Ryder the Love Expert | Protector 2.1

Chapter 29

Anybody ready for a plot twist? ;)

Chapter 29

       "Bad news," Lilith said as she walked out of her office. Everyone was already in the studio, well, except April. She wasn't here yet.

       "Bad news?" Dempsey repeated. "Why do I feel like it's something we don't want to hear?"

       "Probably because she said bad news," I pointed out.

       Dempsey narrowed his eyes at me. "No, really? I did not know that."

       "This is serious," Lilith said. "April....She quit the studio."

       I was shocked when I heard that. We all were. Everyone began talking in confusion, wondering why she would leave the studio. Although, part of me thought it was because I decided to talk to her about Mae. However, April was a dancer. She wouldn't quit just because of that, right?

       ....Right?

       "Everyone, calm down," Lilith said. "That wasn't even the worse part. I was informed, by the head of Nonpareil, that April joined that studio."

       "I'm sorry, she what?" Isla said. "She went to our rival? Why would she do that?"

       "I don't know," Lilith said. "We're going to have to rework the dance and...."

       "Rework it?" Milton said. "Um, I think we have to change it. April knows the dance and if she's with Nonpareil, she can tell them the dance."

       "Yeah," Isla agreed. "We need to change our dance."

       "No way," I said. "April tells them the dance, so what? What's the worst they can do, copy it? They can't really do anything about it. They'll probably expect us to change it, so we should just keep it and work on perfecting it even more. We'll waste time if we create an all new dance with an all new theme and all new costumes. We don't have time."

       "Ryder's right," Mae said. "They'll know our dance, that's it."

       "But if they know it, they can do something similar," Milton said. "And we'll look like the copycats because they're the State Champions."

       "We won't look like copycats if our dance is more clean and perfected," Mae said. "We just need to make our dance the best it can be."

       "You know what? I agree," Isla said. "Besides, what's better than a Beauty and the Beast love story featuring the couple and best duet?"

       It was decided by everyone that we would keep our piece. I bet Nonpareil expected us to change it, thinking they would copy us. Copying our dance would be a stupid move. Not to brag, but we got the duet championship and our dance has more chemistry. They would lose if they copied it.

       They would lose no matter what they do because they were going down.

       For the whole rehearsal, we modified it a bit to take out April's part, then worked on perfected it the best we could. We were going to be working hard because he were going to beat Nonpareil.

       After rehearsal, Mae and I talked about the talent show. She wasn't sure about doing it anymore because she thought we should focus on the state competition, but I really wanted to do it, so I convinced her otherwise. As long as we focused on the competition during rehearsal, we should be fine.

       We decided our theme would be staying by each other's side because we wanted an emotional duet to bring tears to the judges and everyone. Well, I did.