First, a small love letter to my friend and mother and saner half for whom this is a birthday story: Mama Bird.
Mama Bird got her name because in the eight grade, when she refused to eat fruit, she would feed the berries and grapes her mother packed for her lunch to our small squad of introverts and book nerds, as if we were baby birds. She's been pretty much taking care of us (me, since I'm a giant child, it was me) ever since. Which is six years now. I have no idea why she stuck with me that long, but I am a lucky one. This story was meant for her and was actually mailed across the country for the event. She has received it, she has enjoyed it, and so now it comes to you- and I hope you like it too!
Disclaimer: I don't own anything, bye.
A Brief History of Dance
To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.
-Jane Austen
"Sammy," Hazel hissed. "We are not supposed to be here."
"Yeah I know. Premarital sex is a sin and God knows these two were at it way before today, the nuns at St-Agnes told me. They reckon I'm so wicked at this point, even if I hang out with sinners I'm going straight to hell," Sammy said.
"I mean here, here," Hazel said, blushing. "This is not our wedding to come to."
"This is the reception, not the wedding," Sammy said.
"We're not invited to that either!"
"If you leave a door open, you're inviting everyone to your wedding," Sammy said.
Hazel sighed. Sometimes she wished she trusted him a bit less blindly. That way when he'd scaled her building to knock at her window and say put your best dress on and follow me, she would have considered it before scavenging for her left shoe.
"Just trust me," Sammy said. "We'll go in, see if there's any cake left, and then we're back out- with or without. I promise."
"Fine," Hazel said. "But just because you promise."
Sammy grinned and tugged her inside.
The music hall was all bent-knees and bouncy steps and dancers spinning like tops. Sammy kept tugging Hazel towards the food table, but that wasn't what Hazel was looking at. She was fixated on the dancing guests and the way the men would pick up the women, the way they'd shimee in and out, the spins and the lifts and the jumps and the twisting and the swooshing skirts... Her feet had come to life and were tapping against the ground. She was already so alive. She was already a gonner.
"No more hors-d'oeuvres," Sammy said. "See what happens when you scatter your shoes, Hazel Levesque?"
"Sammy," Hazel said. "Can we stay for a bit?"
"Huh?" Sammy asked.
"To dance," Hazel asked.
"You want to dance with me?" Sammy said.
"Well can you dance?" Hazel teased him.
"Girl, I can foxtrot your shoes off," Sammy said. He held her hand out. "Try to keep up, mmkay?"
The only thing that Hazel knew was that nobody wanted to spend extra time at St-Agnes, so it was a decent refuge when Marie got heated. The cracked cement didn't make for a cozy seat, but Hazel was shaking so hard that it didn't matter.
"Hmm hmm. My lady…"
Hazel looked up. There was Sammy, sleeves sloppy and suspenders shrugged off and one sock pulled over his trousers, which would have given his poor mother a heart attack.
"Sammy," Hazel said. She rubbed her eyes. "I'm sorry, I'm…"
"Say no more," Sammy said. He held his hands out, and she took them, expecting him to haul her to her feet. Sammy pulled her against his chest and then slapped one of her hands on his shoulder.
"Sammy," Hazel said.
"Hush," Sammy said. "The other day Sister Carolina said I was acting like a savage and gave me a book on Indians so I could educate myself, she said. Did they ever make you read that one? No? Well in Brazil they dance as a method of healing. I think that's pretty smart. Sister Carolina probably doesn't agree, but let's give it a shot Hazel Levesque. Pretend Stella by Starlight is playing. You know, Frank Sinatra does it?"
"I know Frank Sinatra," Hazel said. And they danced. And then after a while, when Stella by Starlight would be over, Hazel looked up at Sammy.
"I haven't heard Perry Como for so long, it's like the radio forgot about him. I think they're playing It Only Happens When I Dance With You next."
"I think so too," Sammy said.
They went on until they really were by starlight.
Hazel slowed down on her long way back from school. She slowed down in front of a building from which piano music poured.
She stopped and peeked through the window. A bunch of little white girls in pink and tights were all hopping and dancing around on a nice, wooden floor that was polished and even. All of them, learning ballet in neat little rows. Switch out the shoes and maybe they'd learn tap dancing, with the heels filling up their ears as much as the music. Hazel had heard of some circuses where dancers walked on their hands and twisted themselves into pretzels, but she doubted they taught that here.
