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straddled the lines between elegance and eccentricity, self-absorption and altruism. But Cindy would also make me—a girl with knees that curved backward even when I stood straight, my size 7 feet that were still too large for my stick-figure frame—feel like the most beautiful and loved little ballerina in the world. I’d never met anyone like her.
    Those first afternoons in her class at the Boys and Girls Club, I would walk from school and take my place among a dozen or so other budding dancers. They stretched and bowed, their brows creased in concentration. But Cindy, staring attentively, seemed to focus solely on me.
    The class was very basic. We learned only the most fundamental steps of ballet.
    First position: heels together, toes pointed in opposite directions.
    Second position: the same, but with space wide enough to slip two feet between your heels.
    Third position: the heel of one foot meeting the arch of the other.
    Fourth position: one foot turned out in front of the other, with about a foot of space in between.
    Fifth position: your feet turned out but crossed in front of each other, parallel like an equal sign.
    Ballet teachers usually create combinations, mixing and matching the steps and positions of ballet technique for their students to execute, but Cindy kept it simple.
    She would lead, and I tentatively strayed from the barre to follow. I stood on my tiptoes and held out my arms as though I was cradling a giant balloon. My arms were rounded, floating, strong enough not to drop my imaginary sphere but soft enough not to make it pop. Then I spun around, lifting one foot and placing it down into fifth position, again and again until I had made my way halfway across the gym—my first pirouettes.
    One afternoon, I lifted my arms above my head and leaped, my right leg stretched straight in front, my left leg extended backward. It was like the splits I would do in the backyard or during drill-team practice, only in the air. My first grand jeté.
    I would do many more. And in those moments, when I was soaring, getting stronger, going higher, I felt exhilarated.
    Cindy was impressed, whatever I did.
    “It’s just amazing that you can already do all these things,” she’d murmur, after I’d done an arabesque or she’d bent me this way and that.
    My body yielded to her every suggestion. It was as if I’d been doing ballet all my life, and my limbs instinctively remembered what my conscious mind had somehow forgotten. I didn’t question it, but I didn’t take it for granted, either. Just like with my schoolwork, my drill-team choreography, and anything else I set out to do, my overwhelming need to please—to be perfect—was there in ballet class, too.
    So were my insecurities. Despite my prowess, ballet class still felt like being thrown into the deep end of the pool when I’d only just become brave enough to stick my face in the water. Walking into the gym each day, I continued to feel like an outsider. Instead of the leotard and tights that were de rigueur, I was still wearing the baggy clothes I put on for drill-team practice each day. And as I looked at my dance mates, it became clear that, by ballet standards, I was ancient.
    Most ballerinas start to dance when they are sipping juice boxes in preschool. I was thirteen years old. Self-doubt taunted me.
    “You’re too old. You’re behind. You’ll never catch up.”
    But Cindy disagreed. She’d found what she was looking for.
    Cindy’s stint at the Boys and Girls Club was always meant to be temporary. Her studio, the San Pedro Dance Center, was in another corner of the community that was far more affluent and much less diverse than mine. But her desire to share the magic and discipline of dance with those who otherwise might not be exposed to it brought her to South Cabrillo Avenue. She and Mike Lansing, the head of our Boys and Girls Club, were friends, and together they had the idea of turning the club into a sort of feeder program, or