“Just because I wouldn't take part in her mean little games?”
“You don't get it.” Edie wipes a hand roughly across her eyes. “It isn't a game, Cassandra. Maybe you haven't noticed, but no one's even talking to Iako since the vote.”
“I am,” I say. “And so are the other new girls.”
“Yeah, whatever.” She shrugs as if to say that the new girls don't count.
“Don't you think it's kind of mean?” I ask her. “Honestly, Edie?” She isn't meeting my gaze, and I think that deep down she knows it isn't okay. A cluster of girls is standing just ahead of us on the front steps, and I stop walking and lightly touch Edie's arm. “If you didn't go along with it, she couldn't do the stuff she does. Why don't you stand up to her?”
She shakes my hand off. “Because,” she says, “Melissa is my best friend. Besides, I'm not stupid.”
“What does that mean?” I'm a little annoyed that she's called me stupid twice in about two minutes.
“You'll see,” she says and runs off ahead of me into the school.
* * *
Inside, a crowd of girls is jostling in front of the bulletin board.
“It's about the auditions!” Cam calls out when she sees me.
“It is?” I push closer to double-check. Sure enough, there is a flyer posted from the Pacific Coast Ballet, with the times and location for the
Nutcracker
auditions. I turn to look at her. “Oh my god, Cam. Can you imagine being Clara? I'm not going to be able to think about anything else.”
Cam runs her fingers through her hair, making it stick up. “Yeah, tell me about it. I dreamed about
The Nutcracker
last night. Only, in my dream, the Sugar Plum Fairy was chasing Clara around on a broomstick.” She shakes her head. “Guess I shouldn't read Harry Potter right before bed.”
Melissa's sharp voice speaks up from behind me. “Cam, you're not really expecting to be Clara, are you? I mean, you can't help it, butâ¦well, let's just say you don't really have the body type for ballet.”
“I made it here, didn't I?” Cam says. She is shorter than Melissa and tilts her chin up to meet her eyes. “I got accepted for the summer program.”
“Cam has the best jumps of any of us,” I say.
They both ignore me. They look like two dogs staring each other down, waiting to see who will give way first. To my surprise, it's Melissa who looks away.
“Girls! I realize this is exciting, but I still expect you to be in class on time,” Mrs. Hoffman says.
The chatter subsides and we all make our way into the studio for the day's first session, which is jazzâsomething I love almost as much as ballet. The music is alive inside me, filling me with energy and lightnessâmotion and emotion. Every part of my body wants to dance.
But my brain won't switch off. I can't stop thinking about the audition. Can I dance well enough to get the part of Clara?
At lunch, I head outside alone. Edie and Melissa have been ignoring me all morning, and I don't think I'm welcome in their little group anymore. Not that I want to be. They're being totally mean to Cam, making snotty comments about her hair, laughing behind her back. I cross the grass and find a spot to sit, alone, on a bench under the trees.
I need to think. I need to stay focused on why I am here. I close my eyes for a moment and concentrate on the feel of the sun on my face, the sound of the distant traffic, my breath going in and out. My mom went through a meditation phase a year or so ago, and I used to meditate with her, the two of us in
zazen
, as she called it, cross-legged in our living room, listening to some guided visualization she'd downloaded. The guy who led the meditation had a strong accent that Dad liked to imitate. Mom got annoyed at him for it, but he was just trying to make me laugh.
The memory loosens an avalanche of emotion and a homesickness so strong I'm scared I might start bawling.
Focus. Focus. You're here to dance.
I grit my teeth and open my eyes.
Cam is walking toward me. I wave. “Hey.”
“You're not with your friends today?” She stops in front of me.
“No. Well, they're not really my friends. It's just that I'm staying with Edie, you know? Her folks are my homestay family.”
“Ah.” She relaxes a little. “That makes sense. I wondered why you were always with themâI mean, instead of with the other homestay girls.”
“Where are you all staying?” I ask, curious.
“I'm staying with some old friends of my parents, actually. Julie and Mackenzie are staying with a family that has two young boys who do ballet. Eight-year-old twins. I think it's pretty crazy over there.”
