Yours,
Peter
1/24
Peter,
How are you able to remember your dreams like that? I can never remember my dreams. Not the important ones, anyways. Once, I dreamed that I had a pet monkey. I was teaching it to talk. My sister said it meant I was having trouble controlling my impulses—that I’d been having too much fun. No such thing, I told her. I drove to the Flint Hills but I couldn’t find the sculpture. Bet a K-State hillbilly thought it was witchcraft and burned it. Just kidding. If I can find the time, I’ll try to look for it again. School has been keeping me busy. Art History is kicking my ass to high heaven. Can I write “ass” to a member of the U.S. military? It seems bad for some reason. Anyways we’re on Cubism and I got in trouble with Mrs. Wallace for asking her if I could write my essay on plastic surgery instead because they’re basically the same thing. Didn’t go over well…
xo
Michelle
2/3
Michelle—“Ass” is nothing. If I had a nickel every time a drill sergeant told me to do something with my ass—get off it, move it, watch it, cover someone else’s, cover mine, etc.—I’d have an assload of nickels. The filthy mouths on these men and women rival that of a Scorsese film. A French unit next to us lost three yesterday. We get hit at a lot in this valley. I’ve gotten used to it. Stopped having such terrible dreams and shaky hands. I’m so tired at night, I pass out until the alarm goes off. Last night, I won a pair of socks and two pieces of nicotine gum in a game of blackjack, so things are looking up. (Haha.) (I had to give back the socks.) A couple of units from New Zealand stationed with us got lost, but we found them. Believe it or not, it can be difficult to understand them when they speak over their radios. It’s a good thing I’m not in charge of communicating with them, because I could listen to their accents teeter-totter all day, like music, and forget to focus on what they’re trying to say. They’re so friendly that one of them offered to sell me a van if ever I were to travel in New Zealand. I was like, no, thank you, and he was like, you’ll need a van, trust me, and I said all right, though I don’t know why it has to be a van? So if you’d ever like to travel around New Zealand with me—in a van—we’ve got our man. I didn’t mean to rhyme there. (Haha.) I’d like to go somewhere with you.
Yours,
Peter
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Three minutes left in the second quarter and the Lawrence Lions girls’ basketball team was only up by two. Their undefeated record had them as a shoo-in for regionals, and the final regular season game against Free State High was supposed to be a cakewalk. But senior Marcy Mallman, the Lions’ high scorer, sprained her ankle early in the first quarter. As the clock wound down, the Lions and the Firebirds were going point for point.
Kelsey paced by the line of dancers standing just outside the gymnasium doors. “Do you hear that?” she asked her team.
The crowd screamed in protest of a foul called on Lawrence High. When the Firebird point guard missed her free throw, their voices lifted in delight. The bellow didn’t stop after the rebound, following the players up the court, goading them to score.
“They’re out for blood,” Gillian muttered from the front of the line.
“Totally.” Kelsey paused to straighten Hannah T.’s strap.
Despite complaints from the younger dancers, Kelsey and the team had been working on this routine for seven days straight. It was darker than usual. It was powerful. It was perfect, in Kelsey’s opinion. “Y’all really think they want to hear a pop song at this game?”
“No,” they muttered.
“Can’t hear you.”
“No!”
“Pop is for pep rallies. Pop is for parents.” Kelsey pointed at the gym. “We’re doing this for them. If we expect the basketball team to kick ass, then we have to kick ass, too. Got it?”
Kelsey’s stone face broke into a smile. “Chins up. Knees high. Here we go!”
The buzzer sounded. The players left the court. Kelsey’s heart pounded. “And now, ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer’s voice boomed. “For your halftime entertainment, please welcome the Lions Dance Team and their rendition of ‘Dance Yrself Clean.’”
They entered smiling, in step with one another, uniforms red and glistening. Kelsey stood in the center, her head held high.
She scanned the crowd for Davis, who she knew would be late. But not this late. Well, no time for that now.
The beat began, barely audible. As the volume grew louder, the dancers shifted out of their line in robotic steps, their limbs stiff, like moving dolls. The drums began to fall on top of one another, more complex, and the crowd was quiet in their seats. The dancers ended up in a staggered group in the center of the floor, joints bent and jagged, posing awkwardly, a far cry from their usual careful pirouettes and three-point turns.
Then the beat dropped, deep and electronic, slaying the dancers row by row, slack bodies falling to the floor. Seconds of silence between beats. Whispers from the crowd.
On cue, they rose together with the song, triumphant, stomping the floor like tap dancers with a vengeance, kicking, their arms slicing the air.
Kelsey was in it. She was gone. She didn’t think about what the rest of her troupe was doing, because these minutes were an extension of her mind, the crowd now clapping along—they were all in a daydream she had, and was now having, in complete control.
Pace. Slide. Pace. Slide. Leap. Land. Up. Hips.
The song ended with the dancers’ backs to the home team, pointing painted fingernails straight at the opposing crowd’s bleachers, ponytails and buns in wrecked nests, mouths pursed and eyes flashing. Everyone, no matter what team they supported, was on their feet, cheering in approval.
The announcer had to shout to be heard over the clamor. “Wow! What a display!”
Kelsey pulled a whistle out of her uniform. Three blasts, and her team snapped straight and walked off the court.
“The Lions Dance Team, ladies and gentlemen!”
The crowd whooped again as they exited.
“What?! What?!” Ingrid shouted, a happy purple mess.
Outside the doors, next to the locker room, the two basketball teams waited to take the court again.
“That’s how we do it,” Kelsey said, slapping the hand of every girl on her team, hard.
Over their shoulders, she glanced at the basketball team. Two of the girls nodded, giving her a small bow.
“Badass,” one of them said.
Kelsey smiled. I know, she resisted saying.
She retrieved her phone. A text from Davis was waiting: Woulda loved to see you dance tonight baby but my sex appeal would have been too much for the high school basketball moms to handle.
Kelsey texted back: Busy with beer pong?
You know me too well. :)