“Nerves?” he asked.
“Nerves, and family trouble.” We’d find out which dancers were in danger after the group routine. Anders might be a little too focused on me sometimes, but he was still my partner, and I still loved him as a friend. I always would.
I dropped the eyelash glue and spun around in my chair, grabbing for his hands. Anders blinked at me, surprised but not displeased.
“Poppy and Chaz rushed out of here so fast last week that I didn’t get to say good-bye,” I said. His face fell as he realized I wasn’t about to confess my undying love. I pressed on. “I don’t think either of us is going to be in danger, but I want you to promise that if we are, if either one of us gets eliminated, that you’ll stick around so we can say good-bye. Please. Promise me.”
Anders blinked again. “Dude, Val, what’s gotten into you? I expected nervous. I didn’t expect psycho.” He tried to pull his hands away, eyes widening at the strength of my grip. “Yes, okay? Yes, I promise, if either one of us gets eliminated—which isn’t going to happen—I’ll find you backstage. No matter what.”
“I’m so glad to hear that. I don’t think I could bear it if I didn’t get to say good-bye to you.” I’m not sure which of us was more surprised when I hugged him: me, or Anders.
He relaxed into my embrace after the initial stiffness, and he was smiling when he pulled away. “Here I thought you weren’t a hugger.”
“I’m not,” I said, turning back to my mirror before he could realize how uncomfortable I was. This was another of the places where my real life and my fantasy life diverged. Verity was a hugger, but Verity only hugged people who wouldn’t be surprised when they felt a gun pressing against their hip or a sheathed knife digging into their stomach. Anders had no idea how many weapons I was carrying. That had been foolish, and worse, it had been weak. I needed to be strong, now more than ever.
If I wasn’t, someone else was going to die tonight.
“Special circumstances, huh?” Anders patted me on the shoulder. “It’s going to be fine, Val. We danced like gods last week. Nobody’s going to eliminate us.”
“Hope you’re right,” I said, picking up my eyelash glue and carefully tacking one last rhinestone into place. I glittered whenever I moved. Exactly like I was supposed to.
“I’m always right and you know it,” said Anders. He opened his mouth to say more, and stopped as a long, low bong resounded through the room. A wry smile twisted his lips upward. “Ask not for whom the bell tolls . . . you ready?”
“Ready,” I said. I stood and took his arm, and he led me from the safety of my mirror to the dangerous familiarity of the stage.
Sasha might be a punk rock Tinker Bell who thought the human body came equipped with easily replaceable joints, but there was no question that she was a damn fine choreographer. The fourteen dancers still in the competition—the fourteen dancers who were still alive—flung ourselves through the routine like our lives depended on it. And they did. Even if only Malena, Pax, and I knew the danger was literal, and not just a risk of elimination, there was a very good chance that anyone who failed to dance well enough would die.
This wasn’t what I’d signed up for. I leaped into the air with the rest of the winter wind girls, and Pax snatched me before I could hit the floor, wrapping his spring-draped arms around me and lowering me to tangle around his ankles. The summer girls fell into the boys of fall, and the stage was an unending maze of motion. We were dancers. We risked our lives every day. Everyone I knew had a story about someone who’d never dance again thanks to a bad fall or a blown knee, and half of us had a story we wouldn’t tell unless it was late and we were drunk, about someone who’d misjudged their partner during a trust fall and ended up with a broken neck. Nothing was forever, nothing was real except for this moment on the stage, all of us spinning and falling and leaping and alive.
Why was it on me to keep us that way? Why did I have to be the one who’d been born into a family with so many ancestral debts to pay that we might never stop fighting? It wasn’t fair. Even though I’d already chosen the world I belonged to—more than once—part of me just wanted to dance, and always would. And that was the part of me I’d never be able to satisfy.
The music ended. The seasons froze, fourteen dancers holding ourselves rigid in improbable positions, backs bent, hips twisted, and limbs akimbo.