Dance with Me

Put on the glasses, and Ballora will dance for you.
Kasey put on the glasses and felt the same dizziness as the night before.
She looked down the sidewalk toward Circus Baby’s Pizza World. There, in
the distance, she saw the image of a ballerina, her hands above her head,
standing on tiptoe and spinning. It wasn’t a very sharp image, blue and a
little fuzzy. A hologram. That was what these kinds of pictures were called,
she suddenly remembered. But even if distant and blurry, there was
something fascinating about the strange ballerina doll twirling.
A pirouette. That was the word for that kind of twirling. When she was
little, Kasey had wanted to be a ballerina, just like lots of other girls. But
there had been no money, and her mother had said that even if there had
been money, she wouldn’t waste it on something as useless as dance
classes.
Kasey stood on the sidewalk and watched the image as though
hypnotized. It was beautiful, and there was so little beauty in Kasey’s day-
to-day life. Kasey felt overcome with sadness and longing and another
feeling, too … regret? Was she regretting the way she lived? A life should
have beauty in it, shouldn’t it? Life should be about more than just survival.
After a while, Kasey started to feel dizzy, as if she were the one doing
the pirouetting herself. Afraid she might be sick, she took off the glasses
and leaned against the side of a building to get her bearings.
She looked down at the pair of glasses in her hand. Really, the ballerina
was a pretty impressive visual effect for what looked like such a cheap toy.

---

No wonder the little girl was upset when Kasey snatched her goody bag. To
a little kid, these glasses would seem downright magical.
Kasey put the glasses in her pocket. She decided to skip the park and go
back to the warehouse. She had to show the guys this crazy toy.
Jack and AJ were just waking up when she got back.
“What time did you guys get in last night?” Kasey asked, sitting down
on a crate.
“Dunno. Two? Three?” Jack yawned. He propped up on one elbow in his
sleeping bag. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t have to punch anybody’s time
card.”
AJ unzipped his sleeping bag and sat up cross-legged on the floor. “Hey,
we were just saying we might take that gas card you pinched up to the Gas
’n Go and see if we can use it to get some groceries.”
“Sure,” Kasey said. It would be good to have some food in the house.
“But first I want to show you something.”
Outside the warehouse, beside a dumpster, Kasey took out the glasses.
“These were in the goody bag from the pizza place. Try them on.” She held
the glasses out to Jack.
Jack put them on, struck a “cool” pose, then laughed.
“Look in front of you,” Kasey said. “Do you see her?”
“See who?” Jack said.
“The dancing ballerina.”
“I don’t see anybody,” Jack said. “They just make everything look blue,
that’s all.”
“Let me see ’em,” AJ said, taking the glasses from Jack and putting them
on. He looked around. “I don’t see anything, either.”
“No ballerina?” Kasey said. It didn’t make sense. Why could they not
see her?
“Nope. Everything just looks blue, like Jack said.” AJ handed the glasses
back to Kasey.
Kasey was confused. Maybe the glasses only worked in front of Circus
Baby’s Pizza World? But that didn’t make sense, either. Why would
someone make a toy that only worked in one place?

---

She put on the glasses and looked straight in front of her, across the
street. The ballerina—Ballora, according to the instructions—was there,
dancing in a garbage-strewn alley between two warehouses. But soon the
dizziness overcame her, and again there was that uneasy feeling she’d had
before. “Well, I see her,” Kasey said, taking off the glasses before she lost
her balance or threw up. “Maybe there’s something wrong with your eyes.”
“Maybe there’s something wrong with your brain,” Jack said, laughing
and elbowing AJ, who laughed, too.
Kasey ignored his ribbing and put the glasses back in her jacket pocket.
But she did wonder. Were they right? Was there something wrong with her?
At the Gas ’n Go, they grabbed way more food than most people would
buy in a convenience store: a jumbo loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, six
bags of chips, cans of ravioli and beef stew, and a twelve-pack of soda.
Kasey knew she would be the one to pay at the register because Jack and AJ
always said she had an honest face. Also, people were less likely to suspect
a woman of criminal activity.
The cashier looked sleepy-eyed and bored as she rang up and bagged all
the items. Kasey scanned the stolen card in the machine and held her breath.
It took only a few seconds, but it felt like ages until the word “Approved”
appeared on the screen.
Kasey, Jack, and AJ grabbed the bags and waited until they were outside
the store to laugh at their good fortune. “Well, we won’t have to worry
about food for a few days,” Jack said. “Hang on to that card, Kasey.”
Kasey put the card in a small compartment in her backpack. “I will, but I
don’t know if we’ll be able to get by with using it again,” she said. Usually
credit card companies were pretty quick to cancel cards they suspected were
stolen.
Back at the warehouse, they feasted on peanut butter sandwiches and
potato chips and soda that was still cold from the convenience store’s
cooler. Jack and AJ were still high from the adrenaline rush of successfully
using the stolen card. They laughed and joked around, but something was
bothering Kasey that she couldn’t put her finger on. She smiled at Jack and
AJ’s jokes, but something that felt like worry was nagging at the back of her
brain. The weird thing was that while she felt it, she didn’t really know
what she was worried about.
There was always the thief’s worry of getting caught. The worry of
being arrested, tried, jailed. That worry never went away, but this feeling

---

was something else. Somehow it had to do with the glasses, with the fact
that she could see the dancing ballerina while Jack and AJ couldn’t, with
the strange way looking at the twirling ballerina made her feel.
After they were finished eating, Kasey grabbed one of the plastic bags
from the convenience store. “Put your trash in here,” she said to Jack and
AJ, “and I’ll take it out to the dumpster.”
“Always cleaning up after everybody. Such the little housewife,” Jack
said, dropping his empty soda bottle in the bag.
“Hey, I can’t help it if you guys are slobs,” Kasey said. “I don’t want to
get a bug problem in here.”
Kasey had grown up in a series of progressively dumpier apartments.
Her mom would get evicted for not paying the rent, and then they’d move
to another place that was smaller and dirtier than the one before it. There
were always cockroaches, and in the summer, an endless parade of ants.
When Kasey got old enough, she washed the dishes and took out the
garbage that her mom let pile up. Cleaning helped some, but bugs would
still come over from other people’s apartments like party crashers looking
for free food and drink. Kasey always thought that when she grew up, she
would have a neat little apartment of her own that would be clean and bug-
free. Unlike her mom, she would pay the rent on time every month.
The warehouse wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind, but at least she
could do her part to keep the bugs away. She took the trash bag outside and
tossed it into the dumpster.
Maybe she would take a walk. She felt a sudden need to be alone. She
knew that, inside the warehouse, Jack and AJ would be making plans for
the night. Since it was Friday, they’d probably want to go downtown to
where the clubs were. If you waited late enough until people had been