I want to make a difference as a fat dancer. And I want to put my mark on the art as someone extraordinary, and talented, and wildly creative and innovative and new. But here is proof that we’ve already made a difference to people in another sort of way. And that is so much bigger than any other part of this.

By Wednesday it’s funded; by Thursday I say, “What am I supposed to do with all this money?” On Friday there’s a plan.

31

There’s a row of rainbow-frosted cupcakes in the middle of the table, each one of them has a match in it, and Taylor and Katherine are racing to get them all lit before the other ones go out so that Nevaeh can take a snapshot. And since I’ve already burned my fingers twice on the last set of matches, I have been banned from helping, and Nevaeh threatens to send me across the coffee shop to a table in the corner if I don’t stop laughing because I keep blowing them out.

“Yes!” Katherine yells, and I clap when Taylor gets the last one lit. Nevaeh is fast on the photo button, capturing the flames before they flicker out, the happiness on my face, the photo we’ve been dying to upload with the caption we’ve been waiting to use, hashtag met the Kickstarter goal, hashtag blew the goal out of the water, hashtag wait until you see what we’re going to do next. Nevaeh rejects all my ideas for hashtags because she has much better ones, because she’s the internet genius, the marketing genius, the make-it-viral person.

“Hashtag where the hell is Jack?” Nevaeh says, typing on her phone.

“On his way,” I tell her, and he’s coming with his laptop under his arm. He wanted to show it to us in person. Taylor doesn’t want to wait until he arrives to start eating the cupcakes, but I save mine for him and slide over in the booth when he arrives, smelling like snow and cold air, his cheeks red and his eyes glitteringly happy as he wiggles out of all his gear.

Nevaeh makes grabby hands at the laptop. “Show it, show it, give it,” she says.

“Hello, it’s so nice to see you,” he says. To me, he says, “Have you had anything to eat? How’s your day been?”

“Show it to us before I whack you with this cupcake,” I tell him.

He stands and reaches into his backpack, turns to all of us. Nevaeh reaches across the table and takes my hand. He opens the laptop and spins it around.

My picture. I’m leaping through the air, looking like I can fly. Like I’m flying. And underneath, the quote, bold and strong.

Don’t shape yourself to fit the world. Make the world shape itself to fit you.

The Adeleina Elizabeth Grant Dance Scholarship Fund