6x15

Please answer. Please answer. Come on, Amy.

When the ringing on the other end of the line turned into Amy's voicemail, Piper sighed and hung up. She was disappointed but not surprised. Communication with her best friend had been mostly limited to brief text messages ever since AcroNation had qualified to compete at Regionals. Piper was making peace with the fact that Amy had left, but tonight, she really needed her best friend.

Noah had turned 18 a few days before, and as a result, A-Troupe either had to compete with him in the Senior Advanced Division at Regionals or kick him off the team in order to compete in the Intermediate Advanced Division. Kicking Noah off the team would leave A-Troupe not only without their dance captain but also without their strongest and most well-rounded dancer. It would also leave Piper without another friend.

But that hadn't stopped her from voting him off the team anyway.

She hadn't thought she would be the only one to use her red marble. From the way they had been talking before the vote, she had been certain that at least Kenzie and Kingston would also vote Noah off the team, but she had been so horribly wrong. The moment Michelle pulled the jar out of the bag to reveal Piper's lone red marble in the midst of her teammates' white ones, Piper's heart had plummeted. Between the arguments that had immediately broken out between the rest of the team as they blamed each other for what she had done and the hurt look on Noah's face when she had revealed that she was the one who had voted him off the team, Piper was feeling like the absolute worst person in the world.

First, she had let her anxiety talk her out of going to Noah's birthday party, and now she had let it convince her to vote him off the team.

This anxiety was ruining her life.

Piper had stayed late at the studio that evening, intending to work on her aerial, but after Noah had left, she hadn't had the heart to keep working. She didn't feel ready to go home, certain that her parents would pick up on her downcast mood and ask what was wrong, but she knew that she couldn't stay at the studio all night. Reluctantly, Piper texted her mother to ask for a ride home and hoped desperately that her mom would be so distracted by something like Aunt Kathy spontaneously going into labor a month early that she wouldn't think to ask about her day.

(On second thought, it was probably a terrible thing to wish her pregnant aunt would go into labor early just so she wouldn't have to admit to her parents the horrible thing she had done, so... Scratch that last thought. She was really sinking to the lowest depths today, wasn't she?)

As Piper set her phone down, trying to swallow the lump that was growing in her throat again, she looked up to see Finn striding into Shakes and Ladders. What was he still doing at the studio? The rest of the team had gone home hours ago, or so she had thought.

After Finn ordered at the counter, he caught Piper's eye and nodded at her in greeting, taking his juice from the barista then joining her at her table. "Hey Pipes," he said as he slid into the seat across from her. "What are you still doing here?"

She gave him a weak attempt at a smile, saying, "I could ask you the same thing." He simply smiled and took a sip of his juice as she turned her gaze to the table, twirling her phone around in her hands. "I was getting some work in on my aerial." She didn't have the heart to tell him that she'd given up not long after Noah had left, her guilt keeping her from making any progress.

"How's that coming along?" Finn asked, sounding genuinely curious.

She simply shrugged and shook her head grimly to indicate that it wasn't going well. "What about you?" she asked, moving the focus of the conversation away from herself. "What are you doing here?"

"I was helping Ozzy beat level 58 of Legions of Lasers. It's a tough one, but not nearly as bad as level 82. My mom'll be here soon though. I wanted a juice for the road."

Piper simply nodded, still staring glumly down at her phone. Her background was a picture she and Amy had taken the day they had filmed the Regionals Qualifier video. Amy had yet to return her call, but at this point, Piper didn't expect her to, and a fresh wave of sorrow surged through her. She forced herself to look away from the screen, giving the smallest smile she could manage to Finn and hoping he wouldn't ask her what was wrong.

No such luck.

Finn had set his juice down and crossed his arms on top of the table, watching her with a frown on his face. "Hey, are you okay?"

Immediately, the tears she'd been holding back all evening sprang to her eyes, and Piper looked away, shaking her head. Why did Finn always seem to catch her in her worst moments?

"I don't know." Her voice cracked, and she thought miserably to herself: You can't tell him. Don't tell him. Don't turn the only person you have left against you.

"What's wrong?" Finn asked, his voice laced with concern. "Are you upset about Noah? I can't believe someone on the team would actually do that to him."

