Missing Moments

Piper Makes It Right

6x15

Please answer. Please answer. Come on, Amy.

When the ringing on the other end of the line turned into Amy's voicemail, Piper sighed and hung up. She was disappointed but not surprised. Communication with her best friend had been mostly limited to brief text messages ever since AcroNation had qualified to compete at Regionals. Piper was making peace with the fact that Amy had left, but tonight, she really needed her best friend.

Noah had turned 18 a few days before, and as a result, A-Troupe either had to compete with him in the Senior Advanced Division at Regionals or kick him off the team in order to compete in the Intermediate Advanced Division. Kicking Noah off the team would leave A-Troupe not only without their dance captain but also without their strongest and most well-rounded dancer. It would also leave Piper without another friend.

But that hadn't stopped her from voting him off the team anyway.

She hadn't thought she would be the only one to use her red marble. From the way they had been talking before the vote, she had been certain that at least Kenzie and Kingston would also vote Noah off the team, but she had been so horribly wrong. The moment Michelle pulled the jar out of the bag to reveal Piper's lone red marble in the midst of her teammates' white ones, Piper's heart had plummeted. Between the arguments that had immediately broken out between the rest of the team as they blamed each other for what she had done and the hurt look on Noah's face when she had revealed that she was the one who had voted him off the team, Piper was feeling like the absolute worst person in the world.

First, she had let her anxiety talk her out of going to Noah's birthday party, and now she had let it convince her to vote him off the team.

This anxiety was ruining her life.

Piper had stayed late at the studio that evening, intending to work on her aerial, but after Noah had left, she hadn't had the heart to keep working. She didn't feel ready to go home, certain that her parents would pick up on her downcast mood and ask what was wrong, but she knew that she couldn't stay at the studio all night. Reluctantly, Piper texted her mother to ask for a ride home and hoped desperately that her mom would be so distracted by something like Aunt Kathy spontaneously going into labor a month early that she wouldn't think to ask about her day.

(On second thought, it was probably a terrible thing to wish her pregnant aunt would go into labor early just so she wouldn't have to admit to her parents the horrible thing she had done, so... Scratch that last thought. She was really sinking to the lowest depths today, wasn't she?)

As Piper set her phone down, trying to swallow the lump that was growing in her throat again, she looked up to see Finn striding into Shakes and Ladders. What was he still doing at the studio? The rest of the team had gone home hours ago, or so she had thought.

After Finn ordered at the counter, he caught Piper's eye and nodded at her in greeting, taking his juice from the barista then joining her at her table. "Hey Pipes," he said as he slid into the seat across from her. "What are you still doing here?"

She gave him a weak attempt at a smile, saying, "I could ask you the same thing." He simply smiled and took a sip of his juice as she turned her gaze to the table, twirling her phone around in her hands. "I was getting some work in on my aerial." She didn't have the heart to tell him that she'd given up not long after Noah had left, her guilt keeping her from making any progress.

"How's that coming along?" Finn asked, sounding genuinely curious.

She simply shrugged and shook her head grimly to indicate that it wasn't going well. "What about you?" she asked, moving the focus of the conversation away from herself. "What are you doing here?"