Chaos Choreography

by Seanan McGuire

  “She says that like she didn’t come in second,” said Lyra, dialing her smile back and giving Dominic an appraising look. “So you’re dating Val? You think you’re good enough for her?”

  “No, but as she doesn’t seem to have realized that yet, I intend to take advantage of my time in her good graces,” said Dominic, with the sort of solemnity he usually reserved for portents of doom and complaints about how long I took in the shower.

  Lyra glanced back to me. “Ooo, I like him. Spanish?”

  “Italian,” said Dominic.

  “I like him even more.” She whirled and gave me another quick hug. “It’s so good to see you again, Val. I know I was supposed to keep in touch better, and I’m sorry. Things got so crazy after I won our season.”

  “I understand,” I said. I did, too. It was hard to remember to stay in touch when your life was blowing up around you. “I didn’t make the effort, either. Can we agree to forgive each other?”

  “Already forgiven,” said Lyra, making a tossing gesture. “Anders is here, by the way. In case you wanted to see if he was willing to forgive you.”

  I grimaced. “On a scale of one to never gonna happen, how much shit am I in?”

  “I’d say a nine-point-five,” said a voice from behind me. I turned and found myself looking at a perfectly fastened bow tie. I tilted my head back and shifted my gaze to the big blue eyes of one Anders Clarke.

  He was easily six inches taller than me, built like a runner, something he attributed to a combination of genetics and never sitting still. Dance was a world of constant motion, and Anders made the rest of us look lazy. He was a human cartoon in impeccably polished tap shoes . . . at least, he always had been before. Now, he was standing frozen, a sad look on his classically handsome face. Very classically handsome: he could have stepped straight out of a Gene Kelly movie, even down to the cut of his suit. Anders was the only human man I knew who thought of suspenders as a valid fashion choice. Somehow, for him, they were.

  “Anders,” I said, starting to reach for him. That was when he finally moved.

  He stepped away.

  “I emailed you,” he said. “After your phone number was disconnected. I emailed eight times, and you never responded.”

  “When did you start?” I asked.

  He gaped at me. “When did I start? Because that totally makes up for you never answering me, or reaching out in the first place? We were partners, Val. You should’ve called.”

  “I was in Manhattan for a year, and I didn’t get any email from you,” I said. “I would’ve answered.” I would have. I might not have been proactive about keeping in touch with the other dancers from my season—partially out of shame over my loss, and partially because there hadn’t been enough hours in the day—but I answered the people who bothered to contact me. Guilt and curiosity had been enough to guarantee that.

  “I started the day after the show ended,” he said.

  I blinked slowly. “Sweetie . . . I didn’t get any email from you. Not one single piece. What address were you using? Did you ever swing by Facebook and message me?”

  “No, because you were already ignoring my email.” Now Anders was starting to look angry. Never good. He took a long time to wind down, and we were going to be called in to meet with the producers soon.

  Lyra, ever the peacemaker, pulled out her phone and shoved it in front of his face. “Is this the email address you were using?” she asked.

  Anders blinked several times as he refocused on the screen. His anger was like a rolling stone: it gathered speed as it moved, and it was difficult as hell to pull it back. Then he blinked again. “No,” he said, pulling out his own phone and scrolling through his address book before pushing it toward me. “This is.”

  We made a weird sort of triangle, standing there holding phones out toward one another, and it made me want to get my own phone out, just to complete the formation. I resisted the urge in favor of frowning at Anders’ screen. “That’s not my email address,” I said. “That isn’t anything even like my email address. Who gave you that address?”

  “Jessica,” said Anders. “You ducked out so fast after the finale that I didn’t have a chance to get it from you, and I wanted to keep in touch.”

  Lyra and I both stared at him. Lyra lowered her phone to give herself a clearer view of Anders’ face. We were a united front again, just like we’d been during our last weeks on the show, and I wasn’t going to lie: it felt incredibly good. Lyra had never met Verity Price, would probably be appalled by Verity’s world, but she had been Valerie’s best friend. Even compartmentalized and held apart as my two worlds were, that mattered to me.

  “You asked Jessica for contact information for Valerie, and you believed one, that she’d have it, and two, she’d give it to you accurately, without being an asshole about it?” Lyra planted her hands on her hips. “Did you fall and hit your head after you were eliminated, or did you just think the spirit of brotherhood would suddenly move her to not be a horrible human being?”

  “She’s not that bad,” I said, with no real heat.

  “Uh, excuse much? She called you a fake redhead on camera when they did alumni week. She tried to sue the show when they let Emily come back after she was eliminated, because they hadn’t let her come back. She’s awful. She’s always been awful, she’ll always be awful, and the fact that Anders listened to her for like, a second, makes him awful.” Lyra directed a glare at Anders, who squirmed. “How dare you get mad at Valerie because of something Jessica did? That’s like, awful squared.”

  “Valerie still changed her number without telling anyone,” said Anders—a defensive rearguard action if I had ever heard one.

  “My old phone got disconnected because someone blasted the number over Twitter,” I said.

  Anders and Lyra exchanged a look before saying, in unison, “Jessica.” Then they were laughing, and I was laughing, and all was right with the world.

