Isabelle Read online

  For my niece, Franny, who went with me to

  The Nutcracker, and to my wife, Joanne,

  who took me to Lincoln Center

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Into the Studio

  Chapter 2: Dizzy Izzy

  Chapter 3: Dance Juice

  Chapter 4: Flea-Market Magic

  Chapter 5: An Invisible Needle

  Chapter 6: The “Lucky” Sash

  Chapter 7: Carrots and Potatoes

  Chapter 8: Tag-Team Sewing

  Chapter 9: The Water Lily

  Chapter 10: Into the Fire

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Letter from American Girl

  Real Girls, Real Stories

  Preview of Designs by Isabelle

  Copyright

  At my old school, a bus took us to a farm every autumn so that we could buy a pumpkin to carve. At my new school, the pumpkins had their revenge.

  One minute I was talking to my friends as we walked through the school hallway. The next I was flat on my back with the taste of nylon in my mouth, staring up at a kid in an oversized pumpkin costume.

  “Sorry, pumpkins always have the right-of-way,” he insisted as he shuffled toward the drama department like an orange bulldozer. The hallway was crowded between classes, so students squeezed against one another to clear a path.

  My friend Luisa was nine like me. She wore her dark brown hair pulled back in a bun. Though she was smaller than me, having a big brother had toughened her. Anger reddened the dark skin of her cheeks. “I thought vegetables had better manners!” she shouted.

  “Cabbages do. Gourds don’t,” the boy joked as he swayed dangerously down the hall on two skinny, green-stockinged legs.

  “Step out of that pumpkin suit and say that,” Luisa snapped and started after him.

  I grabbed her ankle as the pumpkin squeezed through the doorway of the drama studio. “Wait up, Luisa,” I said. “Don’t get into a fight over me. What’s gotten into you lately?”

  Luisa seized my hands in hers and hauled me to my feet. She shrugged, brushing off my question. But then she finally said, “I’m just worried about my brother. He hasn’t e-mailed me in like two weeks.”

  Luisa’s older brother, Danny, had joined the army about six months ago. He was still in basic training at some military base in the South, but he wasn’t very good about keeping in touch with her, and I could tell she really missed him. I tried to think of what it would be like if my big sister, Jade, wasn’t around. And I knew there’d be a big empty hole inside me.

  “Well, I’m still here,” I said to Luisa, because it was all I could think of to say. “You can always talk to me.”

  “Thanks,” Luisa said. She smiled and leaned over to nudge me gratefully.

  The hallway had almost cleared of students, and suddenly the bell rang, signaling the start of the next period.

  “Now we’ve got bigger problems than your brother. We’re late for ballet,” I groaned.

  More than a hundred and fifty years ago, this building had been a girls’ academy. When Washington, D.C., converted it to a public school for the arts, a modern annex of concrete and steel was added, and the school was named after Anna Hart. She was a dancer who had become famous in New York and then had come home to create her own dance company—the Hart Dance Company, or HDC.

  From far away in the building, violinists began warming up in the music room. Near us in the vocal arts room, voices warbled up and down the scales like robins on stair-climber machines.

  Luisa started to trot down the corridor. Now that everyone else was in class, we could begin to run from the original building into the new annex, leaving the nineteenth century behind for the twenty-first. “Come on, Isabelle,” she called to me.

  “Coming,” I said. I gave a skip and a hop and then ran after her. The music for my ballet routine began playing inside my head.

  As I rounded another corner, I thought to myself, I don’t think I’ve stopped rushing since I got into Anna Hart. Sometimes I was late because I was still getting lost in my new school. Other times it was because teachers were giving me extra instruction after class to bring me up to speed with the other students.

  You couldn’t miss the words still chiseled into the stones over the school entrance: Per ardua ad astra. It was the original girls’ academy motto, and Jade told me that it was Latin for “Through difficulty, to the stars.”

