В Мертл-Бич ученица в слюнявчике молча едет в школу, пока отец рассказывает историю о погибшей танцовщице Энни Хакс

MYRTLE BEACH — The 8-year-old in the dark blue dress sat silently as she rode to school, her left arm cradled in a sling. She normally shared her feelings easily, but not on this day. She said "no" when her father asked if she wanted to talk. Then he brought up the person they were both thinking about.   "Do you want me to tell you a story about Mommy?" he asked. Countless stories about Annie Hucks have been shared in the days since the 33-year-old Horry County dance teacher was killed in a wreck on Aug. 28.  Many of them follow the same pattern: Annie faced an unthinkable fight, but she persevered with verve, faith and an irrepressible joy. Friends and family said it's fitting that her longtime Instagram name was @cultivatingsunshine.      "She could dig it out of the darkest hole," her husband Jarrett Hucks said. "Everybody got a piece of that light, and I lived with it." From kidney cancer to a brain tumor Annie's path was always uphill.  Friends and family gush about the courage of 10-year-old Annie, who endured kidney cancer so severe that a rugby ball-sized tumor shifted her ribs. Doctors weren't sure how she would walk or whether she'd ever have children.  Annie became a hip-hop dance instructor and a mother of two. "She never wanted to get stuck in her suffering or hardship," said Meggan Goff, Annie's friend and biblical counselor. "She always wanted to see God through it." Goff said Annie took courses in counseling several years ago in part because she wanted to help her students navigate their own struggles. She said her friend embodied the biblical passage of Isaiah 43:2-3, the verses describing God walking with someone through rivers and flames. "That's how Annie lived," she said. "She knew how to walk through those waters with her savior. She didn't try to just try to cross over them. She wanted to know what it was like to walk through those hard places, those torrents, those flames, and she wanted to teach other people how to do the same." Several months ago, Annie was in a car wreck and broke her wrist. While she was being evaluated, scans revealed a tumor in her brain. Although it was benign, doctors scheduled her for surgery in July.   In a video she posted on Facebook, Annie asked for prayer for her children, her husband and the surgery. And she did it with her signature enthusiasm. "I'm not going to do something small," she said. "We're going to do it big and we're going to get the T-shirt." She said she was looking forward to dancing again. "God has been so faithful, and he has sustained me every step of the way," Annie said. "It's like a superpower. I can be in bed and then the second he needs me to love on some of his babies, he brings me through it." The sparkling unicorn  Annie's bright red hair fit her personality. She liked vibrant colors and silly jokes. She even named her brain tumor. The mass was called Patrice after the annoying-yet-well-meaning character on the TV show "How I Met Your Mother." "She made a joke out of everything," said Kelly Burton, a family friend whose children took dance lessons from Annie. "She could say things like, 'C'mon Patrice' if she was forgetting a word.... Just in the middle of something, she would call Patrice out." Annie taught at Silver Lining School of the Arts, her family's faith-based performing arts center just outside Myrtle Beach. She was passionate about students knowing origins of hip-hop, but she also taught dance as a form of worship. She mentored students there for more than 15 years.  "I always called her a unicorn," Burton said. "She's just very sparkly, charismatic.... We lost a light." Annie often stayed an hour or longer after her classes ended so she could be a sounding board for kids. She and Jarrett went to so many graduations and weddings for former students, he long ago lost count. In the wake of her death, friends and family have shared numerous accounts of the lives Annie touched. A dance mom described how Annie rescued her teen daughter from dark places, and another student's parent spoke about Annie texting to say she'd woken up at 3 a.m. to pray for her child.  "It's a million tiny moments like that," Goff said. "That's why she had such an impact."  At home, Annie was no different, Jarrett said. She crafted such encouraging messages in birthday and anniversary cards that he stashed them all over the house. She made playlists of her children's favorite songs. Ahead of her 4 p.m. Sunday memorial service at Beach Church, the family made one request: no black clothing. Annie liked to keep things bright. Meeting as teens Jarrett and Annie met as teenagers on the Grand Strand. Separated by three years, the two wouldn't date until he was in his early 20s. Jarrett recalled sneaking into the Myrtle Beach Convention Center where Annie worked at a concession stand so he could talk to her.  