My Seventh-Grade Life in Tights (5 page)

My face froze in whatever half laugh, half scowl it was in. “Seriously?”

“As long as you can promise me you’ll actually stick with the dancing, then I guess I’m okay with it.”

I waited for him to point at me and say,
Ha, you should see your face—of course you’re sticking with football, because football is LIFE!
He didn’t, though. He just put the cleat back into the shoe box.

“Ready to go?” he asked.

I nodded. Before he could turn to leave, I flung my arms around him. “Thank you.”

He patted my back. “You’re welcome, kiddo. But you’re still not getting those baggy jeans.”

I laughed. I could live with that.

On the way to Kassie’s house, I texted everyone the good news. When I got there, I ran upstairs to the room we’d named the Dance Cave.

Carson and Austin were hovering over Kassie’s laptop like they’d just discovered a lost episode of
America’s Best Dance Crew.

“Dillon, you have to see this!” Carson pulled me over to the computer. “The mall’s opening a new Smoothietopia in three weeks.”

“And they’re celebrating their grand opening with a dance-off. A real dance competition!” Kassie said.

I read the information on the site. Registration was only twenty dollars. No age divisions. No categories. “This is so cool! Are we gonna enter?”

“Are you serious?” Kassie said. “Of course we are!”

Austin held up his camera like he filming us. “I could record it and edit it together with the other routines like a real music video.”

“Yeah, I’m in! This could be amazeballs!” Suddenly, it hit me. I took a step back, remembering my conversation with Sarah. “Wait a sec—no, this is bad. This is like the total opposite of amazeballs.”

“What’s wrong?” Kassie asked.

“I, um, sort of forgot to mention something. About Sarah.”

“Oh, you mean besides you telling her I wanted to rejoin the studio?” Kassie cocked her hip out to the side. “Not cool, Dillon.”

“Hey, it got her attention, didn’t it? Anyway, she sort of wants me to quit the crew.”

“See, I told you this was a bad idea!” Austin said.

“I’m not quitting, Austin. I just have to let her
think
I have. If she finds out I’m still dancing with you all, she may decide to dump me.”

Carson threw his arms out to the side. “Perfect. How about I just grab my invisibility cloak. Now, where’d I put it?”

Kassie clapped her hands together. “Masks! We could wear masks! We could be like Sunnydale’s version of the Jabbawockeez.”

It wasn’t a bad idea.

Jabbawockeez dancers were famous for wearing their masks and keeping their identities secret.

“I have tons of masks we could use,” Carson said. “Halloween’s my jam, guys.”

“All right. I say we give it a shot,” Kassie said.

“Hey, what if we put this one on our channel?”

“Ooh, good idea!”

“Our channel?” I repeated.

“Yeah, Austin made us a YouTube channel,” Kassie said. “We’re going to get some people to subscribe. Get our dance out there. Maybe end up on
Ellen
.”

“Oh my gosh, if I got to dance with Ellen, I’d die,” Carson said.

My heart did a dive roll in my chest. “Guys, we can’t.”

“Dude, come on,” Austin said. “Music video! I can make it look awesome, I swear.” He stuck his hands under his chin like he was about to beg.

“I know you can, Austin, but we don’t have any masks yet. Are we forgetting about Sarah?”

“Already on it.” Kassie ran out of the room, her footsteps fading away into soft thuds. When I turned back to Carson, he was grinning at me.

“What?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing. It’s just cute, you thinking you’re being all secretive.”

“Secretive about what? I already told you guys about the video.”

“Not that. Duh. I’m talking about Kassie. I think you need to tell her.”

“Tell her what?”

“That you like her. Like,
really
like her. You two would make a cute couple.”

On the blush scale, my face instantly went nuclear red. “I—I don’t like Kassie. Not like that. I mean, yeah, she’s great and nice and all. And an amazing dancer.” I stopped myself before I mentioned how she had amazing eyes. Or how she’d twirl this one stray piece of hair around her finger when she got nervous.

