"Volunteers will receive six free classes to make up for ze ones zey will miss," Mme Noelle explained.

    "But won't we fall behind?" asked Carrie Steinfeld.

    "You must make zis decision for yourself," Mme Noelle told her. "At some point in your careers, many of you will wish to teach. Zis will be a valuable experience. Now, do I have any volunteers?" Immediately my hand shot up. I love working with kids. I baby-sit a lot and I even belong to a group called the Baby-sitters Club. (The club is really important to me. Maybe not as important as ballet, but close. I'll tell you about it later.) I wasn't worried about falling behind in my work. As it is, I'm the youngest in the class. (Katie Beth used to be, before I joined the class, but she's a year older than me. I think she resents not being the youngest anymore.) And - though I wouldn't say this to anyone else - I'm one of the best. I don't mean to sound conceited. It's just true. Not long ago I danced the lead in Sleeping Beauty in the school production. I've had other lead parts as well.

    The only other girl who raised her hand was Mary Bramstedt.

    To be honest, I was pretty surprised by two things. The first was that more girls didn't volunteer. Teaching kids to dance sounded like so much fun, I couldn't believe everyone wouldn't want to do it. I guess they didn't want to take time away from their own classes. (I know dancers have to be serious and competitive, but sometimes I think they take that too far.) The second thing that surprised me was that Mary did volunteer. She's nice enough, but very intense. She's a perfectionist who worries about getting every step exactly right. And the odd thing is, she's not one of the best dancers in class. Not by far. For all her worrying, she's stiff and sort of robotlike when she dances. It's as if she can't stop worrying long enough to let the music carry her. I wouldn't have expected Mary to feel comfortable taking even a moment away from her regular classes. But - as I said - she surprised me, which made me like her a little better than I had.