“And Iako?”
“She's staying with an older couple, two women who always take students from Japan. She's helping them learn Japanese, and they help her with her English.” She sits down on the bench beside me and opens her lunch bag. “So is it okay for you? I mean, staying with Edie?”
“Yeah. Her parents are nice. I'm just a bit homesick, I guess.” My throat closes up on the last words, and I have to look away.
“Aw. Yeah, I have it easy, staying with people I know.” She takes an apple out of her bag and crunches into it loudly. “Do you know what's up with Edie and Melissa and their friends? I mean, I get that they don't like me, but the stuff they were saying this morning⦔
“I know. That was really mean.” I hesitate, wondering whether I should try to explain the whole stupid voting thing. I don't want to admit that I actually took part. I remember my own hand going up to vote against Iako, as if I were nothing more than a puppet with no mind of my own. “Melissa's very competitive,” I say.
“Ha. You think?”
I laugh. “I guess that was kind of stating the obvious. But the thing isâwell, maybe she feels kind of threatened by the new girls, you know? She really wants to get into PTP.”
“Who doesn't?”
“I don't know if I do,” I admit. “I mean, I sort of do. But I'd miss my family so much.”
To my surprise, Cam doesn't even raise an eyebrow. “PTP's not the only route to being a dancer,” she says, and takes another bite of her apple.
“It's kind of hard to remember that when it's all anyone talks about.” I open my lunch bag, reach my hand inâand snatch it back out with a shriek. Instead of a plastic-wrapped sandwich, my fingers touched something slimy.
“What's wrong?”
“I don't know.” I dump the contents of the bag out onto the grass and stare at the slippery pink mess. “Ugh.”
Cam bends closer. “Looks like your yogurt spilled over everything.”
“I guess so.” I pick up the plastic container. “The lid's still on tight. Weird.” My heart sinks. I open the container, but, just as I guessed, there's no yogurt left inside. “Someone dumped it,” I say flatly.
“Who would do that?” Cam says.
I just look at her. “Take a guess.”
“Melissa? Butâwell, why on earth would she do that? Messing with your lunch is hardly going to help her dance career.”
“She's mad at me,” I say. “Because I wouldn't go along with her games.”
“What games?”
I take a deep breath. “She's playing this stupid game, like we're all on some reality show or something. She's voting people off.”
Cam laughs out loud. “She's doing
what
?”
I guess it is kind of funny. In a way. If you don't think about it too much. “She's deciding who she thinks shouldn't be here,” I explain. “And then she gets her friends to vote to get rid of that person.”
“Let me guess,” Cam says. “They voted for me.”
I nod. “I'm sorry.”
“Don't apologize,” she says grimly. “It's not your fault. I mean, you didn't take part in it, did you?”
I shake my head. “Melissa asked if I was in or out. I said out.”
Cam points at my ruined lunch. “And that's why she did this?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
“That is seriously messed up,” she says.
“Do you think we should tell anyone?” I ask.
Cam looks thoughtful. “Well, she hasn't really done anything except mess up your lunch, and we can't prove that.”
“No. I know.”
She looks down at her apple, slowly turning it in her hands. “I wonder why they picked me to vote off first.”
Cam sounds more curious than hurt, but I hate that she's even thinking about this. “They didn't,” I say. “They started with Iako.”
“They voted Iako off? Seriously?”
“We all did,” I say miserably. “I did too, Cam. I feel horrible about it now.”
Cam takes a last bite of her apple, drops the core back into her lunch bag and chews slowly. She doesn't say anything for a while, and I wonder what she's thinking. I can't imagine Cam doing anything just because Melissa told her to. There's nothing puppetlike about her. “Why did you do that?” she asks at last.
“I don't know.” I make a face. “I didn't like it, but I figured who cares if the girls are playing games and voting? I told myself that the teachers would see who could dance. It isn't a popularity contest.”
“Yeah, but still. You didn't have to vote.”
“I wish I hadn't,” I say. “I was scared, I guess.”
“So what changed? I mean, why didn't you vote for me too?” Her eyes meet mine, direct and challenging.
