Friday Night Stage Lights Page 6

  “You’re delusional. You have no idea how much harder dancers work than you,” I snapped and threw my hands up in the air. I gave up. Randy was terrible. There was no getting through their thick football-filled skulls.

  I marched back to my table and threw myself in the chair. I made sure to keep my back to the team so I wouldn’t have to look at any of them.

  “I’m done!” I told Mia. “Totally done with Leighton football.”

  “Um, yeah, I think we heard that loud and clear,” she said and set her phone down. She slid it toward me. “Press play.”

  I did and my whole freak-out replayed before me on her phone. As I watched the video, my eyes narrowed in on Randy.

  Any time I wasn’t facing him, he mimicked what I was doing with large, exaggerated actions.

  He was awful.

  The whole idea of having the team at Center Stage was awful, awful, awful.

  And the worst part was, there was no escaping them. If I wanted to go to TSOTA, I was stuck with them for the entire season. There was no way out of this.

  Chapter 12

  I became a social media sensation.

  During the next two days, the video of me yelling at Randy and the other boys had gotten more hits than anything Mia had ever posted.

  I was pretty sure that every single person living in Leighton, Texas, had seen it. And I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone in the surrounding cities watched it too.

  “Take that video down,” I told Mia. “It makes me look like a crazy person.”

  “You kind of were,” Mia said. “But now you’re Internet famous. That’s a big deal!”

  “Yeah, famous for going nuts at the football team,” I told her. Usually, I was cool with her posting whatever she wanted because of art and free speech and creative expression and all that, but this was a bit extreme. Classmates stopped me in the hallway and made comments about the video, and an older girl even recognized me when I was picking up Chinese food with Mom.

  “Seriously,” I pleaded with her. “Take it down.”

  “I can’t,” Mia said. “It’s gotten over a thousand hits. That’s huge. This may be my best video yet.”

  “You didn’t do anything. I did. And I look ridiculous.”

  “Come on, look on the bright side. It’s getting people’s attention. Maybe it will catch the eye of one of the judges at your dance school.”

  “And what? They give me a spot at the school based on my amazing talent of freaking out?”

  Before she could answer, my phone buzzed and Jayden’s name popped up on my screen.

  “Mia, I have to go. Jayden’s on the other line. Take down that video, because I promise, if you don’t, I’ll tell everyone you still sleep with a night-light.”

  “You wouldn’t!”

  “Try me. I don’t think you want to mess with me. You have video proof of how mad I get when someone upsets me.”

  “Good point,” she said. “I’ll delete it.”

  I said a quick good-bye and switched over to Jayden’s call. He had been at his cousin Raja’s house all day, and I was pretty sure he’d fill me in on the latest dance moves she taught him. She was a cheerleader, and the two of them taught each other their dance routines. At least he wouldn’t talk about football. Jayden was the one person I could count on not to go all football crazy.

  “What’s up?” I asked. “How was your cousin’s house?”

  “It was okay, but . . . ,” he said and then trailed off.

  “But what?”

  “But then it wasn’t.”

  “It wasn’t? Why not?” I asked, confused. Jayden loved hanging out with Raja.

  “Promise you won’t hate me?”

  “You’re not making sense. Of course I won’t hate you. Unless, of course, you tell me you joined the football team.”

  “It’s worse,” he said, but how could anything be worse than that? “I broke my leg.”

  Yep. It was worse.

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “I was spotting Raja on a lift, and she lost her balance. I tried to stop her from falling, but instead, we both went down. When I hit the floor, my leg made this gross snapping noise. You should’ve heard it. It was like a tree branch. Really—”

  “Stop! Too much information,” I told him, because yuck. I didn’t need to know every gory detail.

  “All I have to say is it was really gross and now I have a giant cast on my leg.”

  “Wait, what? A giant cast?” I was so busy trying not to listen to Jayden’s description of the fall that I didn’t even think about what had happened.

