Friday Night Stage Lights

by Rachele Alpine

  Logan didn’t say anything for a long moment, and I could practically see the wheels turning in his head.

  “Really, it’s okay,” I insisted. “This is what I want to do.”

  He looked as if he was going to fight with me some more, but finally, he nodded.

  “All right,” he said. “But if you change your mind—”

  “I’m not going to change my mind,” I assured him and made my voice sound firm. “You’re going to that game, and I’m dancing the solo, and that’s the way it’s going to be.”

  Logan gave me a half smile. “I guess that’s what we’ll do if it’s what you really want,” he said, even though he still didn’t sound sure.

  “It is,” I said and told myself that I had made the right decision. It had to be the right decision, because there was no reversing it now.

  Chapter 53

  I spent the night before the All-City Showcase on the website for Juilliard’s Summer Dance Intensive. I reread the information about it over and over again. I studied the pictures and searched for hashtags about the program. I told myself this was enough. It was what Dasha and I had dreamed about doing. I would be happy with this, and maybe after high school, I could focus on dance in college. I could try other activities and new clubs in school and find other things I liked. I didn’t need to eat, sleep, and breathe ballet for the next four years. I told myself these things over and over again until I began to believe them.

  What I didn’t do was look at TSOTA’s website, because I had made the decision not to dance in the Showcase.

  Because here’s the thing.

  I could say that I was going to dance the solo. I could tell everyone that it was okay. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t at all. Whenever I thought about doing the dance in front of all those talented dancers, I remembered my recital and how I fell.

  It was silly to have even thought that I’d be able to dance alone onstage again. What was I thinking? It was like the universe was sticking its tongue out at me and telling me I was delusional for believing I could dance again after everything that had happened in Oregon. Jayden’s broken leg, my hurt ankle, the championship game on the same day: It all made sense now. They were signs, all telling me I was silly for thinking I could do this.

  I held the cursor over the link on my Bookmarks bar that I had saved for TSOTA. I hesitated for only a moment before I deleted it from my Favorite Places. I went through and unfollowed it on all of my social media, erasing any trace of it from my life.

  Chapter 54

  Nothing stops a Saturday FaceTime session with Dasha, so when I woke up on the morning of the big game to dance with her, I headed to the studio to call. I still hadn’t decided whether or not I would tell her about not dancing in the Showcase; either option seemed like the wrong choice.

  On one hand, she was my oldest and best friend; she deserved to know, but if I told her, she’d try to talk me out of it. That was the type of person that she was, and it was bad enough to admit to myself that I wasn’t going to dance, I didn’t want to hear about how disappointed she was too.

  “I should say something,” I said to myself as I waited for her to pick up the FaceTime call.

  Dasha’s face appeared, and she smiled and gave me a giant wave. “Today is the day! It’s your moment to shine! It’s here! It’s here!”

  She jumped up and down and threw her hands in the air. I wished that I could share the same enthusiasm as she did. As I watched her dance around the camera screen, I noticed something.

  “Hey, you’re not in your garage. Is that the studio?”

  Dasha paused and for a moment looked as if she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t, but then her face changed and she was a grinning ball of energy again. “Oh yeah, about that. I was thinking that you don’t have to rehearse today. I mean, we’ve gone over the dance a million times; maybe you shouldn’t dance it until this afternoon. We don’t want to jinx anything.”

  “Okaaaaay,” I said slowly. This was weird. Very weird. Dasha always made me rehearse, no matter what I said. I was pretty sure that if I were on the way to the hospital some Saturday morning, she’d be FaceTiming me in the ambulance asking me to do the dance one more time.

  “I have a much better idea. We figured that you were probably under a lot of stress with the Showcase and needed to let off some of that steam.”

  “We?”

  “Oh yeah, I hope you don’t mind, but I invited some friends to come FaceTime with us.” Dasha turned her iPad around, and I realized where she was. She was in my old dance studio in Oregon, and the room was full of my friends I used to dance with.

  “Am I imagining things?” I asked, confused, surprised, and over-the-moon excited to see everyone.

  “Nope! It’s real. What do you think? I thought you could use some moral support.”

  “This is amazing!” I said and waved at all my friends. They looked the same, as if I hadn’t moved away and was dropping in on a class. “How are all of you? I’ve missed you so much!”

  Mallory, one of the girls I was superclose to, came up to the camera. “We’re excited for you, Brooklyn. You’re going to do awesome today.”

  “Yeah! We can’t wait to hear all about it,” another girl named Kylie said.

  Right. The Showcase.

  My good mood evaporated in a second. Everyone was here because of that and they were being so nice to me, while I was living a lie.

  “I figured you’d had enough practice and wouldn’t want to go through your solo again this morning,” Dasha said. “So we had a different idea!”

  Loud dance music began to play in the studio. It was one of our favorite “let loose” songs from our weekly hip-hop class.

  “We thought that you could use a dance-it-out session with all of us,” Dasha said. “You told me how much it helped when you did it at your new studio, so we thought it would be a great thing to try here.”

  “Are you serious?” I asked, amazed by how right she actually was.

