Instructions for Dancing Read online

  ALSO BY NICOLA YOON

  Everything, Everything

  The Sun Is Also a Star

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2021 by Nicola Yoon

  Cover art copyright © 2021 by Renike

  Cover lettering copyright © 2021 by Jyotirmayee Patra

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to Bank Robber Music for permission to reprint an excerpt from “The Book of Love,” written by Stephin Merritt, published by Rough Trade Publishing by arrangement with Bank Robber Music. Used by permission of Bank Robber Music. All rights reserved.

  GetUnderlined.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Yoon, Nicola, author.

  Title: Instructions for dancing / Nicola Yoon.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Delacorte Press, [2021] |

  Audience: Ages 12 and up. | Summary: “After picking up a book from the library, Yvette—who has given up on love—gains the ability to see how other people’s romantic relationships will end”— Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020026948 (print) | LCCN 2020026949 (ebook) | ISBN 978-1-5247-1896-1 (hardcover) | ISBN 978-1-5247-1897-8 (library binding) | ISBN 978-1-5247-1898-5 (ebook)

  Subjects: CYAC: Love—Fiction. | Dating (Social customs)—Fiction. | Divorce—Fiction. | Ability—Fiction. | Books—Fiction. | African Americans—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.Y66 In 2021 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.Y66 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9781524718985

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  Penguin Random House LLC supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to publish books for every reader.

  ep_prh_5.7.0_c0_r0

  For my mom, who is still smiling despite it all.

  And for my father-in-law, who smiled through it all.

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Nicola Yoon

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1: A Better Version of Me

  Chapter 2: (Former) Favorite Romance Genres

  Chapter 3: Give a Book, Take a Book

  Chapter 4: Danica and Ben

  Chapter 5: The Bonfire

  Chapter 6: Not a Witch

  Chapter 7: Shelley and Sheldon

  Chapter 8: Zoltar

  Chapter 9: So Fatal a Contagion

  Chapter 10: Classic Romance Guy Characteristics: A Nonexhaustive List

  Chapter 11: The Formula for Heartbreak

  Chapter 12: Lesson Learning

  Chapter 13: Dancing with the Flow

  Chapter 14: Dance Number One

  Chapter 15: Dance Number Two, Excerpted

  Chapter 16: Dance Number Three

  Chapter 17: Dance Number Four

  Chapter 18: A Strict Definition

  Chapter 19: Not a Date, Part 1 of 3

  Chapter 20: By Act Two

  Chapter 21: Not a Date, Part 2 of 3

  Chapter 22: “Black Box,” Lyrics by Evie Thomas and Xavier Woods

  Chapter 23: Fabulous, Excellent and Copacetic

  Chapter 24: Not a Date, Part 3 of 3

  Chapter 25: The Ones You Don’t See Coming, Part 1

  Chapter 26: Sophie and Cassidy

  Chapter 27: The Ones You Don’t See Coming, Part 2

  Chapter 28: The Fall

  Chapter 29: The Ones You Don’t See Coming, Part 3

  Chapter 30: Off the Cliff

  Chapter 31: Definitely a Date

  Chapter 32: Let’s Taco ’Bout It

  Chapter 33: The Time We Get

  Chapter 34: I Got You, Babe

  Chapter 35: Bachata Monday

  Chapter 36: Salsa Tuesday

  Chapter 37: West Coast Swing Wednesday

  Chapter 38: Hustle Thursday

  Chapter 39: Argentine Tango Friday

  Chapter 40: Declarations

  Chapter 41: Joy Emoji

  Chapter 42: Uncomfortable Silences

  Chapter 43: Entertain Us

  Chapter 44: Archibald and Maggie

  Chapter 45: The Invention of Language

  Chapter 46: Danceball

  Chapter 47: Becomes a Sea

  Chapter 48: X and Me

  Chapter 49: Gone, Part 1

  Chapter 50: Love and Its Opposite

  Chapter 51: Gone, Part 2

  Chapter 52: Forgiveness

  Chapter 53: The Light and the Dark

  Chapter 54: One Million, Eight Hundred and Fourteen Thousand and Four Hundred Seconds

  Chapter 55: The Fish and the Water

  Chapter 56: Once and Again

  Chapter 57: Two Dresses

  Chapter 58: Answers

  Chapter 59: Do Us Part

  Chapter 60: The Future

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  The book of love is long and boring

  No one can lift the damn thing

  It’s full of charts and facts and figures

  And instructions for dancing

  But I

  I love it when you read to me

  And you

  You can read me anything

  —The Magnetic Fields, “The Book of Love”

  Almost nobody gets out of love alive.

