Say a Little Prayer(51)

“I’m not failing—”

“Then what is it? Did your nail tech cancel an appointment? Did you accidentally commit a deadly sin? Did someone—?”

“Enough!”

Amanda rounds on me, white-knuckled fingers gripping the wooden railing, and there it is. Something other than pleasant indifference curling the corner of her mouth. For a second, I think it looks suspiciously like fear. I reach for it, digging my claws in one final time.

“You don’t need to get defensive. I’m just trying to help.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“You sure?”

Amanda exhales through her teeth. “Positive.”

“Okay.” I make a show of looking around the empty clearing. “It’s just that none of your other friends seem to be here at the moment, so if there’s anything you want to share—”

“Oh my god!” Amanda drags a frustrated hand through her hair. “Fine! I didn’t get into Indiana’s dance program. Are you happy?”

I don’t know what I’d been expecting her to say. I don’t know what, exactly, I thought I’d find when I finally cracked her open. Dark, terrible secrets, maybe, or an itemized list of every sin she’s ever committed. Something that proves what I’ve known for months—that Amanda Clarke is not the good Christian girl everyone believes her to be. But as she glares down at me from the steps of the tower, it’s not satisfaction I feel curled in the pit of my stomach. In fact, the only thought running through my head is That’s it?

“You…You didn’t get into IU?”

“That’s not what I said,” Amanda snaps. “I got into the school, of course, but apparently I’m ‘not a good fit’ for their dance program. So forgive me if I’m a little upset for wasting fifteen years of my life on a hobby that went exactly nowhere.”

“But Greer thinks you got in. She told me this week.”

“Well, I lied. To her and everyone else.”

“Why?”

“It’s not…You wouldn’t understand.”

I roll my eyes. “Because you’re sooo much more interesting than the rest of us? Try me.”

Amanda folds her arms over her chest. The movement is too tense to be casual, nails digging into her forearms, but when she speaks again, her voice is barely audible. “I’m not good at anything else. I’m not like Greer or Hannah or you. Dance is the only thing that’s ever been easy for me.”

It’s such an obvious, self-pitying lie that I bark out a laugh. Because Amanda is good at everything—school, ballet, leading the youth congregation in minutes-long versions of the same inauthentic prayer. It’s her whole thing, the reason people stop when she passes in the hallway, and watching her try to twist herself into some poor, pitiful victim is infuriating.

“Really?” I choke back another laugh. “You don’t want to workshop that a bit?”

Amanda’s face flushes a delicate shade of pink. “Fuck you, Riley.”

There it is. I grip both sides of the railing and casually pull myself up the first step. “I’m just saying that even in the weird alternate universe where that’s remotely believable, it’s still not true. You applied to other dance programs. I know you got in. Why does this one matter so much?”

I don’t tell her how I know which programs she’d applied to, how I remember hearing her and Hannah on the phone last fall, brainstorming which variations to pull from Amanda’s repertoire. What about Coppélia? Do you remember Esmeralda from that one summer intensive? I might still have the tambourine. If you send in an audition that doesn’t include the fouettés from the Black Swan Coda, I will literally strangle you.

Amanda shakes her head. “I can’t…I’m supposed to go to IU. I want to go to IU.”

“Doesn’t sound like it,” I say.

“I do.” There’s a note of desperation in her voice, a switchblade edge that sharpens as I haul myself up another step. “It’s a great school. I like it, and it’s the one my parents said they’d pay for. They wouldn’t even have to know I was dancing. All I had to do was get in, but if I can’t do that at a school where my dad has a literal building named after him, how the hell am I supposed to make it anywhere else?”

She drags a hand down her face, smearing the blue paint still caked beneath her eyes. An uncomfortable pressure settles between my ribs, an ache that feels suspiciously close to guilt. I grit my teeth and push it away.

“Why are you telling me this?” I ask. “I mean, I know I kind of forced you to, but I didn’t think you’d actually say anything.”

Amanda lets out a watery laugh. “I don’t know. Because you already hate me, I guess? I don’t really have anyone else to tell. My mom doesn’t care. Jeremy has exactly two brain cells, both of which are devoted to memorizing hockey stats and looking down Greer’s shirt when he thinks I’m not around. Greer’s never lost anything in her life, and I just want…” Her voice catches in the back of her throat. She squeezes her eyes shut. “I miss her.”

There it is again—the fist to the gut. The sudden, airless sensation of drowning. Because I know she’s not talking about Greer or Jorgia Rose or any of their other friends.