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"Oh?"

"I didn't want to make her any more nervous than she was."

"She didn't seem very nervous to me," he said.

I looked more attentively at him. Who was he?

"Rose. Edmond is a theatrical agent, but more important, he is the son of Madame Senetsky, who runs the famous Senetsky School of Performing Arts in New York. He was visiting one of his clients in Atlanta and I asked him to stop in tonight to see you."

"Oh," I said. What does this mean? I wondered.

"I didn't tell you about him because I didn't want you to have any disappointments."

"Very diplomatic of you. Julie," he told her. "You knew I wasn't going to be disappointed."

"I hoped you weren't."

"I trust your eye for talent almost as much as I do my own," he said. I thought he sounded terribly arrogant. He turned to me.

"I think-- no. I know my mother would want you to attend her school. You'll remind her of herself," he added with a smile. "She was a dancer as well as an actress. She had classical training, the same sort you'll get in her school."

"I'll get?"

Miss Anderson smiled.

"My mother permits me to choose one student a year for her. It's taken years and years of proving myself to get her to do that," he said.

"You think I should go to her school?" I asked.

"Precisely."

"But..."

"We'll talk about it later. honey. I know you have people waiting for you."

"It's nice to have met you." I said to Edmond.

"Yes, well, if you're smart, and lucky, you'll meet me again," he said.

I thought that was quite odd and quite egotistical. but I didn't say another word. I hurried to join Barry and Evan and bask in the glow of my great success with the two people I loved the most in the world. hoping I wouldn't cry when I thought about Mommy.

Epilogue

In the end I suppose there was more than one reason I decided to go to Madame Senetsky's School of Performing Arts in New York City. I was upset because it was almost a week after the variety show performance before Mammy called me. There was a letdown after the show anyway. All the preparation, practice, dedication had reached a peak. Miss Anderson and I still danced after school, but it wasn't the same, and there was a heavy cloud of depression hovering over me from morning until night. Every tim

e the phone rang, I waited to hear my mother's voice, but I didn't and I began to wonder if I ever would,

Finally. I did. "Rose sweetheart, how are you?" Mommy cried.

"I'm all right," I said.

"Tell me about your little show. Was it as successful as you hoped?"

"Yes, Mommy."

"I wish I could have been there. I should have been there," she added, a dark note in her voice that cracked at the end of her sentence.

"Mommy? Are you all right?" She was silent. What's wrong?"