Carson grinned and mimed locking the corner of his mouth. I turned toward Austin, hoping he’d say something to help me, but he was busy laughing into his hand.

Kassie walked back in and tossed each of us a wad of black fabric. “We’ll use these until Carson can get us some better masks.”

I knelt down, pretending to tie my shoes so she wouldn’t see the pink that still had to be covering my cheeks.

“Panty hose?”
Carson yelped. “I’m not wearing an old pair of your mom’s underwear on my head!”

“They’re brand-new. And panty hose aren’t underwear. They’re like really thin tights.”

Great. My first pair of tights.

And I got to wear them on my face.

“Do I get a pair?” Austin asked.

“You’ll be behind the camera the whole time,” Kassie said, shoving the panty hose over Carson’s head.

“Trust me, you don’t want any,” Carson said as Kassie wrapped the panty hose legs around his mouth.

“It’s not bad. You can’t tell they’re panties,” I said.

“Panty
hose,
” Kassie corrected me. She masked herself and we stood there for a second looking at each other before we burst into laughter.

“I’m totally making a blooper reel of this,” Austin said, giggling.

“Okay, let’s get into our positions,” Kassie said, thumbing through the songs on her phone. “We’ll run through it once like we practiced. See how they work.”

She walked back to her spot as our song forced its way through the phone’s tiny speakers.

Kassie took a step forward and flew into a spin.

Even with her face covered in black hose, her eyes blazed with an intensity that could melt a hole through lead. The way her arms whipped around as she turned made her look like a warrior princess slashing down evil orcs and demons with her battle-like dance moves.

Then the music stopped.

“Um, dude?” Austin said, holding Kassie’s phone. “That was your cue.”

“What?” I said, blinking fast. “Oh. Sorry. Can we start over? I was just, um, adjusting my panties.”

“
Hose.
They’re panty
hose.
” Kassie grabbed her phone.

I forced my mind into dance mode. The music started up again and Kassie spun. It looked amazing. Not that I noticed.

She planted her feet. The music swelled. My turn to tell the story.

I took a deep breath and launched myself into the air. I pulled my arms around me and twisted my body into a spin kick. As fast as my foot flung by, I was surprised I didn’t hear a whip-crack sound. As soon as I landed, I dropped to the ground with one leg stretched behind me and one hand on the ground for support.

Kassie floated around the floor for a few seconds. I made my way behind her. I reached to the right and she reached left—the one part of the choreography I could nail. Then we both hopped back just as Carson jumped in with a toe touch that would’ve ripped a normal person’s body completely in half (not to mention their jeans).

Carson and I each grabbed one of Kassie’s hands. She pulled us toward each other. I slid under and Carson jumped over, his body almost parallel to the ground.

What I would’ve given to be able to do a move like that.

The music hiccupped and everyone froze.

Again, nailed it.

A funky dubstep groove crept up and Kassie dropped to her knees. The
womp womp
pulsed through the speakers and Kassie pushed herself forward and up to her feet. Just as the first electronic downbeat hit, Kassie was captured. Carson, the alien overlord, had turned her into a mechanical version of herself that moved in fast, popping moves, bending and twitching her body like she was part cyborg.

It was up to me, the samurai warrior, to save her. Carson whipped his arms through the air like they were made of ribbon. I jumped toward him and let loose a barrage of jumps and turns, swinging my arms this way and that, a kick here and an imaginary sword thrust there.

Carson’s spin caught my eye. Without thinking, I threw one leg across my body and spun on one foot.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Four times!

When I stopped, the room didn’t. I stumbled, falling right into a bookshelf behind me and bringing down Kassie’s entire library on top of my head.

“Cut!” Austin yelled.

The gigantic novel covering my eyes was pulled off me. Kassie smiled down, worry filling her eyes. “Are you hurt?”

