“Yeah, because maybe he meets one of us in a dark alley and gets reminded why you don’t talk to a lady like that.” Malena cast a dark look back along the hall. “Or maybe I tell your dangerous boy what he said to you, and his body is never found.”

“We’re supposed to be saving the other dancers, not digging new graves for them.” Still, I couldn’t quite deny the appeal of her unmarked grave proposal. There was something to be said for burying the people who pissed you off.

“We can revisit this after we’ve won.” She let go of my arm. “Get changed, be amazing, and don’t get eliminated. You get ganked, I am out of here so fast I’ll leave claw marks all along the walls. I’m not sticking around to be somebody else’s sacrifice.”

“I’ll be amazing,” I said solemnly. “And Malena?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

She grinned, showing the pointed tips of her incisors. “Don’t mention it. I’m still going to beat your ass for the title once we take care of this stupid snake cult.”

“Of course,” I said, and slipped inside.

There were dancers and costume assistants everywhere. The room still felt jarringly empty compared to the beginning of the season, and it seemed like there were ghosts everywhere I looked, dancers who’d died for their art and would never be taking the stage again. I wondered whether Aunt Mary would be able to find any of them haunting the theater, if I called her and asked her to come and have a look. Maybe I would do that, after this was all over. The dead dancers deserved the chance to rest in peace.

Lyra waved from where she was having her face painted, keeping her expression neutral to avoid messing up the beautician’s careful chart of colors and designs. From the look of her, she was going to be doing some sort of incredibly complex jazz number for her solo. I realized with a pang that I didn’t know. I’d never asked. We were sharing the same apartment, we were sleeping in the same room, and I didn’t know what she was going to be dancing this week.

“Hey,” I said, dropping into my designated seat. My own makeup assistant was there almost immediately, clipping my hair back with two banana clips before reaching for her palette. They never asked me to pull it back myself, and they never made any attempt to actually style it. They had to know I wore a wig, which meant the producers probably knew—which meant Adrian probably knew. He just didn’t care enough to say anything about it.

This wasn’t my world anymore. Maybe it never had been.

People buzzed around me, getting ready, getting their costumes on, getting their makeup just right, and generally oblivious to the world around them, which didn’t matter nearly as much as pointing their toes, shaping their hands, and dancing their way into the hearts of America. I was so envious of them that it physically hurt. My chest ached like I’d bruised my sternum from the inside. I wanted what they had: I wanted the ignorance and the innocence that came with it.

There were things I didn’t know about in the world. There were things I didn’t want to know about. I wasn’t being judgmental when I called them ignorant; I was being jealous. They didn’t know, and so they didn’t have to worry. They could just live their lives, and be happy.

“All done, Val,” said the makeup assistant, taking the clips out of my hair. Lyra was still being painted. She flashed me a thumbs up, keeping her face as still as possible.

“Break a leg,” I said, and grabbed my bag off the floor and my costume off the rack as I started for the stalls at the back of the room. They were just heavy fabric sheets that we could pull closed for an illusion of privacy, allowing us to change without the producers worrying about an invasion of privacy civil suit from a disgruntled, eliminated dancer.

The mirror on the back wall showed me smoky eyes, red, red lips, and a wig that desperately needed to be styled. I hung the dress bag on the hook and dropped my duffel on the stool that had been provided for my use. Then I yanked out the pins holding the wig to my head and pulled it off, revealing my spiky, matted blonde hair. Instantly, it was my own reflection looking back at me, and not Valerie’s. The bruised feeling in my chest remained, but it diminished, becoming easier to overlook. This was her world. She wasn’t accustomed to feeling like an outsider when she was in it. But it wasn’t mine.

If what I had to do tonight meant I got eliminated, or even banned from the theater, that wouldn’t matter. I wouldn’t be losing the world I belonged in. Valerie . . . there was every chance she was about to have her last dance. I owed it to her—and to the part of my life she represented—to make it as memorable as possible.