Dad's Turn

Sam's parents didn't live together anymore, but they still shared her right down the middle, week and week about, and Sam had long since stopped thinking of this as sad and started thinking of it as just how her particular family worked. Her dad's flat was smaller than the house, but it had a bigger kitchen table, and Wednesday nights there usually meant pasta and whatever show they were currently both invested in. That meant that the following Wednesday, at her dad's house, once dinner was cleared away, she got to show somebody brand new.

"Show me the shoulders thing," her dad said, after dinner, once she'd talked about Amrit's studio for what he pointed out was the fourth time that evening, counting on his fingers to prove it.

"You'll laugh."

"I will absolutely not laugh." He paused, considering. "I might laugh a little. In a good way."

Sam stood up anyway, pushed the kitchen chairs out of the way, and tried the move — the same one from the video, the same one she'd knocked her lamp over practicing. Her dad watched with the specific serious face he used for things that actually mattered to him, the same face he made when she showed him her school projects, leaning forward slightly with his elbows on his knees.

"That," he said, when she finished, slightly out of breath, "is genuinely impressive. I could not do that if you gave me a year."

"It's not even right yet. Amrit's is way better."

"Amrit's had way more practice than you. That doesn't make yours not count." He thought for a second. "You know what this reminds me of? Learning to ride a bike. Nobody's first week of riding a bike looks like the Tour de France. It still counts as riding a bike."

Sam liked that comparison enough that she wrote it down in her shoebox that night, right underneath her four original questions: Dad says it still counts even if it's not perfect yet. It felt like the kind of thing worth keeping somewhere safe.