My Seventh-Grade Life in Tights by Brooks Benjamin

thought Sarah might’ve smiled. If she did, it was quick. “Back to first. Let’s try something else. I’m not even going to pretend you can do an arabesque, so we’ll start with what the first years do. A retiré .” She pronounced it “reh-tee- ray .” She pulled her left foot up, toe pointed, letting it touch her right knee. She stood there like a statue and nodded to me.

    Piece of cake. I pulled my foot up, forcing my toes back toward my heel like she’d taught me, and touched my knee. I had to hold my arms out for balance, and I wiggled a little bit, but I was totally—
    “GAH!”
    It was like my leg got shut in a car door. On a cramp scale from one to ten, my calf was at a thirty. I grabbed my leg and fell straight back, yelling the entire way. I landed on my butt as the knot worked its way deeper into my muscle. “I think it’s getting worse!” I cried, and rolled on my back with my foot in the air.
    I looked up at Sarah. My calf was collapsing into a black hole underneath my skin and she was laughing. I rolled back into a sitting position, still holding my foot as close to my chest as I could.
    “It’s not funny! This seriously hurts!”
    “I know.” She leaned down and forced my leg out straight. “I’ve just never seen someone get that freaked out over a cramp.” She put her hands on my foot and pushed it back, stretching my calf. Some of the pain instantly disappeared. I let out a sigh of relief, watching her work her magic. After a few more seconds of her pushing my toes back and forth, she got up and crossed her arms. “Better?”

    I worked my leg around a little. “Yeah. Thanks.” I stood up, hopping on each leg to test it out.
    “Good,” Sarah said. “Then back to first position.”
    Whatever bit of nice or pleasant I thought I’d heard in her voice before was gone. Business-mode Sarah was in the house.
    “I hope you’re not scared of pain. Because if you’re going to be a dancer—” Sarah took a deep breath and straightened her back. “There’s going to be a lot of it.”

S arah wasn’t lying.
    My butt cheeks felt like they had a pair of ninja stars lodged in them from all the pliés. But even as bad as they hurt, I couldn’t stop smiling. Because the throbbing was from the technique. Sarah told me if I was doing it right, I’d be sore. And I was definitely sore.
    The only bad thing was that I had to learn it all from her. She yelled more than anyone I’d ever known. I got home with my head feeling like Troy had used it for a seat cushion.
    And telling my parents I’d changed my mind about quitting football didn’t help.
    “I had a feeling you would,” Dad said. “I remember how exciting it was to get out there on the field. Nothing beats the smell of a football field on game day.”

    “Yeah. Nothing beats that sweaty-body-odor stench.” I opened the fridge to get some orange juice.
    “Didn’t you say you were going to concentrate more on your dancing?” Mom asked me, staring at her laptop the entire time. “I thought you had that scholarship thing you were practicing for.”
    I shrugged. “I guess I can do both.” Not like I had much of a choice, really. If I backed out of Kassie’s plan now, I’d be giving up a ton of free dance lessons with Sarah.
    But at least I finally got to dance in something besides jeans. I went to my room and practiced pliés and retirés and développés until my legs were about to fall off. I kept my football pants on the whole time. They made awesome tights. Those suckers were made out of space-age stretchy fabric and had two layers to protect any rear end from exposure, no matter how beefy.
    Of course, the poop-brown stain running down the back wouldn’t come out. No matter how many times Mom washed them.
    At least the other football players didn’t seem to care. When the team met after school the next day for the first practice of the season, everyone huddled in their usual groups. First string all together, talking