  Teachers here at Anna Hart were determined to make sure that we all aimed high—and worked hard. My regular courses, such as English and math, were a lot tougher than at my old school. My modern dance and ballet classes were just as hard, and so were the classes in music, voice, and visual and theater arts. I knew, because I’d sat in on each of them during my first two weeks here. I wished there were thirty hours in a day so that I could take all of the arts, but I’d been allowed to sign up for only modern dance and ballet.

  I’d been dying to get into Anna Hart ever since kindergarten, but there was a lottery for students from all of Washington, D.C. Even though I’d tried four-leaf clovers and crossing all my fingers and toes, I hadn’t been lucky enough to win a spot, like Luisa.

  My big sister, Jade, on the other hand, had gotten in on her very first try. She’d gone here from kindergarten to seventh grade and was twelve years old now. If ever a school and a student were meant for each other, it was Anna Hart and Jade. A straight-A student, she was such an amazing dancer that the school even featured her picture on the web page for the ballet program.

  If it hadn’t been for Jade, I’d still be knocking on the front door of Anna Hart School of the Arts. But every year, the lottery allowed a few extra slots for the brothers and sisters of students. It had taken four years for my name to be chosen, but I was finally here.

  Unfortunately, after a rough first month, I was beginning to think that coming here was the biggest mistake of my life.

  As soon as we got to the ballet studio, Luisa and I plunged inside. Before I’d gotten into Anna Hart, I’d taken ballet three times a week at a pretty good dance academy. And I had learned all the moves, turns, and positions so well that I’d been one of the best dancers in my class.

  That wasn’t true here at Anna Hart, but the ballet studio still felt like my second home. I loved the soft whisper of cloth on floor as the other ballet students warmed up. They lay on their backs, stretching their arms and legs in ways that arms and legs didn’t normally move. Some wore gray sweatshirts over their brightly colored leotards, as if pigeons and parrots were gathering together in the same birdbath.

  Our teacher, Ms. Hawken, was a small, slim woman in a leotard with a crimson scarf tied around her waist. A matching ribbon circled her ponytail.

  She didn’t say anything to Luisa and me. She just nodded her head toward the girls’ changing room. I was already wearing a purple leotard and pink dance shorts from modern dance. And Luisa and I had put our hair in buns before modern dance class, too, to save time now. I followed Luisa into the long, narrow changing room, where we stowed our bags in two empty lockers.

  We made it back into the studio in time for warm-ups, and then Ms. Hawken sent us to the barre. Some kids found barre work boring, but I liked this part of class.

  I moved a little slower than Luisa, so the only space left was at the end of the barre by Renata. She was a slender girl with dark brown hair that framed her narrow face. She was straightening her expensive leotard (which everyone knew was expensive because she had told us the price) as if it had to look perfect even for rehearsal.

  At a nod from Ms. Hawken, Ms. Emile, the accompanist, began to play the piano in the corner. Standing sideways to the barre, I set my heels against each other with my toes pointed outward.
Then I lowered my arms, curving them so that my fingertips pointed toward my legs.

  “Demi-plié,” Ms. Hawken said as I bent my legs and slowly squatted halfway down. Beneath me, the floor creaked and popped slightly. A tremor passed along the long barre as our many hands tugged at it, all at the same time.

  “Keep your heels down, Stewart,” Ms. Hawken reminded one of my classmates. She moved slowly along the line of students, adjusting an arm here, a leg there. “Bend your knees a little more, Madelyn. That’s it.”

  Madelyn had transferred to Anna Hart this year, too, but she hadn’t taken dance classes before, so she got extra attention from Ms. Hawken. Through her tights, I could see that her calf muscles were trembling.

  Then our teacher said, “And now stretch. Not so fast, Luisa. You’re not in a race. Slow, elegant.”

  As I rose carefully back to my original pose, I smiled at Luisa’s reflection in the mirror, and she grinned back. My friend could do a lot of things, but “slow” would never be one of them.

  Ms. Hawken led us through more arm and leg movements. Then Ms. Emile picked up the tempo, and Ms. Hawken said, “Now battement fondu forward.”

