Showtime! (11 page)

As they crawled out from under the table, Miss Toni was standing right there, hovering over them.

“You girls have some explaining to do,” she said sternly. “But we don't have time now. Get
inside—we have only forty-five minutes before the start of the competition. And I am not letting Justine beat us again.”

The Divas rehearsed the group routine a dozen times in the dressing room until Scarlett's calves were burning.

“I want it clean and sharp!” Toni commanded. “Liberty, your arms need to come over your head straight. And Bria, you need to run farther downstage, over there. A six and a seven and an eight . . .”

Finally, it was time to get changed into their costumes.

“I don't need to tell you how important this competition is for us,” Miss Toni told them. “There are going to be some very important people watching in the audience: talent scouts, agents, Broadway producers. Give it a hundred and ten percent tonight.”

Scarlett was sure that Justine was giving her dancers a similar speech. She felt like all the girls
were caught in a tug-of-war between the two dance coaches. Back in the dressing room, there was even more drama brewing.

“Scarlett, you have to help me!” Rochelle dragged her over to a corner where an argument was taking place between Rochelle's and Liberty's mothers.

“Honestly, you cannot tell me that you think Zumba is an art form!” Jane Montgomery was saying. “It's a complete waste of time. I would never call it dance!”

“I didn't ask you!” Rochelle's mom protested. “I simply said I was going to teach a Zumba class at Rock's school.”

“Well, if you don't want a professional opinion . . . ,” Jane said. She stormed off to unzip Liberty's costume from its garment bag.

“See what I mean?” Rochelle said. “It's getting ugly in here, too!”

“Relax.” Scarlett patted her on the back. “Everyone is just a little tense because of the competition.”

“Oh my gooshness!” she heard Gracie exclaim. Gracie was hovering around Liberty's costume rack, hoping to see her solo costume unveiled.

“Is that for real?” Rochelle gasped when she saw Liberty dressed in a gold lamé leotard covered in dangling strands of nickels, dimes, and quarters.

“The money on it? Yes. It's real,” Liberty replied. Her solo was called “Jackpot,” and Liberty looked like a human slot machine.

Scarlett cracked up. The costume was truly over the top.

“It's kind of heavy,” Liberty complained as her mom secured the straps.

“Well, it's made of coins . . . What did you expect?”

“I can't really move very well in it.” She tried to lift one of her arms, but the entire sleeve was dripping in coins. “Mom, this is crazy! It weighs a ton!”

Her mother hurried her out the door. “Deal with it,” she said. “You think Katy Perry complains
when they dress her in cupcakes? We all must suffer for our art.”

Liberty was the last dancer up for Junior Solo. A girl from Move Manhattan went before her—and she had already set the bar high with a nearly flawless lyrical routine.

“Next up, Liberty from Dance Divas, performing a contemporary dance, ‘Jackpot.'”

Liberty walked out onstage, the coins on her costume clinking and clanking with every turned-out step.

As the music began, she darted back and forth, then spun out into an
arabesque
turn. A quarter went flying off, landing in a judge's lap.

“Oh my gooshness!” Gracie squealed from the wings. “She's losing her money!”

Another coin landed with a
plunk
on the stage as she did her
grand jeté
; two more as she
chaîné
d across the floor.

By the time the dance was over, Liberty's
costume was certainly lighter. The audience was digging under their seats trying to gather up all the spare change.

“Was that supposed to happen?” Bria asked.

“Let's hope the judges think so,” said Liberty's mom, mopping her brow with a pink silk scarf.

Liberty stormed offstage. “I am humiliated!” she wailed. “My entire costume fell apart!”

“Wow,” said Mandy, making her way toward the stage for the Petite Solos. “Thanks for the change for the candy machine!” She waved a handful of coins under Liberty's nose. She was dressed in a green velvet jumpsuit for her acro solo, “Leapfrog.”

Liberty gritted her teeth. Scarlett was afraid Liberty would do something they'd all regret, so she held Liberty's arm and said cheerfully, “That was so cool! How'd you time the coins to come off at just the right moments like that?”

“You mean, it was on purpose?” Mandy asked.

Liberty picked up where Scarlett left off. “Of course. Do you have any idea how difficult it was to rehearse that routine?”

“It was coin choreography,” Scarlett added. “Which is pretty cool, don't you think?”

Mandy nodded slowly. “Yeah, I guess . . .” Then she hopped off to perform her dance.

