Isabelle in the City Read online

  After a few minutes, Jade stopped dancing. “What is it, Isabelle?” She reached for her water bottle.

  “Did you see the poster about the contest?” I asked.

  Jade nodded. “You must have a million ideas already,” she said with a grin.

  “I just wish I could talk about my ideas with Miki,” I said. “She says she wants to decorate the door. But when I try to talk to her about our plans”—I twitched my thumbs as if I were playing video games—“she stops to play her game.”

  Jade sat down on her bed. “Well, put yourself in Miki’s shoes. She’s alone in a strange country. She must be feeling awfully homesick, so it’s no wonder she wants something familiar. Maybe the origami and the video games are a little touch of home.”

  I paused, trying to put myself in Miki’s place, as Jade had suggested. Without my sister, I would’ve missed home, too—a lot. “I hadn’t thought about that,” I said, feeling a little embarrassed. Would I go to Japan to dance if I could speak only a little Japanese? I didn’t think so.

  Jade drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. “It took guts for Miki to come here. Don’t give up on her, okay?” she said.

  I nodded. Jade was right. I needed to keep working on getting to know Miki better—and when I did, I would do a better job of letting my sister hang out with her new friends, too, instead of bugging her all the time. At least I would try.

  If my mornings at the KBC followed a familiar routine of ballet barre and center work, my afternoon classes didn’t. I was taking all sorts of dance classes, from jazz to musical theater and character. Once a week besides my dance classes, I also took exercise sessions like yoga and Pilates. As if that wasn’t enough, there were separate lectures on nutrition, dance history, and injury prevention. The KBC website said the summer intensives would help prepare young dancers for professional careers. That is, if our brains don’t explode, I thought to myself as I prepared for my next class.

  Today’s class was ballet mime in Studio 303. We were going to practice the special signs that ballet dancers and choreographers use to represent feelings and actions.

  Our teacher, Ms. Harris, was an African American woman with her curly hair cropped short. She looked elegant, as usual, in her royal blue leotard and wrap skirt.

  When we had lined up, she handed us each a list of mime gestures, and then we practiced them one by one. “Okay, let’s get those juices pumping. Show me anger.” Scowling, she shook her fists in the air, and we copied her. I tried not to laugh when I saw my classmates’ faces.

  “Let’s try something calmer, like thoughtful,” Ms. Harris suggested. She rested her chin in her hand. Her eyes flicked from side as she checked our miming. “Good.”

  We ran through another dozen mime gestures before our first partner exercise. Ms. Harris took a stack of index cards from her bag. “Each of these cards has a miming motion on it. I’m going to give you six of them at random, and you and your partner will use them to tell a story. But you don’t have to use the motions in the order in which I give them to you.”

  When Ms. Harris assigned Miki as my partner, I tried to hide my disappointment. How could we tell a story together when we could barely have a conversation? But then I remembered Jade’s words: “Don’t give up on her, okay?” And I took a deep breath and smiled at Miki.

  When Ms. Harris handed us six index cards, Miki fanned out the cards so that I could see them. There were some nice ones that sort of fit together, such as beautiful, dance, and dress.

  I tapped them one after the other. “These could be about Cinderella. Do you know that fairy tale?”

  Miki nodded. She paused thoughtfully and then held up the card with weeping. “Maybe she cries.” She brought a free hand up to her cheeks and drew them down, as if tracing tears. “She cannot go to the ball. Her clothes are ugly.”

  I nodded eagerly. “She’s telling all this to her Fairy Godmother. But how do we work in these two?” I indicated the cards with crazy and death.

  Miki gazed toward the ceiling and then said, “Maybe Cinderella can say this to the Fairy Godmother.” She pointed her fingers at her chest in the mime sign for I. Then she twirled her finger in a circle by her ear in the sign for crazy.

  “I am going crazy?” I guessed.

  “Yes,” she said, smiling.

