Dancing on the Edge Read Online Free PDF Page A

candles and sit together on his bed and watch them, and Dane would describe to me the really big celebration we’d have when he sold his new book. And I could see it all. Through the flames of the candle bottles, I could see the magic that shimmered in the room and spiced the air, the kind of magic that gets you believing in miracles.
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    A UNT C ASEY CUT MY HAIR just like Dane’s, swearing that Gigi would kill the both of us, but Gigi liked it. She said short hair looked very stylish and chic.
    â€œWe should have had your hair cut like that long ago,” she said to me in the car on our way to Grandaddy Opal’s home just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. “It sets you apart. It makes a statement. It says to the world, ‘Look out, ’cause Miracle McCloy is on her way.’ It was the same with your daddy. He had that special something. I knew it from the day he was born, but your grandaddy didn’t believe it, not a bit. He said, ‘Dane needs to learn a trade, needs to learn how to work with his hands and work hard.’” She said this with a gruff man’s voice, imitating Grandaddy Opal. Gigi divorced him because of Dane.
    â€œIf it weren’t for me, your daddy would have been working at a sawmill or something. But that nice Mrs. Lundy let us use her little beach house. Right on the water it was, too. I helped her contact her dead brother, Albert, you know. Some people know how to show their gratitude. I bought Dane a typewriter and fixed him tuna and tomato sandwiches and made sure no one bothered him so he could just write and write and write. But did he ever thank me?”
    I glanced over at Gigi. She was gripping the steering wheel and making faces as if she were having a conversation in her head with somebody. I figured she was going back over the argument she and Dane had had just a few days before he melted. Anytime Dane got upset about his work not going well, the two of them ended up in a big fight. I could always see it coming. First, there’d be several days when he wouldn’t have any work to read to me, then he’d start swearing at his computer, and finally he’d tell me to “run on along” because he needed to be alone. I hated it when he’d tell me to leave because I knew if I had worked it right, steered him away from his worries, he’d be back to writing, and he and Gigi wouldn’t end up saying hurtful words to each other, words that scared me.
    Sometimes I’d get him to read me his favorite story by a man named Kafka. I could never remember the name of it so I’d say to him, “Read me that story about the man who turned into a cockroach.” If I could convince him to read it, in no time he’d be back to thinking about his own story, and I could stay down in the cave with him, and he and Gigi wouldn’t have their fight.
    In their last argument, Dane blamed Gigi for messing up his life, which he did every time they fought. Then he said that Opal should have been the one raising me. He said if I were with Opal, I would have turned out normal, and that Gigi wasn’t fit to raise a child and never had been.
    I could tell by the way Gigi’s mouth twisted down that he had hurt her to the core. She couldn’t even think up a good comeback. She waited until he left the room before she said, “I must have done something right, Mr. Prodigy.”
    Gigi turned off the highway onto a road of fast-food restaurants and we poked along, stopping every minute at the red lights.
    I leaned my head against the car window and tried to forget about Dane. I thought about Aunt Casey standing outside our house that morning, crying and waving good-bye. I hadn’t expected her to carry on so about our leaving, and watching her gave me the uncomfortable feeling that she knew something about the move I didn’t know. Her mascara and eyeliner streamed down her cheeks because she was allergic to everything