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Ruth Fleming loved to dance.
Ever since she took her first dance class when she was 5 years old, she'd been in love.
She took a ballet/tap combo class for little kids, and she loved everything about it.
She loved the sound of tap shoes on the vinyl floor, the feeling of moving around to music. It just felt right in a way she couldn't explain.
Each year that passed, she only loved it more.
When she was little, it was simply because it was fun. Because she loved the pretty dresses they wore, she loved to move her body to the music. She just couldn't explain how happy it made her feel.
Most of all, she loved being onstage. She loved the heat of the stage lights as she showed a crowd the dance she'd worked so hard on, showed everyone the product of all these months she'd spent doing this. She just loved the stage.
As she grew older, it quickly became an escape. You see, when people get older, they tend to get a lot meaner.
When she was in 5th grade, the girls she had been friends with suddenly turned on her. It was subtle at first. Hanging out outside of school, saying they "forgot" to invite her. Then it was not being invited to their birthdays. Then they started getting in a circle and talking, and when she showed up, they would stop, slap on fake smiles.
She would go to dance class after school, dance away all the feeling until she forgot about it. She danced to get away from how terrible her "friends" were.
She danced in her room while they had sleepovers.
She danced on the shaggy living room carpet while they talked about her at someone else's house.
Eventually, they out right told her to go away. Told her she was "overbearing" and "too happy".
That day, Ruth found a corner of the playground where nobody ever went, and she cried. Tears came hard and fast as she let herself feel everything they'd been doing to her over the past few months.
That day, two boys walked up to her, asked what was wrong, talked to her.
That day, Ruth met the two boys who would be her best friends until the day she died.
The bullying didn't get much better. People called the three of them nerds, teachers pets, but it didn't bother her.
Because now she had friends who actually liked her, and she could still dance all the insults and anger and sadness away.
Every Monday and Wednesday, her mom would drive her down to the old dance studio downtown. Even before they walked in, she could hear the music. It was different every day, sometimes catchy pop songs, sometimes soft ballet music, sometimes sharp jazz. Every day she loved it.
She would walk in and run to the bench with the window into the dance room just above it. She loved to watch the tail end of the class before hers, a bunch of older girls doing things that looked complicated but oh so cool. She wanted to be them, with their beautiful form and amazing technique.
She would sit and watch them finish up as the other girls in her class trickled into the lobby. She didn't talk to them, she never did, because they were just like the girls at school. They called her a nerd, occasionally they would "help" her by correcting her technique, but only in very condescending tones, clearly not wanting to be helpful.
But still, she didn't mind, because she got to dance, and she could escape all of that when she was dancing. It was like floating on her very own cloud where nothing could bother her, just her and the music, high in the air.
Another year passed, another recital, another heavenly day under the stage lights, performing for a bunch of people. It was amazing every year, but this year was different. This year, Pete and Richie were in the audience. She had to do her best, for them.
They told her afterward that she did amazing, they loved it, it was so cool to watch. They even brought her a bouquet! Not a bouqet of flowers, but a bouqet of candy! She loved it, and she loved them. It made her happier than ever that she had met these boys, that she had friends who actually loved her and supported, and not whatever she'd had before.
The next year, she took a jazz class. It was hard, harder than any of the other classes she'd taken before. It was all so fast paced, and the technique was hard to nail.
Still, she loved it, and it remained an escape from the bullying that got exponentially worse now that she was in middle school.
This year, she was introduced to a certain Maxwell Jägerman.
God, she hated that kid.
He seemed to have a personal vendetta against all he deemed as "nerds". Unfortunately for her, that seemed to include not only herself, but also Richie and Pete.
Every single day in the hallway.
"Hey geek!"
Any time she answered a question correctly.
"Teacher's pet!"
Each day, without fail, when all she wanted was to eat her sandwich in peace.
"Aw, look at those nerds sitting all by themselves. Must be lonely, just the three of you."
It was hard, so hard, to hear this every day and not start to believe it.
She tried to play it cool, to own the term, to be better than them.
But it was hard, especially when her escape was becoming just another place she was made fun of.
She still went to the old dance studio every Monday and Wednesday after school, still watched the tail end of the older girls who she would never be as good as.
But now, as the other girls in her class came in, they would whisper.
She would occasionally catch snippets, and she often heard her name and "bad" in the same sentence.
She tried to brush it off and ignore it, tried to just escape into dance.
But its hard to escape when you feel like you're constantly being judged.
Every day after class, at least one person would come up and "help" her with her technique, show her what she was doing wrong, make it very clear that is should be easy.
It made Ruth feel like something was wrong with her, that she was broken.
She heard them whispering about how she shouldn't be here, that she should join the kiddy classes, that she wasn't good enough.
It's hard to escape into something when people are watching and you know they think its bad.
Now, instead of feeling like she was floating on a cloud, she felt ashamed. She felt like she was doing everything wrong, like she was a terrible dancer and should just quit for good.
Now, instead of watching the older girls in awe of how amazing they were, aspiring to be like them one day, it was just another thing she would never be, another thing she would mess up.
With so many bad feelings coming in from all sides, with nothing left to escape into, she went home and cried.
That year, Ruth cried herself to sleep too many times to count.
Then, the day of the recital came.
Despite how hard the past few months had been, she was still excited for the recital.
Nothing could make her hate the feel of being under the stage lights, doing what she loved, the thrill of the applause.
Oh how wrong she was.
She went on that stage, and she did her absolute best. She danced her heart out, poured her soul into every step. Every single insult, every taunt, all the anger and sadness and tears, poured into this dance for all to see.
She loved every moment of it. For a minute and a half, Ruth was floating on a cloud again, up so high that nothing could reach her, nothing could break her spirit.
At the end of the show, her class was in the dressing room changing back to their normal clothes to go see their friends and family. Two girls were talking, in that way where their "private conversation" is definitely supposed to be overheard.
"God, did you notice that Ruth was like, a step off the whole time? It messed it all up. Everyone else was in perfect sync and she's over here doing what we did like, two seconds ago!"
Ruth heard. Of course she did. She kept herself composed, finished changing, left the room.
She went home, and the minute she got to her room, started sobbing.
She was so, so tired of it. Tired of constantly being told she wasn't good enough, that she was bad at the one thing she loved to do, tired of being called a nerd and a freak. Tired of messing up even when she gave it her all. She was just so tired.
The next day, she threw it all out. Every dance bag, every ballet slipper, every jazz shoe, every single thing that reminded her of dance. All she kept was her first pair of tap shoes, shoved deep in her closet. She wasn't sure why, but she just couldn't get rid of them. So she just shoved them where she wouldn't have to look at them, wouldn't have to be reminded what a failure she was.
A few months later, when her mom asked what class she wanted to take this year, she told her that she didn't want to do dance anymore.
Ruth never took a dance class again, even though she loved it with all her heart.
She never stepped on a stage again, never got to feel that euphoric joy of being under those bright lights, music blaring, giving everything you have to the audience for a minute and a half.
She didn't step on a stage again until the day she died.
One day, when she was seventeen, her neighbors mentioned that their five year old daughter wanted to do dance, she wanted to do tap, but they just didn't know where to find the shoes.
She didn't know why, but she simply said, "You can borrow mine from when I was that age. Their a bit worn, but they should work."
It wasn't like she used them anyway. They didn't even fit her.
But it still felt like giving up a piece of her when she handed them over.