Hailey sat on the tall stool in front of the bathroom mirror.
“I want to sparkle,” Hailey said.
“Close your eyes,” I told her. I swiped some glittery makeup on over her eyelids. Then I pressed on a few tiny silver and fuchsia jewel stickers to her cheeks.
I slicked on a shiny lip gloss. I put her hair up in the style I thought looked cutest on her: two side ponytails.
“Done,” I said.
“Can I wear your jewelry?” she asked me hopefully.
I had a bunch of accessories from competitions that coordinated with my dance costumes that Hailey liked to play with too. Pins, earrings, hair clips, combs, ponytail holders, bracelets, bun holders, and chokers. A lot of them had rhinestones, so they sparkled, too.
“Sure, whatever,” I said. She pulled out a clip shaped like a giant bow and put it in her hair.
“I’ll go pick music,” she said.
I did my own makeup quickly. I pulled out a palette with darker colors. Smoky eye and black eyeliner, done shakily and not well. A dark purple lipstick. I looked at myself in the mirror. I had crazy postdance hair, so I pulled a black cap over it and went back out.
“Oh.” Hailey frowned. “You look scary.”
“You chose your look, I chose mine,” I said.
“Dance Challenge rules: Contestants will be scored not on dance skill, but on enthusiasm and overall amazingness.”
I nodded.
“First contestant is . . . ,” Hailey said. “Hailey!”
As I expected, she picked a peppy new pop song from her favorite singer. I turned off the lights and clicked on the little white blinking strand of lights that looped over my bed. Hailey danced around the room. Hailey actually was a naturally good dancer. My old dance teacher had always tried to get her to join a team because she’s flexible, tumbles, and has good stage personality. She twirled, did a back bend, and jumped around, occasionally jumping up onto my ottoman and then leaping off.
I felt antsy. I felt like she was wasting valuable practice time that I needed to work on my footwork. I secretly did the routine on the floor, keeping the top of my body straight so I wouldn’t get caught.
Step, step, step, step.
Hailey jumped off the bed and did a closing pose with her arms crossed and a smug look on her face.
“Harper, were you paying attention?” Hailey frowned. “You’re looking at your feet.”
“Uh.” Busted. “I’m just stretching them to get ready to dance.”
My sister raised an eyebrow.
“You better bring it.” Hailey pointed at me. “Challenge!”
Well, this would be an opportunity to practice the steps. I scrolled through her music choices and picked a song.
“Harper? HARPER!” Hailey had to yell over the pounding beat of the music. “This song is kind of intense.”
“I know!” I yelled back. I needed intense right now.
I started practicing the dance. I gave up on the arms and just focused on the footwork. Why couldn’t I get that one leap-step combination? Step, step, step . . .
“Harper?” Hailey said my name hesitantly. “I said Dance Challenge. Not sitting there barely moving.”
My real challenge was figuring out the footwork into the turn before the stag leap. Ugh! Fine, I’ll show her a dance challenge! I felt my emotions bubble up into anger, so I danced it out. I slammed my fists on the bed, I kicked at my chair—oops—knocking it over.
The music suddenly stopped as Hailey hit mute.
“So aggressive,” Hailey said. “Are you still mad you can’t do private lessons? Are you mad at me?”
“No, no.” I didn’t want Hailey to think it was her fault. I might as well be honest. “I’m not so mad. I’m mostly stressed. Our first group dance is complicated and really fast. I’m not getting it right.”
“Tell Mom,” Hailey said.
“I don’t want her to worry about it,” I said. “I don’t want it to be big drama.”
“Tell Miss Vanessa,” Hailey said.
I didn’t want Vanessa to think I couldn’t do something even before our first competition. I didn’t want her to regret her decision to choose me for the team. But maybe Hailey was right. If I didn’t get help . . . I shuddered.
“Oh wait, we have to vote for our challenge winner,” Hailey said, and started a drumroll on the bed and then stopped. “Do you want a pity vote to cheer you up?”
