Dancing on the Edge Chapter 26 Summary

  • Miracle goes to the surgery wing of the hospital to get her legs looked at, and the doctor declares that they are healing well enough that she doesn't need to wear thick bandages on them anymore. She wears shorts for the first time since the accident and even gets up the courage to stand up to a girl in group therapy who makes fun of them.
  • At her next session with Dr. DeAngelis and Casey, Dr. DeAngelis explains that they're going to play a game called "I Recall." She and Casey will take turns sharing memories, allowing the memories they pick to be triggered by what the other person says.
  • At first, Miracle suspects that they are trying to direct the game toward her accident—Casey shares a memory of Toole setting off firecrackers and getting stitches—but then the conversation gets directed toward Miracle's dancing, and before she knows it, Casey is telling her about her mother.
  • Just like Miracle, Sissy loved to dance. She saw a dance program at her school and came home wanting to take ballet lessons. Dance was her passion for the rest of her life, and she spent her time performing and attending lessons.
  • When she was sixteen, Sissy and Casey's parents were killed in a plane crash. The sisters used some of the insurance money to send Sissy to a dance program at the beach. As it turned out, it was the same beach where Gigi was living with Dane, forcing him to become a prodigy novelist.
  • At the mention of Dane, Miracle begins to become agitated and begs Dr. DeAngelis to stop the game, but he tells her that she needs to move out of the dark so she can be in the light that comes after it. Miracle begins putting the pieces together. She realizes that she had to keep her dance lessons a secret because Gigi didn't want her to dance—because of Sissy.
  • Casey returns to the story. While at the dance camp, Sissy had a relationship with Dane and got pregnant. It was four months, though, before she noticed something was different because she still looked the same. When she started to get sick and lack energy in the morning, though, Casey took her to the doctor, who told them she was going to have a baby.
  • Sissy had planned on going to New York to become a professional dancer, but having a baby would ruin her dream. Things only got worse when Casey found out who the father was and called him and Gigi—Gigi invited Sissy to live with her and Dane, but forbade her to dance.
  • Sissy told Casey that she'd made a decision: She was going to have the baby and leave it with Gigi, then go to New York and pursue dance. Casey tried to tell her that she needed to think of someone other than herself, the way her parents had made sacrifices so she could go to dancing school, but Sissy said that if she couldn't dance, all their sacrifices would be for nothing.
  • Casey is quiet for a long time. Then, she says that she was afraid the baby would grow up without a mother—which is exactly what happened.
  • Dr. DeAngelis tells Miracle that she knows the rest of the story, and should tell them what happened next.