Chapter 7
Aryl

“Five and a six and seven and go!” calls the captain’s groggy voice.

Rehearsal started at 6:00, as usual, which meant people had to get up at 5:30 to make it to the studio in time. No way would I let a dead investigator or the police’s demands get between me and dancing. I’ll be here until they drag me away.

I’m paying for my lack of sleep, though. As I stretch my arms out, fingers spread wide, each limb feels twice as heavy as usual. Even the shock-absorbent floor can’t fully soften my landings. I shoot a hand above my head, shift my ribcage right, pop my hip out on the other side. Leap, step, turn turn turn.

My teammates know. Some are giving me why-is-she-here? stares. I feel their eyes waiting for me to miss a move—or to drop Rhea, whom I’ve just lifted in the air, one leg extended behind her. That would be catastrophic. She’s the daughter of a gemstone mining tycoon who’d get me convicted of a second crime.

I won’t mess up, not with all of them watching, and not with Rhea depending on me. Together, her lightness and my long lines make us shine. Whenever I watch playback of our performances, my eyes are drawn to myself and Rhea, no matter how neutral I try to be.

But something’s off. It’s not that I can’t do the steps today—it’s that I have no reason to. I can’t feel anything worth putting into movement. I’ve always danced my joy, my longing, my heartache, and my anger. I’ve burned so bright, I’ve lit up stages large and small. I’ve reached to the back of an auditorium and snatched people’s attention.

But what about numbness? How do you express that?

“Stop, stop.” The team captain, a fifth-year apprentice named Kandel, is shaking his head. He carries so little body fat that even his neck is sinewy with muscle. “Fielding, you’re not getting enough height on any of your jumps.”

Rhea shoots me an annoyed look from where she’s resting, hands on her thighs.

“And since when have you all gotten so lazy on your lifts?” Kandel says. “Quit slacking off. We’re two weeks away from a performance in Lucent City’s biggest arena. You can’t be out of shape now.”

So it goes. His comments discourage me, and that only makes me sink deeper into the pit I feel opening up inside. It makes me miss Rori, my old teacher. He always knew what to say to get me soaring, whether it was gently critiquing a technical detail or painting an image of what he wanted with his words. He charged his other students a fortune, but knowing my parents’ situation, he trained me for cheap.

“Take care of your mind, Aryl,” he used to say. “It’s your paintbrush, and your body is the canvas.”

How can I dance when my parents are locked down and out of work? And what about Ester? Her classmates will be as cruel to her as mine have been to me, but with extra thirteen-year-old zest.

Everything I wanted yesterday seems out of reach now. To finish my apprenticeship, audition for one of the big Lucent City dance companies, and dance until my body gives out, returning to science as my backup career. I see parallels between the nano-scale movements of proteins and the human-scale movements of dance. The long experiments in science and the infinitesimal moments of moving onstage balance each other. I can’t live without this dance team, this movement—but it could all be gone by next week.

All because of Ver’s twisted, unrequited love, or whatever it was that made her kill Cal. Maybe Cal was cruel to her too, when none of us were around. Maybe she secretly hated him and wanted to get close enough to murder him.

After practice ends, Rhea and I stretch each other out. I try to ignore the others on the mats, who don’t hide that they’re watching us.

My hip flexors feel like wooden blocks. Rhea pushes my hips forward and wrenches my thigh backward to put tension on the muscles. She’s strong, for someone so small.

“I was worried Kandel would say worse to us,” she says. Her eyes are concerned. You can read her whole heart through those green-tinted windows. That’s why she was the first one I trusted on the dance team, surrounded by the children of gazillionaires, senators, and Institute investigators who saw me as a farm bumpkin. At first, most of them ignored me. But everything changed when Rhea took a liking to me. Then they all started jockeying to grab a meal, to go out at night.

“Kandel’s the least of my problems,” I say. The police want to question Ver and me at 9:00. It’s 8:44 now, so I need to leave soon.”

“Listen, Aryl.” Rhea’s eyes cloud over. “How long will you be dancing like this?”

I stare at her, heart pounding. “Like what?”

“You know, all lifeless. You can usually bend people’s hearts. When I asked you to be my doubles partner last year, that was why. I just . . . I hope you don’t make me regret it.”

Words won’t come. Dread weighs me down. Cal is dead. The law will pin the blame on me, the daughter of aliens with the height in her step and the glint in her eye—unless I can convince them it was Ver.

A week from now, will I still even be free, let alone dancing?