“Definitely not,” I said. “I never want a pity vote.”
“Then let’s get down to business,” Hailey said in an announcer’s voice. “We are down to the final two, but one dancer will be leaving us tonight. Judges, who do you vote for for elimination?”
“Sadly, I vote for Harper,” I said.
“I have to vote for Harper as well,” Hailey said. “So the dancer who will going home is . . . Harper.”
“Thank you for this opportunity,” I said, and then fake–broke down into tears. “Boo hoo! Boo hoo!”
“Please put your hands together for our winner, Hailey!” Hailey jumped around. “Let’s close the show with a tribute to our losing contestant, loser Harper.”
Hailey imitated my mad dancing. She turned the song back on even louder, and stamped on the floor and pounded her fists on the bed in an aggressive dance.
“Actually, this is kind of fun!” she shouted. “Come dance.”
I joined her. It was a good emotional release. We raged together. I whirled around, letting it all out. I danced like nobody was watching.
Suddenly, the door pushed open—and Mo came in. Mo looked around at our crazy scene.
“Ahoooo!” Mo began howling with the music.
Then he spun around in circles really fast with me.
Hailey and I started cracking up.
“He’s dancing for us!” Hailey said.
“And singing for you,” I told her. “Thank you for your support, Mo.”
I meant that for Hailey, too.
CHAPTER
12
Ididn’t get a chance to talk to Vanessa before team rehearsal, because she was teaching back-to-back classes. I tried to come in just a couple minutes before class started so the Bunheads wouldn’t get to ask me about the private lessons.
I put my dance bag in a higher cubby, since it had been moved from a lower one last time, and went to sit near Lily, who was doing lunges.
“Hi!” She seemed happy to see me. She tilted her head at the clock on the wall.
“11:11,” she whispered to me.
“Make a wish,” we both said.
My wish was that I would rock this dance today. Or at least not knock anyone over.
“I have some exciting news,” Vanessa said. “Instead of merely walking in the parade, we have been invited to ride on the float sponsored by Sugar Plums frozen yogurt store.”
“Whoo!” We cheered. I high-fived Lily. It would be fun to represent her parents’ new store, especially instead of walking.
Trina did a pageant wave.
“I think it would be an excellent time to debut our new team to the community,” Vanessa said. “So while the rest of the studio is marching on the street . . .”
She paused for dramatic effect.
“DanceStarz Squad will be performing its first public dance on the float!”
Everyone cheered again, including me. But my cheer was definitely more hesitant than everyone else’s. I know teams that can pick up choreography in a few hours, and we had two more days. But would two more days solve my timing issues?
I needed to talk to Vanessa about it. Maybe I could suggest that everyone else do the footwork and I just do a pose? But then that might make it looked like I thought I should be the featured dancer, when I was definitely the opposite of that.
“Will we get costumes now?” Riley asked. I was getting the idea that Riley was really into costumes, and probably fashion. Her dance outfits were always on point. Today, she was wearing a white racerback dance top with a hot pink stripe and matchi
ng leggings.
“Yes,” Vanessa said, and everyone cheered. “They will have a theme to reflect the Sugar Plums float. I’ll tell you more about that after we practice the routine.”
“I hope they’re cute!” Lily whispered to me.
Me too! And include magical abilities to make its wearer in sync with her team?
Vanessa wasn’t done.
“For now, we’re going to tweak the team dance a bit. Since it’s going to be on a float, we need to adapt for the space.”
Did this mean what I thought it did? Half of me hoped she was cutting out the moves that were messing me up, because that would be a relief. But if she did, that would put a target on me.
“So that being said, we are cutting that tricky sequence,” Vanessa confirmed.
Everyone turned to look at me. Megan’s eyes narrowed. Yup, the target was on me. Ouch.
“Let’s run through the dance now without that combination,” Vanessa said. “We’ll substitute an easier jump sequence.”
“It’s okay, Harper,” Lily whispered to me.
