I’m giving you a taste of delicate and demure, my friends, steps I’m told aren’t meant for a body like mine, showing you I can be your perfect music box ballerina. Lift the lid, and I will spin and spin and spin for you.

But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stay there.

Grande jeté. Arabesque, slowly, slowly, counting down because in three, two, one—

The beat drops.

And I drop to my knees.

And there is such a roar.

So long, ballet.

The deep thrumming bass of a heavy, bone-shaking dubstep “Sugarplum Fairy” remix, familiar classical music gone bonkers, crashes over all of us.

It sweeps away my sweet performer’s smile, and in its place is me, Addie, slightly wicked, grinning out at the audience and telling them, You ain’t seen nothing yet.

Sweeping my hand up along my side, the length of my neck, asking with my hand, with my smile, You ready to see ballerina doll go burlesque? All in one move and right on the beat, I release the sparkling rhinestone clip pinning my hair into a prim updo, and I fling it into the air. My hair tumbles down around my shoulders in waves, and I whip it around, arching my back, whip it around again, my mass of dark curls glittering silver and gold, wild and untamed, and I’m really grinning now. Because this is what I want, to show you how beautiful I feel.

Gathering all my hair up, I lift it off my neck as I roll my shoulders, moving to the thunder that’s filled up the whole room. A pirouette like the world has never seen, sinuous, letting my hips swing around with the force of the turn, leaning it into the force of what my body can do, a tornado, the ballerina unleashed. Then stomp to a halt at my musical cue.

Hips moving to the beat, I trace my fingers down my arm to my shimmering glove, now teasing the first reveal, and suddenly, with the thought of it—the first reveal—I almost rock to a halt, almost stop, almost freeze, almost go up in flames. The beat goes on without me, and I am out of sync. Can anyone tell?

I spin again, roll my hips, buying time.

It’s just an arm. Just a hand.

Still, my mind flashes on names: Shima, Juan, Alice … I know they’re out there, saw them coming in. Sarah, Elise, Eleanor … I have to be with them Monday in math, in technique, in English …