Dance for Me
By Amina Gautier, first published in At-Risk: Stories
When a black teenage girl at a private school gets invited to a party by a wealthy white student, she struggles to navigate the divide between their world and her own.
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Plot Summary
A Black teenage girl attends an all-girls’ private school on scholarship, where the divide between her and her wealthy white peers is only remotely bridged by their school uniforms. One day, she’s in the bathroom trying to adjust her skirt to be shorter like the other girls when a girl named Heather walks in and asks her to teach her a dance. There’s a party on Friday that only the wealthy girls are invited to, but they assume she’ll be good at dancing because she’s black. Heather is impressed by her moves, and when the girl gets home Heather calls her and tells her she’s gotten her a sponsored invite to the party and an even more exclusive sleepover at her house afterwards. The girl’s mom is excited she’s finally making friends and immediately agrees. Over the next few days, Heather brings more and more girls for her to teach how to dance in the bathroom. She also tells the girl that there will be guys at her party and asks the girl to get weed for them, to which she agrees. That day, she goes to a store she knows is a front and asks for weed, but the guy at the counter denies her. Afterwards a guy from inside the store follows her out and asks why she was so direct, then makes out with her and slips the drugs in her pocket. The party itself is a disappointment, and the girl mostly remains a wallflower. At the afterparty, everyone immediately gets drunk and high, and they start playing Spin the Bottle. The girl is the first target with a boy named Gabe, and together they go into the closet. The girl feels sick with worry, but after they fool around and laugh for a bit, she loses her nerves and decides to go forward with him. She thinks about how she is changing, and that the woman she will become will not appreciate who she is now.
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