Tallulah knows that moving to a bigger home is a good thing—but it’s still hard to say goodbye My sister and I lived in a small yellow house with a bright-blue door. The roof was white and so was the porch. The stairs were a bland tan, but I actually liked them a lot because they were familiar. Delilah (she’s my sister) and I shared a room. We only had enough space for a bunk bed and a dresser. I was on the top bunk and she was on the bottom. We each had sheets that were blue. Our bed was in the corner of the room, the corner closest to the big window. By “big” I mean “small,” but it was the biggest window we had ever seen. We had pictures of each other on the pretty purple walls. We loved our room. Our parents’ room was next to ours. Our parents had a bed and two dressers and two small mirrors. A bigger mirror was hung on the door. Though it was still slightly bigger than our room, it was still small. We had old-people neighbors, and none of us had a lot of money. The streets were mostly dirty, though once a year the street sweepers came in and did the top part of the street, leaving most of the street unkempt. Only a week ago, we had found out that we were moving. My parents were really excited, but not me. Delilah was hopeful, but not me. This is what my mother said: “Tallulah? Haven’t you always wanted to live in a bigger house and go to a better school? This will be your chance!” I suppose I had, but I didn’t want to leave my street. So I just shook my head up and down. “You will have a bigger room and more space for things you like!” my father answered. “But Dad, I don’t want to move! Aren’t we happy here?” “Tallulah, your mother and I are bigger than you and Delilah. We need more room.” “Hey, I want to go outside,” Delilah interrupted. “Go outside with your sister, Tallulah.” I grabbed her and darted out of the house. By the way, I am ten and Delilah is five. Outside, we played in the nice green grass. Imagine the prettiest blue dress you’ve ever seen; that’s what the sky looked like. I remember Delilah doing cartwheels across the grass. She begged me to play with her, so I did. After a while, my friend walked by and stayed with me. “I heard you were moving.” “Yeah.” “Where are you going?” “A town away.” “Oh.” Delilah stopped doing cartwheels and sat down right in my friend’s lap. “Hi, Gracie,” she said. “Hi, Delilah! I’m gonna miss you and Tallulah a lot.” “I know. I will miss you and Devon. Where is she?” “Oh, she’s at my house. I can call her over.” Devon was Gracie’s little sister; she was also five. Gracie ran down the street to get Devon; they only lived three houses down. Gracie eventually returned with Devon in her arms. No other kids lived on the street, so we were lucky that Gracie was my age and Devon was Delilah’s. Delilah played dolls with Devon, and Gracie and I played hopscotch. After a while, we all played tag, which was kind of hard since Delilah and Devon were so young. “Oh no, you got me!” I yelled when Devon tapped my arm. “Tallulah’s it!” Gracie called, running with my sister’s hand in hers. Once our legs got wobbly and our breath was scarce, we went inside and my mom made us dinner. * * * Everything was pretty normal the rest of the week—just packing and such. But when the week was over our parents threw a big party, and our parents’ friends came over for dinner and so did mine and Delilah’s. Gracie and Devon were the first people there. Next came my friend Lena and her baby brother, Alan. “Hi, Tallulah,” she said, hugging me. “Hello, Tallulah! Hello, Delilah! We were very sad to hear that you were leaving,” Lena’s mom said, coming into our house. For some reason, when Delilah’s in the room, adults do that thing where they are very loud and they over-articulate. Lena, Gracie, and I left together and went into the small backyard. Since our house was pretty small, the party leaked over into the backyard, front porch, and front yard. I thought it was a lot of fuss since we were only moving a town away, but I think our parents wanted us to leave on a happy note. I don’t remember where Delilah went once all of her friends showed up, but my friends and I stayed in the backyard and played card games, and eventually we went inside and played Mario video games that my friends Luke and Livie (they are twins) brought. “And Tallulah Ross takes the lead!” * * * “Come on, girls! Time to get up!” my dad is calling from downstairs. “We have got a lot of things to start moving!” “Dad,” I ask, “how will we sleep there tonight?” “We have a very special surprise.” “Surprise?” Delilah asks, suddenly jumping up. “Your mother and I purchased sleeping bags!” The reason we are moving is that our dad got a new job and he gets paid much more money. It’s a good thing, I guess. “You have got to be kidding me.” I slump back down into my bed. “Come on, Tallulah. It will be fun to sleep on the floor of our new house.” Our dad shakes the bed, which makes me even more mad. I hop out of bed and hold my sister’s hand. I follow the smell of pancakes downstairs. “That smells so yummy!” “Thank you, Delilah!” my mom says as she picks my sister up. As soon
March 2021
Good Time
Procreate Emi Le, 13Millbrae, CA
Believing
