Nothing could have stopped her; dancing was who she was. Ophelia was set far enough apart from her neighbors that she had peace when she slipped out back. The yard was bordered with a thick copse of trees. She liked them because there was no way in hell that Tommy would step foot inside of there.
It hit her one morning after she did a warm-up session outside. Leaves crunched under her sneakers as she twirled, leaped, danced with a freedom she’d been eerily missing ever since she first met Tommy Mathers. The longer she was in Hamlet, the more she felt like she belonged. She wanted to give back. But how? And, suddenly, she knew.
As much as the locals treated her as a curiosity, the few she met were nice enough. Kind. And they all seemed amazed that she was a professional ballerina once upon a time.
Dancing. It was her life. Even if she couldn’t perform any longer, that didn’t stop her from enjoying it.
Or sharing her passion with others.
She thought about it all that night. When the niggle of the idea didn’t disappear, she brought up the idea of teaching Hamlet locals to dance.
“It’s not about the money,” Grace explained. Considering the haul she got when she pawned Tommy’s diamond bracelet, she was set for some time. “I just want to feel like I’m doing something, you know?”
“I think that’s a splendid idea. You should definitely do it, sweetie.”
“I just—I don’t know how to start. Is there a community center in town? Somewhere I can get a group together and talk to them, maybe advertise free lessons a little.”
Maria shook her head. “Not like what you’re used to, I’m sure. Most locals meet up at the coffeehouse or Thirsty’s, if they want a drink. There’s Izzy’s beauty shop for some of the lady gossips, plus Dave’s barbershop for t
he fellas. That’s on Main, but I’d avoid them if I were you. They’re even worse than the ladies.”
“What about a school?” She’d already been taking lessons five days a week before she was in kindergarten, but she remembered some of her school friends taking dance classes for fun. “Maybe I can hang a poster... you don’t happen to have like a Kinkos nearby, do you?”
“Kinkos?” In her Italian accent, the word sounded so much more exotic than it was. “I don’t know what that is.”
“It’s like a print shop. Or maybe you have a printer I can borrow. I brought my laptop, but that was all. I could make a simple poster to hang up and maybe get some students interested in a dance class. I would just need to be able to print it out.”
“You want to make a poster?” At Grace’s nod, Maria held up one finger. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
Maria left the kitchen only to return a few minutes later with an armful of art supplies. She had a stack of paper, a box of colored pencils, some markers, a ruler, a pair of scissors, and a pen.
Uh-oh. That didn’t bode well for her. Grace could dance Kitri’s variation of the Grande Pas de Deux of Don Quixote with barely any effort so long as she had her toe shoes and a fan. Give her a marker and a blank sheet of paper and she was all thumbs.
“Oh. Wow. Maria? When I said I wanted to make a poster, I was thinking a Word doc and maybe some clipart. I can’t use any of that stuff.”
“Don’t you worry about that. Sit down. Give me five minutes and I’ll have an ad for you that’s better than anything you can get at your Kinkos.”
She wasn’t exaggerating, either. Grace watched in awe of Maria’s artistic ability. She used the ruler to draw a line about three inches from the bottom. Above the line, she sketched a faceless ballerina, arms outstretched, tutu wrapped around her high waist. She used three colored pencils to fill it in—red, pink, and white—then inked it with her felt-tip pen. Underneath, she used simple but elaborately decorated letters to spell out exactly what Grace wanted to offer: FREE BALLET LESSONS.
“I’m going to make this one for you,” Maria said, underlining the message. “If you don’t want to leave Hamlet, we do have one shop with a copy machine. Jefferson’s market. We can get copies made and then I can show you all the places to drop them off.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Hmm.”
“No, seriously. You’ve already done so much. Point me in the direction of this Jefferson’s place. I can do it.”
Maria brushed her bangs out of her face, bending down over the poster again. “Yes, well, they’ll need some way to get in touch, sweetie.”
On the bottom third of the sheet, she turned the page on its side and used a lovely cursive script to write: Contact Ophelia of Hamlet. She did it repeatedly, leaving a small gap between each line, then snipped the space until it looked like fringe.
Oh. Grace got it now. It was one of those rip-a-number-off things. Perfect.
“We’ll have to get you a radio eventually,” Maria mused, “but, ‘til then, we can share my channel. How’s that sound?”
It sounded wonderful.
Jefferson’s was about a ten minute drive from Ophelia, heading further into the heart of town. She was growing used to the way the locals gave directions around Hamlet. Mountainside, gulleyside, stay on Main. She thought it was weird how the deputy—because he wasn’t a cop, but a deputy—told her how to get to Ophelia by looking for stumps and lamp posts with purple ribbons. There really were no signs, or even traffic lights. Probably because there was hardly any traffic.