Liberty looked down at her tattered costume. “Thanks for not making me look any more stupid than I already do,” she told Scarlett.

“On the bright side, your turns were amazing,” Scarlett said.

“And the judges probably appreciated the tips!” Rochelle chuckled.

Gracie checked her ballet slippers one last time, making sure her Lucky Stars were tucked neatly inside.

“Remember, you're not alone.” Scarlett hugged her one last time. “We're right here!” Rochelle, Bria, and Liberty all gave her the thumbs-up.

A voice over the loudspeaker boomed: “Performing an acro routine entitled ‘Watch Out, World—Here I Come!' please put your hands together for Gracie from Dance Divas!”

Gracie skipped out onstage and took her position: hands on her hips in a sassy, playful pose.
As the music started, she kicked up her heels, wiggled her butt, and did a split while blowing kisses to the judges.

So far, so good
, Scarlett thought. Then she noticed Gracie was still sitting on the floor. She stared at the audience, glassy-eyed and terrified.

“Here we go again,” Liberty said.

Scarlett thought quickly. She skipped out onto the stage and twirled around Gracie, pulling her up under her arms to a standing position.

“Gracie, I'm right here!” she whispered in her little sister's ear. “Snap out of it!” As soon as she saw Scarlett by her side, Gracie was fine. Together, they improvised a dance around the stage, leaping and twirling and playing off each other, just like they sometimes did at home in their living room.

At the end, Gracie did her back walkover and the crowd broke into thunderous applause. Their duet was a smashing success!

After almost all the single, duo, and trio performances, it was time for City Feet to take the stage for the group number. The Divas sat right
up front to watch (and maybe to psych them out just a little).

The dance featured Phoebe and Mandy, dressed like ballerinas, having a tug-of-war in the center of the stage. The rest of the team danced around them, taking sides and encouraging them to tear at each other's tutus till they were both in shreds. Then one ballerina—Mandy—let go of the rope. She extended a hand, and Anya took it. The dance ended with the girls, arm in arm, strolling offstage.

“It's weird,” Bria whispered. “I don't get it.”

“Do you think Toni does?” Scarlett asked. She glanced at the seat Toni had been in all afternoon. It was empty.

“Be right back. Forgot something in my bag,” Scarlett said, squeezing past the girls in their seats. She ducked out the door of the main stage and looked around the lobby. There, just as she had hoped, was Miss Toni.

“You missed City Feet's group dance,” she said softly to her teacher.

“I saw it,” she replied. She patted the ledge where she was seated so Scarlett would join her.

“Justine and I were once as close as sisters,” she explained. “We would have done anything for each other—just like you did today for Gracie.”

Scarlett gulped. “Sorry about that. I didn't know what else to do.”

“You did the right thing—even if your choreography wasn't so polished,” Miss Toni said, and smiled.

“Do you think you will ever be friends with Justine again?” Scarlett asked.

Toni shrugged. “I don't know. But she taught me a valuable lesson back at ABC. She taught me the meaning of friendship.”

Scarlett looked puzzled. “I thought she stabbed you in the back at the
Swan Lake
audition?”

Toni nodded. “She did. And I knew I would never do that to a friend. No matter how much I wanted to win. I try to teach that to you girls all the time. A team is only as strong as the sum of its individual parts.”

Scarlett nodded. “City Feet's dance was pretty amazing.”

“My Divas are pretty amazing—and I don't just mean on the dance floor,” Toni said softly. “Thanks for trying to patch things up between me and Justine. Let's just say it's a work in progress.” She stood up and headed for the main hall.

“You coming?” She winked at Scarlett. “I hear there's this team called Dance Divas that's about to perform.”

Scarlett smiled. “Wouldn't miss it for the world!”

Scarlett adjusted the brim of her silver sequined fedora. “Do I look like a gangster?” she asked her mom backstage. She made her toughest bad-guy face.

“You look great!” her mom said, chuckling. “You, too, Gracie.”

Gracie was wearing an old-fashioned “cop” costume, complete with a police hat and a shiny silver badge pinned to her black velvet leotard. Both Liberty and Bria were dressed like “gangster molls” in white-fringed flapper dresses and short black-bobbed wigs.

“You guys look like Bonnie and Clyde.” Rochelle's mom gushed. She made sure Rochelle's pin-striped suit jacket was buttoned over her leotard. “I love it!”

Behind the curtains, Miss Toni rolled their props onto the stage. There was a bank-safe door and bags of money that were stuffed with fake dollar bills.