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do chest lifts that I want to show you. It’ll help you with that sequence you’ve been having trouble with. Look.” It’s easier to show dance moves standing up, so I get up from the table and settle myself into a dance posture so that I can show Angela how chest lifts are way easier if you constrict the muscles in your upper back between your shoulder blades.
    “I said I really like him, Lila,” Angela says. “Aren’t you listening? I really like him.”
    “Really like who?” says Nini. She and Sarit slide onto the picnic bench and pull out their lunches. We do this every day. It’s not like Angela didn’t know they were coming. Angela stares at me with a look that says, Keep quiet!
    “The new puppy she wants her dad to get her,” I say. Well, it is true, even if it’s not the truth she happened to be talking about right now.
    “Guess what? I invited Jonas and Bea to join us for lunch,” Nini says. Both she and Sarit giggle, and Angela widens her eyes and stares at me even harder. Before I can say or do anything, Jonas and Bea walk across the courtyard.
    “I need to do some weeding,” says Angela when they join us. She gets up from the table and packs away her lunch. I notice she hasn’t looked directly at Jonas at all, but her face is redder than usual.
    “I’ll help,” says Jonas, and when Sarit and Nini both turn to stare at him, he adds, “I need volunteer hours.”
    “Your brother’s so nice,” Nini says to Bea as Angela and Jonas head to the garden beds. The ones farthest away, I can’t help but notice.
    Bea shrugs.
    “I was showing Angela what Dana told us yesterday about using your upper back muscles for chest lifts,” I say to Sarit and Nini. “Want to see?”
    “I feel a sudden urge to weed,” Sarit says, and she and Nini giggle.
    “Angela says those ones over there need work,” I say, pointing to a bed in the corner of the courtyard opposite Angela and Jonas.
    “Ha-ha,” says Nini. She pulls Sarit up by the arm, and the two of them march off to the bed where Angela and Jonas are working. I don’t know which one I should feel sorry for, Angela for being interrupted, or Nini for not getting that Jonas would rather be with Angela than with her.
    “I hope you don’t mind that I asked Alex and Robin to join us,” Bea says as two girls come into the courtyard. It’s getting to be like Grand Central Station around here, but I recognize Alex and Robin from Dana’s class, so I’m happy to see them.
    “Hey,” I say as they sit down, and soon the four of us are deep in a conversation about the intricacies of Dana’s choreography and how beautiful it is.
    “She always uses the music so well,” says Alex.
    “I love the beginning sequence of our dance, the way the movement washes across the stage and how we all end up in a pinwheel that seems to float around the room,” says Robin.
    “Me too. It’s so beautiful,” I say.
    “You used to dance with Amala, didn’t you?” asks Bea.
    “Yeah,” I say through a mouthful of salad.
    “What was it like?”
    “It was fun,” I say, “but nothing like Dana’s studio.”
    Robin laughs. “Well, of course. That’s why all the best students end up with Dana.”
    I glance at Angela crouching in the dirt, her long elegant fingers stroking a leafy green plant. “Yeah, I guess,” I say.
    Robin must have followed my gaze and my thoughts because she says, “I hear Angela’s really good too.”
    “She’s a natural,” I say.
    “So how come she’s not dancing with Dana?”
    I shrug. “She wasn’t invited.”
    “Dana’s very picky, but she always chooses well. She must have seen something in you that she didn’t see in Angela. I bet she could come dance with Dana if she really wanted to. If she worked hard enough,” Robin says.
    I don’t know what Angela really wants. I thought she wanted to dance more than anything, like I do, but in the last few days I’ve begun to wonder. She doesn’t seem to want to hear about