Dancing Lesson
Claire loved dancing.
That said, she didn't love it as a form of art. She dreaded the Christmas performance when every eye seemed to rest on her chubby body with contempt. Though she loved her teacher and admired her greatly, the things she said to Claire were usually not friendly.
Nor was she friends with any of the girls in her group. Amelie, who was everything Claire wasn't, considered herself as superior and did her best to ignore her. Anne was nicer when she was alone, but when Amelie was around, she followed her like a puppy.
Madita never said a word and answered questions with averted eyes and an unsure voice, and though Claire thought they could have been friends, they came to lessons, danced, changed and left without a word to each other.
Claire loved dancing because she was away from home and her parents who agreed only on the fact that their daughter was useless – and they did their best to show it. Though she didn't enjoy the lessons too much, they were still ninety minutes of escape every week, time in which she could recover and prepare mentally for the next week – other people's weekends were on Saturday and Sunday, Claire's was on Wednesday afternoon and was painfully short.
Today was one of these days. It had been particularly bad at home – Claire had brought a bad exam home, smashed a teacup on the hard kitchen floor, and her sole presence was usually enough to annoy her parents. When the front door closed behind her and she made her way towards the gym through the snow, she could not help hating them. She had forgiven herself for this years ago.
With reddened ears and frozen toes, she stopped in front of the gym's door and reached out to open it.
It stuck. Claire rattled, pushed, but it remained locked. With disbelief, she looked around for her teacher, a fellow dancer, anyone.
But all she saw was a little note on the side of the door.
“Girls,
my mother is ill and I cannot come to our lesson today. I hope I can be back next time.
Love,
Ms. Tymmet”
Timewasting would have been so much easier than facing the problems of life outside the dancing lesson.
(Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License -
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) 
