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mirror, she bent her neck so that it would follow perfectly the curve her back and arms made. Then she looked back beyond herself in the mirror, seeing the whole class, all performing the same exercise, reflected back and forth in the mirrors that lined the two long walls of the room. “Praise God,” the song sang inside her, over the notes of the piano.
    This was a real dance studio, as different from Miss LaValle’s garage as—she didn’t know anything perfect enough to compare the differences. Even though from the first minute she had stepped into it, she had felt at home, she never lost the feeling of wonder at how right the studio was. It had two narrow walls of tall windows and two long walls of mirrors that went from ceiling to floor. The upright piano filled the room with its waltz tempo for the barre exercises, as Miss Maddinton went up and down the line, correcting. “That’s good, Mina,” she said.
    The floor was polished wood and the air was filled with light. The music went into Mina’s body, and she brought her leg down in time with it, then lifted her left leg. All along the walls, mirrored back and front, fifteen girls did the same. In the mirror, thirty-two arms stretched out. Mina let a smile spread over her face.
    It was coming close to the end of camp, with only a few days left before their performance. They named their dance “Narnia” and they were assigned to this same big studio for their rehearsals because they were a group so they needed more space. These days, the four of them came back every afternoon to rehearse. Mina could see why the instructors were making them work entirely without guidance, and she preferred it that way; but she wished she could hear what Miss Maddinton thought, before the performance. Mina had been careful to listen to what Tansy said when she tried to explain how things should be danced, but she thought Miss Maddinton would have some good advice. It wasn’t that Mina was worried about their dance. She knew it was wonderful. She just thought she wanted it to be absolutely perfect. Miss Maddinton might catch something they’d missed.
    Charlie called Miss Maddinton the “White Witch,” from the Narnia books, but Mina didn’t see why. It wasn’t as if Miss Maddinton wore only white, or had white hair, or anything like that. Her hair was dark, inky black—dyed, Charlie said—and long. She wore grays or silvery blues or silvery pinks, her leotard, tights, and wraparound skirt all the same color. She was a professional dancer who only taught during the summer, only at this camp. Most of the year she was with a ballet company in New York.
    Over the summer, Mina had written to her mother about everybody at camp, and what they were all doing. Miss Maddinton had occupied a lot of letter space, because she was a real dancer, a professional. Miss LaValle, Mina’s teacher at home, had studied dance, but she was only a teacher who gave lessons in her converted garage-studio, with a record player for music. Miss LaValle was built like Miss Maddinton, both of them tall, narrow women with muscular legs, but she was older, and she wore her leotard as if it was a uniform, and it was always a plain black uniform too. MissLaValle had taught Mina well, Mina could tell that. She liked Miss LaValle and was grateful to her. But Miss Maddinton, Miss Fiona Maddinton—she was a real ballerina. Mina wondered what Miss Maddinton would do for her own ten-minute performance, on the night. Because it got so there wasn’t anything happening to write to her mother about, Mina sometimes just wrote down her guesswork about things like that: what Miss Maddinton would do, or whether Charlie’s father would lose his job because he lost a big account. Her mother wrote back the news from home, that Zandor got a fifty-cent-an-hour raise and had a new girlfriend, that Belle was bored (and boring, Mina’s mother added),