I RUN THROUGH the airport in shapeless tracksuit pants, my hair flying behind me.

A screaming toddler stands in my way, and I leap over him in a somewhat

graceful grand jeté before pirouetting past a man who’s struggling to carry his giant
suitcase.

“Faites attention!”a woman yells at me after I almost step on her foot. Be careful!

The thing is, I can be careful or I can be late, and being late is not an option right now.
This American girl needs to get to the other side of Paris tout de suite.

“Sorry,” I say as I race through the Charles de Gaulle terminal, my backpack banging
into my shoulder.

The reason I’m late is that there was a crazy storm in New York last night, and my
flight was delayed by four hours, then six. I stopped counting after that so I wouldn’t
pass out from the idea of missing my first day of school. Well, not school, exactly.
School is a piece of cake compared to what’s waiting for me here.

I bump into a group of children straddling the entire width of the terminal hallway and
almost fall flat on my face, but I manage to turn it into a pas de basque. Thank you,
muscle memory from approximately a million years of ballet classes.

I’ll admit, this is not how I imagined my first hours in Paris. I had a picture-perfect
vision of what was supposed to happen: I would get off the plane on a warm, sunny
morning, my wavy brown hair bouncing and shiny, even after the seven-hour flight.
I’d swing my tied-up pointe shoes over my shoulder and declare something cute in
French with a perfect accent—the result of months of practice—before strutting
elegantly toward the best summer of my life: an intensive ballet program at the
prestigious Institut de l’Opéra de Paris. Le dream, non?

Instead, I “gently” shove past a few people to snatch my suitcase off the luggage
carousel, then search the signs above my head for the word taxi. That’s when
something truly wild happens.

“Mia?”

Um, what? How does someone in Paris know who I am?

“Mia? Is that you?”

It takes me a second to recognize that voice. I turn around, and there she is, my
nemesis. Or she would be, if I believed in nemeses.

“Whoa, Audrey! What are you doing here?” I realize it’s a stupid question only after
the words come out of my mouth.

“The same thing as you, I guess,” she answers, looking surprised. When I booked my
ticket, I was surprised by how many flights there are to Paris every day. I guess we
were on different ones, both delayed by the storm. In any case, I can practically hear
her wondering, How did Mia get accepted into one of the most exclusive summer
ballet programs in the world?

’Cause I worked my buns off, I want to say.

I’m not going to lie: Audrey is one of the best ballet dancers our age in the tristate
area, but, hey, so am I. I know because we’ve competed against each other in every
major event in the dance circuit since we were basically babies. I live in Westchester,
which is outside of New York City, and Audrey lives in Connecticut, so we don’t go
to the same ballet school (thankfully!), but several times a year, I watch Audrey
snatch roles, receive accolades, and almost always come out just ahead of me.

“You got into the Institut de l’Opéra de Paris?” Audrey asks with a perfect accent, one
eyebrow raised in suspicion. I can tell she regrets her question, because she adds right
away, “I mean, what level did you get in?”

I clear my throat, buying some time. There are five levels in the program, and students
from around the world get placed according to the skills they demonstrated in their
application video.

“Four,” I say, holding her gaze.

Four is great. I was so excited to get level four. Honestly, I was happy to just get in,
especially after being rejected from the American Ballet Theatre’s summer program in
New York. I’ve worked my entire life to get into a program like this. Ballet has run in
my family for generations—or so the legend goes—and I know my grandmother
would have been pretty sad if I didn’t get into any school, though nowhere near my
own major disappointment.

“That’s great,” Audrey says. Her hand tightens around the handle of her suitcase, the
only sign that betrays her true reaction. Yep, I’m good enough for level four.

“And you’re in…?” I begin, even though I can guess the answer.

“Five,” she answers coolly.

I nod. Force a smile. Of course she is. It’s fine, really. Audrey’s technique is flawless;
even I can admit that.

“Are you coming?” she asks in a clipped tone, starting to walk ahead of me. “We
should share a taxi. It doesn’t make sense to take two cars to the same place,” Audrey
adds like she’s talking to a child.

“Right.” I hate to admit she has a point. “But we’re probably in different dorms?”
I pull up the dorm address on my phone, which Audrey reads over my shoulder. She
lets out a deep sigh. “That’s where I am, too. Please don’t tell me they put all the
American students together.”

“Seems like it,” I say as we make our way to the taxi stand, not bothering to hide my
annoyance. There are over a hundred girls and boys aged fourteen to eighteen
attending the ballet summer program, and the dorms are scattered all over the city.
The minute I received my admission packet with the address of where I’d be staying, I
thought I’d won the Paris lottery. Now I’m not so sure about that.

“Boulevard Saint-Germain,” I tell the driver once we’re seated in the back of a
metallic gray car with leather seats. Even the taxis in Paris are chic.

The man frowns at me in the rearview mirror, and I don’t know what else to do but
frown back. I have no idea what’s happening. My thoughts feel like they’re trapped in
a cloud. Even if I had slept on the plane, Audrey’s presence would be enough to throw
me off my game.

