The Year My Sister Got Lucky Read Online Free Page A

our hair up and our feet turned out (we can’t help it — we don’t know how to walk any other way). We don’t know anything about him, either, other than the fact that he has a bushy mustache and will give us a discount on Dentyne Ice if we ask for it nicely.
    “Where’s the train?” Michaela asks under her breath, tapping one foot as she gazes down the length of the pitch-black tunnel. “We’ll never make it at this rate.” It usually takes us about forty minutes to get to dance school, and we have the whole journey down pat — ride the 6 train to Grand Central Station,transfer for the shuttle to Times Square, then catch the 1 train, and get out at West 66 TH Street. It’s a bit of a hike, but I kind of like all the switching of trains, the hurrying through stations, soaking up the mad energy, being part of the crush.
    “Don’t stand so close to the edge,” I warn Michaela, taking her wrist. Our parents enjoy scaring us with stories of lunatics who push people onto the tracks. These are the things, the rules, you learn when you’re a city child: Watch your back; keep your bag tucked under your arm; avoid making eye contact.
    I wonder what the rules are upstate, in the country. Keep an eye out for rabid foxes? Avoid creepy men in overalls who go by the name “Farmer Joe”? I’m considering these possible terrors when I notice a small shape dart across the tracks.
    And I shriek.
    The woman standing next to me, who is wearing head-to-toe black, including giant sunglasses, looks up from her BlackBerry and scowls.
    “Rat!” I clap a hand to my mouth. “Michaela, there’s a rat —”
    “It’s a mouse,” Michaela corrects me, trying to wrestle her wrist out of my death grip. “What’s with you? It’s not like you haven’t seen one before.”
    I don’t answer. The rat — I know it’s a rat — pauses on the tracks and turns its rodent-y little head in my direction. Its beady red eyes seem to glowat me, and then it turns and sprints away, a second before the train squeals into the station.
    “It’s an omen,” I tell Michaela as the train doors part, blowing freezing air out at us. “Don’t you know that? An omen of … doom.”
    “Good God, Katie.” Michaela lets out the mother of all big-sister sighs.
    I bite my lip as we’re pushed onto the train by a swarm of impatient bodies. Everyone has their little New York superstitions, and mine is that rats in the subway equal bad luck. Last night I suspected it, but now I know for sure: The move to Fir Lake is going to be a disaster.
     
    Forty minutes later, Michaela and I have gone from the realm of rats to the hushed, cream-and-rose-colored world of the Anna Pavlova Academy of Ballet. The dressing room is empty as we hurriedly shed our street clothes, and my sister and I wave to each other as we dash into our respective studios.
    “Katie Wilder,” my teacher, the great Claude Durand, pronounces.
    When the great Claude Durand speaks your full name, it can be very good or very bad. Once, once, after I performed a decent arabesque, he smiled, patted my arm, and said, “ Oui, Katie Wilder!” My heart sang that day, even though Claude’s smile can be frightening (apparently they don’t have proper dental care in Paris).
    Today, Claude is standing in the center of the wide, airy studio, wearing his usual navy-blue leotard and rolled-up gray sweatpants, and glowering as he strokes his neat white goatee. Beams of sunlight fall through the tall windows, lighting up the nine girls standing at the barre: my Lower Intermediate classmates. They are all dressed in black leotards, pink tights, split-sole Sansha slippers, and high, tight buns. Seeing them like this, I can understand why we’re called bunheads.
    Our eye-patch–wearing pianist, Alfredo, is at the white baby grand, cracking his knuckles. Clearly, they were about to begin before I rudely burst in. And, when I glance into the wall of mirrors, I notice that — as Michaela predicted — my