I knew I should have responded to Diya, but the weight of my hopes froze my tongue. Finally, after what felt like a very long silence, she said, “I bet you wish you were there, instead of here.”

I looked at her. She was being blunt again, but it didn’t sound bitchy. Actually, after so many “maybe it’s for the bests,” it just sounded true. “Here” didn’t just mean the party. It meant the whole thing—high school and the musical and normal, teenage life. And “there” was my dream—ballet. Being in a company. Devoting my life to dance.

Diya’s eyes, which had been considering me closely, shifted to the living room. I turned and saw Margot, Jude, and Ethan walking in the front door. Finally. My body relaxed, and Diya noticed. “They’re your friends,” she said. I couldn’t tell if that was a statement or a question.

“Um, yeah?”

“What do you think of them?”

I shrugged, confused. “I don’t know them that well, but they’ve been really nice to me.”

Diya sighed. “Well, of course they’re nice to you now. But you were… you were an amazing dancer.” She looked me right in the eye again, her expression hardening. “They didn’t like you so much then.”

She held my gaze a moment longer. Then she finished her LaCroix, popped it into the recycling bin, and brushed past Margot, who stood in the kitchen doorway.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“WHAT WAS THAT ABOUT?” Margot asked. Jude and Ethan had been pulled into the living room to dance by some senior girls, so it was only me and Margot in the kitchen.

What did Diya mean that they didn’t like me when I was still doing ballet? I hardly knew Margot then and didn’t know Jude and Ethan at all.

Margot cleared her throat loudly.

“Oh, she was just asking me what I thought about you guys. You and Ethan and Jude. I have no idea why.”

“Pfft, I know why,” Margot said, coming around to the other side of the island and grabbing a cookie. “Diya and Jude dated their sophomore year.”

“Really?” I couldn’t picture it. They seemed like polar opposites.

“Yeah. For, like, two seconds. They were a musi-couple. Those happen every year, and hardly ever last after closing night. But Jude and Diya didn’t even last through winter break. I forget exactly what happened, but she probably got too full of herself. Anyway, Jude’s a sweetheart, and everyone in the musical loved him, so they weren’t kind to her when it all went down.”

Something occurred to me then. “Is that when the Robobitch nickname started?”

Margot glanced over my shoulder at the dancing. “Probably. Jude didn’t start it. But it fits her, so it stuck. Anyway, I bet she saw you dancing with Jude at callbacks and got jealous.”