Angel Falls (Angel Falls Series, #1) by Babette Jongh (inspiring books for teens txt) 📗

including her twin daughters who took ballet. The firecracker red hair was just an indication of their firecracker personalities.

Meredith got out the passenger side, looking like a runway model with her wild brown hair and lean, leggy build. I waited in front of the school’s front doors, my hands shoved into the front pockets of my jeans.

Joan and Meredith came up the stairs, and Joan unlocked the padlocked chain wrapped around the doors’ push bars. “Sorry we’re late.” She unwrapped the chain and dropped it in front of the door. “Richard was showing a house, and he had the key to this place so we had to wait for him to get back.”

Joan Murphy and her husband Richard owned the largest realty office in town, so they stayed pretty busy. “I knew y’all would get here sooner or later.”

The creaky entrance door swung inward. My heart sank down into the dust that covered the old wood floors. “Oh, Lord.” Festoons of peeling paint draped from the ceiling and hung down the walls, suspended in a matrix of cobwebs. Dank mildew and black rot gathered in corners and crevices. I imagined I could see mold spores teeming in the humid air. I could certainly smell them. “This is horrible.”

“I know it looks bad,” Joan said. We entered the old ghost of the building quietly, stepping lightly on the dusty floors as if treading on someone’s grave. “But if you decided to take over some part of it for the ballet studio, the city would send in a cleaning crew.”

“It will take more than cleaning products to make this place work.” But hoping to be proved wrong, I followed Joan and Meredith down the trail of footprints someone had left in the wide hallway.

“As I told you on the phone,” Joan said, “the Historical Society—”

Meredith chuckled, and Joan shot her a look. Meredith explained. “Cole calls it the Hysterical Society.”

Joan hooted. “Whatever you want to call it, the society wants to preserve the building. At their request, the city council has voted to allow any civic groups, clubs, or what-have-you to adopt space in the building, rent-free. The only catch is you’d have to do the renovations for your space on your own dime. Here are the girls’ bathrooms.”

The three of us followed the veering path of footprints to the dark narrow bathroom on the first floor. The place was flat-out scary—bad enough to inspire nightmares. We all crowded at the spider-webbed doorway and peered in.

“I’m afraid to walk in.” It was hard to believe this place had ever housed rows of giggling teenage girls standing in front of the mirrors putting on too much mascara, or coaxing the rusty tampon machine to cough up one of its paper-wrapped lifesavers.

Peeling paint, rusting sinks, wobbly plywood dividers separating cracked toilets. There was no way any of the little ones would consent to go in here. Nor would I want them to. “Fixing this bathroom alone would cost thousands.”

“The city would fix them,” Meredith said. “Right, Joan?”

“Right. They just want to know that someone will actually use the space before they do. And all the utilities would be paid by the city. Once you got your studio space fixed-up, you’d have a free place to teach from now on. Let’s go look at the auditorium.” Joan led the way, and Meredith brought up the rear.

I hurried to catch up with Joan. “Has anyone else agreed to use space here?”

“Cole says that Matthew’s Boy Scout troop is thinking about taking one of the upstairs rooms,” Meredith said from behind me. “They haven’t committed yet, though. They haven’t had enough volunteers to do the work.”

“I can see why. This isn’t looking very promising.”

“I’m afraid I agree.” Joan stopped at the heavy auditorium doors that stood almost as high as the twelve-foot ceiling. “But it’s interesting to see the place again. Brings back memories, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it does.” The day Melody made the cheerleading squad and I didn’t, because even though I could dance, substandard cartwheels were the sum total of my gymnastic abilities. The day Ben pinned me to the wall outside the girls’ bathroom and refused to let me go until I’d kissed him. The day a ballet company came from New York to perform, and offered local dancers the opportunity to audition for their company.

“This is what I thought you’d be interested in.” Joan swung open the auditorium doors. The sloping floor was lined with rows of movie theatre type seating, about three hundred seats in all. The chair seats and backs were bare wood, with long strips of laminate peeled off. Hundreds of adolescents had carved initials in the soft wood. Somewhere near the front, my own initials were paired with Ben’s inside a lopsided heart. I’d carved the initials, he’d added the heart.

Heavy blue velvet curtains still flanked the stage. The material would be rotted by now, held together by cobwebs.

Joan led the way down the aisle. “I thought you could use the stage for classes.”

“But there’s no place for mirrors, or barres...” I could just see kids running backstage, or hiding in the wings. “It’s too open.”

“You could use it for performances,” Meredith suggested.

“At Ms. Daphne’s last recital, people lined the walls of the high school gym, and it holds five hundred chairs. This isn’t nearly big enough.”

“Don’t give up yet.” Joan ushered us out of the auditorium. “Let’s go upstairs and look at the classrooms.”

We climbed wooden stairs worn down a couple of inches in the middle so each stair seemed to bow up on the ends. I knew this was a lost cause. Still, I followed Joan to the second floor, remembering. The wide-planked wood floors, the tall windows, the high ceilings. Ben sitting next to me in literature class, his long legs stretched out in front of him as he slumped in his chair.

I felt my lips curve into a real smile when I realized that the old memories of Ben had lost their bittersweet edge. Now,