The second half of the novel is now written and will be posted by chapters on Mondays. The book title on the previous chapters will be changed to 'Dance, Dance, Dance, Amy'

Chapter Sixteen - Richard's Illness

[Sunday Day Fifteen of the Enchantment]

Coach Patricia Russell, Denise's mother, called the Sunday meeting short.

“Day off,” she said, voice firm but gentle as she stood in the doorway of the cheer lounge. “Everyone handle personal business. Hydrate, stretch, and do not get injured. I mean it.”

Brittany whooped, Sabrina clapped once and spun on her heel, and even Hailey let out a relieved sigh that sounded almost like a laugh. Backpacks zipped. Ponytails fell free. The team evaporated into the echoing hallway like confetti on a breeze.

Patricia didn’t move. She watched the door close, then turned to Denise with that seeing-through-you gaze that made Denise want to check the mirror for smudged mascara—except she wasn’t wearing any.

“Come with me,” Patricia said.

They didn’t go far. Just down to the multipurpose room where the mirrors ran in an unbroken wall and the old roll-out mats smelled like new sneakers. Patricia clicked on only the front bank of lights; the mirrors threw back a ribbon of brightness that made the dim corners look like safe shadow. It felt like a stage without an audience.

“Training wheels are off,” Patricia said, matter-of-fact. “Time to make sure you can ride.”

Denise swallowed. “I can ride.”

“I know you can mimic,” Patricia corrected. “I need to see you be.”

She opened a drawer and pulled out a folded Lamur t-shirt, the kind with the little emblem stitched over the heart. She handed it to Denise. “Put that on. Hair up. No hat. No suit. Just you.”

No armor. Denise’s palms went slick. She wasn’t in the Amy suit. She wasn’t in the uniform. She was just a girl in a gym with her mother-coach’s eyes on her.

She changed in silence. The cotton felt soft, the emblem small and certain against her chest. She caught her reflection—Denise, neat ponytail, clear face, a little too pale. The mirror didn’t flinch.

“Walk,” Patricia said.

Denise walked. Not the exaggerated hip-sway she’d perfected to make the boys laugh when she was Amy, not the athletic stride of a base moving between reps—just a walk. Heel, toe. She watched the girls she’d shadowed: Chelsea’s economy, Hailey’s bounce, Star’s glide. She didn’t borrow any of them. She found the flat line of her own bones and let her weight settle through her hips as if she’d always carried it there.

“Turn. Reach up. Adjust your ponytail.”

Denise lifted her elbow. The mirror returned a girl’s outline, unhurried. The elastic snapped, and she caught it without flinching. Her hands did not tremble.

Patricia’s face softened by degrees. “Good.”

Denise let herself breathe.

Her phone buzzed against the folded sweats she’d left on the bench. She ignored it. Then Patricia picked it up, glanced at the screen, and her mouth tightened.

“It’s from his mother, Jennifer Sanders” Patricia said.

A beat of dizziness tilted the room. “Richard Sanders?”

Patricia nodded, thumbed her own phone. “You need to hear this from me and not a voicemail.”

The words came like stones dropping into a pond—one, two, three, each spreading rings that overlapped and made the surface wobble. “They’ve flown out to a college for a scholarship visit. He’s… very ill. Incommunicado. She says he needs rest, no phones. She asked that you not worry.”

Don’t worry was always the wrong imperative. Denise felt the hollowness under her ribs open like a hatch.

“I—okay,” she said, which was the lie she knew Patricia would let her set gently on the floor.

“You are allowed to be angry or scared,” Patricia said. “You are not allowed to let it run you, sweetie.”

Denise blinked hard. In the mirror, her eyes shone wet. She waited until the sting passed. “What do I do?”

“What you do is what you did yesterday and what you will do tomorrow,” Patricia said. “You show up, you take up your own space, and you don’t wait for someone to tell you who you are.”

Denise nodded, then nodded again because the first one had been automatic and the second one was a choice.

“Cheer practice is off today,” Patricia added. “But the world isn’t going to stop testing you because I said ‘day off.’ Let’s set up one more test. No uniform. No squad. No Richard. Just you and the mascot suit as a prop.”

Denise laughed once, short. “Just me and the eighty-pound hamster.”

“ARMYdillo,” Patricia said, but she smiled.

They hauled Amy out of the equipment cage together. The suit slumped onto the mat like a quiet, sleeping animal. Denise unsnapped the head and set it aside. It stared at the mirror with its blank, friendly grin.

“I want you to show me a first-eight that’s yours,” Patricia said. “Not Chelsea’s, not something from a clip. Something you could lead in a hallway if you had to get Hailey’s attention and get the whole building looking at you—in a good way.”

“Hailey?” Denise asked.

Patricia tilted her head. “She’s on campus. She was reviewing tumbling in the auxiliary gym. I told her to swing by.”

As if conjured, there was a quick knock and then Hailey popped her head in. No eyeliner. Hair in a messy loop. The kind of girl-beauty that made Denise ache for a second with wanting to belong to it.

“You rang?” Hailey said lightly, but her eyes flicked over Denise, then to the suit, then to Patricia, and Denise caught the sharpness there—the alertness she’d started to recognize as the line between teammate and friend.

