The Glow of the Spotlight: My Journey with Rebecca

The dance audition is finally over, and it was definitely my best performance ever. Still, when Ms. Amelia chooses me to do a solo for the winter recital, I am stunned. I never expected her to pick me after what happened last spring.

I froze onstage in front of the whole audience and couldn’t dance, or even move. Ms. Amelia actually had to come out and lead me off, and I’ll never live it down. Even Megan, my twin sister, who rarely misses a chance to embarrass me, spent weeks being extra nice about it, so I’m beyond thrilled that my teacher has enough faith to let me try again.

That happiness doesn’t last long, though, because the day ends in a terrible fight with my friend, Liz. She got rattled and flubbed a few steps of her own routine, and she didn’t end up with a special part in the recital. When I try to make her feel better, she accuses me of only caring because I got the solo, which isn’t true at all. I get so hurt that I lash out and call her jealous, and the second the words leave my mouth, a terrible hole opens up in my chest. I apologize right away, but Liz throws her tap shoes into her bag and storms out of the dressing room anyway.

Now it’s late afternoon, and Mom, Megan, and I are walking down West Thirty-Ninth Street toward the pier to catch the ferry home. Mom suddenly halts in front of a gorgeous antique shop she’s been wanting to visit for ages. While Mom goes up to the counter to negotiate a price on an antique mirror, I go up to the mirror and twirl in front of it. I’m wearing my favorite school outfit. Its purple skirt flutters as I spin.

I had wanted to wear my tap dance costume home. It has sequined black shorts and a black-and-white top with a bow tie, like a girl’s version of a tuxedo. I picture myself strolling around Manhattan in it, people mistaking me for a real Broadway performer. But before we left the studio, Mom reminded me it’s too chilly outside, and I definitely don’t want to mess it up before the recital.

I glance over at Megan, who has collapsed in an overstuffed armchair and pulled out a science textbook. Megan and I are twins, but we’re pretty much opposites. She wants to be a doctor, like Dad, while I want to be a famous dancer. She loves museums, and I love theater. We don’t like the same books or games. Sometimes I wish we were better friends instead of just plain opposites.

Mom reminds me there’s a times-tables quiz tomorrow and suggests I use the time to study instead of hovering over her shoulder. I draw out her name in protest, but she just waves me off and goes back to bargaining with the dealer, who offers free delivery instead of dropping the price any further.

Sighing, I plop down in a creaking leather chair and drag my dance bag closer, digging out my arithmetic workbook from beside my tap shoes and tuxedo costume. Instead of concentrating on the first page of times tables, though, I keep replaying the fight with Liz in my head. I don’t want to lose a good friend just because I got a solo, and I can’t stop wondering how the argument spun so far out of control. The store is so quiet I can hear the grandfather clock in the corner ticking. 5:41 PM.

I close the workbook and rummage through my purse instead, finding two quarters and a crumpled dollar bill. I wander over to a table filled with old-fashioned toy cars, metal mechanical banks, and china dolls. Suddenly I spot a painted wooden doll with a flat bottom that stands there smiling sweetly at me, its painted hands folded across a flowery dress, swirly leaves and flowers surrounding its face. As I reach for it, the dealer explains that it’s an old Russian nesting doll, and if I pull the top and bottom apart, a smaller doll appears inside. I open it, and then the next one, and the next, all the way down to the tiniest doll. I line them all up, falling in love with each one.

The dealer studies me with a curious expression and admits she’s rather attached to the set. She played with it herself when she was my age. I don’t see a price tag, but I suppose that if the set is special to her, it’ll be expensive anyway. I sit down on the floor and start putting the dolls back together, fitting the smallest one inside the next, carefully lining up the painted hands as the second-to-smallest doll closes. Suddenly the room starts to spin, and everything blurs and disappears.

A cool breeze washes over me, and I blink. Instead of next to a table of antique toys, I’m sitting against a low brick wall at the edge of a flat rooftop, and my heart starts pounding. What happened to Mom and Megan, and where on earth am I? I stand up and peer over the edge of the wall at the street below, lined with tidy three-story apartment houses and high front steps. It’s still Manhattan, I think, but instead of honking cars and taxis, the street is clogged with horse-drawn wagons, and a shiny black antique car comes chugging and sputtering past, its horn giving an old-fashioned ah-ooh-ga!

