They Dyed My Dress for the Dance. I Left the Group of Five novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Booth

Rhett's jacket still smelled like cold air and solder.

I carried it back on Monday night, folded over my arm, up the narrow stairs behind the Union ballroom.

The lighting booth was a glass box with a view of the empty dance floor.

It was full of knobs and glowing faders, and there was a half-eaten sandwich next to a laptop.

He was sitting on a stool with his boots on the console, reading a printout.

He looked up, his expression softening.

"You came back."

"You lent me this."

"I wasn't worried about the jacket."

I put it on the stool next to him.

He pulled his boots off the board and swung to face me.

"How's the wrist?"

"Fine."

"How's the rest?"

"I read my brother's handwriting on the recipe for my own dress. Kinsley has two hundred thousand people watching my face. I have a granola bar in my backpack. That's the rest."

He nodded slowly.

"Okay. Then I want to show you something."

He turned to the laptop and clicked through a folder.

"Every dance I run, the board records everything on the wireless channels. Mics, headsets, whatever's hot. It saves it to a drive so I can fix levels later."

"So?"

"So Lance was the emcee for the court announcements. He wore a lavalier clipped inside his blazer from seven thirty on. Nobody turned it off."

He put a pair of headphones into my hands.

I sat on the second stool.

He pressed play.

At first it was just rustling, the thump of a door, and Lance's laugh from very close.

"Okay, she's still at the dorm," Lance said. "Everyone's got their parts?"

"I ordered the lights," Kinsley said. "Note's in the booth at eight fifty. Nobody will think twice."

"Colby, the hem?"

"It's stiff but it holds," my brother said. His voice was thin and flat. "It cracks if she bends it too much. Make sure she doesn't sit."

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