The instructor was a woman with a tight bun and no strays, and she was yelling out numbers in a prissy European French that sounded all wrong to Hazel. Un, deux, trois, quatre, un, deux, trois, quatre… She looked up from the rows of little girls doing pliés and releves and then saw Hazel. Her lips puckered up, like someone had popped in a slice of lemon. She crossed the floor angrily.
"Allez ouste! Nous prenons que des clients ici!" She said. She shut the window so hard, Hazel startled even if she'd been watching the whole time.
Hazel couldn't say no to a white lady, so she just left the studio, promising herself that she didn't need a Russian ballerina who had broken her ankle and failed her career or something to teach her how to dance. Besides, how could Sammy ever keep up to that?
"We should enter a competition," Sammy said.
"Are you going to walk home like a fool if we do?" Hazel said. He'd pulled his shoes off, had tied the laces together and swung them around his neck. He'd even peeled off his socks and stuck them on his ears, so he looked like an elephant. Maybe a woolly mammoth, but Hazel didn't want to say so, that way he didn't take the barrettes from her hair to give himself little tusks. This wedding they'd actually been invited to- or at least Sammy's family had. Most of them hadn't come on account of M. Valdez working nights now and the kids having bedtime so early for church tomorrow and Mrs. Valdez being so busy with the new baby, little Andrea who was cute as a button and who actually wore the little hat Hazel had knit in school. But Sammy had brought Hazel. They'd gotten cake this time.
"That depends," Sammy said. "If I say yes will you say no?"
"I don't know," Hazel said with a smile. "We made a pretty good team."
"I thought so too," Sammy said. "It'd be a shame to break us up, wouldn't it?"
"It would," Hazel said. "I guess we could enter a competition."
Alaska was cold, and Hazel constantly searched for warmth. She spent her days chasing the sun and running from shadows. She piled under quilts every night. And when she was alone in the rickety flats, she'd dance around to the songs she hummed and she'd smile the entire time as if her partner was smiling back. Sometimes, when Marie spent all day talking to the voices Hazel couldn't see, she would go in and work at the restaurant for her mother- scrubbing dishes wasn't hard, she told the chef every time. Hazel could do it. He usually let her, even if sometimes he would pay her half a day's wage on account of Hazel only being half a woman. Still, it wasn't so bad. Plus it meant that Hazel got to listen to the radio he played in the kitchen. She'd be extra careful not to slosh around the dishwater when Frank Sinatra or Miss Fitzgerald or Glen Miller came on.
"Girl," the cook would tell her. "Both feet on the ground when you do dishes or I'll pay you for dancing instead. You know what dancing pays here?"
"Zero dollars, sir," Hazel said.
"Zero dollars is right," the cook said.
Hazel couldn't help it. Ever. And the cook never got too mad at her, so Hazel reckoned that he liked the music and wanted to dance just as bad as she did.
That was the worst part about Asphodel. The quiet.
The second worst part about Asphodel was the loneliness.
Nobody to dance with that way.
Hazel's topographical memory clung to the 8-count circles of the Lindy Hop or the Big Apple or anything at all. Her skin worked overtime to memorise the slight, welcome pressure of Sammy's fingers on her hips as he prepared to lift her off the ground and swing her around. She wished the skin on her heels would become coarse and hard and that blisters would pepper her soles again. Any feeling that would be like feeling alive.
Hazel knew how to dance alone. Prima ballerinas did, and they got a spotlight on them for it. She'd stood alone for so long that dancing alone would have felt a little unfair too, even based on Hazel's parameters for fairness, but she would have made the best of it.
But there were too many people in Asphodel, which wasn't so much of a field as a crowd that constantly grew tighter and tighter. No room to dance.
Hazel wondered if the whole fields would pop like a balloon one day.
"I have a question," Hazel said.
"Oh yeah, go for it," Percy said. They had taken ice cream from the dining hall and gone to eat it, sitting on the porch of their barrack. It was a bit exciting, actually. There were rules against taking food out of the dining hall- to make sure that the barracks didn't stink up and that the Legion's underground barter-based economy didn't explode furthermore. Of course, Percy didn't know. Or maybe he did and this was something they did regularly at Camp… Half-Blood, was it? If the Greeks were anything like Percy, that entire camp must be a chaos of people following their heads left and right.