Behind me, a soothing voice coaxes a pigeon named Gray-Wing to eat. Turning around, I see a girl about my age with long copper-brown hair, feeding a pigeon in a cage. A whole row of pigeon cages lines the far wall, and I hear a chorus of coos. Could this be a dream?

The girl suddenly begins to sing in a beautiful, clear voice, and I duck behind a stack of wooden crates to watch her without being seen. She’s wearing an old-fashioned dress with violet stripes and high-button boots, her hair tied back with a big purple velvet ribbon. I guess she likes purple as much as I do.

I watch the girl sing to the pigeons as if they’re her audience, nothing like the show-offs at my dance studio. Then I glance down and realize I’m still holding the two smallest nesting dolls, one nestled inside the other. I separate the larger doll so the smallest one peeks out, my fingers trembling, and then fit the pieces back together, lining up the painted hands. Everything spins into a blur again and disappears.

Almost instantly, the dizziness passes, and I’m back inside the antique shop. I check the grandfather clock and am startled to see that it still reads 5:41. Not a minute passed while I was gone. Disoriented, I step away from the table and stumble into a small wooden wagon filled with dolls, and there’s a huge clatter as they fall and knock into one another. Mom gives me a sharp look, and Megan looks up from her book, demanding to know if I can’t stay still for one minute. I apologize, feeling shaky.

I realize this might be my only chance to go back and meet that girl, and if I go, I won’t have to deal with Megan, or Liz, or times tables. I pull the bigger doll apart once more, and close it again. In a flash, the room spins. When it clears, I’m back on the same rooftop with the girl in the purple dress, only this time I’m not hidden behind the crates. I try not to startle her, but she jumps when she hears me. I apologize again and wonder what to say next.

Before I can come up with any explanation of how I got there, the girl smiles. She exclaims that I must be Daisy. I have no idea who Daisy is, but I have no time to correct her before she rattles on about how her cousin Max told them I might be coming to stay with them for a few days, and how exciting it must be to be on the vaudeville circuit.

Did she say vaudeville? The theme of my winter recital, the one where I’ll be dancing a solo, is based on old vaudeville acts, and my tap class is learning a dance to a song that was popular almost 100 years ago. Of course, this girl couldn’t possibly know that. She introduces herself as Rebecca and asks if Max told me that she wants to be a performer, too.

I still don’t know where I am or how I got here, but just then a door opens onto the roof. An older man steps out, wearing baggy pants held up with suspenders and a loose white shirt, and carrying two small pails. Rebecca leans close and whispers that we’re in trouble. It’s grumpy Mr. Rossi, the janitor, who doesn’t like kids up here one bit.

He scowls at Rebecca and warns her not to feed the pigeons, shaking one of the pails so it makes a dry, swishing sound, speaking with a thick accent. One pail holds birdseed, and the other holds water.

Mr. Rossi turns to me next, gaping at my clothes with narrowed eyes, and asks if I’m from around here. I shake my head, and he tells us he makes the rules on this roof, and the first one is no kids pestering his pigeons, so we’d both better go on. As Rebecca and I start to leave, he calls out, asking where I’m from.

I stammer that I’m from New Jersey, and he sets down his pails and folds his arms, deciding I must be Millie Santini, the neighbor of an old friend of his. He explains, in an accent I’m guessing is Italian, that he wrote back and said he has no room for me, though maybe the letter didn’t get there fast enough. He frowns and gestures at the pigeon cages, muttering that with so many birds to feed, he has enough hungry mouths already.

Now Rebecca looks uncertain and turns to me, asking whether Mr. Rossi is right. Did I really come all the way from New Jersey, or am I Daisy, the vaudeville performer Max told them about? I hesitate.

The one thing I can’t say is that I’m from about 100 years in the future, since I don’t want either of them to think I’m crazy. I know I’ll need a place to stay no matter what. It would be exciting to claim I’m a performer, but what if I have to prove it?