Enthusiasm

Enthusiasm Read Free Page B

Book: Enthusiasm Read Free
Author: Polly Shulman
Ads: Link
room feel less than comfortable and far from private. Still, at least I would be alone there.
    “Where are you going, sweetie?” she asked.
    “Homework.”
    “How can you have homework when school doesn’t start for another week?”
    “Summer reading,” I lied. (I had already finished the assigned book— Lord of the Flies —back in June.)
    “Really? What are they having you read? Let’s see,” she said, reaching for my book. “Oh, you lucky girl—Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility ! I loved that book. She’s my favorite writer. The romance between your father and me was straight out of an Austen novel.”
    Right, like Jane Austen wrote about igsome schemers who steal other people’s husbands, I didn’t say. I awarded myself an imaginary dollar for refraining, bringing the total for the evening up to two dollars, and escaped upstairs.

    When I got home the next morning, I slipped next door in search of news. Finding Ashleigh still asleep, I pounced on her toes.
    She gave a most satisfactory squeal. “Juniper, get off !” she cried, mistaking me for her kitten.
    Mewing and pinching, I attempted to keep her in the dark as to my true identity. Pretty soon, however, she stopped thrashing blindly, opened her eyes, and identified me as a member of the Human Race.
    “Oh, it’s you. What are you doing up so early? What time is it?”
    “Long past a bat’s bedtime. Get up, lazybones!”
    Ashleigh buried her head under her pillow.
    I like morning. It’s the only time when my enthusiasm outstrips hers .
    “Fine, I guess you don’t want to tell me your news then,” I said, making a feint toward the window. That roused her. She sprang out of bed—or, more accurately, she rose with a speed somewhat greater than that of a daffodil emerging from the moist earth in March. In a mere twenty minutes she had put on a selection of interesting clothes and her Austenesque manner.
    “Let us repair to your abode, where there is more room, my dear Miss Lefkowitz—”
    “You mean your dear Julie—”
    “Quite right, my dearest Julia—Let us repair to your abode, where there is more room.”
    “More room for what?” I asked, retreating through the window. Ashleigh followed me out. Our rooms are more or less the same size, but in the course of her enthusiasms Ashleigh has accumulated far more stuff than I have. In particular, one large papier-mâché dragon hanging from the ceiling tends to bump you on the head if you try to walk across her room without looking both ways first. Well, it bumps me , anyway.
    “Dancing lessons, Twinkle-Toes,” she explained, diving through my window and landing on my bed. “If we are to discharge our duties as party guests with the dignity that befits our position as Ladies, we must learn to perform the required steps. I have here a book”—she thumped the pillow with it—“that promises to instruct us in the Art of Terpsichore.”
    “Whoa there! You want us to learn how to dance by reading a book called The Art of Sick Twerpery ? Have you lost your lemon drops?”
    “Not sick twerpery—Terpsichore. Terpsichore, the Muse of Dance. It is she who breathes life into the Limbs of the Dancers as they perform their graceful movements.” She flung her arms out to demonstrate; a series of crashes followed. Luckily, nothing broke.
    “Very graceful,” I said, putting my desk lamp back on my desk. “Okay, so you want us to learn to dance by reading a book called The Art of Terpsichore ?”
    “No, no, ‘the Art of Terpsichore’ is merely a description of the book’s contents. The volume itself is called Dancing . To be precise, Dancing and Its Relations to Education and Social Life, with a New Method of Instruction, Including a Complete Guide to the Cotillion (German) with 250 Figures . By Allen Dodworth. Published in New York, 1888. New and Enlarged Edition.”
    “I don’t care what it’s called, you can’t learn to dance by reading a book.”
    “Yes, you can. It has 250 figures.

Similar Books

Relentless

Patricia Haley and Gracie Hill

Sworn

Emma Knight

A SEAL's Heart

Nikki Winter

Bend for Home, The

Dermot Healy

Speak Its Name: A Trilogy

Lee Rowan, Charlie Cochrane, Erastes

Twice Bitten

Aiden James

In the Widow’s Bed

Heather Boyd