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Luke pushed a button and the song stopped suddenly and then started fresh from the intro. I stood quietly at Gabriel’s left. He started snapping his fingers. I snapped mine. His arms went up and slid down. I did it. He pumped his arms out. I followed.
I repeated every move. We replayed the song from the start again and I was about a half step behind him for each movement.
By the second chorus, I had at least that chorus part and was keeping in time with him.
“Oh my god, you’re beautiful,” Gabriel said. He ran at me after we’d done the chorus and caught me around the waist, swinging me off the ground and then brought me back down into a hug. He kissed my eyebrow. “You and I, Trouble. You’re the only girl who can keep the fuck up.”
He’d kissed me so openly that I glanced at the others, but no one said anything about it, even though I had to think at least some of them had seen it. They were letting things slip a little. Kota was going to start asking about things.
Luke hit the repeat button on the stereo and jumped up. “Let’s do it.”
Gabriel positioned himself a step in front. Luke and I took up positions just behind him. When the chorus started, I let the guys start first and I joined them a half bar later. I followed Luke, trying to be his match. Occasionally Gabriel would spin out and do his own thing, but for the most part, we synced up.
Nathan strolled over, followed by Kota and the others. Silas hit the repeat button again when the song ended.
I was blushing now that the others were watching, but I wasn’t about to stop or mess up. Nathan surprised me by jumping in after the first chorus. He fell in step next to me and followed me closely. I thought I’d trip over him but he managed to stay out from underfoot. When it looked like he was staying, I moved over a bit, still behind Gabriel, and Luke stepped aside to give me more room.
Gabriel might have taken the lead, but Luke danced more smoothly than any of them. He swung his hips with a dip and tucked his knee in at certain spots that made it look cooler. I tried to mimic his moves, but he was much faster than me. Gabriel could sing, though, and did. Nathan mouthed the words and did okay with the dancing.
I was going into another turn when I spotted Kota holding up his cell phone. I thought he was taking a picture but he kept holding it up.
When the song finally ended, I was breathless after dancing for so long. Luke fell on his butt on the sand. Gabriel practiced a few moves and Nathan picked the sand off of his shoes. I went over to Kota as he lowered his phone and hit a button.
“Taking pictures?” I asked.
“Video,” he said. He hit the replay button to show me. The other guys were visible, but mostly the camera was on me. My cheeks heated as I watched myself on the small screen. I had my head turned a lot, watching Luke and the others and the video captured every time I slowed down or misstepped.
Gabriel came to stand behind me, looking at the screen. “I want a copy,” he said. “Sang and I could do YouTube.”
“No YouTube,” Kota said.
“Aw,” Gabriel said.
“I’m not allowed?” I asked.
Kota shot a look at Gabriel, as if blaming him for my question. He sighed and turned to me. “We want to try to keep you as low profile as possible.”
“Why? What does low profile mean?”
“Sorry, Sang,” he said. “No getting famous for you.”
“I don’t want to be famous,” I said and meant it. Famous meant a lot of attention, and I barely tolerated what I got at school now. I couldn’t imagine being someone really famous and having all those eyeballs on me like Victor had to deal with on occasion.
Kota smiled and swept a fingertip across my cheek. “Good.”
“Do I have to be low profile for the Academy? Is it so I’d be able to get in?”
Kota said nothing, but winked at me and turned away back toward the table. He must not be able to tell me that much, I thought. Victor caught my eye and he winked at me, too. He picked up my hand where Kota left off.
“Hey!” a voice shouted.
Victor released my hand quickly, stepping around in front of me as a shield.
Nathan pointed down the beach. “From there,” he said. Everyone turned, eyes darting toward where the voice was coming from.
There was a group of people coming from the southern part of the beach, walking our way. One ran ahead of the others, waving his hand to get our attention.
“I thought we had the place to ourselves,” Victor said in a low voice.
