We stopped.

Marisol turned off the music before turning on me and demanding, “You! What is wrong with you? A broken heart? A broken ankle? Tell me you have broken something, and that you’re not making a mockery of my rehearsal without an excellent reason!”

“I’m not feeling well,” I said, without hesitation. The trick to a good lie: keep it simple, keep it consistent, and for the love of God, keep it unprovable if you possibly can. The second people start demanding proof, you’re done.

“Valerie, I have seen you dance with walking pneumonia. You slid yourself across that stage like you were the rightful queen, and everyone else your subjects. Do not stand there pleading a little stomach flu and pretending it justifies the performance I’m seeing out of you today.” Marisol’s expression changed, turning calculating. “Unless you’ve got a secret . . . ?”

For a single panicked moment, I thought my wig had slipped. Then I realized she was looking speculatively at my midsection. “No!” I yelped. “No, I’m not pregnant, I’m just . . .” Anders was in the room. Anything I said would be relayed by him to Lyra and Pax, which meant—given Lyra’s fondness for swapping stories with the other dancers—that it would be relayed to the rest of the show by the end of the day. Dammit. I took a breath, and said, “I’m not feeling well, and I didn’t really sleep last night. My grandmother isn’t doing so good. I guess when you combine the two, I’m not up to my usual standards. I’m sorry.”

Marisol blinked. “Your grandmother? I thought—” She stopped herself. It was too late: I already knew what she thought, because I was the one who’d told the original lies. Little Valerie Pryor, whose family didn’t want her. Too obsessed with dance to be a good girl, too obsessed with winning to be a bad girl. To have me saying I was upset because my grandmother wasn’t well probably made about as much sense to her as a gorgon going vegan would make to me.

I didn’t have to work to bring the tears to my eyes. The real challenge was keeping them contained. Once summoned, they threatened to overspill and overwhelm me. “She’s always been happy for me to be whoever I want to be. She’s just one of those people, you know? But we don’t get to see each other much, because she lives really far away. I got the call last night.”

Even Anders looked sympathetic. I was all too aware of the cameras rolling. Adrian would get this footage before the show next week, and he’d play it, even if America’s vote put me solidly in the bottom three. This was the last time the judges could save someone. A story about a sick grandmother might be enough to make them save me.

The thought made me feel ill. I didn’t want to use my grandmother as a rope to pull myself to safety; I wanted to save her. More, I wanted to cling to the idea that she was still alive, somewhere in the dark beneath this building. I wanted her to be fine and furious with the world, kicking and biting and gnawing through her own chains if that was what it took. Grandma Alice was a constant. She was going to outlive the rest of us, because that was the way the world worked, and now here I was, proving to the world that I was the weakest of her grandchildren. This was going to be on television. My parents would see me using her as an excuse.

And I didn’t have a choice in the matter. I stopped holding back my tears and let them run down my cheeks as I gazed miserably at Marisol, waiting for her to say something.

She looked flustered. “My poor dear, I had no idea—I didn’t know you were in contact with any of your family. Why don’t you take some time to compose yourself? I can work with Anders while you’re indisposed, and I know you’ll be able to catch up anything you miss.”

“Yeah, Val,” said Anders, looking equally concerned. “We don’t start learning the group choreo until after lunch. That should give you a couple of hours to put your head together and get back on your feet.”

“Thank you both,” I said, still crying. Now that I’d started, I couldn’t seem to stop. Before either of them could say anything else I turned, grabbed my dance bag off the bench near the door, and left the room.

This was an unexpected reprieve. I was going to do as much with it as I possibly could.

For most people, going from well-lit dance studio to underground labyrinth full of weird smells and damp patches would seem like some sort of punishment. For me, it was a normal day’s work.

I descended the stairs as carefully as I could, wishing I had more for light than the bare bulbs overhead. They were bright enough when I was directly underneath them, but they were spaced out such that there were bands of darkness between them. I’d never appreciated the practical applications of interior decorating so much in my life. A couple of Tiffany lampshades and this whole hallway would have been lit up like Central Park at Christmas.