  “Yeah, it goes all the way up to my knee. I need crutches to get around.”

  “How long do you have to wear it?”

  “A long time,” he quietly said.

  “How long?” I asked, and when Jayden didn’t answer right away, I knew this was going to be bad.

  “Six to eight weeks,” he said. “And then I have to do physical therapy and can’t dance for at least another month.”

  “But the Showcase is in three months,” I said, which before sounded so far away but now with Jayden’s injury was way too soon. A rising sense of panic began to build in me.

  “It’s awful,” he said. “It was such a stupid thing to do, and I ruined my chances of getting into the school.”

  I paused before I let my panic take over and tried to put myself in Jayden’s place. It’s not like he meant for this to happen. He wasn’t just my dance partner; he was my friend, and he had been there for me a lot in the past. Now it was my turn to be there for him.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked. “Does it hurt?”

  “A little,” he admitted. “But I can handle the pain. It’s missing out on the Showcase that hurts.”

  “While I’m glad your leg doesn’t hurt, it stinks that we won’t be able to dance together,” I told him. “But don’t worry about anything. Please change to a period. Just get better. I’ll figure something out.”

  “But you can still dance in the Showcase with your solo,” Jayden said. “You’re a great dancer. You can easily get into the school dancing by yourself.”

  That was where he was wrong. Maybe I used to be a good dancer, but that was in the past. The idea of dancing a solo, and only a solo, terrified me.

  “We’re a great team,” I said. “And now it’s just me.”

  “I’m sorry, Brooklyn. You have to know that I really didn’t mean for this to happen. I had my heart set on getting into TSOTA too,” he said one more time, and I couldn’t very well be mad at him for an accident. Especially when his chances of getting into the school were also ruined.

  “It’s okay,” I told him.

  But it wasn’t. Not even close.

  Chapter 13

  I hung up with Jayden and headed to the kitchen. Mom would be in there making dinner. She had a way of making everything better simply by talking with me, and I most definitely needed to make things better.

  I turned the corner to the kitchen ready for a full dose of Mom love, but when I walked in, she wasn’t the only one there and there was no sign of dinner. Instead, she sat at the table with Stephen and Tanner.

  Tanner had his head in his hands, and Mom’s hand was on his back. Had something happened? Maybe we could eat ice cream and be miserable together. Misery loved company, right?

  “Hi, Brooklyn. We were about to call you down. You must have read our minds,” Mom said when she saw me. She patted the empty seat by her. “Why don’t you join us? We have something to tell you.”

  Tanner lifted his head, and I gave him one of those half smiles to show him that I understood what he was going through. That I was having a bad day too.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked him.

  “I got some news earlier that doesn’t quite seem real.”

  “Me too,” I told him in solidarity. “There’s nothing worse than bad news.”

  “Oh, this isn’t bad,” Tanner said. “It’s the opposite.”

 
; “That’s right!” Stephen chimed in. “Everything is fine. In fact, everything is amazing!”

  Speak for yourself, I thought, and another wave of sadness washed over me as I thought about Jayden.

  “Tanner is going to be the newest player on the University of Texas football team! He was just offered a scholarship to play for them!” Stephen burst out as if he couldn’t hold the news in any longer, and you would’ve thought Tanner had figured out how to make world peace happen from how excited Stephen was.

  Mom jumped up from her seat and danced around the kitchen. Tanner looked a little embarrassed at how our parents were acting, but also pretty excited.

  I, on the other hand, felt as if I’d been punched in the stomach and then thrown into an ice-cold swimming pool. Tanner got a football scholarship? For college? How unfair could life be at the moment? This was the kind of news I had wished and hoped to get after the Showcase. Instead, I’d found out the opposite only moments ago. I wasn’t going to be going anywhere next year, while Tanner got into one of the best football schools in the state.

  “Isn’t this great?” Mom asked when I didn’t respond.

  “Yeah, great,” I replied in a daze.