She shakes her head, then hands the taxi driver her phone, which is open to the map
with our dorm’s address. My newbie mistake hits me right in the face. I’ve researched
Paris so much that I should have remembered that Boulevard Saint-Germain is one of
the longest streets in the city. It snakes across most of Rive Gauche, the side of Paris
south of the Seine. Basically, it’s like telling a New York City cab driver that you’re
going to Fifth Avenue.

Audrey gives me a pointed look that seems to say, Lucky I’m here.

Her phone rings just as we get on the freeway: a FaceTime call from her mom. I’ve
never met her, but I know who she is—a retired principal dancer who spent her entire
career in Moscow with the Bolshoi Ballet. As I listen to Audrey go on and on about
how her flight delay almost ruined her life, I realize that I haven’t even told my
parents I’m here yet. I send a quick text saying that everything’s fine. Dad responds
immediately.

Good luck at orientation! Show them who’s boss! Love you.

I smile and respond.

I’ll try! Love you too.

And then nothing from Mom. I keep staring at my phone, hoping, wondering,
wishing. She’s still mad at me. Grandma swore she’d get over it by the time I left for
Paris, but clearly she hasn’t.

Ever since I was little, dancing has been my whole life. To my mom, however, it was
just a hobby, something fun I did on the side, an extracurricular activity to keep me
busy on weekends. I kept telling her I wanted to become a professional ballet dancer,
and that I would do whatever it took to make it happen, but she always shrugged it
off, like it was something I’d outgrow. Luckily, between Dad and Grandma Joan
(Mom’s mom), there was always someone to drive me to classes, help me sew
costumes for my shows, and cheer me on during important performances.

But things got really tense with Mom when I started talking about applying to this
program.

“You didn’t get into New York. Why would you try again in Paris?”

I’d just received my rejection letter from ABT and was doing my best not to show
how devastated I was. I always knew how competitive it would be, but I figured that,
after a lifetime of dedicating myself to my art, I had a real shot. But Mom didn’t agree
with me. “So many girls want this; there just aren’t enough spots for everyone,” she’d
said with a sad face. It hurt a lot to realize that she was right.

“Paris is every aspiring ballet dancer’s biggest dream,” I’d said.

To be honest, that’s not exactly how I felt at the time. Even though it’s true—the Paris
program is just as well regarded as the New York one—I only ever dreamed of
attending ABT, and of joining their company one day. But that wasn’t going to
happen this summer, and I couldn’t allow myself to accept defeat. Everyone knows
everyone in the ballet world, and borders don’t really exist. If I made it in Paris, then
I’d find my way into ABT eventually. They couldn’t get rid of me so easily, even if I
had to cross an ocean to prove it to them. At least that’s what I told myself.

Mom shook her head. “It’s your last summer of high school. Don’t you want to see
your friends, go to the pool, to the movies, and just, you know, do other things?”

“They have pools and movies in Paris, too.”

She ignored my snarky tone. “Mia, there’s more to life than ballet. You need to have a
plan B. Everyone should have one, especially when they’re only seventeen and
chasing an impossible dream.”

She’d never put it so plainly before. An impossible dream? Thanks for believing in
me, Mom.

Despite everything she’d said, I kept rehearsing for my video, checking the
requirements—an introduction to explain my experience and credentials, a showcase
of each of the key steps, then a personal routine of at least two minutes. Grandma
Joan even surprised me with a new leotard in a beautiful shade of dove gray.

“It’ll be your Paris leotard,” she said as I dashed to my room to try it on. It fit
perfectly and complemented my blue eyes.
“I haven’t even been accepted yet,” I told her as I adjusted the straps over my
shoulders. My hands shook as I imagined myself practicing pliés in a light-filled
Parisian studio.

“But you will be,” Grandma said, her voice firm. “How could they ever say no? It’s in
your blood.”

“Mom!” Mom said to Grandma Joan as she walked into my bedroom. She cast a
skeptical glance at the Degas poster hanging over my bed. “Can you please stop
saying that? It’s not even true.”

Grandma sighed, then turned to me. “Of course it’s true. You come from a long line
of ballerinas, Mia.” She gave me a wink. “You believe me, don’t you?”

Grandma Joan has told me the same story since the day I put on my first tutu. The first
part of it is definitely true: My great-grandmother was French. She met an American
man in Paris when she was twenty-three, fell in love, and moved to the U.S. soon after
their wedding. But before that—and this is when things get a little murky—she
practiced ballet. Like her mother before her, and her mother before her, all the way
back to the late 1800s, when my great-great-great-grandmother was a danseuse
étoile, a principal dancer, the highest, most prestigious ranking in the Paris Opera.
Supposedly, this was around the time Edgar Degas created his world-famous
paintings of ballerinas.

