Free Maybe One Day by Melissa Kantor

through, the idea that teaching her dance class for her was some big sacrifice had to be a joke.
    I heard a voice in the background, and Livvie said, “I’m okay, Mom. Really.”
    “Do you have to go?” I asked her. “We can talk about this tomorrow.”
    “It could be a big job, Zoe,” said Olivia, ignoring my offer. “I might . . . I might be pretty sick sometimes, and . . . I mean, you might have to do it by yourself.” It sounded like she might be crying a little.
    I made my voice mock angry. “Oh, so you think I can’t run a ballet class for beginners? Thanks a lot, bi-yatch! ”
    Olivia laughed. Like, really laughed. “The recital’s a lot of work . . . ,” she began.
    “I’m not taking no for an answer,” I interrupted her. “So just, you know, stick that in your pipe and smoke it.”
    There was another long pause. I stayed quiet, watching dusk turn the sky over New Jersey a deep purple.
    “Zoe, are you sure?”
    “Oh my God !” I cried, slapping my hand against the seat next to me. “Will you stop already? I’m doing it and that’s final.”
    And suddenly Olivia didn’t sound tired or sick at all. “The girls are so great,” she said, speaking quickly. “I mean, they’ve just had the worst lives, but they’re still really into dancing. This one girl, Imani, she’s lived with four different foster families in the past year . Can you imagine that? Four families! ”
    I laughed. “Zoe, you don’t have to convince me. It was my idea, remember?”
    “Oh. Yeah,” she said. Then she added, “Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if I’d staged this whole cancer thing just to get you to teach the dance class with me?”
    “Hilarious,” I said. The computerized voice announced, “The next stop is Wamasset. Wamasset is the next stop.”
    I heard her mom in the background, and this time Olivia said, “I gotta go.”
    “Of course,” I said right away. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
    “Thank you, Zoe.” Olivia sounded slightly out of breath.
    “Love ya,” I said, and then she said, “Love ya,” and we hung up. I walked to the door of the car. Even though I hadn’t wanted to make a big deal out of it, I felt good. Really good.Waiting was the worst. Waiting to visit Olivia. Waiting for her to get out of the hospital. To get better. To come back to school.
    Doing something—even teaching a dance class—beat the hell out of waiting.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
    HarperCollins Publishers
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    9
    Jake had offered to give me a ride to the rec center, but it wasn’t his car that pulled into my driveway at eight thirty on Saturday morning.
    It was Calvin Taylor’s.
    Even before I saw Calvin’s car, I was already in a bad mood. The “two seconds” my dad had assured me it would take to download Skype to my phone had turned into about two years, and by the end he and I were barely speaking, just cursing the phone and the program under our breath. Then I couldn’t find a pair of ballet slippers. That might not be weird for most people, but all my life I’d had a minimum of a dozen pairs of ballet slippers and half as many pairs of toe shoes lying around my room at any given time. But like I said, when NYBC gave me and Livvie the ax, I chucked everythingI owned that was ballet-related, so even rooting around in the attic and basement didn’t turn up an old pair of shoes. On the one hand, it was kind of cool how thorough I’d been. On the other, I was fucked. I stood in my room fuming, surrounded by piles of everything I’d yanked off the floor of my closet and from under my bed. Finally, I just called Livvie at the hospital, and she said she’d tell her mom to give Jake a pair of her shoes to give to me. Livvie and I had the same size foot, and while you can’t share toe shoes with another dancer since they mold to your feet, ballet slippers—especially ones you’re not wearing for some major