Unbeknownst to Jarrett, Annie had been asked to dance for a church service. She talked the youth leader into letting it be a duet so she could get Jarrett to join her. After spending so much time practicing "By Your Side" by 10th Avenue North, they started dating.  Ten months later, Jarrett proposed on a rainy day beneath the Second Avenue Pier. The skies briefly let up for her to say yes. Annie would go through a grueling childbirth with their daughter, Diana, and they had accepted that they would be a one-child family.  But a few years after Diana was born, their daughter began offering a specific bedtime prayer: she thanked God for her mother, her father and her baby sister. "Praying every night with that little girl made us soften our hearts and opened us up to want another child," Jarrett said. The following Christmas Eve, they found out Annie was pregnant. When their daughter learned she would be getting a baby brother named Judah, she told her parents that God didn't hear her. "We got to tell her, 'No baby, God did hear you. But he's bringing you something better. He's bringing you something that you needed,'" Jarrett said. Judah turns 4 this month.  Finding hope Annie's brain surgery in July was a success, but the recovery proved difficult. Headaches and fatigue persisted, and Annie began to grow discouraged, Jarrett said. He encouraged her to seek counseling, and she did that on Aug. 28. Afterwards, Jarrett said his wife finally sounded hopeful. The last time they spoke that day, he told her he loved her. That afternoon, she loaded up the kids and headed to his parents' house. The plan was for the children to spend the night there so Annie could work on her lesson plans for her return to the dance studio the following week.   The crash happened shortly before 5:30 p.m. on Middle Ridge Avenue near West Perry Road, according to the S.C. Highway Patrol. A Ford sedan was heading south when the car crossed the center line, troopers said. The Ford sideswiped a sedan heading in the opposite direction, then slammed head-on into the SUV Annie was driving. Jarrett said a trooper told him Annie made a last-second swerve that likely saved their children's lives. Looking for the light A few days after the crash, Jarrett took Diana to school. He wanted her to see friends, to try to keep a routine. On the way there, they stopped at the gas station where they often get breakfast. A woman behind the counter noticed Diana's sling (she broke her collarbone in the crash) and asked what had happened.  "Car wreck," they said. "Is everybody OK?" she asked. They couldn't speak.  Back in the truck, Diana noticed her scrambled eggs were inside what looked like an ice cream cup. She broke the silence. "Eggscream," she said. They both burst into laughter. Jarrett thought it sounded like something Annie would say. Parked in the lot outside the school, Jarrett wanted to be there just in case his daughter needed him.  "There's my baby," he said as she walked on the playground. "She seems like she's doing good." Jarrett knows his kids look like him — "Annie always said she just cooked them," he said — but it's clear Diana acts like her mother. She can be a goofball, but she's empathetic and kind.  He acknowledged he doesn't have Annie's silly streak, and he's never been the kind of dad to sit for tea parties with imaginary friends. He thinks Diana will need tea parties now, and his mind drifts to the other things she'll need. He wonders how long it will take him to learn how to fix her hair. But Jarrett plans to keep telling Annie's stories. A few days ago, it hit him that their favorite show, "How I Met Your Mother," was about a father named Ted telling his children about their late mother. "My friends always joked that I was Ted," he said. "But now I kind of am." A familiar sight Earlier in the day, when Diana had asked him for a story, he told her how Annie had been sick and they weren't sure if they'd ever have children. But, he said, they brought home a puppy, and they decided they'd be grateful for the family God gave them, no matter how big it was. A few weeks later, he explained, they learned she was on the way. When the school day was over, Diana told him other kids had been asking about the wreck and what happened to her mother. One kid said he'd seen a news story about her. Worried, Jarrett asked how that made her feel.  "It's like Mommy's famous," she told him. They stopped by the dance studio at the end of the day. There, other students and parents had gathered to grieve and support Annie's family.  Jarrett watched his little girl as she choreographed a dance for the other kids. As she guided their movements to Charity Gayle's "I Speak Jesus," she seemed so warm and encouraging. That joy looked familiar.