  My ballet slipper hissed along the floor as I swept my leg in a quick arc. I slid it front to back and side to side, pretending I was a bird sweeping the dust out of my nest with my wing. Ms. Hawken nodded her approval at me.

  After a short while, she had us let go of the barre and move on to center work, a series of steps done across the floor.

  “Port de bras the first,” Ms. Hawken said. I loved how she rolled her r’s when she spoke French. It made what we were doing sound so elegant.

  She demonstrated by raising her bent arms in front of her. As we followed along, she slowly raised her arms over her head, curling her fingertips toward one another. Then she lowered them, stretching both arms out to the sides and giving them a flutter before bringing them down and holding them in front of her again. “Now, port de bras the fifth,” she instructed.

  I began to lift my arms, but Ms. Hawken strode over to me with a little shake of her head. She placed her hand on my ribs and pressed. “Isabelle, keep your body still,” she said. “Move just your arms.”

  It was so simple. And I’d done it so many times, I should’ve been able to do it in my sleep. But in our modern dance class, our teacher, Mr. Amici, had just told me that I was holding my body too stiffly. Modern dance used some of the same gestures as ballet, but it was as if my body had to learn a whole new language. In Ms. Hawken’s class, I was having a refresher course in my original ballet language.

  As Ms. Hawken called out instructions, I fell into the familiar routine of slowly stretching my muscles. It was soothing—even if my arms and legs were tired.

  Sometimes when I looked into the mirror, I could imagine a long line of ballerinas extending beyond my reflection. The very same movements, the very same poses linked us in an unbroken chain that stretched back through the centuries. It made me feel as if I was part of something much bigger and more beautiful.

  Yet I liked my modern dance class, too, because I got to move in different, fun ways. And some of the gestures and movements were brand-new to me. I didn’t have to worry about doing exactly the same thing as a dancer had done three hundred years ago. I could help create something fresh, and I liked that freedom.

  Ms. Hawken said that many classical ballet companies were bringing in both modern and jazz choreographers, so it was good to learn many dance forms. I just had to juggle more stuff inside my head.

  As Ms. Emile played the piano more quickly, Ms. Hawken took us through different short combinations of movements, building up to a series of jumps across the floor. Jetés were my all-time favorite part of ballet. I kicked my right leg out as I pushed off with my left. At the peak of my jump, I stretched my legs into a split. When I landed on my right leg, I bent it slightly and extended my left leg behind me. No wobbling.

  The sun shone through the window, creating a shimmering path along the floor. All I had to do was follow it, feeling stronger and lighter with each leap. My feet thumped against the floor rhythmically along with my classmates’ feet, sounding like distant drums.

  I could have gone on jumping for the entire period, but finally the piano notes came to an end. Ms. Hawken clapped her hands. “Places, please,” she said. “Time to be a bouquet.”

  Ms. Hawken had put tape down on the floor, outlining the shape and size of a stage. Renata and the other dancers moved eagerly to their spots on the floor to rehearse for the Autumn Festival. I lagged behind.

  Every fall, students at Anna Hart put on a show for their parents. The teachers did the choreography and ran the tech, but the students made their own costumes—and the audience came in costume, too. For this year’s show, our ballet class was doing a shortened version of “The Waltz of the Flowers.”

  Our modern dance class was performing, too—a pirate routine that Luisa was really excited about. But I had said no to being a pirate and yes to being a waltzing flower, because I thought the ballet routine would be easier for me. Boy, had I been wrong.

  “Whenever you’re ready, Isabelle,” Ms. Hawken murmured.

  Reluctantly, I walked toward the corner and took my spot, standing with the heel of one foot against the instep of the other.

  My stomach began doing flip-flops. That had been happening more and more often. If there were such a thing as gymnastics for stomachs, mine would have won the gold medal for somersaulting.

  Ms. Hawken fiddled with her phone, and French horns began to call from the studio speakers.

  That’s when my nightmare began.

  After two weeks of Ms. Hawken’s patient coaching, I finally knew the choreography for our flower routine, but I always seemed to be one step behind everyone else. If I’d had a tail, Renata would have been stepping on it. As it was, I could smell her breath—maybe she had been chewing some cinnamon-flavored gum.

