The Minnows

None of her students wanted to arrive here. Their parents just wanted to namedrop. My daughter takes dance lessons from Sally Valentine.

Sally wondered if her clients received their money’s worth. The boast hardly counted for anything anymore. Sally’s name meant little outside of punch lines.

She watched her bored students (ages ten through fourteen) enter her dance studio as if they approached a hangman’s noose tied just for them.

Sally recalled her tenth birthday, when she had begun dance lessons. Singing, too. She also loved to spend time with her father. They used to fish together.

“You can’t use a piece of bread for bait,” he used to tell her while she slid a wad of white bread onto a hook. “The minnows will just nibble it apart.”

“I know,” she would say. She didn’t want to catch fish. She just wanted to feed the minnows.

Sally returned to the present, clapped her hands for her students’ attention. “Okay. Take off your shoes, put them in your assigned cubbies. Beginners on the white mat. Advanced students on the gray.”

She turned on the radio, selected some music, and went through the motions that would warm up her students’ muscles.

Sally completed her class and dismissed her students. She switched off the lights, locked the doors, and headed towards her car.

She could afford a newer model, but she didn’t want to discard her old station wagon, which she had cared for most of her adult life.

She coaxed its engine to life, shifted into drive, and headed towards the nearest toy store. Her daughter’s seventh birthday arrived tomorrow.

Sally’s first big break in show business arrived when she turned thirteen. She scored a slot as a backup dancer in a children’s musical, filmed and sent straight to video.

Mr. Gray, a talent agent, called Sally’s mother after the video’s release.

Sally’s parents signed a lot of contracts. Sally hadn’t read a single one. She cared only that she would entertain people.

She admired the performers who made life more enjoyable for those who watched or listened to them.

What do I do for a living? I make people happy. I make their lives easier.

She recorded her first album at sixteen. Dance coordinators met with her, directed her stage tours.

Her dance moves grew a bit more sexual. Her lyrics a bit raunchier. Her outfits a bit skimpier.

“It’s part of the gig,” Mr. Gray had assured her when she complained.

Not everyone agreed with Gray. Entertainment reporters hadn’t the nicest things to say about Sally. Adjectives such as “smutty” often described her routines.

Adult Sally parked her station wagon in front of the toy store. She headed towards its front doors. No one thrust a camera or microphone at her.

Do you feel responsible for the young, impressionable girls who follow your lead?

No one gave a damn about her anymore, and she welcomed the anonymity.

The merciless reporters from her past had sought only footage that made her look trashy, stupid, or slutty.

When she started to date one of her stagehands, the rumor mill exploded. Everyone felt they deserved to know whether or not she and her new boyfriend had become sexually active.

She and Jackson had slept together, and she had gotten pregnant.

She didn’t love Jackson, didn’t want to marry and start a family before she had grown old enough to legally drink. She obtained an abortion—

—and the whole world lost its shit.

Twitter (still in its infancy) bloated with nasty, cruel, and even threatening language against her. Someone threw a bottle of blood at her during one of her concerts.

Jackson disappeared.

News reporters requested interviews with her. They felt Sally owed America an explanation for her “bad behavior” and “poor examples.”

She couldn’t sleep. Her performances suffered. She missed cues, forgot lines, and even tripped and fell.

She bought her way out of her contract, escaped with fewer than ten thousand dollars. Mr. Gray made millions, and continued to his next “little star.”

Sally had collected plenty of debt while on tour. The profit made by her albums went to her producers. She had to pay back all her teachers, coordinators, stylists, publicists, and so forth, all people that Mr. Gray insisted she needed.

Desperate for money, she accepted a two-bit role on a sitcom. People blogged about her performances, used them to measure Sally’s “mental state,” a subject for which many people enjoyed far too much interest.

The sitcom faced cancelation during its second season. Sally had, by then, settled most of her debts, and public interest in her had all but evaporated.

She obtained a business loan, opened her own dance studio.

A few years after that, she married a psychiatrist she didn’t love (she had to act “realistic,” as her mother pointed out).

Present-day Sally entered the toy store, headed towards the pink aisle with its girl-centered toys. An entire wall of dolls, perfect, plastic, and identical, awaited her.

She selected one, headed towards a checkout counter, paid.

A donation box, in which people could place unwanted toys for poor children, sat near the doors. An old, plush doll, frayed and scratched, rested upside down inside the box.

Sally took the old doll, replaced it with the new one. It seemed a fair trade.

A lake sat beside the parking lot. An old man and little girl fished.

The little girl hooked a wad of white bread, dropped the bait into the water. Minnows attacked the bread, nibbled it until nothing remained.