  —Helen Fisher

  CHAPTER 1

  A Better Version of Me

  BOOKS DON’T WORK their magic on me anymore. It used to be that if I was in a funk or in the barren hinterland between sad and mad, I could just pluck any random one from my favorites shelf and settle into my fuzzy pink chair for a good read. By chapter three—chapter four at the very latest—I’d be feeling better.

  These days, though, the books are nothing but letters arranged into correctly spelled words, arranged into grammatically correct sentences and well-structured paragraphs and thematically cohesive chapters. They’re no longer magical and transporting.

  In a past life I was a librarian, so my books are arranged by genre. Until I started giving them away, the Contemporary Romance section was the biggest. My favorite of all time is Cupcakes and Kisses. I pull it down from my shelf and flip through it, giving it one last shot to be magi
cal. The best scene is when the no-nonsense head chef and the sexy, constantly brooding line cook with the mysterious past have a food fight in the kitchen. They both end up covered in flour and icing. There’s kissing and a lot of dessert-related wordplay:

  Sugar lips.

  Sweet buns.

  Sticky situations.

  Six months ago this scene would have made me gooey inside. (See what I did there?)

  Now, though? Nothing.

  And since the words haven’t changed from the last time I read them, I have to admit the problem isn’t the book.

  The problem is me.

  I close the book and stack it on top of the others I’m giving away. One last trip to the library tomorrow and all my romances will be gone.

  Just as I start putting them in my backpack, Mom pokes her head into my room. Her eyes travel a circuit from my face, down to the tower of books, up to the four empty rows on my shelf, and then back to my face.

  She frowns and looks like she wants to say something, but then she doesn’t. Instead, she stretches out her hand and pushes her phone toward me. “It’s your father,” she says.

  I shake my head so hard my braids whip around my face.

  She jabs the phone my way again. “Take it. Take it,” she mouths.

  “No, no, no,” I mouth back.

  I’ve never seen two mimes arguing, but I imagine it would look something like this.

  She moves out of the doorway and all the way into my room. I have just enough space to dart around her, so I do. I sprint down our small hallway and lock myself in the bathroom.

  Mom’s inevitable knock comes ten seconds later.

  I open the door.

  She looks at me and sighs.

  I sigh back at her.

  Most of our communication these days comes in the form of these small exhalations. Hers are Frustrated and Long Suffering and Exasperated and Impatient and Disappointed.

  Mine are Confused.

  “Yvette Antoinette Thomas,” she says. “How long are you going to keep this up?”

  The answer to her question—and I think it’s a fair one—is forever.

  Forever is how long I’m going to be angry at Dad.

  Really, the better question is: Why isn’t she?

  She slips the phone back into her apron pocket. There’s a dusting of flour on her forehead and some in her short Afro, making it look like she suddenly went gray.

  “You giving away more books?” she asks.

  I nod.

  “You used to love them,” she says. The way she says it, you’d think I was setting them on fire instead of donating them to the library.

  I meet her eyes. It feels like maybe we’re having a moment. If she’s willing to talk about me giving away my books, then maybe she’s willing to talk about something real, like Dad and the divorce and how things have been since.

  “Mom—” I begin.

  But she shifts her eyes from mine, wipes her hands down the front of her apron and interrupts me. “Danica and I are going to make brownies,” she says. “Come down and help us.”

  The baking’s new. She started the day Dad moved out of our old house, and she hasn’t stopped since. If she’s not on shift at the hospital, she’s baking.

  “I’m meeting Martin and Sophie and Cassidy tonight. We’re supposed to start planning our road trip.”

  “You spend more time out of the house than in it these days,” she says.

  I never know what to do when she says something like that. It’s not a question and not an accusation, but it has a little bit of both in it. Instead of answering, I stare at her apron. It reads Kiss the Cook and has a drawing of two enormous red lips smacking.