  A chime rang through the lobby, shaking dancers out of their conversations and warmup stretches. I wrinkled my nose and turned to Dominic, who’d been looking increasingly confused during our conversation. He’d just been dropped into a world he didn’t understand, complete with preexisting social connections and rivalries. He was doing the sensible thing and staying quiet. I loved him even more for that. Common sense is less common than you’d think.

  “You can come in for this part; we’re encouraged to bring friends and family to the producer meeting, since it makes the audience look fuller,” I said. The instructions had been clearly spelled out on the last prep email from the producers. “You’ll have to leave after the showboating, but at least this way you can get a look at the judges and our host.”

  “I understand,” he said solemnly.

  Lyra grabbed my arm, tugging me toward the theater doors. “Come on, come on, Val. We want to get good spots on the stage!”

  As if they weren’t going to arrange us according to their own plan? This was all staged. Every bit of it. I was just surprised there weren’t cameras here in the lobby—at least not cameras I could see. I glanced around, suddenly paranoid, and resisted the urge to check my wig.

  Then Anders grabbed my other arm, signaling that all was forgiven, and the two of them lifted my feet off the ground and toted me into the future.

  As I’d expected, the stage was marked with little pieces of tape, each with a name written on it. They were mixing the seasons, turning us from five sets of four into a mob of twenty dancers. We milled around the stage until we found our names. Then we stepped off again, waiting in the wings where the cameras wouldn’t pick us up.

  A statuesque blonde rose from the front row of seats and made her way onto the empty judges’ podium. She walked with the easy sway of someone who’d been drinking since she got out of bed. I knew she wasn’t drunk: she was just tall, wearing impractical shoes, and incredibly loosely joint
ed. I knew that, but I still held my breath as Brenna Kelly climbed the stairs, waiting for a fall that never came.

  “Are we rolling?” she asked, glancing toward a production assistant. Whatever answer she got, she nodded, and said, “On my count, then. Five, four, three, two . . .” She stopped talking and smiled, an expression that took her from attractive to stunningly beautiful. It was directed at the camera, and hence, at America. “For five years, you’ve tuned in to watch as America’s most talented and hardest working dancers took to our stage. You’ve seen their triumphs and their tragedies, their flights and their falls, and after every season, you’ve asked ‘what happened to my favorites?’” Her smile softened, turning almost maternal. “I know I’ve often asked that question myself. Often enough, in fact, that someone listened, and said ‘why don’t we find out?’”

  Brenna took a step back, gesturing to the stage with her free hand. “This season, we’re doing something that’s never happened before in Dance or Die history. We’re bringing back your top four dancers, America—not just from last season, but from the last five. Our top twenty is made up of your very favorites, here to dance for you one more time, to prove that they deserve the title of America’s Dancer of Choice.”

  She descended the stairs, never looking where she was putting her feet, hitting her marks impeccably. It was a form of dance in and of itself. She always insisted she had two left feet, but I couldn’t have done that walk in those shoes without a choreographer. “But, of course, we can’t do it without the people who started it all. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your judges.”

  Adrian was the first to appear—naturally. It was his show, and he wasn’t going to let anyone steal that from him, even if the structure of the program forced him to give Brenna more camera time than he had. He strutted out of the wings, waving for the cameras, grinning. The dancers around me clapped. The families and friends seeded throughout the audience clapped. I clapped. There was no knowing whether we were being filmed right now, and a dancer who didn’t applaud for Adrian might well find themselves falling, quite abruptly, from grace.

  “Executive producer Adrian Crier,” announced Brenna.

  A woman with auburn hair teased into a glorious bouffant was the next to appear. She was smiling, but less broadly: she had Botoxed most of the movement out of her face years ago. It was sad. She was a beautiful woman, but as someone who worked in an industry where the most important thing a woman could be was young, she’d been forced to resort to increasingly desperate measures. Her hatred of Brenna—who was rumored to be the same age, and yet hadn’t needed any such procedures—was legendary.

  (Brenna was actually older. Brenna didn’t need Botox because Brenna wasn’t a mammal. This . . . wasn’t something we could actually explain to anyone. Oh, well.)

  “Our lady of the ballroom, the lovely Lindy O’Toole,” said Brenna.

  Lindy waved, smile never shifting, as she crossed the stage to take her place next to Adrian.

  The third judge varied from season to season. I crossed my fingers, hoping for one of the faces I liked, and was rewarded when a skinny man in a bow tie, with the sort of smile that promised unexpected explosions, stepped out of the wings. He was waving with both hands, and looked happier to be there than any of us.

  “Choreographer, producer, and all-around fabulous human being, Clint Goldfein!” said Brenna.

  Clint sat down at the end of the judges’ table. Lindy leaned over to touch his arm and say something inaudible, smiling like she hadn’t seen him in months, even though she’d been backstage with him for who knew how long. That was show business for you.

  My nerves were starting to tingle, and my stomach was a hot pit of terror. It was almost time to take the stage. I wasn’t ready. I wanted to be up there right now. It felt like I was pulling myself in two different directions at the same time, and it couldn’t help but be an awkward sensation.