"It's a question that umm Nico didn't want to answer when he brought me back and kept giving me books," Hazel said.
Frank and Percy looked at each other over her curls. This could mean anything at all.
"What's the Macarena?" Hazel asked.
Percy burst out laughing.
"What?" Hazel asked, looking genuinely confused. "I heard Gwen say that everyone could do it, that and the Soldier Boy. But Dakota said he liked the Chicken Dance best?"
Percy literally fell off his chair.
"Okay," Piper said. "You know what. I love all of you, but fuck all of you for getting our periods to synchronise."
Annabeth groaned and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Last night had been a bad night for nightmares- all seven of them had had nasty dreams and miscellaneous visitations, but they were particularly unpleasant when your body was trying to literally shed its insides (Hazel had recently found out that that was actually what the uterus was doing once a month- Annabeth and Piper had staged a sex-ed class on their first night aboard the ship, after learning how recently Hazel had come clean about the "from the 1940s" issue. It had been a bit mortifying, but it had helped them get close, Hazel supposed).
After breakfast, they had excused themselves to avoid what Piper referred to as a "god-sanctioned mutiny". Because Jason kept clearing his throat weird ("but always half-assing it so damn it, he just has to keep doing it" as Piper put it), and Leo couldn't stop humming Beyoncé songs but just a tad too slow, and Percy was being particularly ADHD and kept blurting out random things and could absolutely not be held to a conversation, and Frank was just trying to be extra sweet and it was absolutely exasperating and also he looked scared of them.
"This is not going to work," Annabeth said. "We can't be off our games. A sea serpent could literally flop onto the dock any second and at this point I would let it eat me. We have to find some Advil-"
"Coach won't let us because we had nectar with breakfast," Piper said. "He says Ibuprofen and Mydol and Tylenol and every other painkiller I could think of are also unavailable."
"Did you suggest any experimental drugs?"
"No, Annabeth. Mostly because I don't know any damn experimental drugs off the top of my fucking head."
"Your language is so bad," Hazel winced.
"Sorry Haze. Side effect," Piper said. "Every month. I wish I had my dad's soup. Or bananas. Bananas help, right? Something about them- potassium?"
"It is the potassium," Annabeth confirmed.
"Beignets with so much powdered sugar it gets all over your face like they made it before the war," Hazel said. "And gumbo. And Jambalaya. And bubble-gum cigars and Almond Joys and Dots and chocolate cigarettes and candy buttons and Bit O Honey and licorice pipes and Neapolitan Coconut Candy and Red Vines and Root Beer Barrels and Broadway Licorice and Sky Bars…"
"Hazel, I don't even think that all those candies exist anymore," Annabeth said.
"I know, it's sad," Hazel said. She felt her lip tremble a bit.
"Okay, so we need to exercise," Annabeth said, steering the conversation away. If one of them was going to be a crier it was Hazel, and if she did Annabeth wasn't sure she could keep it together- not with the Arachne nightmares striking so close to home and Tartarus so fresh and damn it, they were all so tired they could barely walk straight and fight a war, much less keep their shit together.
"On a boat?" Hazel asked. "Won't Leo yell at us for messing up the weight distribution of the ship?"
"I'll kill him," Piper said. "I mean, literally in a heartbeat. I'll wipe Katoptris so clean, nobody will ever be able to prove a thing in the court of law."
"Piper, you're frightening. And Hazel, it doesn't have to be running to count as exercise," Annabeth said. She got up and walked over to her desk, flipping her computer open and punching a few keys. Music floated through the cabin.
"Spontaneous dance party," Piper said. "This I like. Oh, and you have the bouncy bed too! Geez, how did you talk Leo into that?"
"I don't threaten to kill him once a month," Annabeth said.
"Fuck the fucking hell off. Come on Hazel!"
Hazel smiled and took Piper's hand so they stood on Annabeth's bed, jumping as they danced. It may have looked more like a vertical seizure to a bystander, but they were laughing and bouncing and shrieking out song lyrics- and as long as you couldn't see yourself, it didn't matter how crazy you looked, right?
