Heartbeat(a lukesse fanfic)

Chapter 6

    Second period was gym class. I couldn't help but smile as our E.L.A. teacher broke the news to us that the gym teacher wasn't at school today. That meant we had a free period, as long as we stayed in the gym. I sat down on one of the bleachers and rested my hands on my knees, grateful that we wouldn't have to run laps today. My backpack was next to me. All of the kids brought their backpacks to gym because they held the books for their next class. I got my pointe shoes out of my backpack and started turning them over again and again in my hands. I was completely in love with them, and I hadn't even used them yet.

    I had about thirty seconds of peace before a group of kids came over to me. I knew who they were: Dan, Lizzy, Cassie, and Stampy. I'd never talked to them before, but I'd sometimes pass them in the hallway.

    "Hey, is it true that you have epilepsy?" Cassie asked. I slowly nodded, a confused expression on my face as I wondered where this was going. "Does it, like, make it hard to do stuff?" she asked. "What do you mean by that?" I asked. "Well, isn't it like... hard to do well at anything? I mean, not to be rude, but you're probably not very good at anything because you're too weak to do anything because of your epilepsy, right?" she asked. I rolled my eyes.

    "Do you even know what epilepsy is?" I asked. She looked thoughtful for a moment. "It's like some sort of disease, right?" she asked. I facepalmed. She obviously had no idea. I opened my mouth to speak before I heard a voice from behind me. "Actually, Jesse is really talented." I turned around to see Lukas. Cassie turned her attention to him.

    "At what?" she asked. A few other students had gathered around to see what was going on, and I noticed one kid come out of the crowd. Nick. Nick was always a jerk to everyone, and no doubt he was going to poke fun at me. "She probably doesn't even know how to read. She's one of those retarded kids," he joked. I heard a few snickers from the crowd. I looked over to my ex-friends to see a Petra and Axel trying to hold in a laugh.

    "Actually, she's not. Maybe you would know that if you were smart, like she is," Lukas said. I sent him a small smile before I saw Aiden come up next to him. I know Aiden doesn't like me, but there's also no way he's going to let my reputation as a loser get any worse, should it drag down his reputation too.

    "She's not smart at all," Nick said. "She's an awesome dancer," Aiden said suddenly. "I agree. That little shaking on the ground thing she did was very entertaining," he snickered. I noticed Petra and Axel had stopped holding in their laughs. "I'm serious. She's amazing," he said. "I highly doubt that," Nick replied. "Want her to prove it?" Aiden asked. "Yeah, I do," Nick said, crossing his arms. Aiden turned to me expectantly  as I reluctantly got up and took my shoes off. I can't really dance with sneakers on.

    I slowly make my way down the bleacher steps to the gym floor and leave my pointe shoes on the first bleacher. The whole class was watching now, both because they had nothing else to do and because my classmates are a bunch of drama hogs.

    I turn and face back towards Nick. He crosses his arms and gives me a condescending look, as if I were a jester and he were the king. I felt slight anger boil up inside me as I thought about the events of the past few days. How my friends ditched me. How my mom hit me every day when she got home from work. How my whole class thinks I'm a freak.

    But I keep it inside. I wasn't going to do a dance. I'm just going to do a few cool tricks to get them off my back. I think for a moment before I go into a small lunge and push off with my back foot into a pirouette. I turn about four times before I swing my leg up and grab it with both hands, being careful not to lose my balance. I do about four leg spins before I bring my leg down in the middle of one of the turns and swing it to the back, pushing off with the foot that was on the ground into a front aerial. I landed without flaw and immediately drew the first leg behind me and let it slowly rise into a full split before I rotated my body and turned it into a tilt. I held it for a few seconds before slowly bringing my leg down into a pirouette position and then, just for show, slowly lowered it into a fifth position.