He looked at me and smiled. I smiled back.

“I do want to try out for the fall show,” I said. “Dance is sort of calmer in the fall.”

“Yay!” Zora said dramatically. “Meantime, soak up some Broadway vibes for me. Yell at all of the theaters: ‘Zora is coming for you!’”

We all laughed.

“Trina is going to have to miss our battle-of-the-robots tournament while you’re on your trip,” Frankie said. “But she promised she’d help me program ours. We named it Boop the Destroyer.”

I smiled at the thought of Trina maneuvering a robot called Boop the Destroyer. Frankie had invited Trina to the robotics club, and Trina was having fun with that too.

“Every time she tears another robot’s limb off, she says, ‘BEEP BOOP,’” Frankie said. “It’s awesome.”

“Hey, where’s Lily?” Zora asked.

“She’s doing some extra training during lunch,” I said. “In the gym, over video. With her solo coming up, it’s pretty intense for her.”

“Are you sad you didn’t get the solo?” Zora was always up front with her thoughts. “Like I was sooo jealous of Ariel when she got the lead.”

“Don’t put her on the spot!” Frankie admonished.

“Um,” I said. “No, I’ll answer. I mean, I definitely wanted the solo. I mean, I can’t always dance the lead. Plus, my best friend on the team got it, so I’m happy for her! But yeah, it’s complicated when there’s only one spot.”

“Could be worse,” Frankie said seriously. “In robotics battle tournaments, if you don’t get the lead, you get your metallic pieces ripped apart and flung outside the ring into the audience.”

Nobody said anything for a second. Then we all laughed.

“Good point,” Zora agreed.

As we were winding down, Courtney, another girl from the show, came over to our table. “Hey, Mrs. Elliott asked me to come tell you guys that the new makeup palettes came in if you guys want to go practice!”

“Yeah!” Almost everybody chimed in. I noticed Drew didn’t, but when Courtney offered to make him up like a zombie, he jumped up with everybody else. I felt a little bit left out. It wasn’t their fault—they had been super welcoming to me, and I loved that we still hung out. I just felt like lately, I had one foot in each world. I was a dancer who liked hanging out with the drama group, but didn’t have time to be in the plays (actually, since I couldn’t sing and I was new there, I wasn’t sure I had the talent to be in the plays! But it was fun! So who knew?!).

“Okay, you guys have fun!” I told them.

“You have to come with us!” Zara insisted. “I know you don’t have your own makeup palette, but that’s okay—you can do someone’s makeup or just come have fun.”

She had a point. I jumped up and went with them backstage. There was a room that had a lot of makeup mirrors set up, and after everybody had gotten their makeup kits they all scrambled to get a seat.