“Witness,” Patricia said. “No coaching. No rescue. Just watch.”

Hailey propped the door with her foot, folded her arms, and leaned against the frame.

Denise stood in front of the mirror and let the hum she always tamped down rise to the surface. It wasn’t magic, not the capital-M kind. It was an old habit; her body’s way of listening to the room and matching it. Mimicry as a way to belong. But if she stripped the habit of its camouflage, there was a rhythm underneath that had nothing to do with copying anyone.

She counted herself in, out loud, because emptiness eats silence. “Five, six, seven, eight.”

She started with a clean clap—sharp, elbows in—and a step-touch that wasn’t anyone’s but hers. A high-V that softened halfway through into a diagonal punch, then a snap-down that flowed into a toe-touch she didn’t jump but placed, because she was not here to impress a panel; she was here to claim shape. She pivoted into a tuck roll, came up to a low-V, and let her hands settle on the ARMYdillo suit’s shoulders as if greeting an old friend at a party. She grinned at its silly grin.

Then, because the whole point was leading without a crew, she moved behind Amy, slipped her arms through the sleeves but left the chest gaping, and used the weight like resistance. She dipped, drove through the thighs, and pulled Amy into a three-count half-lift so the suit’s belly cleared the mat on four. On five-six, she guided it forward like a dance partner, and on seven-eight she let it drop into a staged bow that looked intentional, not clumsy.

It wasn’t a stunt anyone would put in a sanctioned routine. It was a message: I can carry this. I can make even this awkwardness listen to me.

Hailey’s “pffft” of a laugh turned into applause before she could stop herself. She stepped in, grabbed the suit’s paw, and pumped it like Amy had just signed a million-dollar endorsement.

“That was stupid cute,” she said. “And kind of badass.”

Patricia didn’t clap. She didn’t need to. She nodded once, slow. “Again. But this time, call it like a captain.”

Denise’s throat worked. She looked at Hailey, at the suit, at her own face in the mirror. She lifted her chin.

“Lamur on me,” she said, voice steady. “Five, six, seven, eight!”

She called out the counts, clean and clear, named the arms, named the levels, named the fun, because fun was leadership when fear wanted the mic. She made the same sequence bigger, brighter. At the end, she stepped out of the Amy sleeves, slid her hands to her hips, and hit a high V that felt like fireworks in her shoulders.

Hailey whooped. “Okay, captain.”

Denise laughed, breathless. The crack in her chest where the news about Richard had slipped in still ached, but it didn’t gape. It was a bruise she could move with, not a wound she had to protect.

Patricia picked up the mascot head and offered it to Denise. “One more,” she said, a glint in her eye. “Helmet on.”

Denise took the head—sixty degrees hotter, vision narrowed to twin ovals—and slid it down. The world smelled like foam and detergent. Her breath bounced back at her cheeks. She planted her feet, widened her stance, and felt the weight pull her forward. She adjusted, straightened, and found her center again. The mirror gave her Amy’s grin. Behind the mesh, Denise smiled back.

“Hailey,” she called through the muffled mouth. “Spot me for a second?”

Hailey moved to her flank without question. Denise bent her knees, set her hands on the mat, and kicked into the clean, simple cartwheel she’d practiced a hundred times in the safety of empty halls. Amy’s head dragged at her balance, but she kept her hips stacked, toes pointed, and landed solid. The room erupted—Hailey’s shout, Patricia’s quick inhale, Denise’s own surprised laugh like a popped bubble.

“Again,” Denise said, and did it. This time smoother. At the end, she stuck the landing and threw the head back like a victory toss, catching it before it hit the floor.

She stripped the head off and the world rushed back in. Hailey grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her, grinning.

“You’re ridiculous,” Hailey said. “In the best way.”

Patricia finally clapped, two quick sharp beats. “Good work,” she said, and if there was pride in it, it was the quiet kind that Denise would carry for the rest of the day like a lucky coin.

Her phone buzzed again. Denise glanced at it. No new message from Richard. Just the old thread, the last blue bubble with a dumb meme, the gray one with a single heart.

She slid the phone into her pocket and didn’t check it again.

“Go shower,” Patricia said, gathering the mascot head like a precious thing. “Eat. Study. Stretch. And—call me if you feel the floor tilt.”

Denise nodded. Hailey gave her a quick side-hug—awkward around the armadillo’s paw—and jogged backward toward the door.

“Text me if you want to run counts later,” Hailey said. “Or if you want fries.”

“Counts and fries,” Denise said, and surprised herself by meaning it.

They left the gym together, the echo of their steps weaving into one sound. In the hall, Denise’s reflection ghosted along the trophy cases. She watched the girl in the glass walk with her head up and realized she wasn’t mimicking anyone’s stride.

Outside, the sun made the concrete hard and bright. The sky was so clean it hurt to look at. The day felt like it might keep its balance after all.

At the corner, Hailey peeled away with a finger-gun salute. Denise lifted her hand in return, then tucked it into her pocket.

Richard was gone for now. The training wheels were gone for good. But when she’d lifted the weight of Amy and made it move the way she wanted, something had clicked into place that hadn’t been there before. Her mother knew that going back to basics and Amy was the way to ground her for what was coming.

She could carry. She could lead. She could be.

And she didn’t need anyone to tell her how.