His words hit Piper right in the heart. She squeezed her eyes shut, a few tears spilling over, which she quickly wiped away and hoped he didn't notice. "Finn, I think I made a really big mistake..."

The words came out before she could stop them, and she reluctantly met his gaze through teary eyes. She watched with bated breath as his brows knit together, something in his expression shifting as he seemed to realize what she was implying.

"It was you?" His voice was uncharacteristically quiet, his expression disappointed. It wasn't a look she was used to seeing from him, and she hated it.

Piper slowly nodded, new tears springing to her eyes as Finn sighed heavily and averted his gaze, scratching the back of his head like he didn't know what to do with this new information. She chewed on her bottom lip, hating herself for telling him what she had done. This was just as bad as telling Noah himself. She couldn't bear the thought that Finn was disappointed in her, that he might even hate her over the terrible decision she had made in a moment of fear, and so she scrambled to defend herself. Maybe if he understood why she had done it, he might hate her less.

"I didn't want to vote him off the team, but I can't compete in the Senior Advanced Division. I can't do it, Finn. My aerial's getting nowhere, and I'd just bring the team down, and–"

"You don't have to explain yourself, Pipes. I get it," Finn interrupted. His tone was gentle, which she clung to as a hopeful sign that maybe he didn't hate her after all, but the disappointed look was still present in his eyes.

"But you don't agree with it."

He met her eye, a frown on his lips, and she looked down in shame. "He wasn't even mad at me," she murmured after a moment. "He helped me with my aerial and told me he knows I can get it. He's the best dance captain we've ever had." She took a shaky breath and shook her head at herself. "What have I done?"

Finn was quiet for a long moment, and Piper was starting to wish that he would say something, anything, when finally, he told her, "Maybe it's not too late to make it right."

Piper looked up at that, her brows knitting together in confusion. "What do you mean?"

He shrugged, glancing down as his phone dinged before looking back to her. "We said the vote had to be unanimous, didn't we? Maybe it's not too late to change your vote." With that, he reached for his juice and grabbed his phone in his other hand as he stood up. "My mom's here. You need a ride home?"

Piper shook her head, glancing down at her own phone, where her mom had texted her a few minutes before to let her know that she was on her way. "No, my mom's coming to get me."

He nodded and said, "Alright. See ya tomorrow, Pipes."

She watched him go, turning his words over and over in her head. Could she change her vote? Finn was right. They had all agreed that everyone on the team had to vote one way or another. If she told Emily and Michelle that she had changed her mind, that she wanted Noah to stay on the team, that would make the vote unanimous.

But could she really compete in the Senior Advanced Division? She was only 15 with limited tricks and acro abilities, and competing in the older division would mean competing against dancers that were several years her senior and had much more training and experience than she did. Piper wasn't sure that she was ready for that. Hadn't James himself warned her just last year that she was too young for A-Troupe, that she wasn't ready to compete on such a cut-throat team?

But hadn't his lack of faith in her also been the exact thing to push her to work as hard as she had to in order to earn and keep her spot on A-Troupe? She wasn't the same person or dancer she had been when she'd started dancing here, and competing in the Senior Advanced Division would be the exact kind of challenge that her 14-year-old self had been hoping The Next Step would give her.

She had lost sight of that desire to be challenged as a dancer when Miss Angela had sauntered in and crushed all of her self-confidence in a single day. She just had to keep working on her aerial and give her all to her dancing in the next few weeks. If she was going into Regionals all by herself, she wouldn't be able to win in the Senior Advanced Division, but she wasn't on her own. She had her team, and if they all thought that they could do this, then what kind of teammate was she to hold them all back?

Amy may have left to go to AcroNation, but Piper still had 10 teammates who had her back. She thought of Noah, and Finn, and Emily, and Michelle, each of whom believed in her – that she could get her aerial, that she was a good dancer, that she deserved to be on this team.

Piper could do this. Her team could do this. She couldn't let her nerves convince her otherwise.

It would still be another 15 minutes until her mom arrived to pick her up. In the meantime, she picked up her phone. Hopefully Emily and Michelle weren't too busy. She had to let them know that she was changing her vote. The team needed Noah. She was going to make this right.

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