“Well, he used to,” Olivia said, in the clipped, efficient tone she used when she was nervous. “Not anymore, obviously. Which apartment is it, again?” Then, pulling a sheaf of papers out of her purse before I could answer: “Wait, never mind. I have it.”
A good thing, too, since I actually had no idea what I’d done with my copy of the information Juliet had sent us. I thought I’d packed it, but my stuff was all in a jumble—I didn’t have a suitcase big enough to fit everything I needed for the trip down here, so I’d shoved the overflow into a beach tote, plus a couple of grocery bags. The plastic handles cut into my wrists now as we climbed the metal steps to the outdoor walkway that ran along the second story of the building, Olivia knocking a cheerful little tattoo on the front door of apartment 208.
“You’re here!” trilled the blond girl who opened it, flinging her arms up in a cheerleader’s V like she’d just stuck a landing. She was tall and pretty, dressed in expensive-looking jeans and a T-shirt that showed off a jewel in her belly button, her hair so thick and straight and shiny you could have used it to sell prenatal vitamins. “Ash and I got set up in one of the bedrooms already. We figured you guys wouldn’t mind.” Then she shook her head. “Oh my God, I’m sorry. Hi. I’m Kristin Aires. I’m in Daisy Chain with you guys. Clearly.”
Something about her—the clearly, maybe, or the fact that she said her name as one word, like millionaires—irritated me right away, but Olivia flung her arms around Kristin like they were long-lost friends and said, “Hiiii!” I was surprised—usually Olivia hated being touched by anybody who wasn’t me or her immediate family—but then again, I reminded myself, as I remembered how she’d acted at the audition, this was Showbiz Olivia. The rules were bound to be a little different here.
There were four of us in Guy Monroe’s Daisy Chain, Olivia and me plus Kristin and a tall, pretty girl named Ashley Coombs, who was black and from a suburb outside Chicago that sounded rich. All four of us were staying in this apartment with Charla, the choreographer who’d run the dance audition and who met us in the living room now. “Hey, ladies,” she said, smiling warmly; she had an easygoing, big-sister quality to her, the opposite of Juliet’s chilly efficiency. She was dressed in leggings and a T-shirt that said HOUSTON BALLET, with a long, flowy cardigan overtop. “Let’s get you settled in.”
The apartment was bare-bones but huge, with a master bedroom that Charla slept in and then two smaller ones for the four of us, connected by a bathroom with double sinks and tilework in a seasick shade of green. The couch and loveseat were upholstered in plasticky pink fabric that seemed to have been chosen specifically for its stain-repelling qualities; a watery painting of palm trees was hung above the TV. A laminate breakfast bar separated the kitchen from the living space.
Olivia dropped our bags in the bedroom we’d be sharing, which was outfitted with a pair of twin beds and a couple of windows that didn’t actually open. The AC whooshed noisily from a vent over the door. Still, it was ours, mine and Olivia’s. “This isn’t so bad, is it?” she asked, bouncing a bit on one of the mattresses and grinning across the room at me. “I mean, I can live with this.”
“Me too,” I agreed, smiling back at her. It wasn’t until I felt myself relax that I realized I’d been clenching my jaw, my shoulders migrating upward to somewhere in the general vicinity of my ears.
Once we were all unpacked, Charla made popcorn and had us sit in the living room and go around in a circle saying where we were from, our favorite song, and what our hopes were for Daisy Chain. It felt like summer camp, which I’d never actually gone to—like we should have been huddled around a fire instead of a prefurnished college apartment with a noisy highway right outside. Kristin put the soundtrack to the musical Rent on a boom box on the shelf. She and Ashley both had performing backgrounds like Olivia’s, and I dug into the popcorn as references flew through the air: Bernadette Peters and Tommy Mottola, whose range had how many octaves and who’d auditioned for which directors in New York. I nodded and tried to look interested, hoping nobody would notice that I had exactly zero to add.
“I hope our first album goes platinum,” Kristin said earnestly when it was her turn to say what she wanted for Daisy Chain. Ashley hoped for a number one single, and Olivia said that all she really wanted was to make people happy by performing, which I suspected was probably a lie and fully intended to tease her about later. She was using her audition voice again, I noticed, pitched way higher than she normally spoke. I was going to tease her about that, too. I couldn’t wait until later, when we could close our bedroom door and compare notes.
“I’m Dana,” I said dumbly when it was my turn, although obviously we didn’t have to introduce ourselves. “I’m from Jessell, same as Olivia. My favorite song is ‘Tangerine,’ by Led Zeppelin, which Olivia hates.”
“I don’t hate it!” Olivia protested from across the circle. “I just think it’s, like, a weird, clangy, old-man song about a breakup.” Then she tilted her head to the side. “Okay, I kind of hate it.”
“Uh-huh.” I grinned. “As for what I hope happens with Daisy Chain . . . I don’t know, really. I guess I’m kind of just here to have fun and see what happens.”
Right away I could tell that was the wrong answer. Kristin’s eyebrows crawled toward her hairline. Olivia looked down at the floor. I felt myself blush. Just because I was here on a lark and weird luck didn’t mean the rest of them were. “And of course I want the group to be successful,” I added lamely.
Charla went to her room not long after that, but the rest of us stayed in the living room, where I ate the rest of the popcorn in its entirety while the three of them chatted, listing their accomplishments, sizing one another up. Kristin had been in a series of Wendy’s commercials when she was a toddler. Ashley had been dancing ballet since she was three. My attention had started to wander when Kristin looked at me shrewdly. “What about you, Dana?” she asked, tilting her head to the side in curiosity that might have been genuine. “What shows have you done?”
“Um, not much, really,” I admitted. “I’m kind of new to performing.”
“Dana’s a natural,” Olivia said, and I smiled.
Kristin was nodding. “We heard how you weren’t even going to audition, that Guy just picked you randomly. Ash and I figured you must be super hot or something.”
I shrugged in what I hoped was a self-deprecating kind of way, feeling myself chafe and trying not to show it. “Yeah,” I said, holding my hands up. “I don’t know what the deal was, either.”
“It’s weird,” Kristin agreed. “Well, I hope you’re a fast learner.”