Page 23 of The Right Kind of Wrong

Maisie . . . Lockhart, she assumed—she’d add it to her list of questions—was standing near the glass wall, her sneaker-clad feet stubbing the ground.

Blake crossed the studio quickly, stopping in front of Maisie, who looked up at her cautiously. “Maisie, right?” she asked. “My name’s Blake. I teach this class. Do you remember me?”

Maisie nodded, and for a second, Blake had the irrational fear that the little girl would burst into tears again.

In Blake’s defense, that experience had traumatized them both.

She still didn’t know what she’d done to cause such a strong reaction, but some kids were just especially sensitive to the world. If they’d had the words to describe it when she’d been younger, she’d probably have been identified as one of them.

But her own mother would accept nothing less than perfection, which went hand in hand with congeniality, so Blake had learned from an early age to mask her discomfort. Feeling at ease in front of crowds or being the center of attention was never going to be her happy place, but she’d learned strategies over the years to make it work.

One of the things that helped was doing something she genuinely loved. And she absolutely adored kids.

Their curiosity. The way they took in the world. And don’t even get her started on the clothing.

She’d planned to have at least a couple of her own. She’d grown up teaching Vacation Bible School and volunteering at the town’s summer tennis program for preteens, and, most recently, she’d been an aunt to the kids that her former friends had started having within the last five or so years.

Working at the dance studio was a natural evolution for her, especially in her time of financial need. If she didn’t have her evening classes here, she’d be spending the majority of her time with sweaty men who overwhelmingly swore like sailors and looked like they’d just traipsed up from the depths of a mine whenever they slid out from underneath a car.

But back to her newest student. Luckily, the knowledge that Blake was a familiar face seemed to outweigh the nature of their first meeting, and she was on the receiving end of a smile after a few seconds of hesitation from Maisie.

That look warmed Blake from the inside out, and she relaxed, placing a hand on her own hip. “Is this your first dance class?”

Again, Maisie nodded but didn’t speak.

Blake could already tell, given her lack of ballet shoes, her shorts, a T-shirt instead of leggings and a leotard, and her general unease in the space.

“Well, I’m happy to have you here.” Dropping down to her knee, Blake leaned a little closer, like she was sharing a secret. “I’m sort of new here, too.”

Maisie’s already big eyes grew impossibly larger. “Really?”

Blake nodded seriously. “Yep. I just started teaching here. So I know what it feels like to be somewhere new.”

She watched as Maisie pointed through the glass. “My aunt Monroe is new, too.”

“I can’t believe that she didn’t want to dance with us then. It’s what all the new kids are doing!” Blake made sure to keep her voice light, and she avoided staring through the glass for too long, lest it seem she was trying to catch Monroe’s eye.

“But you aren’t kids,” Maisie challenged, squinting one of her eyes adorably, like she was trying to make sense of what Blake was saying.

“You’re right,” Blake agreed, “but I did know your aunt when we were kids. Did you know that?”

She hadn’t known Monroe in elementary school, but by middle school, she’d been aware of who she was. Quiet. Shy. A lot like her niece, it seemed.

“Aunt Monroe didn’t say.” Maisie shook her head, finally pushing off the wall and standing up taller, gaining confidence as she took up more space. Blake loved to see it, and she refused to interrupt the moment, even as she was curious as to whether Monroe had mentioned her lately.

And yeah, she was aware of how bananas it was that she was trying to ferret information out of a kid who probably hadn’t even started kindergarten yet.

But as much as Blake’s life had been changing as of late, it was, at the end of the day, woefully small in a lot of ways. Monroe Lockhart breezing back into town was like a breath of fresh air amid the cloying need for survival she found herself wading through each day.

Her watch vibrated, signaling that it was time for class to start. She coaxed Maisie over to the corner, where there were cubbies she could place her shoes in. Then, taking extra care, she set Maisie up in the front but over at the edge, so she could keep an eye on her but also not make her feel like the center of attention.

She could teach this class with her eyes closed. Stretching took up almost a third of the forty-minute class, which included floor exercises, posture building, and arm poses. She taught them through the lens of a five-year-old, having her students pretend to hold an invisible beach ball to teach first position or imagine an invisible string was pulling them up from the tops of their heads to practice good posture.

By the time they’d moved on to the technique portion of the class, Blake’s mind had begun to wander.

Sunday night was the first time in months that it had felt like she’d had a real conversation with anyone. Her sister, Grace, just wanted her to get over what had happened to keep the peace—and to avoid embarrassing her around town, probably. Her mom, infuriatingly, made her feel like she’d done something wrong, but Blake wouldn’t let herself accept what she knew wasn’t the truth.

“Now, rise up on your tippy-toes,” she told the class, clocking the range of motion and control of what looked like a pack of drunken ducklings.