Free Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina by Misty Copeland

coming up empty. Finally, Cindy pulled to a stop. Staring at the run-down motel where my family was living, she looked as stunned as she had when I told her that I couldn’t dance with her anymore.
    “Thanks for the ride,” I whispered as I hurried out of the car. Upstairs, I fumbled for the room key and entered the living room, blankets rolled up near the spots where they would later be unfurled as makeshift beds.
    I’m sure Mommy didn’t believe she was being neglectful. After all, we hadn’t always lived that way, with pallets on the floor. We hadn’t always called a motel—with a lobby window to slide our rent check through—home. We didn’t always sleep around the corner from a highway lined with liquor stores and sketchy taco joints.
    But that’s how we lived now. That’s what Cindy saw.
    There was a knock on the door. Mommy, who’d been in the bedroom with Alex, came out and opened it.
    Cindy stood there tentatively. I could feel the tension building in the small space, a nearly tangible thing. I just wanted to disappear. She met my eyes where I sat withdrawn on the floor. I believe that she knew this was it: she either brought me with her that night and into the world she believed I was born to be a part of, or I would never dance again.
    The two women huddled a while, talking softly, crying, too. Mommy made it very clear that she had five other children. I was not, nor could I be, the center of her universe. I knew that—but I needed to be that to someone. “I can’t leave her,” Cindy said, tears steaming down her face. “I want Misty to come live with me.” Then Mommy sighed and looked around the crowded motel room.
    And she let me go.

Chapter 4
    IT WAS LATE WHEN we pulled up to Cindy’s house.
    When Mommy said I could leave, I was in a daze but managed somehow to stuff my world into a backpack. Blue jeans, pajamas, a few tops. By then I didn’t have very much. Then she hugged me tight, and I walked slowly out of one kind of life and into another.
    Cindy lived across town near the Angel’s Gate Lighthouse in a condominium perched on a hill. Her husband, Patrick, was a full-time art teacher. But in his spare time, he loved to surf. When he wasn’t catching waves or teaching dance at the San Pedro Dance Studio, he was baking desserts. Their front door was barely two blocks from Cabrillo Beach, and the condo smelled like cinnamon and the sea. It was filled with paintings, sculptures, and other tiny beautiful things. I remember thinking that nothing so fragile could ever have survived in my home.
    As we walked through the door, Cindy said, “Misty is herewith me. She’s going to be living with us. Can you set a third place setting at the table?”
    “Sure thing,” Patrick said, not even missing a beat.
    I know now that Cindy never asked him for permission or even let him know I was coming. They welcomed me with the most generous and open arms. We ate Chinese food that night at the dinner table, like I had always been there.
    After dinner, Cindy led me to the large bedroom that I would share with her three-year-old son Wolf, whom I’d often seen at the studio, taking tap dance. He was asleep in the bottom bunk. I changed my clothes, climbed into the top bed, and she came to tuck me in.
    “Good night, honey,” she whispered as she kissed me on the cheek. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
    As sudden as it all was—Mommy’s consent, my moving out of the motel room we’d shared—I knew that my going to live with my dance instructor was not an unusual arrangement. Talented young dancers and athletes often leave home to live with their coaches and teachers so they can concentrate on training. Even Cindy had moved out of her childhood home as a teenager to pursue a dance career.
    Still, I lay in the dark, terrified. Now I would have to try to fit in not only at school but also in this new home. It was yet another test to pass, another social maze to figure my way through.
    But I also knew how