Dancing for the Lord The Academy - By Emily Goodman Page 0,1

her, the odds were good that she would never have the opportunity again.

And Danni knew—with absolutely no question in her mind knew—that this was the plan that God had in mind for her. She had to go to the Academy. If she didn’t, she would be denying His sovereign plan for her life, and that was something she wouldn’t be able to live with.

She was going, whether she wanted to or not.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t having her fair share of second thoughts, though. And, she decided grimly, she was more than owed those second thoughts. What was she supposed to do over there, without her best friend at her side?

She couldn’t remember a time when Michael had ever been more than a phone call away. He’d been the one on the other end of the phone listening every time she performed badly during an audition. With the exception of The Nutcracker—which she had danced in for the last several years—Michael had been on stage with her every time she had ever danced.

Danni bowed her head. Am I betraying him by leaving him behind, Lord? she prayed silently. Michael would have sworn that she wasn’t—had sworn it a hundred times. This was the opportunity they had both dreamed of. For him, it wouldn’t have meant anything without her. For her, though…for her, it meant everything.

So this is the path I have to walk. Lord, I wish you hadn’t made me walk it alone! But that wasn’t God’s doing, and in her more honest moments, Danni knew it. God wasn’t the one who had ensured that she would be walking into the Academy alone. That was all their doing. If Michael had accepted his slot when it was offered—if they had taken that step in faith, instead of waiting in fear—he would already be there, waiting on her.

She wasn’t sure which would have been worse: seeing him off at the beginning of the year and doing her best to paste a smile on her face through it, or the feeling she had now, sitting on the front porch and staring off into nothingness as she tried to accept the fact that she was going to be leaving him behind.

“Why the long face, Dragonfly?” a familiar voice demanded.

Danni’s head came up, and she smiled as she watched Michael leap lightly onto the front steps of the porch, holding out his hands to pull her to her feet. It was second nature to bound up beside him, to let him take her weight as she did so.

They had been partners for a very long time—so long that she no longer remembered the first piece that they had danced together, only that it had been beautiful, and perfect, and everything she had ever dreamed of when she thought of dancing a pas de deux with a partner of her very own.

Michael had started calling her Dragonfly then, she remembered, grinning. The first time he’d met her, she had been working with a classroom full of five-year-olds, trying to convince them to skim lightly across the surface of the floor—dragonflies on a pond, according to her teacher’s instructions. She had been attempting to demonstrate a dragonfly for them, calling out in a half-breathless voice an explanation for each step she’d taken.

She had been Dragonfly to him ever since—and that dance, at least, Danni had never forgotten.

She stepped into it now—not an overt movement, but enough of a shift that Michael could feel it.

He squeezed her hands and moved along with her, following along as only her partner could do. He knew these steps as well as she did, and there was little effort involved in dancing them together. They’d done it for a dozen different shows, even a competition or two over the years, using the same basic choreography that Danni had put together in that classroom that morning. The younger dancers hadn’t been able to perform it to her liking; but she and Michael had been playing with it for years. It had been set to a hundred different songs, tweaked in a dozen different ways.

She would never forget these steps.

Michael took her by the hand, adding a step or two as he guided her out to the paved area in front of the house. Not a bad idea; the last time they’d done this on the porch, he’d nearly taken a tumble off of it when a leap went too far. Danni followed him instinctively.

Men always led during classical ballroom dancing. On the