“The Academy has this whole place,” North said coming up from behind us. He stared ahead out at the approaching group, squinting his dark eyes, a hand lifted to his brow to shield the sun. “Unless it’s park rangers, they’ve got to be Academy. They aren’t dressed like rangers.”
“How do we find out if they are without asking directly?” I asked.
Victor turned his head back toward the people approaching. He remained in front of me, standing close. “Random,” he said.
I knew it meant something, but in my panic, I couldn’t remember what. Kota told us to stay put, breaking away from our group with North and Silas following. We inched forward to stay within earshot but held back.
The group consisted of three guys out front with three girls trailing behind them at a slower pace.
When the three guys got close enough that Kota could talk to them, the lead one spoke. “Caught you all dancing. Are we missing the party already?”
My cheeks burned in embarrassment. They had seen us? I ducked a half step behind Victor, putting my cheek to his shoulder to peek around. That they had watched us dancing made me super self-conscious.
Kota held out his hand toward the guy who had spoken. “Taco,” he said.
Taco?
The guy smiled and looked Kota in the eye as he shook his hand and said, “Copernicium.”
Kota’s head bobbed in an approving nod. Silas and North relaxed behind him.
I remembered suddenly that if Kota said something random, and the other guy said something random as well, that was a sign that they were Academy. Anyone else would have asked why he said taco.
“That’s number one-twelve, right?” Kota asked.
“Of course. Much better than the old name,” the guy said. “Did you hear Japan might get to name a periodic element soon?” I couldn’t see much of his actual face, but he was wearing jeans, a blue sweatshirt, and had on a New York Yankees baseball cap. He was the same height as North. The guys behind him were a little shorter, but broader.
All of them were casually dressed. One guy was just wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt but had his hands in his pockets like he was cold. The guys looked to be eighteen, maybe a little older. The girls looked older than that, like twenty-five.
Looking at their group, I suddenly felt so young and small. Would I be the youngest here this week?
“I’m Ian,” New York guy said.
“Kota,” Kota replied.
“This camp is better than the one from a few years ago,” Ian said. He adjusted the cap higher on his head. “The one with the outdoor showers.”
“We didn’t know another team was coming in today,” Kota said.
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“We weren’t going to, but then we didn’t have anything to do today. At least my team didn’t. Thought we’d at least come check out the place.” He turned to the girls.
The three girls stood close together, and I got the feeling they had followed the guy team over but they weren’t really familiar with them. “Us, too,” said one of them. She had long brown hair, wore a brown sweater, and had brown glasses. “We wanted to set our tent up. We like getting to places early.”
“We did a sweep of the camp,” Ian said. “There’s a couple of girl rangers that live in a trailer on the grounds, and the guy is in the booth right now. He’ll leave for the night. I hope no one else decides to come in after he takes off later.”
“There’s another campground, though,” the girl in brown said. “It’s a few miles out, but other campers might stop here, thinking this is it. It’s a camp for hunters.”
As they started talking about the campgrounds, what was close, and where their tents were, Nathan, Luke, and Gabriel moved in, joining Kota.
I lingered behind, standing next to Victor. He started to move forward but stopped when I grabbed his shirt and didn’t move.
He paused and looked over his shoulder at me with his eyebrows up, a spark of curiosity simmering the fire in his eyes. “Sang? You okay?”
Was I ready for this? After this morning, I’d assumed I had a whole night with the guys to myself before I needed to prepare myself for meeting other people. My heart was beating a mile a minute. What was I supposed to do? I looked at the boys and the girls but wasn’t sure what would happen now.
Suddenly, one of the guys looked right at me and nodded. “What about her team?” he said. “We didn’t see another girl team around.” He spoke directly to me then. “Where’s your campsite?”
Kota started to do a side shuffle to block me from view but then stopped, shoulders relaxing. “She’s with us,” he said.
Curiosity filled all of their eyes. Ian spoke, “She’s new, huh? That’s cool.” He smiled at me. “Sorry, I don’t mean to talk around you. There’s plenty of new recruits showing up this week. You won’t be the only one.”
