A Million Miles Away(29)

She scanned the crowd for Davis, who she knew would be late. But not this late. Well, no time for that now.

The beat began, barely audible. As the volume grew louder, the dancers shifted out of their line in robotic steps, their limbs stiff, like moving dolls. The drums began to fall on top of one another, more complex, and the crowd was quiet in their seats. The dancers ended up in a staggered group in the center of the floor, joints bent and jagged, posing awkwardly, a far cry from their usual careful pirouettes and three-point turns.

Then the beat dropped, deep and electronic, slaying the dancers row by row, slack bodies falling to the floor. Seconds of silence between beats. Whispers from the crowd.

On cue, they rose together with the song, triumphant, stomping the floor like tap dancers with a vengeance, kicking, their arms slicing the air.

Kelsey was in it. She was gone. She didn’t think about what the rest of her troupe was doing, because these minutes were an extension of her mind, the crowd now clapping along—they were all in a daydream she had, and was now having, in complete control.

Pace. Slide. Pace. Slide. Leap. Land. Up. Hips.

The song ended with the dancers’ backs to the home team, pointing painted fingernails straight at the opposing crowd’s bleachers, ponytails and buns in wrecked nests, mouths pursed and eyes flashing. Everyone, no matter what team they supported, was on their feet, cheering in approval.

The announcer had to shout to be heard over the clamor. “Wow! What a display!”

Kelsey pulled a whistle out of her uniform. Three blasts, and her team snapped straight and walked off the court.

“The Lions Dance Team, ladies and gentlemen!”

The crowd whooped again as they exited.

“What?! What?!” Ingrid shouted, a happy purple mess.

Outside the doors, next to the locker room, the two basketball teams waited to take the court again.

“That’s how we do it,” Kelsey said, slapping the hand of every girl on her team, hard.

Over their shoulders, she glanced at the basketball team. Two of the girls nodded, giving her a small bow.

“Badass,” one of them said.

Kelsey smiled. I know, she resisted saying.

She retrieved her phone. A text from Davis was waiting: Woulda loved to see you dance tonight baby but my sex appeal would have been too much for the high school basketball moms to handle.

Kelsey texted back: Busy with beer pong?


You know me too well. :)



The Lions basketball team took the court, and then they took the game. The second half was a blowout.

Afterward, both the girls’ and the boys’ basketball teams met the Lions Dance Team in the gymnasium lobby, letter jackets on over their jeans.

“Victory party at the Wheel?” Gillian yelled above the happy din.

A few calls of “Yeah!” and “We should call ahead, tell them to make all the pizza they have,” and “Nick’s house after?”

Kelsey didn’t take the time to change out of her uniform. She gave a few more pats on the back and ducked out a side door to the parking lot.

Through the dark, Kelsey heard, “Where are you going, Maxfield?” Under a streetlight, she could see one of the forwards from the boys’ team.

“So tired,” she called back. “Tell Gil and Ingrid I’m heading home, will you?”

“Have it your way!” he said, and went back inside.

It wasn’t that Kelsey didn’t want to celebrate. She did, very much.

But it was morning in Afghanistan.

After she had texted Davis, her phone had buzzed again, with a Skype message from Peter. She told him she would be online in an hour.

As the car started up, she hooked up her phone to the Subaru’s speakers, and selected the first track of one of Michelle’s playlists, where she had found the track her team had danced to tonight. The playlist was mostly filled with bands named “The” and plural nouns. The Breeders, The Strokes, The Turtles. She didn’t know if she liked the actual music, or just liked the idea of Michelle listening to it, her hair escaping the windows as she hummed along. Probably both.

At home, she opened Michelle’s laptop to three missed calls from Peter, and now a fourth rang out. Kelsey let down her hair and threw a sweater over her dance team uniform before she answered, watching his face fill the screen.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Good evening,” he replied.

“You look chipper.”

He lifted a tin mug. “Thanks to this watery Nescafé we call coffee here.”

Kelsey gave him a sympathetic look. “You miss La Prima Tazza, don’t you?”

“Ha! Not that chocolaty stuff you drink.” That’s right. Michelle and her hot chocolate. He continued, “Give me a Styrofoam cup of 7-Eleven drip and I’d be golden.”

“Well, if we had one of those machines from Willy Wonka, I’d send you a cup.”

Peter looked puzzled, his lips turning up into a confused smile. “What machines?”

“You know, the machine that takes the candy bar into the TV, then dissolves it into molecules and transfers it into the other TV?”

Peter put his hands in a prayer position. “I have a confession to make.”

“What?”

“I have never seen Willy Wonka.”

“What?!”