  “It hasn’t sunk in. I got a full ride to the University of Texas. They made the offer today. It’s like I’m dreaming,” he said.

  More like having a nightmare, I thought, but then felt bad. Tanner deserved this. It’s just, did I really need to find out about this right after I got the awful news from Jayden?

  “Oh, it’s a dream,” Stephen said and patted Tanner on the back. “You earned that scholarship. You worked hard for it.”

  “And we definitely need to celebrate!” Mom said. She pointed at the box of pasta sitting on the counter and wrinkled her nose. “Who wants to eat boring old spaghetti when we’ve got news like this? Let’s go out! What do you think, Tanner? Where do you want to go?”

  Tanner suggested our favorite barbeque place, and the three of them continued to have a conversation about how great Tanner was and the incredible news and blah, blah, blah. I didn’t want to hear it. Maybe I was acting like a poor sport and I should’ve been excited for him, but how could I be when what was happening to him was exactly what I’d been dreaming would happen to me with TSOTA? And now that dream was crushed.

  “And think, Brooklyn,” Mom said in a superhappy voice, “once you get into Texas School of the Arts, we’ll be celebrating that, too!”

  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that wasn’t going to happen anymore, which made everything a million times worse than it already was.

  “What a household full of talented kids we have!” Stephen added. “I think we may have the two most talented kids in the entire state of Texas!”

  “One,” I whispered to myself. Tanner was the only talented one. And what stunk the worst was that the best day of his life was the worst day of mine.

  Chapter 14

  Jayden showed up to math class the next day with a lime-green cast. Elliana and Adeline stood on either side of him like body guards.

  “We’re Jayden’s official bag carriers,” Elliana said, and Adeline spun around to show me that she had Jayden’s giant red backpack on. “We take the job very seriously.”

  “Especially because we can leave class five minutes early and take our time to get to his next class,” Adeline said, and Elliana rolled her eyes.

  “Some of us like to be late for class,” Elliana said, and pointedly looked at Adeline. “The rest of us value our education.”

  “Oh, I do,” Adeline said. “I take lunch and gym class very seriously.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh, even though this was nothing new. The two of them fought like sisters. They were always arguing about something, and it was usually silly. I tuned out their conversation and turned toward Jayden.

  “I have a special get well present for you,” I said. Jayden was such a good friend, and I felt guilty about how upset I was when he told me about his foot. I handed him a gift bag that I’d stuffed some tissue paper into.

  “You didn’t need to get me anything,” he said, but I nodded toward it.

  “It’s just something little. Open it up.”

  Jayden pulled out a long stick with prongs on the end. “What is this?”

  “Trust me, you’ll be thanking me. I heard that it can get pretty itchy inside that cast, and since you have to wear it for so long . . .”

  Jayden groaned. “Don’t remind me.”

  “Speaking of your cast,” I said and gestured toward it. “You should’ve picked a brighter color. I can’t see it.”

  “Hey, go big or go home,” Jayden said, and I couldn’t argue with that. That’s the way Jayden was. When he walked in the room, he somehow managed to be the life of the party. People noticed him. Maggie had once said that was part of his magic onstage, that the audience wanted to watch him, and it was true. Jayden was one of those people who seemed to have been born a star, and whatever it was he had, I was lucky to have been a part of it when he agreed to dance with me.

  “Are you sure you can’t be a part of the Showcase?” I asked. “Your injury doesn’t look too bad.”

  “You’re right. Maybe we could change things around, and you could lift me instead.”

  “It would definitely get the judges’ attention,” I said.

  Jayden’s face grew serious. “Listen, I really am sorry for what happened.”

  I dismissed him with my hand. Talking about this wouldn’t change anything. It was now my job to make Jayden feel better. “It’s okay, you don’t have to apologize. It was an accident.”

  “Maybe Mary Rose can find you another partner?” he suggested. “Or you could see if you could just dance your solo.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know about that . . . ,” I started and then trailed off. Because how do I explain how hard it is to just rely on my solo?

