Don’t Let Me Go(102)

And Mrs. Hinman’s face lit up.

Grace took a position properly back from the edge of the stage, and the world stood still.

“Oh, my God, she looks so beautiful,” Billy breathed out loud.

Rayleen had wound flowers into Grace’s hair, and every ounce of Grace-spirit glowed from the inside out. If she was nervous, if she hadn’t slept, you’d never have known it.

“She’s a natural,” he breathed quietly. Reverently. “I was wrong about that.”

How could I have made that mistake? he wondered. Maybe because he’d never taught anyone before, never witnessed the first few months of anyone’s lessons except his own. And maybe everybody goes through an awkward stage, one that’s recognizable only from the outside.

She hadn’t even begun dancing yet. The music hadn’t even started. It didn’t matter. He’d seen her do the dance a hundred times. That much he knew she could do. Now he was watching her take the stage. Take the audience.

“She’s a natural,” he said again.

The music started, the song Billy had picked out. Grace tilted her head ever so slightly, as if listening. And she smiled. And she danced.

And she was perfect.

Her time step was perfect. Her Buffalo turns were perfect. Her arms were perfect. Her upper body looked relaxed. She never once stopped smiling. And it was a real smile, too. Not a stage smile. Even her smile was a natural.

He counted out the treble hops with her, biting down hard on his own molars with tension, as if he could drive her motions. But he couldn’t, nor did she need him to.

The trebles were perfect.

Her finish was brilliant. Crisp and clean. She even threw her arms wide, as if inviting, receiving, the acclaim she so deserved, had worked so hard for.

One beat of silence. The audience needed a split second to catch up to the performer. Then the applause. Billy leapt to his feet to applaud. His four neighbors followed, Mrs. Hinman leaning on Felipe and struggling. Then Eileen and Yolanda jumped to their feet. Grace took a bow from the waist. The applause continued. Intensified, if anything. Other parents were standing now, and Grace’s smile had turned into a beam.

“She was born for this,” Billy said out loud.

Jesse cocked his arm back and sailed the red rose, end over end, on to the stage.

Grace ran to it, picked it up, and curtsied, cradling it in the crook of her arm. Curtsied! He had never taught her that. He had never told her how to hold a long-stemmed rose. Had she seen these things in a movie, or on TV? Or did they just spring from her in some natural way?

The din set in again as the kids behind him began to shuffle out of the auditorium, but Billy paid it no mind.

Grace trotted down the stairs from the stage and headed right for him, and he met her halfway. He didn’t even bother to look around and see if Jesse, or any other form of moral support, remained close by.

She stood at his feet, beaming up into his face, between the stage and the front row, asking a question with her eyes. Well, not a question. The question. And not even, “Are you proud of me?” Because that went without saying. More, “Exactly how proud of me?”

He took her face between his hands.

“I was good,” she said breathlessly.

“Oh, my God. Grace. You were…”

But he should have been faster. He should have spit it right out. Because, before he could even tell her what she was, what she had been, the face disappeared from between his hands. It was yanked away.

Eileen had Grace by the elbow and had taken her back.

“You see this?” Eileen said to Billy, all bluster and anger.

She held up a bright orange plastic disc, like a little key fob on a chain. It had some gold writing on it, but Billy couldn’t make it out.

“You know what this is?” she spat.

Billy shook his head blankly.

“It’s a thirty-day chip. It means I have thirty days clean. It means I have no drugs in my house, I have no drugs in my bloodstream, and it means that if any of you come near my daughter — and I mean within a hundred feet of my daughter — I’m going to call the police and have you arrested for kidnapping. That’s what it means.”

She pivoted abruptly and towed Grace down the aisle to the door. Grace looked back over her shoulder and offered a plaintive wave goodbye. Billy waved back.

“Sorry,” Yolanda said, startling him. “Sorry. She actually didn’t warn me she was about to do that. I’ll try to talk to her.”

And she trotted down the aisle to catch up.

Billy woke suddenly from his dream-turned-nightmare and found himself in public, in a school, in a tragedy. He spun around looking for Jesse, who, it turned out, had been standing just behind Billy’s left shoulder, and nearly knocked him down.

“I need to go home,” Billy said. “It’s an emergency. I’m totally panicking. I’m in over my head. You have to help me.”





Grace



“I wish you’d talk to me,” Grace’s mom said.

Grace was sitting on the floor about two feet from the TV, cross-legged, with her elbows on her knees and her chin on her fists, staring at that cartoon show she didn’t much like. But it didn’t matter that she didn’t like it, because she wasn’t paying any attention to it anyway.

“Want to play a game of checkers?” Grace’s mom asked.