Double Treble (Book 1 of the Ava and Mia Series)

Chapter 15

I wake up to Sadie running around the room panicking because she woke up late. She's running around when we still have 2 hours to get to the venue with 4 hours before she dances. They're both freaking out and I think it's crazy. Me and Mia both get dressed and she's in a nice pretty blue and white checkered dress with black flats and nice neat little curls while I'm in a neon yellow dress with black converse and my hair is like a wild poof ball of hair. My mom looks us over and shakes her head at me. I guess I'm never gonna be good enough for her.

We walk down to the Mareiot and meet Lucy and Mrs Collins outside Ballroom C.
"LUCY!" Mia shouts, and runs over and  gives her a big hug, and then I join the big huddle of friendship.
"Hey Ava!" Lucy exclaim.
"Hi Lucy! Good job yesterday!" I says.
"Thanks Ava! You too!" 
"Alright girls, you're free to roam the building on your own. Ava and Mia have their phones so if there's an emergency, they can call me or Mr. Peterson. But you can't leave the building ok?" Mom says. We all nod and run off together, chatting about how much fun we're gonna have today. We're going down the escalator when Lucy sees a girl I'm assuming is from her school

"Hi Margaret!" She says and the girl looks over.
"Hey, Lucy! Good job yesterday!" She exclaims.
"Thanks! Good luck!" She says back.
"Who's that?" I ask. "She looks really good."
"She is. Her name's Margaret and she's from my school. I saw her set awhile ago and it was amazing!"

"Wanna go to Starbuck's?" Mia asks.
"Sure! I don't have any money though." Lucy says.
"Psh! I'll buy you something! Mom gave us each $50 to spend this weekend!" I say. It may sound like we're spoiled but Oireachtas spending is basically our Christmas present We go down another escalator that takes us to the Lobby.
"Wow! That's a looonnnggg line!" Mia breathes and it is. The line is out the door.
"Let's go! Before it gets any longer!" I say running over, and Mia and Lucy follow.

(15 minutes later)

"This is taking forever! Should we just come back later?" Mia asks.
"No way! We've been waiting forever and it's almost our turn! That'd be such a waste of time!" I argue

Finally it's our turn, and I steps up to order first.
"Can I please have one of those chocolate croissants, no make that two please and a tall cotton candy frappuccino please?" We always get Starbucks before a feis when we can and this is my favorite order
Then I turns to Lucy  and says, "The second croissant is for you, you know."
"Thanks so much Ava! I really appreciate it!" She exclaims and i give her a side hug. She's so sweet, it's hard to imagine she's related to Chloe

"Ok now you one of you order." I say to Lucy and Mia. Mia steps up and says, "I'll have a hot chocolate please and one of those huge cinnamon rolls please." Then she turns to Lucy  and says, "What do you want?"
"Can I please have a cream based double chocolate chip frappuccino?" I ask the man at the register. "Your drink is on me, and you can split the cinnamon roll with me if you'd like." Mia says. There goes Mia being the perfect twin as usual but for once I don't care. "Thanks so much Mia! Honestly, guys, I appreciate this so so much!"
"It's no biggie!" We both say at the same time and we all laugh.

Then the guy rings up our order and we all move down towards the end of the counter where they give out the drinks. We have to wait several minutes until we get all three of our drinks  and then we set out into the hotel and Oireachtas craziness once again.

It's 11:19am on Saturday, Day 2 of the MARO. Lucy , Mia, and I are just finishing up the last bits of our drinks as we walk by the practice room.

"Mila!" I shouts across the hall. Mila is walking away from us, but she turns when she hears her name.
"Hey guys!"
"We're just walking around, what are you up to?"
"I don't know. My mom's in her teacher mode running people's dances and I'm really bored so I'm just walking around."
"Wanna hang with us?" Lucy asks.
"Sure! I would love to!" She exclaims.
I get a text from mom saying that Sadies group is delayed till about one so that means we can hang out. Then a brilliant idea comes to me.
"Let's go up to the top floor! I really wanna go up there!" I exclaims and they all agree
"Should we take the stairs or elevator?" Lucy asks.
"How about stairs up, elevator down?" Mia asks and we all decide to go with that plan.
"Hold on, can we stop at the fifth floor to drop off the journal with my mom? She's in Ballroom A, watching Margaret and some of the other girls." Mila says.
"Sure! We don't have any time limit or anything!" Lucy exclaim. We head upstairs on the escalator and while Mila's giving the journal to Her mom, the rest of us hang out in the hallway.

"Hey look there's Chloe!" I notice. Chloe's walking towards us and she's with some girl I've never seen before. Her jacket says she's from the Gilligan School. They're near us I think.
"Hi Chloe! Wanna hang out with us?" Lucy  waves when Chloe gets closer to us. She just looks at us with a look of disgust and rolls her eyes. "No! I have an actually nice friend that I can hang out with!" Wow sassy much
"What did I do to you?" Lucy asks.
"You beat me when you didn't deserve to! That's ok because I know I was way better than you, and I'm a much better dancer than you. I know I am because you're jealous of me."
"Am not!"
"Yeah you are, and you're trying to rub it in my face that you have friends from other schools. I don't care at all,because I don't hang out with losers." She turns around and leave. Lucy's blinking tears out of her eyes and we all surround her In a hug.

"That was totally rude, Lucy! Don't even listen to her!" Mia exclaims. I almost want to call out that we aren't losers because we all beat her but that would probably make things worse
"Yeah, we're really not losers, and you totally deserved to beat her! We all did!" I exclaims.
"Don't worry about her, Lucy. Apparently her mom was pretty mad that she didn't do 'that well' either." Mila says quietly.
"For real?"
"Yeah," Mila says. "She complained to my mom and Razz saying she thinks that they bribed the judges to get me to do better because she thought Chloe looked way better. But my mom and Razz didn't and they said so. Then her mom, like, stomped off. Don't worry about her though."

"Let's forget about this drama and let's run to the top floor!" I exclaims to try and bring the fun back into our little group

"Floor 15, only 10 more floors guys!" Mia exclaims but we're all panting. I'm exhausted.
"This is more of a workout than my full jig." I complain and we all laugh. All of a sudden we hear a loud bang and a man's voice say, "Yeah I'll get them for you. They're way too noisy!"
We all stare at each other, pure horror written on each of our faces. We're all frozen in place so I have to take action again.
"Run!" I whisper And we take off running as fast as we can up the stairs.

Panting and sweating, we reach the top floor and open the door that takes us out of the stairs area.
"I thought he was gonna get us!" Mia says falling on the ground. Soon we're all on the ground in a jumbled heap, trying to catch our breath.
"I thought for sure he was talking about us." Mila says.
"Yeah me too but maybe not." Lucy  say.
"Let's stay here for a few more minutes. Then let's explore." I suggests, and everyone agrees to that plan. We eventually get off the ground and begin looking around.
"You guys, look!" Mila exclaims.
"What?" 
"Come here! There's a window, and we're so far up!" She cries, leading us over to a giant window that goes almost from the floor to the ceiling, but there's some seat thing so it's not actually a floor to ceiling window. We all stand on the bench thing and peer down. I can see so many buildings and hundreds of cars and people, who are so small!
"The people and cars look like they could fit in my hand!" I says and we all laugh.
"Let's explore for a few more minutes..." Lucy says but i can never resist a game of tag "You're it!" I tag her. We all scatter and run, all over floor 25 and I hear Lucy's footsteps behind me. a game of tag has officially begun.