The Drive to Coventry

It turned out there was a class after all — just one, a whole hour away, in a city called Coventry, taught by a woman named Amrit.

Sam's mum read the website out loud in the car, one hand on the wheel, glancing at her phone at every red light. "It says: all levels welcome, taught by a Pungra-certified instructor."

"What's Pungra?"

"I have no idea. Let's find out."

The drive felt like the longest hour of Sam's entire life, and also somehow not long enough, because every mile that passed made her stomach do a little more of a nervous flip. She watched the mountains slide by the window, brown and gold in the morning light, and rehearsed, silently, in her head, exactly what she'd say if anyone asked her why she was there. I saw a video and I couldn't stop thinking about it seemed like a strange thing to say out loud to strangers.

They stopped once for petrol, and Sam stood by the car in the cold morning air, watching a truck idle two pumps over, and thought about turning around and asking to just go home instead. She didn't say it out loud. Her mum seemed to notice anyway, the way moms sometimes do.

"You don't have to go in if you get there and change your mind," her mum said, handing her a hot chocolate from the petrol station. "We can just turn around. Nobody would think less of you."

"I'd think less of me," Sam admitted, and her mum laughed, not unkindly, and ruffled her hair.

The studio was small, tucked between a tax office and an empty shop with paper still taped over the windows. A hand-painted sign hung crooked in the front window: Saturday 10am — Group Exercise to Punjabi Music, all levels.

Sam counted the people going in through the glass door. Six adults. Zero kids. She was, as far as she could tell, about to be the only ten-year-old in the entire building.

"You can wait in the car if you want," her mum said gently, catching the look on Sam's face.

Sam did not want to wait in the car. She wanted to go in more than she'd wanted almost anything all year, and that was exactly what made it so scary — the wanting made it matter, and the mattering made it possible to get it wrong.

She went in anyway. Her hand was sweaty on the door handle, and she went in anyway.