Grandma insists that Degas painted my great-great-great-grandmother, and that she

was the subject of one of his masterpieces. The nonspecifics of this family legend
drive Mom crazy. She doesn’t believe this story, and whenever Grandma Joan brings
it up, she’ll happily point out that no one actually knows which painting our ancestor
might be in, or even remembers what her name was. If she was a ballet dancer at all.
Mom never lets me forget that it’s most likely made up, and that there’s no way to
know for sure. She doesn’t want me to believe in fairy tales.

But I do.

The myth itself is proof enough that ballet is my destiny—how could anything as
strange as this get passed down from generation to generation if it weren’t true? This
story has always been part of me, of how I dance. When I’m performing, I sometimes
imagine my ancestor twirling across the stage, spotlighted by gas lamps, while Degas
sweeps his oil paints and pastels onto canvas and paper. I like to think she was part of
his inspiration, that he watched her spin in a sea of color and light.

I wore my new leotard for my audition video, which Camilla, my best friend from
ballet school, helped me film. She’d decided to only apply to local summer programs,
and swore it had nothing to do with the fact that she didn’t want to be away from her
new boyfriend—an aspiring musician named Pedro. I think Mom wishes I had a
boyfriend as well, but my dating experience so far has only proved that no one can
make my heart flutter the way ballet does. To go with my leotard, I put my hair up in
a tight bun, my face fully made up. And two months later, I got into the Institut de
l’Opéra de Paris, just like Grandma had promised.

I close my eyes for a moment, and when I reopen them, one of the most famous
churches in the world stares back at me.

“Notre-Dame!” I squeal to Audrey, who doesn’t react. I press my face against the
window, soaking in its beauty, the two towers disappearing off behind our taxi, the
arched structure revealing itself in the back, and the grand majesty of it all. My first
look at Paris! But I don’t have time to revel in the moment, because our taxi makes a
right turn, and, a couple of minutes later, we pull off to the side of a wide street
packed with cyclists, buses, and pedestrians.

“Finally,” Audrey says, looking out the window.

The driver slams his horn as a bike zooms past, and I’m definitely awake now. The
cyclist turns back and yells what I can only assume is an insult. Though, because it’s
in French, it sounds almost pleasant to me. Our driver just shakes his head in response
as he parks in front of a white stone building, about six stories high, with small double
windows all with matching gray curtains—our home for the summer. Thanks to my
Google Street View research, I know exactly where we are—a stone’s throw from the
embankments of the Seine, and the lively student neighborhood called Saint-Michel.

Inside the building, the hall is very quiet. According to my admission packet, my
room is on the third floor, and I pull my suitcase up the curved stairwell one step at a
time as Audrey rushes ahead with her duffel.

“I knew it!” she calls down the stairs. When I catch up, she’s standing in front of a
door, shaking her head.

A handwritten sign reads: Audrey Chapman & Mia Jenrow

I take a deep breath. Roommates. Ugh.

In the room, two single beds with metal frames are tucked against opposite walls,
which are painted in dirty beige. There are also two tiny closets and a small wooden
desk barely big enough for a laptop. The window looks onto the building on the other
side of the inner courtyard, letting in very little light, even though it’s now the middle
of the day. Okay, so it’s not as glamorous as I’d imagined.

Without a word, Audrey pushes past me and claims the bed by the window. She
quickly pulls out fresh clothes and makes a dash to the communal showers. I grab a
striped tee and a flowy navy skirt and follow suit. Ten minutes later, we’re both back
in the room and ready to go when I notice the cardboard tube peeking out of my
suitcase. I stop in my tracks.
“What now?” Audrey asks, standing by the door. Our flight delay means that we have
to leave immediately if we want to get to orientation in time.

I don’t want to have to explain to her that inside that tube is my favorite painting in
the whole wide world. I’d promised myself I would hang it up as soon as I got to
Paris. It’ll only take a minute.

“You should go ahead. I…” I pick up the tube and open it. “I need to do something.”

Audrey gives me a funny look, her big brown eyes framed by thick but perfectly
curved eyebrows. I’m sure she’s going to run out the door and not speak to me for the
rest of the summer. Instead, she retrieves the few pins from the corkboard above the
desk and kicks off her shoes. “Quick,” she says.

I’m too shocked to respond as I join her on my bed. A moment later, I smile as I take
in the image I’ve woken up to for as long as I can remember: Ballet Rehearsal on
Stage, the Edgar Degas painting featuring tulle-clad ballerinas rehearsing on the stage
of the Paris Opera. It’s so striking; I can practically sense the tension before the
curtain lifts.

“It’s a superstition—” I begin.

Audrey cuts me off. “I get it. I put my ballet clothes on the left side of my body first.
The left strap over my shoulder before the right, the left leg in my tights, my left
shoe…I can’t dance if I don’t do that.”

I grin. Audrey and I may have never exchanged more than a few icy words before, but
this is promising.

“It’s a nice painting,” Audrey admits.

With the Degas dancers watching over me, my Paris adventure can finally begin.