Chaos Choreography (7 page)

“Chin up, shoulders back, trigger finger ready. Now go out there, my darling girl, and prove that you're the one.”

—Enid Healy

The lobby of the Crier Theater in Hollywood, California, six weeks later

T
HE AIR INS
IDE THE LOBBY
was at least five degrees cooler than the air outside. It felt more like my native Portland than like Hollywood, land of sunscreen, tanning beds, and movie stars with thousand-dollar skin. I shoved my sunglasses into my oversized dance bag, blinking rapidly to adjust to the switch from outdoor bright to indoor dim. Everyone around me was doing the same thing, which gave me an excuse to hang back from the crowd and get a feel for the situation.

The building was familiar, of course: this was where we'd done my original season of
Dance or Die
. Holding our final rehearsals on the actual performance stage used for live shows made it easier for us to get comfortable with routines that we barely had time to learn, which cut down on injuries. Cutting down on injuries lowered the show's insurance rates, so everybody won. Besides, the theater was huge. There was plenty of practice space, and the plumbing almost never decided to back up and flood the bathrooms. Almost. Stepping into the Crier Theater was like coming home.

Dominic was a different but equally familiar presence behind me, although his blond-tipped hair and studiously “I am in a boy band, ask me about our new single” attire made him less familiar when I actually looked at him. Dominic De Luca wasn't the kind of guy Valerie Pryor would have looked at twice, much less gotten involved with. David Laflin, on the other hand, had all Dominic's natural hotness, combined with a much more modern sense of style. He was believable as part of her image. That was what mattered here. Image. Reality was boring if it didn't have a layer of sequins on top.

“Remember,” I murmured. “If someone asks you a question you can't answer, just laugh and either look in a mirror or look at me.”

“I am to be your boy toy,” he said. He sounded amused. That was good. I couldn't have done this if he hadn't been willing to play along.

Six weeks seemed like a long time when I'd agreed to do the show. Six weeks hadn't been nearly long enough. Not when I needed to have my costumes altered, wigs made, and get a whole new identity set up for Dominic—a big task under any circumstances, and one that was made bigger by the fact that some of Valerie's paperwork was out-of-date. We'd managed to finish everything just under the wire, and now here I was, a week out from our first show, about to become reacquainted with the people I'd once thought of as my natural peers.

I wasn't ready. And that didn't matter, because I'd been spotted. A black-haired blur rocketed through the crowd toward me. I braced for impact, hoping Dominic would recognize this as the opposite of an attack. We didn't have an easy way for me to warn him without drawing attention to myself or looking unfriendly, and then it was too late, as a slim African-American woman in yoga pants and a beaded red halter top slammed into me, rocking me back several inches as she slung her arms around my neck.

“Val!” she squealed. “Oh my gosh Val you're
here
I heard from Anders who heard from Lo that you'd
dropped out of your last two competitions and then the producers were having trouble finding you and I was so afraid you weren't going to come but here you are! You're actually here!”

“I'm actually here,” I confirmed, giving Lyra a quick hug before attempting to extricate myself from her embrace. “I had a bad fall during training, and bruised my tailbone. Nothing permanent, it didn't need surgery or anything, but it was pretty messed up for a while, and I had to miss some competitions. I wasn't getting any traction, so I figured I'd come home to California and think about my options.”

Lyra let go, stepping back enough to beam brilliantly in my direction. It was like staring into a searchlight. “This is some option, huh?”

“And how,” I agreed. I half-turned, opening my posture as I gestured to Dominic. “Lyra, I'd like you to meet my boyfriend, David. David, I'd like you to meet Lyra, my season's dancer of choice.”

“She says that like she didn't come in second,” said Lyra, dialing her smile back and giving Dominic an appraising look. “So you're dating Val? You think you're good enough for her?”

“No, but as she doesn't seem to have realized that yet, I intend to take advantage of my time in her good graces,” said Dominic, with the sort of solemnity he usually reserved for portents of doom and complaints about how long I took in the shower.

Lyra glanced back to me. “Ooo, I like him. Spanish?”

“Italian,” said Dominic.

“I like him even more.” She whirled and gave me another quick hug. “It's so good to see you again, Val. I know I was supposed to keep in touch better, and I'm sorry. Things got so
crazy
after I won our season.”

“I understand,” I said. I did, too. It was hard to remember to stay in touch when your life was blowing up around you. “I didn't make the effort, either. Can we agree to forgive each other?”

“Already forgiven,” said Lyra, making a tossing
gesture. “Anders is here, by the way. In case you wanted to see if
he
was willing to forgive you.”

I grimaced. “On a scale of one to never gonna happen, how much shit am I in?”

“I'd say a nine-point-five,” said a voice from behind me. I turned and found myself looking at a perfectly fastened bow tie. I tilted my head back and shifted my gaze to the big blue eyes of one Anders Clarke.