We ran through the routine.
I had to admit it was so much easier for me without the leaps and jumps combo. The rest of rehearsal went smoothly.
I felt the momentum of the dance moving me as I turned in perfect sync with the other four girls, and then we closed. Megan was in the middle, with her arm in the air. Riley and Trina were on either side, their arms outstretched. Lily and I were on the ground in front of them, each doing splits.
I felt energized. And happy.
“Whoo!” Lily shouted, and she and I gave each other double high fives. This excitement and support was what I’d wanted when I’d joined the dance team. It felt good.
After we finished, we went back to change into our street clothes and gathered into a group.
“Nice job, team,” Vanessa said. “Now, about your costumes. With such short notice, we’re going to stay simple. Since we’re representing Sugar Plums, your costume theme will be—”
“Plums!” Trina happily shouted.
“No, not plums.” Vanessa smiled and shook her head.
“Plums? What would we wear?” Megan turned to Trina. “Giant round purple costumes?”
“Sure!” Trina wasn’t swayed.
“You’ll each wear the color of a frozen yogurt flavor,” Vanessa said. She brought a box into the room. We opened it up to find pastel costume dresses. They were so pretty: a lace leotard on top and flowy chiffon cascade skirt.
“Megan, you’ll be original flavor because you are our original member of the studio.” Vanessa gave her a white costume.
“First and fabulous!” Megan held it up to herself and posed happily.
“Riley, you’ll be strawberry.” Vanessa gave Riley a pink dress.
“Because I’m the second member of the studio?” Riley asked. “I don’t get it.”
“It’s because you said your favorite color is pink,” Vanessa said. “Lily, you’ll be blueberry. Or I suppose it could be cotton candy.” Vanessa gave her a baby blue dress. I was happy for her that she’d gotten something close to her favorite color for her first dance.
“Cotton candy works.” Lily grinned. She took her dress happily.
“Trina, you’ll be lemon.” She gave her a pale yellow dress. “And, Harper, you’ll be mint chocolate chip.”
I took my mint green dress, pleased. It was really pretty.
“I love them,” Megan said definitively. “We’re going to look incredible on the float.”
“We also have an opportunity to make the float itself look incredible by helping to decorate it,” Vanessa said. “Follow me to the back room.”
We followed her to the back of the studio, to a space that looked like a giant storage room. On the floor were huge wooden cutouts in the shapes of ice-cream cones, painted in the same colors of our costumes.
“Frozen yogurt cones!” Lily said happily. “My dad had them made to attach to the sides of the float.”
Vanessa was wheeling a large three-tiered table toward us.
“The arts cart!” Riley was practically jumping up and down.
“You can embellish the cardboard decorations to create chocolate chips, sprinkles, and other toppings,” Vanessa said. “And you can do the same on your costumes if you want. Have at it.”
We all went over to the table. There were containers of gemstones, beads, pompoms, and rhinestones, sparkling in so many colors.
“Wow,” I said. “I love crafts.”
“Isn’t this cool?” Riley said, genuinely smiling at me. “Vanessa lets us embellish our stuff here sometimes. Our jackets, our spirit sticks, our props . . .”
“Riley embellishes everything,” Megan said, rolling her eyes.
“My phone case! My dance duffel! My team jacket!” Riley had no shame.
“She gets it, already,” Megan snapped. “Stop talking, start embellishing.”
“Yay!” Riley started to dig through the tubs. We all got started.
“My mint chocolate chip needs some chocolate chips,” I said. I collected my supplies and brought them over to the floor next to the green wooden fro-yo cone. I used black rhinestones to represent chocolate chips. I thought it would look classic against the mint green color. I used tweezers to pluck out the ones I wanted. I decided to scatter mine around, just like chocolate chips would be. I dotted glue around randomly.
Trina and Lily were using different colors for rainbow sprinkles on theirs. Trina was scattering hers, like I was doing.
“Rainbow sprinkles, like my favorite color,” Trina was saying happily.
