When the interminable full-day SAT prep is finally over, Mom declares she is too tired to cook.
Mindy’s mom insists that Andy and I stay for dinner so that Mom can relax a bit with Dad without us around.
We all jump at the chance for this. I wonder wildly if I can say I’m spending the night, then leave for home and end up having an entire night with Blitz!
But watching Mindy and her mom work together in the kitchen to make dinner for all of us, I can’t do it. She’s just sixteen and I can’t get her in trouble on my account.
Her mom sees how anxious we are to talk and waves us off to Mindy’s room. She doesn’t have a rule about keeping her door open, so as soon as we’re alone in there, Mindy pulls out her phone.
“It’s out, Livia. You have to see it.”
“What’s out?”
“The video.”
Oh my God. I dig my phone out of my bag and power it back on. There are a slew of messages from Blitz. He’s seen the video. He loves it. He’s given the green light. Can I come over and watch it with him?
If only I could. Maybe I’ll sneak out after I get home. Maybe I’ll just run away!
“Play it play it play it,” I tell Mindy.
She holds out her phone. The video already has a couple hundred thousand views and it’s only been up for three hours.
The title is “Blitz Craven’s precious new dance partners.”
It opens with a few seconds of the girls prepping, powder on faces, hair getting braided. Then the mirror of Studio 3 and an empty room. The girls come in, the images carefully close up to show only their faces. Then Blitz holds his arms out to greet them.
He goes down the line, straightening their arms and adjusting their chins. They move together, arms in fifth position, framing their faces.
Then Blitz turns in a circle, the view pans out, and you see the wheelchairs.
It’s very powerful.
There are a few more seconds of dancing and turns, the middle section of their recital piece, and then they do the half circle around Blitz.
I know I’m behind Marissa in this shot, as I’ve moved her chair. The camera closes in on Daisy, then Gabriella. My Gabriella!
Then he looks up, and his face is just as I remember in the moment, so full of emotion. My heart catches.
“I think I just fell in love,” Mindy says.
The video fades out with the words “Any dancer can be a star.”
“That is wow,” I say.
“Look at the comments.” Mindy scrolls down. Other than one or two who still call Blitz evil and horrid, most are swooning over the video and how he treated the dancers. One says, “He had me at minute 2:17.” A bunch of others agree.
We go back up to the video. Sure enough, it’s that look he gives the camera, raw, naked, vulnerable.
The look he gave me.
I pull out my phone. I’m not even sure what to say. That it’s going to work? That I love it? And maybe him? That I want to spend the night with him? That I’m the luckiest girl on the planet?
I tap out something simple instead.
The video was incredibly beautiful. I am so proud to have been there. You are perfect.
I can feel the smile in his response and picture his happy expression.
The thing that made it work was you.
And then another.
You make me a better man.
I show it to Mindy. She falls back on her bed. “This is the most romantic thing, like, ever.”
Then she rolls on her side. “You think he’ll get his show back?”
I don’t want to think about that. “Let’s watch it again,” I say.
And we do, over and over, reading new comments, until Mindy’s mother calls us to dinner.
I’m afraid it is the beginning of the end.