Calore Dance Academy// Red Queen AU

Chapter 60

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Enjoy, as always!

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The next morning, Blonos's studio looks a little different.

At first, I don't take much note of it. I'm more focused on the deadening ache in my biceps. The muscles are painfully stiff, and every little movement hurts.

On the bright side, maybe if Blonos notices that my arms are no longer functional, I can get her to call Cal off. The chances are slim, though.

With my AirPods in and my eyes engrossed in the American Ballet Theatre's synopsis of Manon on my phone, I barely notice how eighty-or-so folding metal chairs are arranged in a neat oval around the hulking studio. The usual barres are gone, exiled to the room's margins, and some disgusting TikTok hit that's popular now but will be forgotten by next week plays from overhead.

There's a flurry of excitement to the room. The dancers who have already gotten to class are either hanging around in little clumps or have taken to the folding chairs. Each one has a piece of plain paper taped to its back, accompanied by a dancer's name in bold black marker. I spot my assigned chair across the room, spaced only four away from the chairs of the Calore brothers. Alphabetical order, I see.

Still not caring too much about whatever's going on, I trek halfway across the room in my navy-blue warm-up pants, black sweatshirt, and moon-boots.

Under the hood of my sweatshirt, my ballerina-tight bun pulls at my scalp, as per usual. Only once I'm fully across the way do I bother to take down my hood. I toss my bag down onto my chair, making to take out my AirPods and put them away with my phone.

But a few things seen only out of the corner of one of my eyes make me pause.

Blonos, who sits two chairs over from me, wears a look of intense displeasure. Dressed in her usual mean ballet mistress clothes, she sits with that pristine posture of hers. She would usually be ordering people around, working the Corps girls to the edge of tears with her remarks. Now she just sits quietly, staring across the room at three people who look entirely out of place for a professional ballet company.

My eyes tear to Maven next, who's already peering back at me with some degree of panic. To anybody else, it only looks like awestruck excitement.

Through the grand wall of mirrors at the front of the studio, my eyes flicker between three heads of hair, one blue, one green, and one white. Each dancers' hair is vividly neon, as though a little bit of lightning struck their scalps one day.

One of them is moving away from the doors. I completely missed him, even though he was standing right there as I passed him, greeting every new dancer with that TikTok enthusiasm of his.

My mind works faster than my eyes.

Tyton, Ella, and Rafe, the infamous TikTokers of New York City, known for starting flash mobs from the Bronx to Brooklyn and currently thirty-three-million followers strong on TikTok, are standing around Blonos's studio. Rafe is perched on a chair, shamelessly flirting with a boy in the Corps de Ballet, and Ella seems to be having a casual conversation with Carmadon, who's seated a ways down from me.

Their pathetic Gen-Z camera crew of three follows them around, bearing little vlog cameras attached to tripods. Two other teens dressed in brand-name sweatpants and oversized T-shirts loiter at the door like some sort of interns. The TikTok mix that plays begins to make sense.