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about it. breathe. breathe. I heard Eileen over a speaker (I never figured out where the speakers were …) “ok, urn, all set, Kelly?”
    i nodded. i heard the first few beats (luckily i’d built in a two-bar pause at the top of the routine so I couldn’t be caught off guard) and felt my legs start to move. it was strange not knowing where to focus because they could have been behind any of those walls. Luckily I also realized that if I tried to see through the glass, to see behind it, I’d look like a real idiot. I got that from watching the real world. so I just picked a spot to center myself with and stuck with it.
    as soon as the song hit the first chorus, though, the music stopped. “urn, sorry, Kelly. hey, um … the girls weren’t watching. would you mind starting over?”
    I didn’t know which way the voice was coming from or where I was supposed to look when I answered it so I just said, “SURE NO PROB.” that got me flustered, but I kept it under control. I kept thinking about the way tito would react if I screwed up. he’d glare at me in horror, then pretend that darcy barnes had no idea what she was doing and that she was a moron for not choosing me and that I’d be a star no matter what and did I want to deep-condition anything. I wasn’t sure I could take all that, so I was determined not to screw up.
    and we started again. this time I figured I had find to find my way THERE—as soon as possible. and stay THERE.
    luckily I found it. in fact, once the music started again, it wrapped me up like a spring roll. i was flying, working, striking, hitting EVERYTHING in a way that I’ve never felt. I just went for it and rocked. it was like how when you know someone important is watching you, you kick everything up a notch (either that or you totally collapse and fall apart. luckily that didn’t happen this time). anyway it felt like a total “peak” as Danielle my ballet teacher used to call it.
    except right as I was “peaking” the music conked out. silence. I just looked around at myself (myselves) in the mirror.
    I stood there, still breathing, not sure what to do. I realized I’d raced from sitting outside on the curb to auditioningfor darcy barnes to waiting for a response and forgetting which way I was facing in the space of only 10 minutes. this was all happening so fast, even if for a moment it felt like nothing at all was happening.
    there goes the $40,000, I thought.
    still nothing.
    then the mirror cracked. cracked open. I fixed my eyes on the floor in front of where the mirror opened into the room. I was too scared to look up. I was expecting eileen wang to step out of the mirror-door and tell me to go home. This was bad.
    slowly I raised my gaze, hoping that perhaps eileen would come out and again tell me that they weren’t watching.
    and out popped darcy barnes! it was so unreal. like, this girl I’ve seen 100,000 pictures of, whose wardrobe I know even better than my own, was all of a sudden right there in front of my face! she looked different … not like different different, but the expression she had on her face was kind of, I don’t know, unglamorous. and she had a zit on her chin! And she was taller than I thought. all these things went whipping through my head, and what do I say? omiGOD you’re Darcy Barnes!
    Then I wondered whether I was even allowed to talk to her. Or whether I was supposed to do something to show my respect, like curtsy.
    â€œhi!” she goes. “I
loove
your tank!”
    that’s what she said when she hired me. not “You were great!” or “Sweet moves” or “It will take a lot of work but you’ll probably do OK. Nope, just “I loove your tank!”
    made me wonder whether my dancing had anything to do with it. what if I’d worn a different tank?
    tito was like, How do you spell the way she said “looove” and I go,