Vivi-Anne at the ALDC

11. Winter Wonderland

I wake up with the sun shining brightly in my face, turning over in my bed to cover my eyes.

Wait a second- the sun? I instantly get up and look at my clock. 8 AM? Oh, no. My mom must have forgotten to wake me up.

"MOM!" I shout. "Mom, we're going to be late for pyramid! Mom!" It takes two hours to drive to the studio. We usually leave the house at 6 in the morning to get there on time for pyramid at 8:30.

"Vivi!" I hear my mom's voice from the kitchen. "Hold your horses. We're not going to the ALDC today."

"What? I'm confused. Did Abby kick me off the team?"

My mom looks guilty. "Not really. There's so much snow today that I called Abby and told her we couldn't drive over. She said if you didn't come to Pyramid, you wouldn't be dancing this week. So... I thought you could dance here at Candy Apples this week. Just for this week, then we can go back to Abby's if you want."

I run to the window. Sure enough, it's heavily snowing. Sighing, I sit at the table for breakfast. I wanted to see Kenzie today. And I wanted to go back to the ALDC and get more practice with Gianna or Abby. I learn things there so much faster and so much better with one of them teaching me. My mom... honestly, she's not that good compared to Abby. The Candy Apples Junior competition team has never won first place... ever. Not even in a competition that only had two Junior groups.

Mom smiles at me. "It's okay, Vivi. I can't wait for you to meet our newest Apple. Her name is Kendall and she's seven. She's really good at dancing. I think we can make her our next big star."

I perk up. In my mom's studio, there aren't too many kids my age. There's Justice, who is eight, and Gino, who is nine. The only girl my age is Alice, but she's very quiet and only talks to her older sister Olivia. I'd love to have another friend.

Mom grins at me. "Actually, Kendall is going to go to a jazz class at 8:45, why don't you go too? I would love to see if you two would be good duet partners."

I want to scream that Kenzie and I are already good duet partners, but I nod. "I'll go get changed."

I go on my computer, and Mackenzie's messaged me saying Abby put me on probation because I wasn't there. Cursed snow.