“How could they do this?” Jared asked, his voice anguished. I’d known he would take this harder than anyone.

Dan paced back and forth, his movements stiff and jerky. “I’m so pissed I can’t even tell you. They did this last season to Angel’s team, but I was never sure if it was her incompetence or if the producers were actually manipulating things. I guess now I know.”

Kyle rubbed his face. “What are we going to perform? We don’t know ‘Jesus Takes the Wheel’ but we can’t do ‘Radioactive’ now either.”

“They’re probably hoping you’ll still do ‘Radioactive’ and that you’ll look like you were copying Fairy Lights,” Dan said. “Or they think you’ll choke and not even go on stage.”

Neither of those was an option. Jared and I looked at each other and something unspoken passed between us, the same idea popping into both of our heads at once.

“‘Bad Romance,’” we said together, but the guys just stared at us.

“We have to do ‘Bad Romance,’” I repeated. “We already know how to play it, and we even recorded it the other week before they changed the song on us.”

“Exactly,” Jared said. “They didn’t want us to do that song before, so we’re going to do it now as one big middle finger to them.”

Hector rubbed the back of his neck. “We haven’t practiced that song in over a week. But I guess it’s the only song we can do.”

Kyle nodded. “We might be a bit rusty, but we can make it work.”

“Do it,” Dan said. “It’s the last show anyway. What are they going to do—kick you off?”

We were scheduled for the last performance of the night, and we spent every minute until then brushing up on the song while Dan discussed the changes with the sound and lighting people. We didn’t tell the producers what we were planning in case they tried to stop us.

As we waited backstage for our cue, Jared pulled us all in for one final group hug. We laced our arms together, facing each other in a huddle, holding on to each other for support.

“The producers might not want us to win, but we’re going to make it damn hard for them to stop us,” Jared said. “And even if we don’t win, look how far we’ve come in the past few weeks. A little over a month ago, we were lucky to get a gig, and now we’re going to be touring the country and playing in giant concert halls. We have thousands of fans, who make signs and T-shirts and camp out all night to see us. As far as I’m concerned, we’ve already won.”