Flying (Fight Song Book 2)

Chapter 16: The aftermath

Basically part two of the last chapter bc I was too upset to finish it last time.

Joe's PoV
I walk back into the room and see all the B Troupers looking anxiously at me. I feel quite bad to have to let all but one of them down, but they knew what they were in for when they auditioned.

"Thank you all for auditioning, this decision was really hard for us to make," I say, getting everyone's attention in the room. "After much deliberation, we have decided Poppy Deyes will be the one to join A Troupe for Nationals!"

There's massive cheers from her fellow teammates, and Poppy looks absolutely shocked. I grin at her. Yes, I let the others down, but seeing the excitement on that girl's face was all I needed. Her day had been made. Zoe goes up to her and congratulates her, saying she couldn't have picked a better person. I know Zoe and Poppy are pretty close given how often Zoe's round Alfie's. It's nice to see.

I go and walk over to Dianne, Alice, Rosie, Lola, and unfortunately now Tilly.

"It's been almost an hour and no dancing has been done," Tilly observes, looking bored.

"If you couldn't gather with your oh so smart mind, losing team members and auditioning new ones isn't on the daily rota," Lola glares at her.

"Sorry you've not seen any dancing yet," I say to Alice and Rosie, completely ignoring Tilly. "I promise this doesn't usually happen. We're about to get to work now though, so come on you two," I grab Dianne in one hand and Lola in the other and we head towards the centre of the room.

"We're gonna just run around and do some star jumps quickly to make sure you're all warmed up," Alesha says.

"But we just had jazz class," Jack complains.

"Yes, an hour ago, and you've been barely moving since then," Alesha continues. "So run."

Begrudgingly, Jack stands up and Alesha presses play on her phone, MMMBop blasting out the speakers.

"I hate this song," Neil fake sobs as he comes to run next to me.

"Same, after bloody PE I will always hate this song," I say, groaning.

I wish Miss Lamb hadn't played that so much, because one of my favourite songs was now one I wish didn't exist.

"Okay," Alesha sits down on the bench at the front once we've done our running. "You're gonna stretch now by yourselves and then we'll move onto our semi finals dance."

We stretch to Hey Mama, because apparently Alesha can't be bothered to get up and change the song...

Then, we jump straight into things.

"Okay, Poppy, if you just want to sit on the side and watch this dance, that would be fab," Alesha says. "The rest of you, just try and pretend Zoe's here." She finishes with a sigh, which is relatable. Zoe's whole departure was just one long sigh.

As much as our semi finals dance is cool, I don't actually like it. I don't think it tells the story in the way we might think it does, and honestly it feels a bit chaotic. I set my worries aside as we run it once, but after we've run it twice I know I have to speak up.

"Okay, I hate this," I say simply. "This isn't a Nationals standard dance, it's just chaos on a stage."

"You're joking, right?" Neil snaps his head round to look at me. "We've been doing this for three weeks and literally got a professional choreographer in to work on it with us and only now do you say you don't like it?"

"Well I don't know!" I say. "Look, it'd be better to learn a new routine now than to keep this and lose at the semi finals."

"So what do you propose as the semi finals routine, Joe?" Alesha looks at me, one of the only faces that isn't mad.