Free "The Flamenco Academy" by Sarah Bird Page A

discovered I was standing on the edge of a cliff that dropped
off into infinity. That I was leaning out over the edge and could
not step backward. That I was going to fall and never stop
falling.
    “He’s gone.”
    Didi let me cry until a spot of powdery dirt
between my knees had turned to mud, then she said, “Repeat this
after me. ‘As long as I keep my father in my heart, he is with me.’
”
    I raised my head. My face was glazed with
tears and snot.
    “Say it,” Didi ordered. “Say, ‘As long as I
keep my father in my heart, he is with me.’ ”
    I bent my neck into my shoulder like a bird
and scrubbed my face against my blouse until it was streaked with
black from mascara. “As long as I keep my father in my heart, he is
with me.”
    “ ‘He will always be with me.’ ”
    “He will always be with me.”
    “ ‘No one can ever take him away.’ ”
    “No one can ever take him away.”
    “Okay, good,” she concluded, relieved. “Keep
saying that because it’s true.”
    She was right. Daddy was with me and he
always would be. I nodded and my stomach, which had traded places
with my heart when I peered over the edge of the cliff, settled
back enough that I could breathe. Not a full breath but enough to
keep living. The shadows grew longer and deeper. I was hugging my
knees and shivering before I realized the sun was down, it had
gotten dark, and I was cold.
    “I’ve got your back. You know that, don’t
you?” When I didn’t say anything, Didi put her hand on my shoulder
and asked, “You do know that, right?”
    I nodded. Didi Steinberg had my back.

Chapter Nine
    At Didi’s house, Mrs. Steinberg quickly
burned through the small savings Mr. Steinberg had left, then
turned to eBay. She was using it to sell off all of Mr. Steinberg’s
jazz albums and memorabilia.
    Didi had taken to calling her mother
Catwoman since Mrs. Steinberg now barely spoke, slept most of the
day, worked on her eBay sales during the night, lapped all her
nutrition out of a bowl, and never showed any outward signs of
affection toward human beings. Catwoman had turned the living room
into eBay Central with two computers going all the time, tracking
the progress of whatever auctions she had under way. She had
economy rolls of clear tape on big gun-type dispensers and stacks
of sturdy boxes scrounged from the liquor store for shipping out
items that had been sold. Teetering piles of old albums,
autographed publicity stills, yellowed copies of DownBeat magazine, and odd things like cuff links and bar napkins, all
carefully labeled and stuck in ziplock bags sat around waiting to
be sold or shipped.
    We were looking through Mr. Steinberg’s
stuff one day a month after Daddy’s funeral when a loud chiming
came from one of the computers.
    “Hey, Catwoman made a sale,” Didi said, and
went over to study the screen. “Shit! One thousand, two hundred and
eighty-five dollars for a—” Didi read off the “Description of Item”
that she had copied for her mother from the detailed labels Mr.
Steinberg had affixed to the hundreds of archival sleeves he’d
stored his jazz memorabilia in. “ ‘One 1941 cover of DownBeat magazine signed by Duke Ellington, two mint
condition B&W, 8 Yen 10s signed by Billie Holiday, one 1944
photo signed by Dizzy Gillespie with Juan Tizol on valve trombone.’
” As she read, the nimbus of manic energy that always surrounded
Didi like a cloud of bees sagged. Finally, she sucked in a deep
breath. “Wonder what he’d think if he knew that all the stuff he
loved most in life was getting turned into frozen margaritas?” She
attempted a laugh, then decided to scoop us out a couple in his
honor.
    We locked ourselves in Didi’s room and ate
the margs out of bowls. Even though Didi’s bedroom door was closed,
we could still hear Mrs. Steinberg snoring in the next room. Didi
rolled her eyes at the sound. “You know what we need?” she
asked.
    “What?”
    “A lair!”
    “A lair?”
    “Yes, a lair! God,