch to my mom was that she could see it.

  Even when she’d come to visit, before the cancer quickly overwhelmed JoJo and took her away, Mom noticed. It bothered me that as much as I loved my grandmother, my mother was able to see in me what JoJo could not—that I wanted to be more than books and intellect. That I was getting bored living inside my little box.

  And wanting all that change and feeling so much change scared me because holy, sweet mother of pearl, I’d spent my whole life learning how to be the Me that I am. Did I really want to shift gears in high school and start being all brand-new?

  Rosalie was downstairs, pacing back and forth, rooting for me to fail so she could see my failure as a victory.

  But I knew in my heart, I didn’t want to fail. Even if it did mean I wouldn’t get the high school story of the century. I wanted to write a different story. One about two groups of girls who seemed to stand for different things, yet became determined to unite in order to make life better for all kinds of girls.

  I had to find a way to bring SPEAK and the Lady Lions together. But first I had to find out whether or not the Lady Lions thought I could hang.

  “Girls, come forward please. . . .”

  And then, just like that, it was over. Girls were shrieking, crying, laughing, squealing. I almost couldn’t walk. One girl wailed, screeched, “No, no, no, I can’t believe it, no!” She was grabbing me, holding me, pulling me into her misery swirl.

  All around me girls stumbled and stammered, hooted and cried out in stages of disbelief like lifetime felons finally set free to see the ocean and run barefoot in the sand.

  First I couldn’t walk, then I was stumbling, then running. I was part of a herd now. A zebra.

  A Lion.

  Rosalie and the other FOFs had come un-“penned,” leaving the confines of their grassy waiting area and were milling around the cement steps. “I made it!” My voice was so high and shrill that the force of it doubled me over.

  Her face was blank. So I screamed again.

  “Rosalie! I didn’t get cut! I made it! I made it! I MADE IT!” This time I dropped to the ground, buried my face in my hands, then sprang up and stamped my feet against the concrete. Shooting pins of pain and life and magic shot through my ankles. I felt everything and everything felt good.

  Crazy glee coated me when I looked up again, looked at Rosalie’s face, expectant, you know? Needing her . . . what?

  Joy?

  But girlfriend had no joy for me. Here I was so huge with joy that I was positively joygantic. Not Rosalie.

  Her face collapsed like an eighth-grader’s science fair volcano left out in the rain. Then her features squenched into a squirmy expression of disbelief and disgust.

  “You made it? The Lady Lions are going to let YOU be on their squad? You made it?”

  OBITUARY NOTICE: Joy Is Dead!

  My face got chili pepper hot. Heat—part shame, part “how dare she” anger—made my skin hot. Still, I nodded my head like a fool bobblehead doll. “I made it, Rosalie. I’m . . .”

  My voice caught in my throat. A murderous look blazed in her crazy glee-free eyes.

  “You what?” she growled.

  “K
ayla!”—before I could answer, before I could plead—“I’m so happy! Be happy with me!” Several hands came around me and I was swept into a group frenzy. Joygantic in a big, big way!

  “Can you believe it? We made it?” said the girl who’d comforted me in the auditorium. Then we were all jumping again.

  Minutes later, when the jumping and hugging had subsided, I spun to look for Rosalie.

  Gone.

  Later, I called her from my cell.

  No answer.

  Hours passed.

  Still, no Rosalie.

  AMBER ALERT:

  Be on the lookout for a missing best friend.

  Last seen fleeing the scene of a celebration.

  PEARLS OF WISDOM

  Kayla discovers that love, like a precious gem, is a treasure one only needs to accept.

  Rosalie left me hanging all weekend. Can you believe it? She wouldn’t answer my calls, pages, e-mails, smoke signals—-nothing, then, presto, she is here and ready for action.

  Hmph! Allow me to recap the past forty-eight hours of her disappearance:

  I’d been helping the Demolition Diva pack her sturdy “delicates” and other necessities for her cruise with the church ladies.

  At Port Everglades, where the cruise ships line up awaiting their vacationers, the whole family waved and took pictures and made a big fuss. I must say, Grandma-ma looked so happy in her buttery yellow suit and hat that I couldn’t help smiling at her.

  That was until she gripped my face in her hands and got, like, nose to nose with me and said, “Child, I am very, very proud of you. You were so brave to go out there, to throw caution to the wind. You showed ’em what for!”

  I wasn’t sure whether she was talking about my trying out for and making the dance squad or if she thought I’d swam to Cuba and brought down Fidel Castro’s dictatorship.

  “Um, thanks, Granny,” I said.

  She gave my face a small shake. “Don’t say ‘um,’ child. Be steady and sure in your speech. And don’t call me ‘Granny,’ either. ‘Granny’ is a sour apple, dear.”

  Even the salty scent of the ocean and the bustling sounds of passengers, car horns, fog horns, and seagulls couldn’t totally distract me from the parting shots of my own personal Steel Magnolia.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  She smiled and looked around dramatically. Then she did the oddest thing. She reached into her bubblegum pink vinyl shoulder bag and pulled out an oblong black velvet box.

  A jewelry box.

  She handed the box to me. I looked at Mom, then the Great Oppressor, but they both shrugged. Amira managed to scowl and look bored at the same time.

  “What’s this . . . ?”

  “Open it!” Grandma-ma’s voice was bright and crinkly, like foil wrapping paper. Inside the box on a padded bed of satin lay a beautiful, perfect strand of pearls. I was so stunned that I dropped the box and the pearls spilled, and for a moment I was paralyzed in horror.

  But contrary to her reflexes behind the wheel of her car, my grandmother’s reflexes for retrieving runaway jewelry was flawless. In one motion she swooped the pearls from the ground, stepped behind me, and began to unfasten the clasp.

