Don’t Let Me Go(83)

“All right,” Ms. Katz said, gathering up her folders and swinging the strap of a briefcase over her shoulder. “All right, that’s fine. I have another visit to make, and I’ll come back. Just tell her I’ll come back.”

Billy rose to walk her to the door.

“Grace is thriving here,” he said.

He sounded desperate, and it reminded Grace that he was scared, and that they both were, and that they both had plenty of reasons to be.

Ms. Katz smiled as if smiling made her sad, and started to say something, but Grace never gave her a chance. It was begging time, and she knew it. She got that from what Billy said, and it came through loud and clear.

Grace jumped up and begged.

“Please, you can’t take me,” she said. “You can’t take me away from here. It’s good here. I get to be near my mom so that way I’ll know if she gets clean — I mean, better — and besides, I get to dance at my school, in, like, two months, and if you take me away now I won’t get to do my dance, and it’s the most important thing ever. And I’m a good dancer, too, and before I came over here to Billy’s every day I didn’t know how to dance at all, not even one little step, and I was all pudgy and everything was terrible. And now look at me. Here, I’ll show you.”

She shuffled fast over to her plywood dance floor.

“I’m afraid I have to—”

But Grace refused to let her finish. There was too much on the line here to give up now.

“No, you have to see this,” she said. “You have to see me dance, so you’ll know how important this is.”

She tapped her way into the center of the plywood.

“Now watch. You’ll be impressed. You will.”

She closed her eyes. Pictured the first few steps. The way Billy had taught her to do. Counted to three. Started with a time step.

It was perfect. Billy was right. You start with something simple and perfect and it calms you down for the rest of the dance. But the Buffalo turns were coming up, and they had to be perfect, too. The whole future of the world depended on those turns being perfect.

Then it hit her, what she was forgetting. She relaxed her upper parts and felt her shoulders drop. And she smiled.

And the turns were perfect. The best she’d ever done.

She looked up at the county lady, who really was watching, and really did seem impressed. Maybe it was working! How could Ms. Katz watch this, and then take her away from the very people who’d made it happen?

She ended her turns in the perfect place, right back in the center where she’d started them, and spun into her treble hops, counting them out in her head. And smiling!

One, two, three, four, five, six seven, hop…one, two, three, four, five, six seven, hop…one, two, three, four…one, two, three, four…one and a two, and a one and a two, and a one and a two, and a three and a stop!

She stood proudly, one leg still in the air, beaming. It was the best dancing she’d ever done. Ever. It needed to be, and so it was.

Ms. Katz wedged her folders under one arm and applauded.

“Very nice,” she said. “Excellent. You are a good dancer. You learned all that in just a couple of months?”

“Yeah,” Grace said, still puffing with exertion. “I practice a lot.”

“Well, I think it’s wonderful that Mr. Feldman and your other neighbors have been so helpful to you. And I really wish it changed the legal facts. But…Just tell Ms. Johnson I’ll come back after six.”

And with that she let herself out.

? ? ?

“You have to get up,” Billy said. “You have to dance.”

“I can’t dance at a time like this,” Grace said.

She was sitting slumped on the couch, holding her cat tightly. Maybe too tightly. But the nicest thing about Mr. Lafferty the Girl Cat was how she never complained. Grace figured it was because there were worse things in the world than being held too tightly. Mr. Lafferty the Girl Cat had a point about that.

“You have to dance especially at a time like this. That’s the whole point. The dancing will bring you back into the moment. It’s the dance that will save you.”

“What time is it?”

Billy leaned way back to look at his kitchen clock. “Ten after six.”

“Nothing will save me.”

“You don’t get to say that until you try.”

Grace sighed. She set the cat down on the couch and pulled to her feet, only to find that nothing but Mr. Lafferty the Girl Cat warm fur and comforting purring had been standing between her and the panic. She felt suddenly as if there were no air to breathe.

She looked up at Billy, who was lacing up his own tap shoes.

“I think I’m having a panic attack,” she said.

He leaped to his feet and ran to her, one of his tap shoes still untied.

“No!” he shouted. “Undo! No. You’re not. Don’t even give it a name. Don’t even give it so much power. Cancel,” he said, waving his hands around Grace’s head as if he could erase her thoughts. “Unthink that one, right now. Come on. I’m going to dance with you.”

He took her hand and pulled her into the middle of the kitchen, all four of their tap shoes echoing in rhythm. He bent down quickly to tie his other laces.

“Billy. You said we can’t dance in the kitchen.”