  “Or you could join drill team with us!” Elliana said, which was something she’d begged me to do multiple times. Drill team was the reason the two of them weren’t taking part in the All-City Showcase. The team performed at all the Leighton High football games, and the reason the two of them took classes at Center Stage in the first place was so they had a chance to get on the team. It was almost as impossible to earn a spot as it was to get into TSOTA, but Elliana and Adeline were determined to do it. I was pretty sure they’d make the team too; those two could dance.

  “I don’t think I could ever trade in my ballet slippers for the drill team boots,” I said.

  “But they’re amazing,” Elliana exclaimed, and clutched her hands to her heart and swooned.

  She was right about that. They wore white cowboy boots with fringe on them and silver spurs on the backs that sparkled under the stadium lights. They were pretty cool. But those boots had nothing on my shoes. I thought about all my pairs of beat-up pointe shoes. The stiff leather you have to break in. The cracked bottoms and split heels worn from hours of dancing on them. The cool satin ribbon against my fingers as I laced myself in. Sometimes I thought I was more comfortable in my pointe shoes than regular shoes.

  I lifted my foot behind me and did an arabesque. There was a gentle tug in my calf muscles, and I smiled at the familiar pull. Ballet was what I wanted. It was as important to me as breathing.

  “Nope, I think I’m perfectly fine in my slippers,” I told them and glanced at Jayden. “But it looks like I may just dance at Center Stage for now. I don’t think I could be in the Showcase without my right-hand man.”

  The bell for class rang saving me from any other questions that Elliana and Adeline might have.

  “We have to get moving or we’re going to be late,” Elliana said.

  Adeline dismissed her with a swipe of her hand. “No worries, remember? We have an excuse.”

  “Glad to see that my tragedy is your personal gain,” Jayden said. “And since you’re taking your sweet time getting to class, do you think that you could get me a breakfast sandwich from the cafeteria first?”
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  “I don’t think we can work that much magic with the broken leg excuse,” Elliana said and turned to Adeline. “I do need to get to class. Some of us want to be there on time.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Adeline said and held out Jayden’s bag to me. “Can you help him to his next class?”

  “You trust me to be his bodyguard?” I asked.

  “You’re the only person we’d trust,” Adeline solemnly said.

  “I’m honored,” I said and waved good-bye as they raced off to class.

  “Those two,” I said and laughed one more time. I dug around in my book bag until I found the Sharpie I used to write my name on stuff for ballet so it wouldn’t get lost in the changing room. I held it up to Jayden. “And on that note, we have important things to do. Let me sign that cast of yours.”

  “Make sure you sign it nice and big. After all, your autograph is going to be worth something someday,” Jayden said.

  “Both our autographs are going to be worth something,” I corrected him.

  “I like the sound of that,” he said as I bent down and signed my name with a flourish on his cast.

  Chapter 15

  The following week at school, you would’ve thought my family won the lottery the way they were acting about the news of Tanner’s scholarship. Mom and Stephen wore their UT sweatshirts all weekend and the cheerleaders came and decorated our front yard for Tanner. It was all anyone talked about all day, so when I got home that afternoon, I half expected to see Tanner on the TV. I wouldn’t be surprised if the national news covered it. It felt like these days anything was possible, no matter how outrageous it seemed.

  The only positive about all of this craziness was that Tanner and Stephen had made the short drive to Austin to visit the University of Texas for the day to talk with some of the coaches and walk around the campus, so I had Mom all to myself. She’d be home soon from the job she’d gotten when we moved here. She was secretary at an elementary school in the next town over. I bet even her school had heard all about the amazing Tanner and his scholarship.

  I dropped my book bag off in the family room and headed toward the kitchen. The plan was to make some of our favorite tea from Oregon, which Dasha had surprised me with in a care package, and then have a heart-to-heart mother-daughter talk when she got home. I still hadn’t told her about Jayden, and while I didn’t think she could help me, at least she’d understand how upset I was.