  My fingers instantly flew to the strand of pearls, which felt majestic and important on my throat. But it was the pearl of wisdom she left in my ear that gleamed brightest.

  When she’d finished with the clasp, she softly whispered in my ear so no one else could hear, “I know how close you were to . . . your grandmother JoJo. I know you miss her. But remember, I am your grandmother, too. Wear the pearls like the lady you are. I’m proud of you.”

  That was yesterday . . .

  Now, a day later, while my grandmother and her church friends were walking on water, I sat in our backyard, biting my lip and running my finger along the crests and valleys of my brand-new pearls. (Yes, I was still wearing them!)

  And believe me, with the tear Rosalie was on, I needed the pearls, anything for support. After her little disappearance, she had the nerve to come in here and act all “everything-is-going-according-to-plan.”

  Ha!

  Now she claimed making the squad was the most perfect way for “us” to get our agenda “out there.”

  “Think about it, K. Before, you would have had a good story, but some heretics would have tried to dismiss you and claim your article was bogus because you were bitter over not making it. Now we don’t have to worry about that, do we?”

  She was so close to me that when she said it, I could feel her quest for power.

  Pebbles of anger lodged in my throat, but uncertainty and maybe fear pressed like a sack of stones on my chest. “But . . .”

  Bam! Before I could get more than a word out, she hit me with the palm-up hand in my face.

  “No time for that now, Kayla. Right now we have more important things to worry about. Like getting to work on ‘Kick the Crown.’ We’re meeting with some women from the community—the radio stations, one girl from Channel Seven, and Dr. X said she even got a call from a legislator’s office. We’re meeting with them next week.”

  The she hit me with a whammy. Telling me she was leaving town in a few days so I was going to need to “step up my game.”

  Ugh!

  “Rosalie, I have practice every day, every minute, almost every hour until school starts.”

  “So?” she countered. Her level of funktivity never wavered. Just so you know the difference— funktaciousness, in the book of Kaylaisms, describes boldness, like fashion or a high spirit, but funktivity, that’s just plan ol’ stankaliciousness run amok.

  “Look, Rosalie . . .”

  “Go to the practice, chica, whatever, just . . .” She pulled out a day planner full of phone numbers and of course numerous lists.

  “Just follow the lists. Make sure everybody knows where and when. The planning session’s at our house, so you know the drill.”

  Aye, captain!

  Then she reached into her bag and pulled out a small package. It was a slightly wrinkled—recycled—gift bag.

  “Here,” she said, pushing it at me. I opened it and pulled out a crisp, fresh T-shirt. It read: This is what a feminist looks like. When I met her gaze, she shrugged.

  “Ordered it on the Internet after you made the squad. I . . . I am proud of you, Kayla. You really did it.”

  We hugged awkwardly, then just as abruptly as she showed up at my front door, she was gone.

  GATOR BAIT

  Private dance time leaves Kayla mired in a swamp of humiliation!

  Our f irst practice:

  It was well over five hundred degrees. We were outside in an enclosed field behind the school. We weren’t practicing with the marching band yet. For now we were just working on our own. All around RPA were scaffolding and tractors and construction equipment, all with growling motors to give the school a face-lift before the school year started.

  After three hours, I was a funky, molten mess. Sadly, heat, humidity and musty armpits would be the high points of my afternoon.

  Allow me to explain.

  First, there was our dance team coordinator, Miss Lavender. Miss Lavender is the stuff of urban legends.

  HER VITALS:

  * superlong legs and razor-thin eyebrows

  * former professional dancer currently married to a Miami Dolphin football player

  * rumor has it that she jogs Fort Lauderdale beach in her stilettos

  * rumor also has it that she periodically trains with the Navy SEALs just to stay in shape

  We’d finished, so I dropped into a self-made puddle in the grass. Next thing I knew I was shocked into an upright position as her long, dark shadow stretched across my aching body. Not wearing stilettos. Black leather jazz shoes with a Mary-Jane strap.

  Miss Lavender: “You are the youngest member on our squad, Miss Dean. We had quite a bit of discussion about whether or not to select a fourteen-year-old sophomore. We chose you because we felt you’d be able to grow into our system and be a re
al asset. Not to mention the fact that you blew us away with how you were able to dance and perform in those high heels.”

  Me: “Um . . .”

  Miss Lavender: “But . . .”

  Why is it that with me, there’s always a “big but”?

  “. . . What we need to concentrate on now is your confidence. You’ve got all the moves, but you lack the attitude. You gotta’ work it like you mean it.”

  I scrambled to my feet and started brushing myself off. Then, Roman Nivens, a junior and the quintessential male choreographer of dubious sexual orientation, piped in:

  “Girlfriend, you have got to learn to be more at ease with your body.” He looked me up and down, his willowy thin arms crisscrossing his chest like ancient snakes from a pharaoh’s crypt.

  Roman: “Little Diva, I promise, once you start to ooze confidence, you’ll have tons of fans, and little girls will want to grow up and be just like you.” Little Diva! Oh, no he didn’t. My family had only one “Diva” and she was of the demolition variety, currently out to sea, thank you very much.

  Me: “Um . . . duh.”

  I stood there blinking like a gecko on a limb. The whole squad was checking me out, no doubt feeling all kinds of pity for the pathetic little sophomore with no makeup and clothes from The Salvation Army. Instinctively, my hands crept around back in a useless, sad attempt to cover my rear end.

  Roman appeared to get some sort of signal from beyond because no sooner had my hands slid behind me to cover my butt did he jump forward with a big, fat “Aha. See what I mean. Girl, you better stop trying to cover yourself up. The booty is your friend.”

  Medic! I need someone to come and pronounce me dead at the scene.

  Of course, it got worse, because, well, it could.