Waiting to hear if she and her dance teammates won nationals, Lily reflects on the ups and downs they met along the way I walked onstage slowly, following the dancer in front of me. I was sweating up my costume, partly because of the intense heat coming from the blazing stage lights overhead and partly because of the anxious anticipation. I peered into the audience, trying to find my grandma. My eyes traveled over hundreds of people, tall and short, young and old, but from the stage, they all looked the same. All I could see in front of me were rows and rows of seats, not a single one empty. The stage itself was humongous. Colorful lights hung from a beam on the ceiling, illuminating the large wooden platform. Velvety violet curtains—three on each side— hung indifferently from the rafters backstage. On the large screen, fixed on the back wall of the stage, the Kids Artistic Revue (KAR) logo was projected in an enormous purple font. After a long wait, the audience murmured like the gallery at a trial as two men wearing black suits stepped onstage carrying a towering trophy. At first, the trophy looked shiny black, but as the men set it in the center of the stage and it caught the light, rainbow hues flashed magically across its long metal rods, thrilling me. I gulped nervously as a woman with long, curly red hair came striding up to the stage holding a giant piece of paper. Quickly, the cavernous auditorium became eerily quiet. Squinting, I managed to see the number 200 written on an oversized check; it was the $200 prize to be awarded to the winning dance team— the National Grand Champion. Out of nowhere, a feeling of dread shot through my body, and I shivered despite the invisible glow of heat radiating from above. My team had won first place in the first round, and we had survived the secondary round to make it into Showcase, the finals, our chance to win the ultimate prize. Just a few of the original fifty squads had to be bested, and I kept thinking that it would be a shame to have gone so far just to lose in the showcase round. Of course, the other teams were probably thinking this way too. I glanced around the stage, where the eight other teams had formed a half circle. What were the chances that we would win? “I yearned to feel the thrill of dancing on stage for a large audience, but my family was too poor to afford dance lessons, and my parents couldn’t even afford to buy me dance shoes. Eventually, I gave up on my dream”. I thought back to the regional competition three months earlier when our team had received a low score. On stage, we had been wobbly and messy, and everyone had returned home embarrassed and sad. Afterward, there was even talk about forfeiting our spot in nationals because of our poor performance in the regionals. When I’d heard some of the rumors flying around, I was upset. To me, there was no doubt: we absolutely had to go to nationals! After how hard we had worked, and how long, we couldn’t, after one bad performance, just give up. Luckily for me, our tough-as-iron instructor, Ms. Lu, agreed. Instead of letting us give up, she demanded that we work harder than ever and pushed us to our limits. Slowly, our form improved, and a twinkling of hope began to reappear. Day after day, we rehearsed for hours, and now, three months later, we were at nationals. As far as I was concerned, we had to win to prove those disbelievers wrong. As we stood there waiting, the passing seconds felt like hours. I found myself nervously fingering a long tear in my skirt, one that had been cleverly patched up with a long white thread that had rendered it practically invisible. And, oddly, touching the thread triggered a memory. My mind drifted back to the day after our defeat at regionals, when my beloved grandma was sitting on the couch in our living room, sewing the rips in my costume, rips that had occurred on the rough competition stage. “You can do it, Li-li,” she said to me, sensing my lack of self-confidence. I stopped whatever I was doing, walked over, and sat next to her. Her warm, gentle voice and soft smile, along with her soft curls, hid an inner toughness. “Never give up,” she said to me in perfect Mandarin. “When I was a young girl like you, I lived in a small town in China called Shantou. My dream was to be a professional dancer. I would secretly watch dance performances on television and search magazines for pictures of elegant dancers and paste them on my bedroom wall. I would lock myself in my room and dance to some music, glancing longingly at those pictures. I yearned to feel the thrill of dancing on stage for a large audience, but my family was too poor to afford dance lessons, and my parents couldn’t even afford to buy me dance shoes. Eventually, I gave up on my dream. You cannot, Li-li,” she said to me, her eyes sparkling with a deep determination that I didn’t have. I nodded earnestly and gave her a tender smile. “Don’t worry, Grandma,” I reassured her. “We can do it.” I held her delicate hand for a few more seconds and then left, a warm feeling in my chest and a new motivation burning in my heart. Our team, consisting of sixteen nine-year-old girls, had spent many months learning a dance called “Everybody Do the Cancan.” It was a cabaret-style jazz dance, and the highlight was a very difficult sequence that came in the middle of the performance. At a precise time, all sixteen of us would form a straight, horizontal line and, while kicking our legs high and together as one, complete a
