It was almost four—Vijay was due over any minute now. They were going to finally get down to planning out their dance routine. Now that Gary was roped into being part of it, Derek and Vijay could map things out, knowing they had a monster lined up.

When Vijay arrived the two friends set to work. “Okay, should we start with the story?” he asked Derek. “Or should we go through all the moves we know first?”

“Let’s get the story down,” Derek said. “Then we’ll know what kind of moves we need to get it across.”

“Okay. Sounds good. So from what we talked about on the phone, I have fleshed it out a lot. So let’s start with the basics, all right? Two friends”—he pointed to himself and Derek—“each thinks he’s braver than the other. So they dare each other to go into the haunted house. We can do that with dance moves, like trying to outdo each other.”

“What are we going to do to show the house?” Derek wondered. “Is the audience just going to have to imagine it?”

Vijay thought for a moment. “I’ll paint a big poster of a house—maybe even with the words ‘Haunted—Do Not Enter!’—and we can hang it from the back curtain.”

“Sounds good, but—”

“Don’t worry, I know you’re busy with basketball and such. I’ll do the poster.”

“Cool. So what next?”

“So then we do all our fancy walking moves, edging closer and closer to the house, right? Moving in, backing off, ’cause we’re really scared underneath. Then finally we get there, and we’re about to go in when the monster comes out and tries to get us!”

“That’s when we can do our floor moves—spins and flips—”

“And that worm thing you do!” Vijay said. “And at the end, when the monster talks? We try to get away, but he keeps getting closer, and closer—’cause we’re moonwalking, and we’re not getting anywhere!”

Both boys cracked up, and Derek applauded. “Good job, Vij!” he said. “Man, you’ve done a lot of good work on this!”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” he said, waving Derek off. “When I get excited, all kinds of ideas come into my head.”

“That’s for sure.” Derek clapped his hands together. “So why don’t we put the song on and go line by line, figuring out what moves to do?”

They got about halfway through, then sat down to write down everything in an outline form, so they wouldn’t forget all the details.

“Okay, we can pick this up tomorrow,” Vijay said.

Derek was about to suggest they put it off till after the tryouts on Saturday—but he just couldn’t disappoint Vijay yet again. He’d already put him off so many times. And besides, this routine was looking like it was actually going to be good!