The Storm Before the Calm by Cate Ashwood Read Free Book Online Page A

“Are you from here?”
    I shook my head. “South Dakota. You?”
    “New Jersey. But don’t tell anyone.”
    She winked at me. I liked her immediately. She reminded me of Emily a little. Not so much in the way she looked. Andy was petite, with high cheekbones and very blonde hair pulled into a messy bun on the top of her head. If her ears had been pointed, she would have looked like an elf.
    “Is this your first time at Free Rein?” she asked.
    “Yeah. I’m a little out of my element. How about you?”
    “Yep, same here. Not the out of my element part, but my first time. Yeah. So far I love it.”
    I chuckled. “We’ve barely started.”
    “Yeah, but there’s like this energy, you know? Can’t you feel it? Like magic seeping up from the floor.”
    “I guess.” I didn’t really know what she meant. There was a feeling to this studio that was poles apart from the one I’d been at my whole life, but I’d chalked that up to the familiar versus the unknown. The peeling pink paint that covered the faux-wood paneled walls back at my studio was comfortable. I knew every dip and divot in the linoleum floors. I knew where to kick the bottom drawer in the tiny kitchen so it would easily slide open. I’d spent more time in that space than I had in my own house over the past decade and a half.
    The rooms here felt foreign to me. The people were strangers, and I was alone in this place. Oddly enough, I wasn’t as terrified as I thought I’d be. The familiarity of dance was holding me together, keeping me from flying apart with the fear of it all.
    The instructor, Sophie Diaz, floated into the room a moment later, followed by the guy who had been staring at me earlier. The temperature of the room suddenly felt like it had climbed twenty degrees. I took a deep breath and willed my now-pounding heart to slow back down to a normal rhythm.
    “Hello, everyone, my name is Sophie, and I’ll be going through the contemporary curriculum with you. This is Max. He’ll be my assistant for the remainder of the summer. To get started, Max is going to take us through a warm-up. Today’s a sample class, so we’ll do a short floor section and then a bit of choreo to introduce you to my style.”
    She walked over to the stereo, plugged in her iPod, and turned up the music. Max took his place at the front of the room, his air of confidence palpable as he stood with his feet spread and began the side stretches. The movements were a bit out of order but so familiar to me. It was like a universal language, spoken by all dancers everywhere. My body knew the words, and I followed along with Max as he led the class.
    I could feel my muscles stretch, and the well-known sting from the scars on my ribs was conspicuously absent. I realized it had been a few days since I’d had my last run-in with a razor. This was possibly the longest I’d gone without cutting, a realization that left me feeling lighter than I ever remembered.
    Once the class was adequately warm, Sophie took us through a short piece of choreography. It was beautiful. With learning contemporary from an unknown instructor, there’s always a risk that it would be a little too out there for me. I like my contemporary simple and clean, and Sophie’s style was just that. I bent and flowed with the music, running through the steps over and over. The repetition was reassuring, and I never wanted to stop.
    I was surprised when the hour was over. I’d have given anything to keep going, to learn the rest of the steps. It felt incomplete, like when you have to get out of the car halfway through listening to your favorite song on the radio. I walked over to where I’d left my water bottle, picked it up from the floor, and emptied the remainder down my throat, reminding myself that I was signing up for the class and I had the whole summer to savor Sophie’s steps.
    “Wasn’t that great?” Andy asked, bounding up to me, wisps of hair falling, framing her face.
    “It was