Dance Team Read Online Free Page A

felt my cheeks burning. Leah hadn’t been coaching me. In fact, she pretty much refused to help me when I out and out asked her. Instead, she said she was going to do her best to kick my butt. Maybe she wasn’t the friend I wanted her to be?
    Camilla patted my hand. “It really is okay, Izzy,” she said. “We can beat Northside even with Leah Velasco performing. Now, your pancakes are getting cold—eat!”
    She turned the conversation back to dance team and school gossip. I picked at my soggy food, less eager to talk than I had been before.

I
    couldn’t help worrying about what Camilla and the other girls had said about Leah. But as the week went by, I relaxed a little. Camilla didn’t mention Leah to me again. She seemed totally focused on improving our own team’s performance.
    Anyway, I had plenty to think about with school, my own dancing and, more recently, Joel. We started having lunch and walking to classes together. And since there wasn’t a home basketball game on Saturday, we went with Olivia and Eli to see a movie and grab some pizza. Thinking about a cute guy who was close to being my boyfriend helped distract me from worring so much about Camilla.
    Joel teased me as we stepped out of the theater. “Earth to Izzy. Was the movie that good?”
    I flushed. The movie had been good, but that wasn’t what I was thinking about. At least, not exactly. The movie was about two friends who grew apart, then came together again when one of them got sick. Instead of taking my mind off my problems with Leah and Camilla, the film just made me think about them more. My life seemed to have become much more complicated since I made dance team at Southside. And complicated did not equal fun.
    I looked at Joel, who had a puzzled expression. I didn’t want to spoil this evening, and I tried to shake myself out of my funk. “I’m just deciding what kind of pizza I want,” I said with a laugh.
    â€œI like a girl who’s always thinking about her stomach,” Joel said. He took my hand and squeezed it—and then didn’t let go.
    The warm pressure of Joel’s hand made me forget about Camilla. A date with a cute boy was a lot more fun than thinking about sabotaging Northside’s dance team!
    â€“ – – – –
    The fun lasted until Monday morning. When we got to school for our early-morning practice, we were stopped cold. One whole side of the gym was covered with graffiti. Really mean graffiti, and it was all about the dance team. Each of us was mentioned by name, and the things we were called made me blush.
    â€œNorthside rocks—Southside sucks,” Olivia read, as we stood there gaping. It was the cleanest thing written.
    By noon, the whole school was talking about the graffiti. Rumors flew, and most of them were about how Leah Velasco was responsible.
    â€œThey found her student ID card behind the gym,” Ana said. “And I heard people at Northside found paint and receipts from Home Depot in her locker!”
    â€œShe’s going to be disqualified from regionals,” Jaci said smugly. “Disfiguring public property and unsportsmanlike behavior. She’ll probably get kicked off the dance team. Maybe even suspended from school.”
    I couldn’t believe it. Leah would never do anything like that! Or would she? Was she just bluffing with all her talk about how Northside was the stronger team? Did Leah really think Southside was too much of a threat?
    I thought about what she’d said at the mall:
Southside has a good team. With time and practice and your kind of determination, there’s no reason you can’t win …
    Could Leah be capable of trashing the Southside gym?
I wondered.
    Principal Nuñez and Ms. Geiger both showed up at our after-school practice. They looked grim.
    Mrs. Nuñez got right to the point. “As you know, we had an act of vandalism over the weekend. Someone