The Devil of DiRisio Read Online Free

actually taught us. Was that legal? Could this place legally be called a school when all they did was give us textbooks, tell us to read them, and expect us to come on Saturdays to sit for exams?
    Could they do that? I guess they could, because they did. Well, in all fairness, they did offer private tutoring in all subject areas every night between six and ten. But after dancing for twelve hours, who wanted to go watch a tutor pull his hair out in frustration because after two months you still didn’t know the difference between ionic and covalent bonds for your chemistry class? Certainly, not me. Anyway, on that particular day, I tried to make sense of trigonometry when Anna Marie burst into the room.
    “Damian Karl,” she panted out of breath. She must have run all the way from the office to tell me about this person.
    “What?”
    “Damian Karl is coming here!” She jumped up and down, on the verge of exploding with excitement.
    “So?” I asked, not sharing her excitement. At first I thought he was her boyfriend from Minnesota.
    “You don’t know who he is?”
    “Nope. Never heard of him.”
    “Oh, my God. That’s unbelievable.” Anna Marie grabbed the remote and turned on the TV. “He’s only one of the greatest hip hop dancers ever. He’s choreographed for Justin Timberlake, Usher, and Janet Jackson,” she explained as she flipped through the channels. “And he’s coming here! I can’t believe we’re gonna be learning from Damian Karl!” she added as she stopped on MTV.
    “Look, this is a Veronica Valerio video. He did the choreography for it.” She turned the volume up and started imitating the moves in the video. She was pretty good too.
    Anna Marie kept dancing around our dorm room singing the popular Veronica Valerio song that I’d heard several times on the radio. “Come on, let’s dance,” she said, shaking her butt like I had seen girls do back in Venton Heights.
    “Did you learn that in Minnesota?”
    “This is how everyone dances.”
    “Not me.”
    “You’re kidding me, right?” She stopped dancing and gave me a sideways glance.
    “Why? You think because I’m black, I can automatically dance like that?” I sat back down on my bed and opened my math book.
    “That’s not what I meant and you know it.” Anna Marie was a little offended.
    “Seriously, I can’t dance like that. Never have, never will.”
    “ Don’t worry , Damian Karl will find that inner black girl in you,” she had said as she continued to shake her butt closer and closer to me.
    “Get off me!” I had squealed.
    Anyway, back to our schedule, from eleven thirty to twelve we had another break, then back for pas de deux class from twelve to two thirty where I prayed and prayed that Pierre only dropped me once or twice. It was way too much to ask for him not to drop me at all. I didn’t think it was physically possible. Pas de deux class was also where I got the daily, not-so-subtle talk from Madame Mara about how big I was. One day, after Pierre dropped me for the fifth time, Madame Mara said, “You two are horrible partners.”
    “I know that. Maybe we should be paired with other people.” I looked at Pierre for a little back up. Maybe if we both complained, they would give us other partners. Pierre was too busy admiring his reflection in the mirror, however, and was unable to come to my aid. Madame Mara looked around the room, then back at me.
    “There is no one else. You are too big!” I thought I would die. I felt like a cow. I couldn’t believe she would say that in front of everyone. A few minutes later I told her I had female issues, went to the bathroom, and cried.
    From three thirty until four thirty, the girls had pointe class. And from four thirty until God knows when, we worked with Alejandro, the short, militant Spaniard who hated me but happened to be the current studio director.
    “I’m so tired of them calling me fat, Will,” I sobbed in his arms as we sat by the pool in his