  “Oh, I’m dead serious.” She turned to the rest of the girls and nodded. “What do you all say? Ready to dance it out for Brooklyn?”

  And just like that, all my friends began to dance as if it didn’t matter. As if no one was watching, judging, or cared.

  I hesitated for only a moment and then let the silliness take over. I shook my arms and legs all over the place to songs that were all about happiness and fun. I let my hair out of its bun, so it fell all over my shoulders. I jumped around, laughed with them, and didn’t care what I looked like. And it was perfect. It was exactly what dance was supposed to be: nothing but pure love.

  Chapter 55

  I thanked Dasha and the other girls about a million times for our Saturday-morning dancing session. What I didn’t do was tell them that I wasn’t going to dance in the Showcase. How could I? It seemed impossible to say the words after Dasha had planned something as incredible as that. So instead, I allowed them to believe that I was still going to the Showcase.

  I wondered how long Tanner kept his decision not to take the scholarship to himself and if this was what he felt like when he first made the choice to turn it down. Was he nervous to tell people? Was he afraid he was going to let everyone down?

  These thoughts stuck with me as I huddled next to Mom, Stephen, and Mia in the high school parking lot. We waited with pretty much the entire town to send off the football team to the championship. People were painted up as if it were a Friday night, cars were decorated in Leighton colors, and a large part of the crowd held signs they’d made. We gathered around the bus the team would ride down. They were going early so they’d have some time to practice on the field.

  Mom wrapped her arm around me and pulled me close. “I wish I could be in two places at once, but you’ll do amazing in the Showcase.”

  “I hope so,” I said and felt a flash of guilt that she thought I was dancing today. That everyone thought I was dancing. I hadn’t even told Mary Rose, so I was still on the program for the Showcas
e. It had all become such a tangled mess that I had no idea how to unravel it. I wished I didn’t have to lie, but I couldn’t see any other solution.

  Members of the team arrived, and each time they did, the band played a drumroll and everyone burst into applause as they headed toward Coach Trentanelli, who stood on the steps at the entrance of the bus. The rest of the team gathered around him and helped welcome each new player who arrived.

  It was a pretty elaborate send-off for a football team, and if anyone else saw this, they might have thought a famous celebrity was arriving with the size of the crowd and the way they were going wild. I guess you could say the team was a bunch of famous celebrities, at least to us. Our boys were going to the state championships, and there was no way the town wasn’t going to give them a giant send-off.

  Mia came over to me with her camera. She was riding down with the middle school football team and considered herself the official journalist for the event.

  “So are you ready for your big break?” I asked her.

  “You know it!” She grinned and held up a badge around her neck that said OFFICIAL TEAM VIDEOGRAPHER.

  “Whoa, fancy. How’d you get that title?”

  “I made it!” she said and gave me a sly look. “I figured people wouldn’t question someone wearing a badge like this. Who knows what kind of stories I’ll be able to get!”

  “Just as long as there aren’t secrets about Tanner,” I joked.

  “Nope, never. I’ve learned that I need approval before running any stories because the aftermath can be tragic.”

  “A month without my best friend was pretty traumatic,” I agreed. “So did you get any good stuff here?”

  “Um, have you seen this crowd?” Mia swept her arm around as if I weren’t aware of how packed it was there. “I think I’ve got enough footage to last until I graduate. Everyone wants to talk to me about the team. I asked them to give me their best cheer, and some of it’s pretty funny.”

  “You haven’t asked me to do a cheer,” I told her.

  “Would you?” Mia asked and eyed me skeptically.

  “Okay, maybe not, but I love everything about this. The energy in the air is off the charts. Who would’ve thought I’d be here cheering on the team?”

  “It was only a matter of time until we wore you down and turned you into one of us,” Mia said. She gestured around to everyone. “You have to admit that you’re going to miss this.”

  “Actually, I’m not,” I told her. “I’m not going to miss it at all.”

  “Really?” Mia asked, and her smile evaporated.

  “Surprise!” I said and forced a grin. If I acted excited, maybe I could convince myself to really be okay with all of this. “I’m not going to miss it, because I’m not leaving.”

  “You’re not what?”

  “I’m not leaving Leighton. I’m going to go to high school with you.”

  “Are you kidding?” Mia threw her arms around me. “I get to keep my best friend?”

  I nodded and laughed. I tried to wiggle out of her grasp, but she was doing a good job of trapping me in the world’s tightest bear hug.

  “But what about Texas School of the Arts?” she asked when she finally let go.

  I avoided her gaze to make things easier. “I’m not dancing in the Showcase.”

  “Wait. What! Why? You’ve been practicing for months. What about Logan? I thought he was doing a great job.”

  “He is,” I said. “But he doesn’t love ballet. He loves football. He lives for it. And I wasn’t about to take the championship game away from him. So I told him I’d dance alone to make sure he’d go to the game.”

  “And you’re not dancing by yourself?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not. I only said that so he’d go to the game. I didn’t want him to have to choose the game or me, so I made it easy for him. And now you’re stuck with me for the next four years.”

  I grinned and figured she’d do the same, but instead, she got a stern look on her face and shook her head back and forth.