He was easily six inches taller than me, built like a runner, something he attributed to a combination of genetics and never sitting still. Dance was a world of constant motion, and Anders made the rest of us look lazy. He was a human cartoon in impeccably polished tap shoes . . . at least, he always had been before. Now, he was standing frozen, a sad look on his classically handsome face. Very classically handsome: he could have stepped straight out of a Gene Kelly movie, even down to the cut of his suit. Anders was the only human man I knew who thought of suspenders as a valid fashion choice. Somehow, for him, they were.

“Anders,” I said, starting to reach for him. That was when he finally moved.

He stepped away.

“I emailed you,” he said. “After your phone number was disconnected. I emailed eight times, and you never responded.”

“When did you start?” I asked.

He gaped at me. “When did I
start
? Because that totally makes up for you never answering me, or reaching out in the first place? We were partners, Val. You should've called.”

“I was in Manhattan for a year, and I didn't get any email from you,” I said. “I would've answered.” I would have. I might not have been proactive about keeping in touch with the other dancers from my season—partially out of shame over my loss, and partially because there hadn't been enough hours in the day—but I answered the people who bothered to contact me. Guilt and curiosity had been enough to guarantee that.

“I started the day after the show ended,” he said.

I blinked slowly. “Sweetie . . . I didn't get any email from you. Not one single piece. What address were you using? Did you ever swing by Facebook and message me?”

“No, because you were already ignoring my email.” Now Anders was starting to look angry. Never good. He took a long time to wind down, and we were going to be called in to meet with the producers soon.

Lyra, ever the peacemaker, pulled out her phone and shoved it in front of his face. “Is this the email address you were using?” she asked.

Anders blinked several times as he refocused on the screen. His anger was like a rolling stone: it gathered speed as it moved, and it was difficult as hell to pull it back. Then he blinked again. “No,” he said, pulling out his own phone and scrolling through his address book before pushing it toward me. “This is.”

We made a weird sort of triangle, standing there holding phones out toward one another, and it made me want to get my own phone out, just to complete the formation. I resisted the urge in favor of frowning at Anders' screen. “That's not my email address,” I said. “That isn't anything even
like
my email address. Who gave you that address?”

“Jessica,” said Anders. “You ducked out so fast after the finale that I didn't have a chance to get it from you, and I wanted to keep in touch.”

Lyra and I both stared at him. Lyra lowered her phone to give herself a clearer view of Anders' face. We were a united front again, just like we'd been during our last weeks on the show, and I wasn't going to lie: it felt incredibly good. Lyra had never met Verity Price, would probably be appalled by Verity's world, but she had been Valerie's best friend. Even compartmentalized and held apart as my two worlds were, that mattered to me.

“You asked
Jessica
for contact information for
Valerie
, and you believed one, that she'd have it, and two, she'd give it to you accurately, without being an asshole about it?” Lyra planted her hands on her hips. “Did you
fall and hit your head after you were eliminated, or did you just think the spirit of brotherhood would suddenly move her to
not
be a horrible human being?”

“She's not that bad,” I said, with no real heat.

“Uh, excuse much? She called you a fake redhead on camera when they did alumni week. She tried to sue the show when they let Emily come back after she was eliminated, because they hadn't let
her
come back. She's awful. She's always been awful, she'll always
be
awful, and the fact that Anders listened to her for like, a second, makes
him
awful.” Lyra directed a glare at Anders, who squirmed. “How dare you get mad at Valerie because of something Jessica did? That's like, awful squared.”

“Valerie still changed her number without telling anyone,” said Anders—a defensive rearguard action if I had ever heard one.

“My old phone got disconnected because someone blasted the number over Twitter,” I said.

Anders and Lyra exchanged a look before saying, in unison, “Jessica.” Then they were laughing, and I was laughing, and all was right with the world.

A chime rang through the lobby, shaking dancers out of their conversations and warmup stretches. I wrinkled my nose and turned to Dominic, who'd been looking increasingly confused during our conversation. He'd just been dropped into a world he didn't understand, complete with preexisting social connections and rivalries. He was doing the sensible thing and staying quiet. I loved him even more for that. Common sense is less common than you'd think.

“You can come in for this part; we're encouraged to bring friends and family to the producer meeting, since it makes the audience look fuller,” I said. The instructions had been clearly spelled out on the last prep email from the producers. “You'll have to leave after the showboating, but at least this way you can get a look at the judges and our host.”

“I understand,” he said solemnly.

Lyra grabbed my arm, tugging me toward the theater
doors. “Come on, come
on
, Val. We want to get good spots on the stage!”

As if they weren't going to arrange us according to their own plan? This was all staged. Every bit of it. I was just surprised there weren't cameras here in the lobby—at least not cameras I could see. I glanced around, suddenly paranoid, and resisted the urge to check my wig.

Then Anders grabbed my other arm, signaling that all was forgiven, and the two of them lifted my feet off the ground and toted me into the future.

As I'd expected, the stage was marked with little pieces of tape, each with a name written on it. They were mixing the seasons, turning us from five sets of four into a mob of twenty dancers. We milled around the stage until we found our names. Then we stepped off again, waiting in the wings where the cameras wouldn't pick us up.