#115: Jessi's Big Break
Jessi (did you know she’s a ballerina????) gets accepted to a prestigious Dance New York program. It’s a four-week session in New York; she’ll have to live with her aunt and uncle in Brooklyn, be tutored through the dance academy, and mingle with a crop of competitive dancers. This is, uh, kind of a lot for an eleven-year-old, but such is the life of a Stoneybrook middle-schooler.
Of course Jessi excels and of course her former sort-of boyfriend Quint is there. And Quint seems to think that now that they’re no longer “long distance” they’re a couple. Jessi has to shut him down, which she does… eventually… and, like the upstanding gentleman that he is, he takes it well even though he’s disappointed.
Meanwhile, Jessi really clicks with a fellow dancer named Maritza and her friends, and she doesn’t really miss Stoneybrook, the BSC, or her friends and family at all… which is harsh because both Mallory and Becca basically have rain clouds hovering over their heads Eeyore-style the entire month that Jessi is gone.
At the end of the program, Jessi gets invited by the head honcho — a famous and respected choreographer — to join and stay on full-time. That means she’d have to leave her Stoneybrook life behind and make a permanent move to New York and a permanent commitment to ballet. Again, this is a lot for an eleven-year-old, and luckily Jessi decides that she’s not ready to give up her friends, family, and childhood yet. (Phew! Can you imagine Aunt Cecilia as a stage mother aunt?)