  I felt like we were starting to click. “And then she could say, ‘I think I will die,’” I went on. I pretended to give a big sigh and then made the gesture for I. Then I swung my arm by the side of my head and tapped two fingers against my temple, the symbol for think. Finally, I made both hands into fists and crossed them in front of my waist, the sign for death.

  “I like that,” Miki said enthusiastically. “You be Cinderella.”

  “Don’t you want to be?” I asked.

  “I like the Fairy Godmother,” Miki insisted.

  I chewed my lip as I tried to work out my performance. “I’ll be crying when you appear, okay?”

  Miki nodded. She really seemed to be enjoying herself working on our silent dialogue. “I will ask, ‘Why do you cry?’” she said. Miki turned her palms up, motioned to me, and then put both hands in front of her face and pantomimed tears falling down her cheeks.

  I signed I am going crazy and then added, “And maybe I should also tell her it’s because I want to dance with the prince.” I made the mime gesture for I again and then curved my hands above my head and twirled them for dance. Then I lowered one hand to the top of my head with my fingers straight up like a prince’s crown.

  “But I have no dress.” I shook my head and put my hands by my waist, sweeping them lower and out as if I were tracing the bottom of a ball gown. I finished with the gestures for I think I will die.

  Miki put up a hand and signed, Do not go crazy. I will … She frowned. “I want to tell you that I would make a dress for you,” she said. “But I do not know the sign for make.”

  I looked around for Ms. Harris so that we could ask her, but she was busy with another team. “You could pretend to sew,” I suggested, using my hand to mime the pushing and pulling of a needle through a piece of cloth.

  “Good,” Miki said, her eyes bright.

  Ms. Harris called us back to attention then so that we could start “telling” our stories to the rest of the class. When it was our turn, I gave Miki a nervous smile. Then I went to the center of the floor and started sweeping an invisible broom as I pretended to cry.

  When Miki danced in as the Fairy Godmother, I instantly saw why she’d wanted that role. She really got into it, puffing out her cheeks as if she were chubby. She didn’t try to float like a butterfly. Instead, she gave waddling hops like a dizzy bumblebee.

  Miki was such a comedian that she had the others giggling. I laughed in amazement. I hadn’t even known that she had a sense of humor!

  We’d practiced the signs of our dialogue, but not the facial expressions and our acting gestures. Miki was such a great actress that she made me feel as if she really was the Fairy Godmother—and I really was standing in a kitchen with a broom.

  So when Miki finally waved an imaginary wand, I could almost feel a wonderful ball gown appear around me. I smoothed my hand over the invisible material, and for a moment I felt as if I was actually touching silk. Then I turned this way and that, admiring my magical dress.

  But the ball gown wasn’t just something that I happened to be wearing. It had a life of its own. I felt it pushing, tugging at my body. It was made to dance, just like me!

  I pretended to grasp the dress between my fingers. Then I jerked my arm as if the gown itself were pulling me onto a dance floor.

  Miki’s eyes lit up when she saw what I was doing. She rose on her toes and raised her arms. Then she took a short step as she swept her arms down gracefully, finishing with a kick of her left foot behind her. With a grin, I rose on my toes and copied her.

  Suddenly, there was no wall between us. There was no need for clumsy words or awkward conversations. It was so much easier to
communicate with Miki through dance.

  We repeated the steps as we left the floor together. When we were done, our classmates applauded. “Very nice,” Ms. Harris said approvingly.

  I was feeling pretty good as Miki and I went to sit down. We were starting to become friends—I was sure of it—and I was determined to keep it going.

  But as soon as class ended and we started walking back toward the dorm, a switch seemed to go off in Miki’s head. When I asked her what other fairy tales she liked to read, she just shrugged nervously and began walking faster. It was as if the clock had struck midnight, and the friendship we had formed in the dance studio had turned suddenly—and sadly—back into a pumpkin.

  The next morning was Saturday. When I woke up, Miki was nowhere to be found. I rolled out of bed and got dressed, trying to forget about what had happened after ballet mime class yesterday—and focus instead on the fun of everything we’d see today.