“Physically? No.”

She laughed and helped Carson pull me to my feet. “One day we’re going to find a spot for that shelf where it doesn’t get in your way.”

“Look at it this way,” Carson said. “The stage at the mall probably won’t have anything he can crash into.”

“You’re hilarious,” I said.

Kassie peeled the cloth away from my eyes. “We can take a break if you want to.” Her voice was soft. Practically a whisper. There wasn’t a bit of judginess in it, either. Of course, there never was.

“Nah.” I tightened the hose around my head. “Let’s run it again.”

After that last run-through, it wasn’t like I could get any worse.

Y
ou can’t handle the AWESOME!

Austin had made a banner at the top of our Dizzee Freekz YouTube channel with that on it. As soon as we picked our official masks, Kassie wanted to add a crew photo.

On Monday, I could barely eat my breakfast. I was having my first practice with Sarah and a knot was taking up all the room in my stomach.

When I walked into the cafeteria at lunchtime, Kassie was already there, sitting at our table.

“Hey!” I said, sitting down across from her.

“ ’Sup, fellow Dizzee Freek?”

A smile stretched across my face. “I can’t stop thinking about our competition.”

“I know, right? It’s going to be so cool!”

We sat there for a second just grinning at each other. My face suddenly felt like it was about to burst into flames. And then an image of Carson locking his mouth popped into my head. I gave my chocolate milk a good shake and pushed the picture away. “Hey, um, mind if I ask you something?”

“Go ahead.”

“I was thinking about our plan over the weekend and it got me wondering.” I cleared my throat. “The whole studios-are-for-sellouts rule—is that all because of what happened with Sarah?”

Her mouth did this cute sideways pucker like she was deep in thought. “Pretty much. When I started dancing, I was just doing the moves that fit. Like you do. But the longer I was at Dance-Splosion, the more my teachers kept trying to change everything. Like they knew how my body was supposed to move to the music. Which is why I never got any solos at the competitions.”

“So you didn’t like them bossing you around?”

“No. I mean, yeah, that’s part of it. But it’s more like—you know how sometimes when we all watch a movie together, Austin laughs at certain parts and Carson laughs at others?”

I nodded.

“It’d be like if Carson got mad at us for not laughing at the things he thought were funny.”

“He always does that.”

“True. But imagine if he
made
us laugh at those parts because he thought that was the right thing to do. It’d kind of ruin the movie, right?”

“Yeah. I guess it would.”

“Studios do that with dancing. Every teacher I had was the same. They’d force steps into my dance because they thought they were the right ones. And after a while, it started to ruin dancing for me.”

I took a bite of my hamburger, thinking about what she’d said. “So they gave away your solo just because you weren’t following the rules. That stinks.”

Kassie picked up a French fry and stared at it. “Yeah. It does.”

“And it stinks even more than Sarah agreed to take it. I’m starting to see what Carson was saying.”

“No. I mean, yeah, Sarah took it and I’ll never forgive her for it. But it’s the studios that’re the enemy. No matter who I told, they didn’t care. All they wanted was another win.” Her eyes drifted up to mine. “People deserve to know the truth about that place.”

I needed to say something epic. Something the hero in a movie would say. But all I managed was a quick gulp of milk that nearly spewed out my nose when it went down the wrong pipe.

“Whoa, easy there, Dillon.” Carson gave me a slap on the back and sat down. Austin plopped into the seat beside me.

“Sorry.” I wiped my chin and immediately wished I wasn’t sitting right across from Kassie, gagging on my drink.

Austin slammed his hand on the table, making me jump in my seat. Thankfully, I’d already set my drink down. “Hey, I almost forgot. I had a thought.”

“Congratulations,” Carson said.

“Shut up. Anyway, what I was thinking was that we should get some business cards made and hand them out around school and stuff.”

“No!” I said, my voice raspy from the coughing. “Not school. What if Sarah sees it?”