Chapter 79
[Rose's POV]
The monitor refreshed one final time, and my stomach sank as the reality crystallized on screen. Jolene to team six. Valerie to team seven. Dog Days Are Over to team eight.
One song remained.
Group 3: Bailando
Status: AVAILABLE
Difficulty Rating: ★★★★★ (Highest)
Language: Spanish
Dance Component: REQUIRED - Advanced Level
The production coordinator's smile turned brittle. "Well. It seems we have one unclaimed song." Her gaze swept the room, landing on the cluster of us at the back—the final nine contestants who hadn't been selected into any group yet. "Contestants ranked 72 through 80, you'll be assigned to Group Three by default."
Beside me, Ava made a sound like a wounded animal. Her fingers dug into my forearm hard enough to leave marks. "Spanish," she whispered, her voice cracking. "Rose, I don't speak Spanish. I can barely pronounce 'quesadilla' without sounding ridiculous."
I covered her hand with mine, squeezing gently to ground her before panic could take full hold. Around us, the other seven "rejects" were having similar meltdowns—some more vocal than others.
"Group Three's team leader," the coordinator announced, consulting her tablet, "will be Hannah Clark. Hannah, please come forward to meet your team."
The girl who rose from the middle section moved with the careful precision of someone trying to mask fury behind professionalism. Hannah Clark. I'd noticed her during the first round—tall, with the kind of razor-sharp cheekbones that photographed well, dark hair pulled into a severe ponytail that accentuated her angular features. She'd chosen a power suit in deep burgundy for today, the kind of outfit that screamed I'm here to dominate, not make friends.
But as she walked to the front of the room, her jaw was so tight I could see the muscle jumping beneath her skin.
"Hannah had specifically requested Bailando," the coordinator explained with barely concealed amusement, "hoping to showcase her Miami upbringing and bilingual abilities." The subtext was clear: she wanted the hardest song to prove she was the best, and now she's stuck with the worst team.
Hannah's face remained carefully neutral as she turned to face us, but her eyes told a different story. They swept over our little cluster with the kind of assessment reserved for damaged goods at a clearance sale—cataloging deficiencies, calculating losses, assigning blame.
"Alright," she said, her voice clipped and professional despite the visible tension in her shoulders. "Group Three, let's head to our rehearsal space."
We filed out like prisoners being led to execution. The production staff had assigned us to one of the smaller practice rooms—another subtle humiliation, as if our collective failure had earned us reduced square footage. The space could barely accommodate nine people comfortably, with one wall dominated by floor-to-ceiling mirrors.
Hannah closed the door with more force than necessary and turned to face us. "First things first. Show of hands—who here speaks Spanish?"
Silence. Nine pairs of eyes avoided her gaze.
"Anyone?" Hannah's voice climbed half an octave. "Basic conversational level? High school classes?"
A petite blonde in the corner raised her hand tentatively. "I... I took two years in ninth and tenth grade? But I can only really say hola and gracias and ask where the bathroom is."
"Great." Hannah's laugh held no humor. "Fantastic. Anyone else?"
More head shakes. Beside me, Ava had gone so pale I worried she might actually faint.
Hannah pressed her fingers against her temples, her burgundy blazer stretching tight across her shoulders as she took what looked like a meditative breath. "Okay. Okay. This is fine. We can work with this." But her voice cracked slightly on the last word, betraying the lie. "I'm going to find a production assistant and request a Spanish language coach. Just... stay here. Don't leave. We need all the practice time we can get."
She strode out, heels clicking an angry staccato against the tile floor.
The moment the door closed behind her, the room erupted.
"This is a disaster," someone wailed. "We're going to bomb so hard."
"I can't even roll my Rs properly!"
"The lyrics on that printout looked like alphabet soup. How are we supposed to memorize that?"
Ava turned to me, her eyes glassy with unshed tears. "She hates us already. Did you see how she looked at us? Like we'd personally ruined her grand plan."
I had seen it. Hannah's entire strategy had hinged on being the star of the most technically difficult performance, the girl who could tackle what others feared. Instead, she'd gotten a team of linguistic disasters who couldn't tell bailar from balar.
"May I see the lyrics?" I asked quietly.