  Besides finding decorations for our door, I was looking forward to seeing the exhibit “Clothed in Wonder—Sixty-Six Years of NYCB Fashion.” It featured costumes from a New York City Ballet collection, and I was interested in them not only as a dancer but also as a designer.

  I’d designed my own costume for our school’s Autumn Festival. It had looked good, but when I’d tried to dance in it, I’d fallen flat on my face. So I knew it wasn’t easy to come up with something that would look beautiful while letting you dance well, too.

  When we boarded the bus, Jade took a seat halfway down the aisle. I saw that Miki was already on the bus, sitting way in the back. I hesitated, wishing I could just sit here by Jade—that would be easier than trying to make conversation with Miki again this morning. But Jade saw me glancing back toward my roommate, and she gave me a thumbs-up. “Get going,” she said, nodding her head toward Miki.

  When Miki saw me coming, she smiled. That was a good start, I thought, so I sat down by her and tried to think of something to say. “I’m looking forward to shopping in the fashion district today,” I said. “Do you have any super-cool ideas for our door?”

  She paused, and after a minute, all she said was, “Um … no. Have you?”

  “Not really,” I said. And then I couldn’t think of any other questions. Miki looked away, and we rode through the streets in silence.

  The costume exhibit was at the Fashion Institute of Technology, or FIT for short. Its buildings covered an entire city block. The director of the KBC was friends with some of the people over at FIT, so we were going to get a private tour two hours before the museum usually opened.

  There must have been classes at the museum on the weekend, though, because we passed some older kids who looked like students carrying sketchpads in big, broad cases. I saw one girl in a short brown vest and skirt, a matching fedora, and ankle-high boots. Was she wearing her own designs? It made me curious to see the fashion classes. I almost wanted to go up in the elevators with her instead of down the stairs to the basement, where our exhibit was.

  The NYCB exhibit was in a big gallery, where we met our guide, Ms. Scott. She was a thin woman wearing black pants and a white silk top. Her blonde hair had been done up in a topknot that reminded me of the handle on the lid of a pot. Clasping her hands in front of her waist, she welcomed us to FIT and then said, “Some of the world’s greatest fashion designers have created costumes for New York City Ballet. And their outfits added a whole new dimension to the dances. But as we look at their designs today, think about the challenges the designers faced. They were creating clothes not for models walking on a runway but for athletes jumping and dancing onstage.”

  I thought about that as we began to tour the exhibits. The costumes hung lifeless on the mannequins. It was too bad we couldn’t try them on and dance in them.

  There was a beautiful pink gown by Valentino with winglike sleeves and a large sequined butterfly between the shoulder blades. I wanted to put it on and spread my arms as I danced. Would it make me look and feel as if I were flying?

  And then just two steps away, I found a skirt, another Valentino that I longed to dance in. It was made of a thin gray material with pleats that were narrow at the waist and wider as they reached the hem. When I pirouetted, the skirt would swirl like ribbons of smoke around me.

  Ms. Scott and the group moved through the exhibit much too quickly. There were so many clever designs! I wanted to stay and study each outfit, but the real eyepopper was the new costume for NYCB’s revival of Bizet’s Symphony in C. Crystals were sewn on the scalloped powder-puff tutu and along the edges of the white bodice. They sparkled under the lights, and I suddenly imagined how Jade would look in the costume dancing. She’d be a shining angel onstage.

  I was busy trying to memorize every detail when Jade herself grabbed my arm. “Come on, Isabelle. Keep up.”

  The rest of the tour group was already twenty feet away. As she tugged me along, I twisted my head left and right, trying to glimpse the last few costumes.

  Once we’d caught up to the group, it took me only ten minutes to fall behind again. It was amazing how many variations there were on a simple ballerina’s top and tutu, and I was getting all sorts of design ideas. It was a good thing that our group was the only one in the room. If it had been crowded, Jade might have had a hard time finding me.

