Page 107 of What You Wish For

“I’ll try not to.”

“I’m not going to swallow my tongue or anything—that’s not a real thing. After it’s over, there’s a phase where I go limp. Please just make sure I’m okay to breathe. And when all that’s over, I get really tired—just sleepy and exhausted beyond belief. If you could just help me home, that would be awesome.”

“Shouldn’t I take you to the hospital?”

“Nope.”

“But you hada seizure.”

“Ifyouhad a seizure, we’d go to the hospital. But it’s normal for me. Same-old-same-old. No big deal.”

Duncan frowned at me. “Okay. I’m going to help you not stress. I’m going to distract you.”

“How?”

“Did you know I invented a dance?”

I tilted my head back and looked up at the sky. Deep breaths. I could work with this. “You invented a dance?”

“Yep. A dance called the Scissors. Look.” He put his elbows together. Then he moved his hands up and down, like his forearms were scissor blades.

I watched him for a second, then turned my eyes back up to the stars. “I’m not sure that’s a dance.”

“It’s totally a dance.”

“Is it a dance other people know?” I asked. “Or just you?”

He gave me a look. “It’s a dance other people know. It’s all over YouTube.”

I looked over at him, then back up to the stars, still breathing. “How did you invent a dance?”

“I used to have a job as a party motivator. I worked the bar mitzvah circuit.”

“I can’t imagine you in that job,” I said. “I can imagine you as a drill sergeant, maybe. Or maybe, like, a museum guard. Or one of those guys at Kensington Palace in one of those crazy hats.”

“A Beefeater,” Duncan supplied.

“Something stoic. Something solemn. I absolutely cannot in any lifetime see you as a dance instructor.”

“Well, that’s your loss,” Duncan said. “Because I am a legendary dancer.”

This actually made me laugh out loud.

“I’ll take you dancing one night, and you’ll see.”

“Oh,” I said. “I’m not a big dancing-in-public person.”

“You don’t dance?”

“In public,” I specified. “I dance, but only alone in my house with nobody around.”

“That sounds really sad.”

I shrugged. “I just have a mortal fear of humiliation.”

“The trick to dancing is that it’s voluntary humiliation. You have to lean into it.”

“No, thank you,” I said.

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