Unfortunately Leo could see them, so when he knocked on the door and wandered in looking for an extra cable Annabeth had borrowed…
"Fellas," Leo screamed over his shoulder. "Forget all the self-pitying I've done. I'm okay with being the single hot one."
Piper threw a book at his face.
"This wouldn't be happening if you hadn't stolen my breakfast waffle and wrecked my mood for the day!" Piper said.
"This is great," Hazel said as she drifted off the dance floor for the first time that night, a smile plastered across her face.
"Yeah, the Romans were known for their festivals," Frank said. "I think the Senate was trying to outshine Cabin 12's parties from earlier in the summer."
Hazel smiled and nodded. It was probably the first time that Frank ever seen her in a dress. Only a certain rank was allowed to wear true Roman ceremonial dress at special occasions, so for this evening Hazel had rallied Piper and Annabeth and they'd found a soft yellow dress with straps just wide enough for Hazel to pin her medals onto. She'd tied a white ribbon around her waist, Frank had no idea why, but she could pull it off. She looked exhilarated, her face split by a smile. She'd let her hair down ages ago but she was still standing tall in her heels. Frank felt like he was going on and on, painting a picture of Hazel in his head, when in reality the bottom line was simply that she looked beautiful.
"The DJ is great," Hazel said. "Piper was right, Beyoncé is the queen. That's what people call her, right? And the children of Apollo- they are not messing around on the dance floor. I think I even saw a few Greeks crashing the reception! You should come."
"On the dance floor?" Frank asked.
"Yeah," Hazel said.
"I better not," Frank said.
"Oh come on," Hazel said. "Just because you get to come in your shiny armour doesn't mean that you're in charge of security or anything for the night. Even Reyna got the cue! She's enjoying the night off."
"That's because Reyna can dance," Frank said.
"True. The hips on that girl- wait," Hazel said. "Wait a second, are you insinuating that you don't dance?"
"Hazel, I'm a clutz. It's gotten a bit better since I joined the legion and started shapeshifting, but I don't dance," Frank said.
Hazel's jaw dropped.
"Frank Zhang!" Hazel said. "Dancing is the first thing the cavemen did to entertain themselves on late nights around the fire. Dancing is the way a lord would court a lady in between dragon slaying and dying of the plague. Dancing is how people shouted into the void and told stories without being told to shut up. How can you say you do not dance?"
"Umm…" Frank said.
"Did you know that in South Africa they made a style of dance called gumboots because abused miners wouldn't be allowed to talk to each other by white bigshot bosses- so they'd tap on their boots and stomp to communicate, then they realised that they could dance it?" Hazel said. "Did you know that nobody knows for sure why Irish dancers keep their upper bodies so still while they dance, but some say that it was to avoid bowing to English lords when Ireland was under their occupation? Did you know that-"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Frank said. "You're rambling. Your Louisiana is coming out."
Hazel took a deep breath and huffed. A piece of hair floated away from her face.
"My point is…" Hazel said. Her accent had deflated somewhat. "How do you not know how to dance? I mean… anyone can dance."
Frank shrugged.
"Mom taught me to skate when I could walk, signed me up for Timbits and that was the extent of the athletics expected from me."
"Very few of those words make sense," Hazel said.
"Okay, but you call soda 'cold drinks' and that's weirder," Frank said. She grabbed his hands and pulled him to his feet, which happened when he forgot how strong she actually was.
"Hazel, this is not going to go well," Frank said nervously.
"Frank," she said. She put her hands on his arms. "Frank, folks who didn't have a lot, especially coloured folks, we didn't have a whole lot of entertainment either where I grew up. But we could always dance, and it was so fun, and I have waited a long time to do it again. And I never even thought I'd have a dance partner again. Much less someone like you."
Frank looked at her with that strange look he had- like he didn't know what to do with her, but he was also looking at Hazel like he saw every inch of her crystal clearly. Then he held his hand out to her. It hung in the air for a second.
"Is that how you invite someone to dance?" Frank asked nervously. "It is in the movies."
"That's how we do it now," Hazel nodded. She didn't want him to think she was making fun of him, but she couldn't bite back her smile. "It's a future thing."
"As is the Soldier Boy," Frank said.
"Oh, shut up and dance with me," Hazel laughed. He'd given her his hand, now she could freely drag him to the dance floor.