  “Nope, nope, nope. You can’t do this. You’re dancing in the Showcase,” she said.

  “It’s okay, I don’t want to. These last few months have shown me that Leighton isn’t all that bad. All I had to do was give it a chance. I already have some ideas for activities and clubs that I might want to join.”

  “Brooklyn, you have to do this. It’s your dream.”

  “It was my dream, but things changed, and now I guess you all are stuck with me.” I tried to make a joke about it, but Mia wasn’t buying it. She looked at me as if I was making the biggest mistake of my life.

  She held up her phone. “Can I show you something?”

  She hit the play button on a video and placed it in my hand. Someone was moving across the screen in leaps and twirls. Someone who looked familiar.

  “Is this me?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I went to your dance studio when I was trying to get you to talk to me. I’d wanted to apologize, but when I got there, you were going over a dance routine by yourself, and I couldn’t help but watch. This is the dance you have to do. Look how incredible you are. You need to show all the scouts that at the Showcase. You can’t miss this chance.”

  The recording was from that afternoon when I’d played the music for my recital piece and I’d danced for myself and no one else. The afternoon when I remembered how magical it truly felt to let the music lead you.

  I watched myself on the screen, and it was as if I was looking at someone else. The girl on the screen was good. Really good. And maybe Mia was right. But there was no way I could get in front of people and perform that dance again. It was like asking me to do the impossible.

  “I can’t dance that for anyone,” I said.

  “Then dance it for yourself,” Mia said, repeating those same words Mary Rose had said.

  Before I could respond, a huge cheer went up through the crowd. The drill team broke out into a dance, and the band played Leighton’s fight song. Tanner had arrived with Malik. The two waved at everyone, and I hadn’t thought it was possible, but it got even louder.

  “Tanner is invincible,” I said. “Even after he decided not to play football in college, everyone is still in love with him.”

  “Because he’s chasing after his dream,” Mia said.

  Mia was right. I thought again about how Tanner wasn’t letting anyone stop him from doing what he wanted to, even if it wasn’t what everyone else expected of him.

  I held my hand out to Mia for her phone. “Let me see that video again.”

  “I can do better,” she said and typed something into her phone. “There you go; I sent it to you.”

  I pulled my own phone out and clicked on the text. I pressed play and watched myself whirl and spin to the music. There was a calm to my face that I hadn’t seen in such a long time. I’d placed so much pressure on myself lately to get into TSOTA that I’d forgotten how to simply dance. I missed that peacefulness.

  “Hey, listen. I gotta get going,” Mia said, interrupting my thoughts. She began to back away, but I reached out and grabbed her arm.

  “Why? Where?” I was confused. Did I do something to upset her?

  “Tanner’s coming over,” she said softly. “He’s not going to want anything to do with me. Not after my last video.”

  “Apologize,” I told her. “It’s as simple as that.”

  “I don’t know . . . ,” Mia began.

  “I do. I bet you’ll find that he forgives you. People are surprising, you know.” I spoke to Mia, but I was focused on Logan, who had arrived with his parents. He headed over to the rest of the middle school team and they were all bumping shoulders and joking with each other. Goofing off the way they always did. “After all, you were the one who told me to give Logan a chance.”

  Mia gave me a halfhearted smile. “I did, didn’t I?”

  “Yep,” I said and pushed her toward Tanner. “Apologize to him. You’ll feel a million times better after, and maybe y
ou can talk him into an interview.”

  “I’d be happy if he just listened to me for a second.”

  “Go talk to him,” I repeated in a firm voice.

  “Okay, here I go.” Mia took a deep breath and headed toward him. She said something, he nodded, and the two walked away from the group. I turned to give her some privacy and tried to catch Logan’s attention instead. He wore his practice jersey and a pair of jeans. All of the boys had red sweatbands on each of their wrists with LHS stitched on in white. When Logan spotted me, he waved and jogged over.

  “Today’s the day, huh?” he asked.

  “Today is the day,” I agreed.

  “You sure you don’t want me to dance with you? It’s not too late to change your mind.”

  “We’ve gone over this. I’ll be fine. You need to go to the game.”

  “You promise to tell me how it all goes?” he asked, and I nodded, that tiny ball of guilt growing inside of me.

  “I sure will,” I said. “And make sure you pay attention to the game today, because that’s going to be you out there next year.”

  “I hope so,” Logan said and grinned.

  I gestured over to Mia, who was recording Tanner with her phone. “It looks like someone is getting the big scoop from the quarterback today.”

  “Another Tanner exclusive?” he asked with his eyebrow raised.

  “Something tells me this one is on slightly better terms.”

  The two of them talked for a few more minutes and then headed our way. Mom acted as if she hadn’t seen Tanner for days, even though she’d seen him at the house only about an hour before. She bounced from foot to foot, talking to him at about a mile a minute. She reminded me of a little kid on Christmas. But this game was a big deal, and it was pretty cool that Tanner was one of the ones leading the way.

  Stephen told him how proud he was, and Mom wrapped her arms around him and gave him a giant bear hug. After she let go, he walked over to me and ruffled up my hair. I made a face at him, but it was kind of nice, too, something a brother would do to bug his sister.