  At one point in the choreography, the class was supposed to dance in two separate circles. Then we were each supposed to curl away from the circles and form two lines.

  “Faster, Isabelle,” Ms. Hawken called.

  But when I tried to speed up, things seemed to get worse. I went left when I should have gone right. And during the rest of the routine, I often did the reverse of what everyone else was doing, going forward when I should have gone backward.

  When it was over, Ms. Hawken gazed at the floor and then at me. “Isabelle, stay there,” she said. “The rest of you take a break.”

  I could feel the blood rushing to my cheeks as the rest of the class began to sit on the floor and stretch. Madelyn smiled at me sympathetically. Since she was a beginner, Ms. Hawken had simplified her part of the routine so that she could handle it. Did Ms. Hawken need to simplify mine, too? My cheeks burned hot.

  “Let’s try these steps again,” Ms. Hawken suggested, demonstrating the series of steps she wanted to see.

  I did my best to copy Ms. Hawken, but she frowned. “You’re still a little off,” she said. She began to snap her fingers rhythmically. “This tempo, Isabelle.”

  I tried again, but Ms. Hawken shook her head. “Still too slow,” she said. She waved her hand toward a group of girls. “Renata, please show Isabelle.”

  Folding my arms, I stepped to the side. As Renata passed, she whispered, “Watch and learn, Dizzy Izzy.”

  I bit my lip, fighting the urge to say something mean back. All I could do was watch silently as Renata did my steps—perfectly.

  It made me feel even worse when it was my turn again. I still couldn’t do the steps fast enough.

  Ms. Hawken motioned for me to sit in a corner. “Watch this time,” she said. Then she took my spot in the lineup and began to dance with the others. “You’re supposed to be here,” she said. “Not still there,” she added, pointing to another spot. She called out a commentary like that throughout the rest of the waltz. Then she waved me over to join the other flowers. “Now, from the top.”

  I tr
ied. I really did. I wanted to show everyone in the class that I belonged at Anna Hart, that I wasn’t here just because of my sister.

  Instead, I wallowed like a tugboat in a race with motorboats. And I just got worse and worse with each repetition. I was beginning to think I was never meant for ballet.

  Renata got more and more disgusted with me. “It’s hard to believe she’s Jade’s sister,” she muttered to one of the other dancers.

  I didn’t try to defend myself—I was too frustrated with my own dancing—but Luisa said, “Shut up, Renata.”

  Ms. Hawken held up her hand to stop the dancing. Then she looked sternly at Renata and Luisa and said, “In my class, we treat everyone with respect. Got that?”

  Luisa muttered an apology. Renata glared at me angrily as she mumbled, “Yes, ma’am.” I think she blamed me for the reprimand.

  Mercifully, the bell rang, ending the class. We did our reverence, girls curtsying with our arms in port de bras and boys bowing.

  “Remember to bring your costumes next Thursday,” Ms. Hawken said as we headed to the changing rooms.

  Now that the narrow room was full of girls, there wasn’t much space to walk. “Excuse me,” I said.

  No one budged, though. Maybe they blamed me for losing valuable rehearsal time, too.

  “Leave this to me,” Luisa said. Slipping in front of me, she began to elbow her way through the bodies ahead of us. I trailed in her wake, afraid to look any of the other dancers in the eye.

  Once we had reached our bags at the very end of the room, Luisa changed into her regular clothes, but I took my time. I didn’t want to have to leave with Renata and the others. When they were all gone, I finally zipped up my bag.

  Luisa put her hand on my shoulder. “Don’t let Renata get to you,” she said, as if she could read my mind.

  I shrugged, discouraged. “I don’t know, Luisa,” I said. “The first couple of weeks I was here, when the principal told me I should try the other arts classes, maybe she was trying to warn me to quit ballet.”

  Luisa shook her head. “No,” she said firmly. “If anyone was meant for ballet, it’s you.”