One of the other girls handed over the creased printout she'd been clutching like a lifeline. I smoothed it against my thigh and began reading.
Bailando, bailando
Tu cuerpo y el mío
Llenando el vacío
Subiendo y bajando
The words themselves weren't particularly complex—I'd heard far more intricate Spanish during my time at Los Alamos, working alongside brilliant physicists from Mexico and Argentina who'd code-switched between languages as fluidly as breathing.
"Can anyone here sing the melody?" I asked, looking around the circle of defeated faces.
A girl with long braids—her name tag read "Keisha"—raised her hand hesitantly. "I'm... decent with pitch matching? I listened to the song a few times when we first got the list."
"Would you hum it for me?"
Keisha's cheeks flushed pink, but she nodded. After a moment's preparation, she began humming the chorus, her voice thin but accurate. I recognized the rhythm immediately—a Latin pop structure, nothing I hadn't encountered before.
I waited until she finished the first verse and chorus, then picked up where she'd left off, singing the Spanish lyrics.
"Bailando, bailando
Siente el ritmo en tus caderas
Como olas en la marea
Toda la noche, bailando"
The room went silent. I looked up to find eight pairs of eyes locked on me with expressions ranging from shock to desperate hope.
"You speak Spanish?" Ava breathed.
"Some," I said carefully. Not entirely true—my Spanish was functional but limited, confined mostly to scientific terminology and casual workplace conversation. But I could read phonetically, could hear the patterns in the pronunciation, and that was more than anyone else in this room seemed capable of.
"Can you teach us?" Scarlett asked, leaning forward with sudden intensity. "Please? Hannah's going to kill us if we can't at least pronounce the words properly."
I glanced at the printout again, then at the eager, frightened faces surrounding me. These girls hadn't done anything to deserve my help. We were competitors, technically. But there was something about their collective desperation that reminded me uncomfortably of those early days at Los Alamos.
"Alright," I said, standing and moving toward the mirrored wall where someone had propped a small whiteboard. "But we're doing this properly. No shortcuts, no half-measures."
I uncapped one of the dry-erase markers and began copying the lyrics onto the board in neat, evenly spaced lines.
"First lesson," I said, turning to face them. "Spanish is a phonetic language. Unlike English, each letter generally makes the same sound every time. That means once you learn the basic pronunciation rules, you can read anything."
For the next forty minutes, I broke down the lyrics syllable by syllable, sound by sound. I demonstrated the proper mouth positions for the rolling 'R' sound. I explained how vowels in Spanish were shorter, crisper than their English equivalents. I marked the stressed syllables with small circles, the connected sounds with flowing lines.
"Bailando," I repeated for the dozenth time, watching Scarlett struggle with the final consonant. "The 'D' is softer in Spanish. Let your tongue barely touch your teeth—don't press hard like you would in English."
"Bai-lan-tho?"
"Better. Again."
Slowly, painfully, they began to improve. Keisha picked up the patterns fastest, her musical ear translating to linguistic mimicry. Ava struggled more, but she attacked each word with desperate determination, repeating syllables until they sounded right.
By the time we'd worked through the first verse and chorus, the room had transformed. Girls who'd been near tears an hour ago were now standing at the board, pointing to specific phrases and asking clarification questions. The atmosphere had shifted from despair to something approaching cautious optimism.
I was in the middle of explaining the difference between bailar and besar when the door flew open.
Hannah stood in the doorway, flanked by a middle-aged woman in a floral blouse who I assumed was the Spanish coach. Both of them froze, staring at the scene before them: eight girls arranged in a semicircle around the board, where I'd written out pronunciation guides and rhythmic notations, all of them humming softly as they practiced the chorus in unison.
"What—" Hannah's voice came out strangled. She cleared her throat and tried again. "What's happening here?"
"Rose is teaching us Spanish!" Ava said brightly, apparently forgetting her earlier terror in the excitement of actually making progress. "She's amazing—listen!" She turned to the group. "Ready? One, two, three—"
The eight of them launched into the chorus, their pronunciation not perfect but dramatically improved from an hour ago. They moved through the entire section without stopping, hitting most of the sounds correctly, the rhythm finally starting to gel.
