Chapter 2 – Clover Robinson
Chapter Two
Clover Robinson
The three of us stand in a straight line in front of the dance studio mirror, getting into position to rehearse the choreography Kola spent all night coming up with.
Sylvia stands to my left, and Kola to the right.
I’m the shortest, so I stand in the middle, hands raised over my head in the starting position.
I pick up dance moves quickly, so I think I can nail the lead.
I’m out of breath after the first minute and I throw my hands up in a T-shape.
Time out. Kola stops the music, out of breath and grinning.
“How was that?”
“Hard as hell,” Sylvia says. “I’m out of shape, y’all.”
Sylvia doesn’t look out of shape. She’s a couple inches taller than me and much fitter.
Her smooth dark stomach undulates as she gasps for air in her white crop top and black leggings.
Sylvia has a great fashion sense. I wear baggy clothes whenever I can get away with it, including dance rehearsal.
I don’t look like a sexy dancer in my purple vintage baggy track pants and my oversized “Free Weezy” t-shirt.
Kola throws her arms around both of us proudly.
She’s about the same complexion as Sylvia, officially making this the first time in my life I’ve been the ‘light’ one out of all my friends although in England, I’m still just…
black. Kola wears bright yellow leggings and a tight black crop top that makes her boobs look Hollywood ready.
“Clover, you killed it,” Kola says. “I knew you would make a good lead. And Sylvia, you did great. We need to run through this a few more times and then we can teach our new recruits.”
I don’t know how we’re going to pull a dance team together at this school. Rich English people aren’t exactly known for their rhythm.
“I can’t believe they’re letting us do this,” I reply, awkwardly sailing past the compliment.
I don’t like that kind of attention. I work hard, I dance hard, but I don’t like taking away attention that we all should share. If I did a great job, so did Kola and Sylvia. I’m surprised Sylvia doesn’t want to dance the lead, but she completely refused when I tried to push the job over to her.
Sylvia swings her hips and does a little victory dance. “We threw the word diversity and initiative into our proposal and we have ourselves a dance team. We’re going to make this school so much fun.”
Sylvia’s sister went to college here before the name change.
The Fox Academy. It makes this spooky gothic place seem that much scarier.
But my new friends are right. If we can pull a dance team together, we don’t have to do one of these British sports for our physical education requirement, and we can spend time doing something we actually love.
“Let’s take it from the top,” I suggest the minute I catch my breath. I don’t want to lose the moves before I nail them down. If we’re going to teach a bunch of white kids with no experience how to shake their ass, we need to be in peak form.
“I need some more water first,” Sylvia says, taking a sip from her water bottle and adjusting one of my dreadlocks back into place. “But let’s do this!”
I’m so lucky my first friend here was Sylvia.
She literally hugged me the first time we met and squealed with excitement about finally meeting another black girl.
I knew the school would be primarily white, but I didn’t know it would be this isolating.
Anything is better than being at home right now. I just need to remember that.
Kola glances down at her phone and pumps her fist excitedly. She manages the recruits along with the choreography.
“Yes! We got new recruits. Look, they’re coming to rehearsal.”
Kola tilts her phone so we can all stand around her and admire her skills at recruitment.
“Who?” Sylvia says, crowding around Kola’s phone with me to look at whatever has her swiping excitedly.
Kola pops her hips and does a little dance as she points to our new recruits.
I am definitely not in the South anymore.
The people on the screen look like they have about as much rhythm as bread pudding.
“We’re making them audition, right?” I mumble.
Teaching a few newbies won’t be a problem, but everyone on Kola’s list looks disastrously free of rhythm.
“Um, yeah, I guess. But girl, we have to take everyone if we want the dance team to succeed,” Kola points out.
I scroll down the list and find one of the only boys to join the team.
“Do you really think a guy named Roger can bust a move?” I grumble, putting my forefinger underneath his name. Roger doesn’t seem like he has rhythm but at least he’s good looking. If his looks help us recruit more dancers, I can keep quiet.
Sylvia snickers in what I think counts as agreement.
“We can train them,” Kola reassures me. “Mold them into rhythm-having dancers and maybe even entrepreneurs.”
Sylvia rolls her eyes. “Slow down. First, we’re going to have to teach them about clapping on the two and the four instead of the one and the five or whatever it is they do.”