“Rainbow is not a color,” Megan said.
“Rainbow is my favorite,” Trina insisted. “Rainbows have red, which is strong; orange, which I love because it’s pretty much nobody’s favorite color, poor orange; cheerful yellow; green—”
“Okay! Okay!” Megan groaned. “We get it.”
“See?” Trina smiled happily and went back to her gluing.
Lily was lining her rhinestones just along the border of her costume.
“Rhinestoning makes me crazy,” she said to me, stretching her arms over her head. “I have no patience for this.”
I actually liked rhinestoning. It felt like I was doing an art project. It was a challenge to do it as perfectly as I wanted to: The glue would gloop out too much or smear; the rhinestone would stick to my finger or the wrong spot. But it was also relaxing, and I loved the sparkly finished product.
“Do you want my help?” I offered.
“Thanks, but I think I’ll go for the minimalist look,” Lily said, pressing her last rhinestone. “Meaning, finishing as soon as possible . . . and done!”
She jumped up and went to do handstands against a wall.
I tentatively slid my outfit closer to the Bunheads. I looked at their costumes.
Megan was using iridescent gems that shimmered in different soft colors when they light hit them.
“Megan, that’s pretty,” I told her.
“I know, right?” Megan said, covering her top so that it was almost all rhinestones with the fabric peeking through. “I’m so good at this. You should see the one I did with my mom for the costume I wore when I won regionals for a jazz/funk dance.”
“I love costuming,” Riley said happily. Riley was bedazzling her dress in an elaborate geometric pattern.
“Wow, that’s cool,” I told her. “You like fashion, right?”
Riley was always dressed stylishly in a laid-back way. Right now, she was wearing a black-and-white-plaid shirtdress, a choker, and white sneakers.
“Thanks. I think I might want to be a fashion designer with my own clothing line,” Riley said. “And also a Rockette and a football cheerleader.”
I also thought it would be cool to have a clothing line. Today, I had on a white varsity tee and slightly baggy boyfriend jeans. Chill and comfortable but really cute.
“I’m going to be a dancer on Broadway, and a supermodel,” Megan said. She was wear
ing a cute outfit too: a cropped tee and high-waisted skinny jeans with a tear in the knee.
“If I can’t dance, I’ll be a choreographer,” Trina said. “Or maybe a teacher. And a mom.”
“What do you want to be, Lily?” I called over to her as I dotted some glue.
“Ugh, I don’t know,” Lily said.
“A dancer?” Trina asked her.
“I don’t knoooow,” Lily said. “What do you want to be, Harper?”
“Maybe a dancer on Broadway. Or a backup dancer for a celebrity,” I said hesitantly. “Or something with makeup, like doing makeup tutorials.”
Doing makeup was kind of like doing artwork, both of which I loved.
“You like doing makeup?” Lily asked me. “I hate doing mine. Maybe you can help me for competitions.”
“Sure,” I said. “I also love doing hair. I do my sister’s hair and I always did my dolls’ hair.”
“Oh, my mom is going to be so happy,” Lily said. “She can’t stand doing my makeup and hair.”
“I love makeup too!” Megan said. “I totally want to have my own kits and makeup channel. My line is going to be called Megan’s Makeup. . . .”
Megan took over the conversation, telling us the different colors of her makeup line. The rest of us quietly worked on our costumes.
I finished the last of my “chips” on my leotard, pleased with the results. I looked around at everyone’s outfits.
“We are going to look amazing,” I announced.
“Our costumes, at least,” Megan sniffed. “Too bad, since our dance could look more amazing. It’s so basic now.”
“Without the tricky steps and jumps?” Riley asked, and Megan nodded.
My cheeks flamed red.
“We’re going to be on a float,” Lily pointed out. “It’s not a competition.”
“Yeah,” Megan sighed loudly. “At least it’s only a parade for our town. It’s not like Energii will be there.”
CHAPTER
The Audition Page 7