When they finished, there was a moment of proud silence before they all turned to me with matching grins.
The Spanish coach—Ms.Blackwood, according to her name tag—stepped forward slowly, her dark eyes fixed on me with professional curiosity. "¿Quién te enseñó español?" she asked. Who taught you Spanish?
"Científicos en los años cuarenta," I replied automatically, then caught myself. Cursing internally, I tried to smooth over the slip. "I mean... I studied with some exchange students. They were very patient."
Ms. Blackwood's eyebrows rose slightly, but she didn't press. Instead, she addressed the group in English. "Your foundation is excellent. Whoever taught you the basics did very good work." Her gaze flickered back to me with something between respect and puzzlement. "The pronunciation patterns are old-fashioned, almost classical. Not what I expected from..." She trailed off delicately.
From teenagers learning from pop songs, I finished silently.
Hannah remained frozen in the doorway, her expression cycling rapidly through confusion, anger, and something that looked uncomfortably like fear. I watched her gaze move from the whiteboard covered in my notes to the cluster of girls now looking at me with obvious admiration, to Ms. Blackwood's approving nod.
Her plan had been simple: be the competent leader who guided her struggling team through impossible circumstances, emerging as the hero who'd salvaged a disaster. But I'd just stolen that narrative completely.
"Well," Hannah said finally, her voice artificially bright. "That's... great. Really great." She moved into the room with careful steps, like someone navigating a minefield. "Ms. Blackwood, thank you so much for coming. Maybe you could work with everyone on the more advanced sections?"
"Of course." Ms. Blackwood set down her bag and pulled out additional sheet music. "Let's start with individual pronunciation checks. I want to hear each of you sing a verse solo, so I can identify specific areas for improvement."
We arranged ourselves in a loose line. Ms. Blackwood worked through the group methodically, offering corrections and praise in equal measure. Most of the girls earned gentle corrections—slightly flattened vowels, the occasional misplaced stress.
Then it was Hannah's turn.
She stepped forward with visible confidence, shoulders back, chin raised. "Bailando, bailando, tu cuerpo y el mío..."
Ms. Blackwood's expression shifted almost imperceptibly—a slight tightening around the eyes, a barely perceptible downturn of her lips. She let Hannah finish the entire chorus before speaking.
"Your Spanish is technically correct," she said carefully. "But it's very stiff. Too... proper. This is a dance song, so the pronunciation needs to flow, to have rhythm and ease." She demonstrated, singing the same line with liquid grace, each word blending into the next with natural fluidity.
Hannah's face flushed. "I grew up in Miami," she said defensively. "I've been speaking Spanish my entire life."
"Then perhaps you've been speaking it too carefully," Ms. Blackwood suggested gently. "When you're trying to prove competence, sometimes we overcorrect and lose naturalness." She turned to me. "Rose, would you sing the same section? Just so Hannah can hear the difference."
I wanted to refuse—wanted to shrink back into invisibility rather than publicly outshine the team leader. But Ms. Blackwood was already gesturing me forward, and eight pairs of eyes were watching with expectation.
I sang the chorus, letting the words roll off my tongue with the ease that came from learning Spanish in casual workplace conversations rather than formal classrooms. The pronunciation wasn't perfect but it had the loose, natural quality Ms. Blackwood was describing.
"Perfecto," Ms. Blackwood murmured. "You hear the difference, Hannah? The way the words dance together?"
Hannah's jaw was so tight I thought her teeth might crack. "Yes," she managed. "I hear it."
"Good. Let's work on loosening your pronunciation. Repeat after me: Bailando..."
"Bai-lan-do."
"Softer. More air. Bailando."
"Bai-lan-do."
"Again."
While Ms. Blackwood worked with Hannah on the same syllable I'd mastered in casual conversation eighty years ago, I retreated to the back of the room and pulled out my phone, pretending to check messages. But I could feel Hannah's gaze boring into my back between repetitions, heavy with resentment.
When I finally glanced up, I caught her staring. Our eyes met in the mirror for exactly two seconds before she looked away, her expression a complicated mix of jealousy, fear, and barely suppressed rage.
This is going to be a problem, I thought.