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EVERYONE ON THE BUS IS singing. MONTANA’s in front with Coach Carson, their heads bent together over the workshop schedule. Next to me, Liz pokes my arm.
“You have to know this one,” she says as the group belts out the chorus of an old Bruno Mars song.
I do know it. In fact, I’ve sung it in the shower and danced to it in my room. But there’s something about big groups like this that makes me feel even more alone. I’ve always been like that. I’d see people singing in public and I’d get intense secondhand embarrassment, even though I wasn’t singing. I’ve been on teams and in groups my whole life, but I’ve never fully felt like an integral part of them. They always seem to be parading around their closeness. Look how comfortable we are with each other We don’t even care how embarrassing this is.
Maybe I never joined in because I already had a best friend, someone I could share inside jokes with and laugh at the top of my lungs with.
Someone who is, quite possibly, falling for someone else.
“I’m just tired,” I tell Liz, yawning, and lean my head against the window. “Besides, I’m at a really good part in Queens.”
“Fine, fine. I won’t disturb you.”
The team launches into another song, and I adjust my earbuds. The book is good, but my brain is buzzing too much about Peter’s confession to let me enjoy it right now. Peter likes Chase Cabrera. Peter is bisexual. The latter does nothing to change my relationship with him, though I wish he’d told me earlier. But that’s selfish. This was his to tell, his decision.
The thing is, I have never been able to picture Peter dating anyone who isn’t me.
I should have told him I’d go with him to temple because now it’s another thing he’s doing without me. But religion isn’t something you can partner up and figure out together. Even for my bat mitzvah, I was so focused on getting through it, surviving it, not what it meant. If I’m ever going to figure out what religion means to me—if it means anything to me—I’m pretty sure I’ll have to do it on my own.
I hold my phone up to the window and snap a selfie.
Help, I’m trapped on a bus with 20 people singing “Uptown Funk,” I caption it.
I’m not expecting a response right away.
But it still stings that I don’t get one until I’m off the bus.
Spokane is on the other side of the state, close to the Idaho border, a four-hour drive that felt much longer. It’s a college town mixed with a farm town mixed with a suburb. Dinner is an Italian buffet before we check in to the hotel, where Coach Carson passes out our room assignments. The university’s dorms are full, so most of the dancers are staying at the nearest hotel.
“No loud noises, no alcohol, and lights out by ten thirty at the latest,” she says, and we murmur our agreement.
We’re sleeping four to a room, and I’m with Montana, Neeti, and Taylor. Once we unpack, spreading out all our various products along the bathroom counter, Neeti and Taylor go to the hotel gym, leaving me alone with Montana, who’s watching old episodes of Parks and Rec on her tablet.
“I sent in my workshop application,” I tell Montana after I finish brushing my teeth. She’s in sweatpants, her black hair loose on her shoulders, and after she took out her contacts, she put on glasses. It’s always strange seeing someone undone for the first time, the way they are at home or with people they’re fully comfortable with. My own makeup’s been blotted off, my hair pushed away from my face with a stretchy headband. And I’d never wear this Matzah Ballers T-shirt to dance team practice.
Montana glances up from Parks and grins. “I’ll keep everything crossed for you! Seriously, you would love it.”
Truthfully, I’m not sure yet what I want: if I’m hoping I get in or hoping I don’t, so I don’t have to stress about making the wrong decision. Sometimes it’s easier when decisions are made for you. The application involved an essay and a one-minute clip of a dance you choreographed, which I filmed during practice a few weeks ago. I was hoping Peter would edit my essay, but when he said he was overwhelmed with homework, I asked my dad instead.
“You’re a great captain.” I unclasp my Star of David necklace and lay it on the nightstand before sitting climbing onto Neeti and Taylor’s bed. “The best since I started on the team.” Our captain before Montana, a guy named Lyle, put the least experienced dancers in the back and never explained difficult combinations for long enough for those dancers to actually get better.
Montana puts down her tablet. “Thanks, Soph.”
“You danced as a kid, right?”
“Since I was three. It’s what I’ve always done and what I’ve always wanted to do. My parents, they’ve both had terrible office jobs for as long as I can remember. They come home exhausted and upset, and I can’t imagine doing that. I never want to sit in a cubicle for ten hours a day.”
That certainty about her path in life—I wish I had that. I love dance and I love choreography, but why doesn’t that translate into the certainty that a summer in San Francisco is the right choice?
“It must be wild living with your sister and the baby.” Montana moves along the conversation with an effortlessness I’ve never had.
“Extremely. I spend most of my time with Peter anyway, though.” It slides off my tongue as though it’s still true.
“You talk about him a lot,” Montana says. It’s more of an observation than an accusation. “Like, you rarely answer a question without including him somehow.”
“I do?”
She nods. “That must be what it’s like when you grow up together, though, right? Like, Liz is my best friend, but we only met freshman year. I can’t imagine what it’s like with someone you’ve known forever.”
