Page 14 of Friends with Benefits

Bashful.

It’s Grandma Pep’s word for her, but she doesn’t know how to articulate that it’s more intense than that. She doesn’t yet have the language, the vocabulary, to describe the terror she feels at the mereideaof speaking to a stranger. It will be a decade until she has a diagnosis, has medication, has coping mechanisms to deal with the social anxiety that debilitates her in this moment.

“Hi, Evelyn!” Miss Stella speaks in the melodic cadence of a Disney princess. She squats down so that she’s eye level with Evie, who absorbs every detail—platinum-blond hair in a perfect ballet bun, neon-green nails, pale pink tights that match her own. “I’m so excited to have you in my class.”

“She’s excited to be here,” Grandma Pep says.

No. She’s not.

It’s confusing, her anxiety. She asked to take dance classes. She wants to be a ballerina. When she turns the music up, up, up and dances around her bedroom, her brain is so quiet. She isn’t being mean to herself for misspelling a difficult word on a spelling quiz, isn’t scared to go to school, isn’t worried that her mommy is going to disappear again. Dance allows Evie to be in her body and gives her a break from her brain. But she didn’t consider until this moment that these classes would mean talking to people, dancing in front of people. Now confronted with this reality, her brain screams,No, no, no.

Brains are so weird.

How can she both want something so bad and not want it at all?

“Go on, Sweets.”

She hugs her grandmother’s knees goodbye, then steps out of her pink Crocs and follows Miss Stella into the studio that’s already filled with tiny dancers sitting in friend clusters. In the center of one of these clusters is a boy—the only boy—with curly brown hair. His laugh is pure joy.

Just try.

She reaches into her tote bag for her brand-new ballet slippers, then stuffs the bag in an empty cubby along the wall as Miss Stella tells everyone to get on a dot. Evie doesn’t understand what this means until she processes the evenly spaced neon stickers dotting scuffed wood floors. She stands on the pink dot closest to the door.

“You’re on my dot,” someone in a purple tutu says in a tone that very much implies that this isn’t okay, prompting Evie to surrender her dot. It’s probably safer to wait until everyone claims one.

The boy waves her over with a one-dimple smile. “This spot’s open.”

So she stands on the dot next to him, toes touching the highlighter-yellow sticker.

“Is this your first class?” he asks.

She nods, wordless.

“Obviously it’s your first class atMiss Stella’s, but is it, like, your first dance classever?”

She nods again.

Purple Tutu butts in. “Wait. Do you even know what a plié is?”

Evie shakes her head, wordless.

“Wow.”

“So, that’s Caro,” the boy says as Purple Tutu skips back to her dot. “Don’t worry. Miss Stella is the best. What’s your name?”

“Evelyn,” she says.

“Ev-e-lyn,” he repeats, enunciating each syllable. “I’m Theo.”

“Like Theodore?”

Purple Tutu, Caro, now back on her dot, laughs. “Ew, no. Just Theo.”

Evie feels her cheeks get hot at the sound of collective laughter. This is why it’s safer not to speak, because it’s better than saying the wrong thing. Somehow, she always says the wrong thing. Even worse than feeling her red-hot embarrassment, she canseeit in the mirrored wall, her face turning into a tomato.

Don’t cry.

But then the boy,Theo, says, “You can call me Theodore.”

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