“I guess I was feeling bad about Iako. And I thought, you know, that we wereâ¦well, friends. Sort of.”
“We are.”
“It wasn't just that,” I say. “I'd seen what had happened to Iako, and I was wrong about it not mattering. I mean, it wasn't just the vote. It was what happened afterward. They all stopped talking to her. You can see it totally affecting her confidence. Even her dancing seems kind of flat, you know?”
“She was already homesick anyway,” Cam says. “But now that everyone's ignoring her, she's really a mess. She was crying in the girls' bathroom after class this morning.” There's an edge of anger in her voice.
“I think they might be doing more than just ignoring her,” I say.
“What do you mean?”
I take another deep breath. “I think Melissa took Iako's shoes. Before that first pointe class, remember? Edie says that Melissa didn't do it, but I don't know if I believe her.”
“What about the other girls? Danika and Anya and Zoe?”
I shrug. “They go along with whatever Melissa says.”
“Right.” Cam frowns, blue eyes narrowing and eyebrows pulling together. I can practically hear the gears turning in her mind. “We can't let them get to us,” she says. “I mean, you were right, in a way. It's what the teachers think that matters. They decide who gets invited to stay.”
If what Melissa is doing is affecting Iako's dancing, the teachers might not see her potential. “Do you think we should tell Iako? So that she doesn't take it so personally?”
She nods. “And Mackenzie and Julie. They're next, I assume.”
“I guess so.” A giant fist is squeezing my stomach. “Do we have to tell them about me voting for Iako? It's not that I'm ashamed of it.” I shake my head, taking back those words. “I mean, of course I amâI feel awful. But I don't want to hurt her feelings.”
“I think she'd understand,” Cam says. “But don't worry. I won't say anything.”
Before the lunch break ends, Cam and I find the other new girls sitting together near the entrance steps, and I fill them in on what Melissa and her friends have been doing.
Julie rips off a chunk of her fruit bar and chews ferociously. “What a total bitch.”
Mackenzie is sitting in the splits, stretching. Her dark-lashed eyes are huge, her mouth a perfect O. “I can't believe she'd do that,” she says at last. “It's so
mean
.”
“I don't understand,” Iako says.
“Okay,” Cam says. “You know those TV shows? Like
Survivor
, orâ”
Iako shakes her head. “No, no. I understand this. She voted me off the island. But why? I don't understand why she does this.”
“It is horrible,” I say. “But maybe it's a compliment, Iako. She's jealous of you.”
“Jealous? I'm sorry. I don't understand.”
“She thinks you are her competition,” I say. “Because you're a good dancer.”
“We're all good dancers,” she says.
“I know.” I look around at the four girls, noting Julie's fury, Mackenzie's wide-eyed indignation, Iako's puzzled frown, Cam's resigned expression. “So here's what I think, okay? Melissa only has as much power as we give her.”
Cam nods. “It's what the teachers think that matters. That's who decides who gets invited to stay.”
“So we just ignore Melissa, right? We don't let her get to us.” Julie looks thoughtful. “Actually, maybe we should really ignore her, like she's doing to Iako. Pretend she doesn't exist.”
I shake my head. “No. Then we're as bad as she is. We're not going to play her games.”
Mackenzie swings her legs back together.
“Got it,” she says. “We stay focused and we dance our best.” Then she grins. “And we beat her and Edie for the two Claras.”
* * *
That evening, Edie's parents take us out for dinner at a fancy Italian restaurant with a fireplace, red-brick walls with dark wood beams, and white tablecloths. Mr. Harrison orders wine for himself and Edie's mom, and Shirley Temples for me and Edie. I've never had one before. It's got different-colored fruit juice floating in layers, and a cherry speared on a plastic skewer.
“We're celebrating,” Mrs. Harrison says. “Both of you auditioning for Clara! So exciting.”
Mr. Harrison lifts his glass. “A toast! To two beautiful girls and amazing young dancers.”
We all clink our glasses together, and my eyes meet Edie's for a second. I wonder what she is thinking. I take a sip of my drink, which is as sweet as honey. “Thank you,” I say, dropping my eyes to the menu in front of me.