The moment I walked into Once upon a Scoop, I knew something was terribly wrong. Mom’s face—pale and angry—was enough to tell me.
She knew. She knew everything.
I glanced at the line of customers, hoping that she’d have to deal with them instead of me. No such luck.
“Ladies and gentlemen.” Her voice, on the surface, seemed calm enough, but I could hear the current of fury underneath. “The shop will be closed to customers for the next ten minutes. My sincerest apologies and gratitude for your patience.” She ushered them out the door, issuing coupons for free ice cream cones. “We’ll reopen as quickly as we can.”
My skin turned clammy as she flipped the sign on the door to CLOSED. Then she faced me, her eyes full of disappointment. She let loose a string of Hawaiian—something she only did when she was absolutely beside herself.
“How could you?” she said, switching to English. “All these weeks I believed you were going to Tilly’s. Doing schoolwork. And—and now I learn that you’ve been dancing? Behind my back?”
“I was going to tell you,” I started helplessly.
“Instead I find out from this Violet girl I’ve never met!” She put her head in her hands.
So it had been Violet who’d told Mom. I shouldn’t have been shocked, especially with Violet peeved over losing the Cinderella part. Now I had no defense, no excuses. Not that it mattered. I was wrong to lie, and now I was going to pay the price.
“It was humiliating,” Mom continued. “She came into the shop to congratulate me, she said, on your great accomplishment. ‘What accomplishment?’ I ask. And she says, ‘Don’t you know?’ And then she tells me about Cinderella.” Her eyes bored into me, stabbing my chest with regret. “I have to hear all of it from a stranger! Because my own daughter has been lying to me!”
“Violet shouldn’t have told you. It wasn’t any of her business—”
“You had no business disobeying me!” Mom cried. “Violet can’t be blamed for your poor judgment.”
Suddenly, the frustrations of the day, of the past weeks, exploded from my mouth in a torrent of words. “What was I supposed to do? You told me I couldn’t dance anymore. I tried to talk to you about it, but you wouldn’t listen! You didn’t care how much it hurt me to give it up! All you care about is this parlor with its lame ice cream!”
Mom held up a warning finger to my face. “The source of our livelihood is not lame. We couldn’t live here without this shop and the income it gives us—”
“I know that! But it will never be what I want.” My chest was burning, my eyes welling. “My dancing at the conservatory wasn’t costing us anything! Signora Benucci was teaching me for free. And you had Lanz here to help! You weren’t stressed about the business anymore. I arranged everything, and I thought—”
“You thought only of yourself.” Mom’s voice was thick with distress. “You disrespected me by disobeying.”
“I’ve tried so many times to get you to understand, but you never will.” I leaned toward her, reaching for her hands. She pulled them away. “Makuahine, I’m so sorry I lied to you. I was wrong. Please, let me show you what I can do. Come watch me at rehearsal. See how far I’ve come. I’m on pointe now. I’m the principal ballerina—”
“Not anymore you’re not.” The words, thorny and brutal, wedged in my heart. “The conservatory will find a replacement for you.”
I froze, stunned. “No.” It came out quietly but firmly. “You can’t take it away from me.”
“I can,” she said simply. “I will.”
My eyes filled with tears. “Why would you do that to me?”
She turned toward the kitchen. “Because you put dancing above all else, even your family. Reality is responsibility and work and school. Reality is not following a fantasy that can never last. It is not hurting your family with dishonesty.”
My tears spilled over my cheeks. “Don’t do this—”
“Malie. It is done.” She paused in the doorway to the kitchen to glance back at me. “Open the shop now, please.”
Then she disappeared into the kitchen, leaving me with my tears, and customers peering through the shop’s front window, waiting for their ice cream. I sucked in a shaky breath and opened the door, as my dream of being Cinderella melted away.
“Malie?” Ethan touched my shoulder and I jumped, dropping my binder on the floor.
“Oh!” was all I could manage as I slipped my earbuds from my ears, remembering where I was. It was Monday, exactly one week since Mom had banned me from dance. I was at school. Standing in the hallway at my locker. That’s right. At least, I was physically at school. Mentally, I was in a colorless, mind-numbing world without dance. “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t see you before.”
Ethan peered at me with concern, and I noticed Eve standing beside him. In some distant corner of my mind, I registered that they were holding hands. “I—we—wanted to make sure you were okay.” Ethan glanced at Eve. “We heard about what happened with your mom and Cinderella. It’s lousy.”
“Let me guess. Violet told you?” She’d wasted no time telling the entire student body that she’d reclaimed the Cinderella role for herself.
“Actually, Lanz told us.”
“Oh.” Another pain shot through my heart. So he knew, but he still wouldn’t talk to me.
“How are you? Really.” Ethan’s voice was so full of compassion that I nearly started crying right then and there. What could I say? I was breathing. I was eating. Sleeping. Going to school. I was scooping ice cream every day, wearing a plastered-on smile. I was existing. But each day that passed without dance dragged slower than an adagio battement fondu. There was a void inside me that nothing could fill.
“I’m surviving.” I strove to give my voice some brightness. “Mom pretty much grounded me for life.”
“What about your