  It’s true that I’m not home much these days. The thought of spending the next few hours baking with her and my sister, Danica, fills me not with despair exactly, but something close to it. Danica will be dressed perfectly for the occasion—a vintage-style apron with a matching chef’s hat that sits in the middle of her Afro poufs. She’ll talk about her latest boyfriend, who she is (very) excited about. Mom will tell gory emergency room stories and insist on playing reggae music, something old-school like Peter Tosh or Jimmy Cliff. Or—if Danica gets her way—they’ll play trip-hop while Danica documents the whole thing for social media. They’ll both pretend that everything is just completely okay with our family.

  Everything is not okay.

  Mom sighs again and rubs her forehead. The flour dust spreads.

  “There’s flour,” I say, reaching to wipe it away.

  She dodges my hand. “Leave it. It’s just going to keep getting dirty anyway.” Mom’s originally from Jamaica. She moved here when she was fourteen with Grandma and Grandpa. The only time she has a Jamaican accent is when she’s nervous or upset. Right now her accent is slight, but it’s there.

  She turns and goes back downstairs.

  As I get dressed, I try not to think about our not-quite-an-argument but end up thinking about it anyway. Why was she so upset with me for giving away the last of my romance books? It’s like she’s disappointed in me for not being the same person I was a year ago.

  But of course I’m not the same person. How could I be? I wish I were as unaffected by the divorce as she and Danica are. I wish I could bake with them, carefree. I wish I could go back to being the girl who thought her parents, especially her dad, could do no wrong. To being the girl who hoped to have a love just like theirs when she grew up. I used to believe in happily-ever-afters because they had one.

  I want to go back and unknow all the things I know now.

  But you can’t unknow things.

  I can’t unknow that Dad cheated on Mom.

  I can’t unknow that he left us all for another woman.

  Mom misses the version of me that used to love those books.

  I miss her too.

  CHAPTER 2

  (Former) Favorite Romance Genres

  Contemporary

  Enemies to Lovers—Asking the perennial question will they kill each other or will they kiss each other? I’m kidding. Of course they’re going to kiss.

  Love Triangle—Everyone loves to hate love triangles, but actually they’re great. They exist so the main character can choose between different versions of themselves: who they used to be, and who they’re still becoming. Side note: If you ever find yourself choosing between a vampire and a werewolf, choose the vampire. See #1 below for more on why you should (obviously) choose the vampire.

  Second Chance—These days I realize this is the most unrealistic trope. If someone hurts you once, why would you give them the chance to do it again?

  Paranormal

  Vampires—They’re sexy and will love you forever.

  Angels—They have wings that they’ll use to envelop you or to take you away from this place to wherever you need to be.

  Shape-shifters—Jaguars and leopards mostly, but basically anything in the big cat family. I once tried reading about dinosaur shape-shifters. T. rexes, pteranodons, apatosauruses, etc. They are as horrifying as you think they are.

  CHAPTER 3

  Give a Book, Take a Book

  BY THE TIME I get downstairs the next morning, Mom’s already left for her shift at the hospital. Danica is at the dining table taking pictures of the brownies she and Mom made. They’re arranged into a pyramid on one of Mom’s fancy new cake platters. Danica is from the jaunty-angle school of picture taking. She tilts her phone and circles the brownie pyramid, taking picture after jaunty picture.

  I get myself cereal and sit at the table next to her. We’ve been in this apartment for six months, but it still feels temporary, like I’m just visiting. I keep waiting to get back to my real life.

  Compared to our old house, this place is small. I miss having our own p
rivate backyard. Now we share a courtyard with twelve other apartments. Our house had two bathrooms, but now we only have one. Mostly, though, I miss how every room held our memories.

  Danica settles on a photo and slides her phone to me so I can see her post. “You can’t even tell they’re burnt,” she says with pride.

  She’s right. They do look perfect. I scroll through her posts. There’s a selfie of her and Mom dusted with flour, holding a big block of chocolate and laughing, that makes me wish I’d stayed and helped. I read through the hashtags—#motherdaughterbakenight #blackgirlmagicbaking #perfectbrowniesareperfect—before sliding the phone back to her.

  “How come you’re not at brunch?” she asks.

  Usually I spend Sunday mornings with my best friends at Surf City Waffle, the absolute best waffle place in all of Los Angeles. This morning, though, they’re all busy.

  “Everyone’s got stuff,” I say.

  “So you’re just gonna hang around here, then?” she asks, and not in a way that makes me think she wants me to hang around here.

  I drop my spoon back into the bowl and take a good look at her. Most days, she looks like a supermodel from the ’70s with her enormous Afro, bright glittery makeup and vintage clothes.