  Brenna stepped up onto the stage, standing on the edge as she smiled at the judges, and said, “It’s so nice to have us all back together again. It’s like a big family reunion for me. Adrian? How do you feel right now?”

  “Well, Brenna, I’ve got to be honest with you, I’m as excited as you are,” he said. “Every dancer we’ve ever had on the show has been magnificent in their own style—they wouldn’t have made it through the audition process if they weren’t—but there’s always a bit of sadness at the end of the season, because we’ve seen these wonderful dancers leave us one after the other, and then we have to start all over again. The idea of being able to begin with the sort of technique and strength that we normally see at the end of the season . . . it’s really exciting.”

  “Lindy?” Brenna turned her body slightly, so no one could accuse her of slighting the judging panel’s only female member. She was a consummate professional in that regard.

  “I’m so excited I could scream,” said Lindy, her surgical smile not budging a bit. “I love all our dancers, you know I do, but some of the best ballroom people we’ve ever had are going to get a second shot at our stage, and I’m hoping there won’t be any slippage in their footwork or their partnering. I’m expecting a whole new level out of this group of dancers. They know what we expect of them. We know what they’re capable of. Put it together and it’s going to be . . .” She sighed theatrically. She did everything theatrically. Since she’d frozen her face, her voice was all she had left to work with, and she made it do as much as she could. “Magical.”

  “I like a little magic,” said Brenna, and turned to Clint. “All right, Mr. Goldfein. Sprinkle some of your magic dust on us, and let’s get this show on the road, shall we?”

  Next to me, Lyra snorted. I whapped her on the arm as a signal to be still. Out of the three judges currently seated at the podium, Clint was the least likely to go shoving foreign substances up his nose for fun. He wasn’t an angel—he worked in Hollywood for a reason—but he’d always struck me as someone who genuinely enjoyed being alive, and didn’t see any cause to complicate life with illegal pharmaceuticals. My kind of man, in other words, even if he was way too old for me and my particular code of ethics wouldn’t have allowed me to sleep with a judge even if I hadn’t been married.

  “I don’t have anything fancy to say about any of this,” said Clint, grinning his wide, disarming grin. “I’m just thrilled to have everybody back with us.”

  “And so am I,” said Brenna. “Let’s bring them out now, shall we?” She turned to beckon us forward.

  That was our cue. In a carefully rehearsed mob, we surged forward and took our places on the stage, settling with our butts on the pieces of tape staged for our benefit. We were supposed to sit, so that we’d look like the eager, earnest students of dance we were meant to be. Some of us knelt; others settled cross-legged, or tucked their ankles like they were posing for a pinup calendar. I was in the front row between a dancer I didn’t recognize and a dancer I vaguely thought had been on the season after mine. Lyra and Anders were somewhere behind me. They’d only been back in my life for a few minutes, and I already missed their presence desperately.

  “Well, well, well, look at you all,” said Adrian, beaming a toothy smile in our direction. “I can’t believe we were able to get all twenty of you back again.”

  I tensed. I wasn’t the only one. The show normally opened each season with auditions, milking them for every bit of artificial tension they possibly could. If you auditioned with a best friend or a sibling, for example, you’d both make it as far as the producers could justify, before one of you would be eliminated in the most vicious way possible. This season, by bringing back the twenty of us, they were missing out on all that drama . . . unless, of course, they were planning to eliminate one or more of us right now, when we were completely off guard.

  Adrian’s smile remained fixed and unmoving for a few seconds, giving us plenty of time to work ourselves into a low-grade panic. The dancers around me beg
an to shift nervously, their chins dipping and their shoulders tensing. I forced myself to remain still, looking relaxed and content in my position. If someone was getting eliminated today, it wasn’t going to be me. Why, they couldn’t do the show without me! It was easier to look like I believed it than it would have been to actually start believing, but I hadn’t been a dancer for most of my life without learning how to control my face.

  Then he relaxed, moving into his patented sympathetic look, and said, “Come on, my darlings, you can’t really believe we’d do that to America, can you?” The fact that he didn’t need to say what “that” was should have been proof enough. Wisely, no one said anything. “None of you are getting eliminated today. We brought back our twenty top dancers because we wanted to show what you could do if you didn’t have to go through the early stages of getting used to our format and learning how to work with our choreographers. We wanted to take all the stops off, and let you run. So no, there is not going to be a surprise elimination today: all twenty of you will be taking the stage in one week.”

  The mass visibly relaxed. Someone murmured, “Oh, thank God,” and the dancers around them giggled, nervous and relieved.

  “That doesn’t mean we’re not gonna put you to work,” said Lindy, not to be left out. She fixed us with a stern look, only slightly diluted by the fact that she was still smiling. “You thought the choreography in your seasons was hard? Now we know what you’re capable of, we’re not going to be pulling any punches. You’re going to work harder than you’ve ever worked before, and you’re going to love every second of it.”

  The dancers broke into “spontaneous” applause. There was an element of honesty to what she was saying: we probably would love whatever we were told to do. We hadn’t become dancers because we wanted to avoid challenges. I’d always been happiest when I was bruised, aching, and on the verge of collapse, and the same held true for most of the people around me.