  By the time we exited the gallery, I was feeling both excited and frustrated. I had ideas whirling around in my head for all these new outfits I wanted to create. And I could have come up with even more designs if Jade hadn’t kept nudging me along.

  “I don’t want to see the other exhibit,” I complained to my sister. “I want to stay here.”

  Jade clamped her hand on my arm. “Sorry, Isabelle,” she said, “but they’re not going to leave you alone with the costumes.”

  I wanted to dig in my heels, but my sister was an expert at pulling me along. She’d had years of experience at it. It’s amazing my arms weren’t six feet long after all that tugging.

  Hailey ran down the stairs toward us, looking worried. Her short black hair bounced around her ears with each step. “There you are,” she said, relieved. “I was short on my head count.”

  “Sorry,” Jade said and shot a look at me. “We’re coming. Right, Isabelle?”

  As it turned out, I was glad Jade didn’t let me skip the next exhibit. There was a smaller gallery off the lobby on the ground floor. The sign above the entrance said “Papier Haute Couture.”

  “In the 1960s, some fashion designers refused to be bound by just cotton, silk, and satin,” Ms. Scott explained to us. “They began to experiment with paper instead. Think how nice it would be to buy an haute couture dress for just a few dollars. You could wear it once to a special occasion and then throw it away and buy another.”

  I could see a problem with that right away, and I put my hand up. When Ms. Scott nodded at me, I asked, “Wouldn’t a paper dress tear if you tried to walk in it?”

  “Well, the better ones were made out of a tougher, coated paper,” Ms. Scott said. Then she grinned and added, “But if they ripped, you could usually repair them with tape.”

  The first few paper dresses in the exhibit were early styles—simple smock-like things, but with bright, colorful, wild patterns. One was a red-and-orange paisley print that reminded me of something I’d seen under the microscope in science class. “The mannequin looks like she’s being attacked by giant germs,” I whispered to Jade, who giggled.

  The fashion designers didn’t stop at just dresses, though. There were matching paper slips, and rings and pendants made out of papier-mâché.

  “The fad died out, but recently, fashion designers around the world have been turning to paper again.” Ms. Scott led us to a beautiful dress inside a glass case. “The Japanese have a long tradition of making different types of papers and turning them into many useful things. Here is a Japanese designer’s take on a classic draped gown, using mulberry paper.”

  The blue material of the dress rippled across the mannequin like water. A pink flow
er perched upon each shoulder strap.

  Ms. Scott stepped over to the next display. “Now, this next gown was done by a French designer.” She motioned toward a dress with a print of newspaper headlines running diagonally across it. In back, long strips of newspaper fanned out like a peacock tail.

  I turned back toward the Japanese dress, which fascinated me. The folds of the gown flowed and hung like cloth. “Do you think that’s really paper?” I asked Jade. But she had already moved on.

  “Yes, it is,” someone else’s voice answered. It was Miki! She leaned to her left so I could see her on the other side of the case. “Come. See the back.”

  I went around the case to see the chains of pink flowers that crisscrossed the back of the dress.

  “Wow,” I said. I’d designed costumes made of cloth, but what could I do with mulberry paper? And what would a paper dress sound like? Would it rustle and rattle like dry leaves?

  Pointing at the flower dress, Miki asked in a low voice, “You like it?”

  “Lots,” I said. She drew her eyebrows together in puzzlement. I remembered how she usually spoke so formally, with full sentences. So I added, “I like it very much.”

  Miki nodded, and by the way she gazed back at the dress, I could tell she liked it, too. This was great. I’d finally found something else besides dancing that we were both interested in!

  Then Miki leaned her head close to mine and whispered, “My uncle works at a paper factory. His factory made the paper for this dress.”

  A tingle ran down my spine, and I turned to face Miki. I felt like a crack had opened in the wall between us, and I could see her for the first time.

  “Really?” I asked. “Your uncle?”

  “I help him sometimes,” Miki said proudly.