It's the finale of Dancemania and the stakes are high. A-troupe verses Richelle, and J-cruise, and only one of them can win. Both of them have worked so hard and sacrificed so much to get here. Who will win? And what will it mean for the other?
An...
Note to self: work on cardio. If I wanted my solos to be twice as impressive, I would need twice the performance. After all, there was a reason I hadn't won Dancemania.
My dancing would need to climb a whole new level.
I held the ending pose of my solo for a few more seconds, but I was surprised by the applause that came from Jones.
"First day on A-troupe and you've already learnt some of the customs," I said.
"Pardon?" He cupped his ear in confusion. I was about to explain that there wasn't a time where I had done a solo and hadn't had someone walk in on me, but thought better of it.
"Never mind." I took a sip from my water bottle. "Shouldn't you be with Kenzie and Heath?"
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
"Yeah," he said, taking a seat on one of the benches. "But they were boring me to sleep." The harshness in how he said it was now making me start to see why A-troupe might not like Jones a bit.
"If you want them to like you, you need to start to be nice."
"Who says I wanted them to like me?" I rolled my eyes. He carried the same cockiness of people like Elliot and I didn't have the time to deal with that.
"I have a question," he said.
"Yeah, what?" I sat down beside him, giving my legs a rest.
"We were going over the songs we needed to use for the big group dances and Kenzie thought it would be a good idea to reuse old choreo, but you weren't in two of the dances."
I tried to decipher what he was saying. "What dances?"
He paused, trying to remember the names. "Now you got the best and Work."
I sighed. "I had medical appointments the days everyone learnt the dances." I got back up, hoping we could change up the conversation.
"For what?" He asked. Would he not let it rest? I played the song on a low volume and started marking the rough choreo I had. Most of it was inspired by my Dancemania audition.
I was finally about to answer, but Jones already had something else to say.
"Is that Ariana Grande?" He teased.
"Yeah, and what about it?" Everyone on A-troupe was probably expecting me to dance to some powerful hip-hop-jazz fusion that fitted my acro style perfectly, but I was getting tired of that.
"Nothing, nothing. It's cool. Just different from what I've seen from you." His grin said otherwise. "But what were your medical appointments for?"
"Hip injury," I said calmly, before going to a sloppy illusion.
"Oh, so that's why you've been acting so different."
"Different, how?"
"Well, the confidence you seemed to have is slipping away. Didn't Maria want to help you cover it up?"
I could feel myself starting to tense up. "My confidence, which is very much present, has nothing to do with that injury. That happened ages ago. What Maria wanted to do was a lie."
"There's that fire you used to have."
"You don't even know me," I said.
"But I do know you have been acting strange."
"How?" If this was just some weird way of getting my attention and wasting my time, it was working. And I wasn't happy about it.
"You always seem... flustered. Always staring at the floor, even now when you were dancing. I thought you would be one to take the lead on the team."
"You thought wrong. That's more Summer's thing." It came out meaner than I intended.
"Why is it not your thing?" He raised a brow, questioning me.
"I don't know. Anyways, I need to start rehearsing. Is that all?"
He nodded. "I'll leave you to it." He walked out of the studio, finally leaving me alone.
What he was saying... it didn't have any truth behind it.