Sylvia laughs at her own joke along with me and Kola. Her bubbly spirit is so different from the energy of people back home. It’s not that she doesn’t care what people think or she’s above it all. She’s just… genuine.
We have to stop giggling over Sylvia’s joke when a tall guy pushes the door to the dance studio open, completely shirtless and scraping some obnoxious contraption across the ground as he drags it behind him. The sound immediately causes me to wince. Annoying.
The three of us turn to look at him and… I recognize him. Apparently, so does Sylvia.
“Thomas? What are you doing here?” She says, contorting her face in confusion and putting her hands on his hips. I can’t bring myself to look him in the eye but before I dart my gaze away from him, I notice how grey his eyes are.
Thomas. Yeah, that was definitely his name.
Ugh. The only thing that could make my awkward meltdown with Jude Fox any worse is running into one of the witnesses of my public shame.
I don’t even know why I hooked up with Jude.
I mean, he looks good. But looks aren’t everything, you know?
If I hadn’t been so drunk and stoned, I probably wouldn’t have said yes to him. And Thomas knows.
“We’re taking over,” Thomas says, dropping his contraption on the ground with a loud thud.
“Hey, this is a dance studio you can’t just drop metal on the floor,” I snap.
Thomas snickers, stopping himself from slouching to make his body taller as he intones condescendingly, “It’s not metal. It’s an ergometer.”
His accent sounds so ridiculously rich.
“A what?” Sylvia asks, putting her hands on her hips, about as unimpressed with Thomas’ contraption as I am.
“A rowing machine,” Thomas replies snidely. “For the crew team. Now scurry. We’re using this room.”
“No. You’re not. We’re the dance team and we’re using this room,” I snap.
Judging by the fiery look on Thomas’ face, I probably should have let Sylvia handle this. But something about this Thomas guy makes me feel warm and uncomfortable. He’s a jerk. Look at him just standing there like he owns the place. Ugh.
Sylvia glances nervously at Thomas, but he isn’t looking at her, he’s staring at me with a fierce gaze. Tread carefully, Clover. This is a small school and you have a reputation to look after. His grey eyes roam all over me. His gaze stops me in place.
“Clover,” he says without any intonation. He said my name. I freeze because I don’t actually want to talk to Thomas, or acknowledge him.
“You two know each other?” Sylvia sounds surprised, but it’s more surprising to me that she knows this tall, terrifying asshole.
“No,” Thomas answers. “But she knows… many people.”
The gentle smirk teasing the corner of his lips enrages me.
He’s talking about Jude and I haven’t even given my friends details about the Jude situation.
They just know I had two one-night-stands that went badly and they think I’m some kind of feminist hero for ‘liberating’ myself.
They wouldn’t feel that way if they knew what Jude said to me.
But Thomas knows and I don’t want him blabbing to my friends and making me look like a girl who fell for some dumb British guy’s line.
“You should leave,” I say to Thomas as firmly as I can manage. “We’re practicing now and we have more members coming in for auditions.”
“No chance, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart?! I want to punch his condescending ass face.
Thomas whistles and seven more boys enter the room behind him, dragging those stupid ass ‘ergometers’ behind them.
They’re all shirtless with these weird unisuits hanging over their hips, the tight spandex highlighting the pale legs and protruding junk of every guy on the team.
Thomas is the only one on the team absolutely covered in tattoos.
A knife, a snake, a skull and a fern protruding from his pants. How far does the fern tattoo go?
“Oh my God, EW!” Kola screeches. “They’re right! You can’t be in here! Get these naked mole rats out of here!”
The sight of too many white men in tight pants finally stimulates her to stand up against Thomas. Kola never spent much time around white people before the Fox Academy.
Thomas sticks his headphones on, long brown hair falling to his shoulders suddenly pushed off his face. He has such an annoying face.
Then everything gets worse because the last member of the crew team enters the room — Jude Fox. He looks at me and says loudly. “Hello, Clover.”
The entire team laughs and repeats his words with purposeful mockery. “Hello, Clover.”
“Thomas!” Sylvia protests. “Get them out of here. We’re serious. We have people coming down for rehearsal.”
“Try the basement,” Thomas says. “We have permission from the headmaster to use this room.”
“So? We asked the dean,” Sylvia says.
“Headmaster beats dean.”
Sylvia argues with Thomas for a few minutes, but that gives his annoying ass crew team plenty of time to establish a complete takeover of what should have been our perfect dance studio.