My scream echoes down the hall, bounces off the ceiling, and should be shattering windows, and my heart is a firework, and oh my god, the relief, the complete, sheer relief. The hollow, grateful feeling that’s left behind when the terror vanishes.

Carly squeezes my hands even harder, and we’re jumping up and down in tandem. She has been 100 percent behind me from the moment I ran into her office with the flyer crunched up in my fist with that glorious photo of Mohadesa Rabei, swearing this was mine, because it had to be. She kept me going through all those hours of rehearsal before my dance block, after dinner, through dreaming my audition piece, rehearsing it in my head in class, in line for coffee, everywhere.

When she lets go, I slide down the wall to the floor. “Is it real?”

“It’s real,” she says, smiling. “I couldn’t wait to tell you—I should have had you drop by my office.” She helps me up.

Dancers are beginning to fill the hallway, headed down to the changing room before they’re off to the boring parts of the day, arts block now over. My friends will be here any minute, and I cannot wait to tell them. But it’s Ellory I see first, emerging from the studio. Carly’s attention has been grabbed by Halim, passing by. Ellory stops in front of me as I’m undoing my pointe shoes.

“Was that you?” she says. She’s frowning. She must know already.

“Angles,” I say. I’m still out of breath. “I got the senior spot.” I try to keep my voice even, not gloating. One senior spot between the two of us. Should I feel guilty for winning? Screw that. I earned it. I owe her respect, not regret.

The briefest flicker of emotion sparks in her eyes. “Good for you,” she says, and then adds, “I’ll let Gavin know.” My heart stutters at the dig. She glides past me and down the hall without a backward glance.

“What’s wrong?” Carly asks, attention back on me. I shake my head, hating that my face is giving anything away.

“Just excited,” I say. Angles is better than a boy. A boy who rejected me because I wasn’t enough, or I was too much or—no. Forget him. I got Angles.

“Do you have time to talk? I’ll make you a cup of tea,” Carly says. “We have a couple things to discuss, okay?” She slips her arm through mine to guide me to the double doors at the end of the hall. I’m still kind of dazed. I want to tell my friends, and I crane my neck, but they still haven’t appeared from their different studios yet. Then, all of a sudden, Carly’s words and new tone of voice register and stop me.

“Talk about what?” I say as the hall doors swing shut behind us.