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had melted. The flames of the candles around him stuttered with each footfall.
    “You may have thought orientation was over,” he said. It was the same boy who had restrained Vanessa. “But you were wrong.”
    He scanned the line of freshmen, lingering on Vanessa for a moment before looking away.
Is it Zep?
Vanessa wondered.
    “Welcome to the
real
New York Ballet Academy,” he continued. “As you’ll soon discover, the dirty work gets done after hours. Starting tonight.”
    He looked shorter in the dark, his shoulders more hunched. And his hair—was it longer than she had realized? Vanessastared at the black sockets of his mask and tried to see the metallic glimmer of his eyes, but they were vacant.
    “Take off your shoes. All of you.”
    Everyone around Vanessa began slipping off their shoes, but Vanessa gave Steffie a dubious look.
    Steffie shrugged. “Don’t worry,” she said, sniffing the red fluid caked on the sides of her shoes. “It’s not blood. Smells like … ketchup.”
    One of the upperclassmen must have heard her, because a voice bellowed across the room, “You. Step forward.”
    Another boy emerged from the line of upperclassmen, wearing a charred-looking gray mask. He pointed at Steffie. “You will be the first to make your mark.”
    A hush fell over the room. The boy in the gray mask removed a thin scalpel from his pocket, the blade glinting in the candlelight. “Come forth.”
    Everyone turned to Steffie, but if she was scared, she didn’t show it.
    “Don’t do it,” Vanessa said under her breath, but Steffie had already kicked off her shoes.
    Her chin raised in the air, Steffie strode forward. “What do you want me to do?”
    The masked boy held out the scalpel. “Cut the ball of your foot until you bleed. Then make your mark by dragging your foot across the back of the stage.” The boy moved aside and gestured to a row of unvarnished floorboards behind him.
    Leaning forward, Vanessa could see a long line of dark-brown streaks—at least a hundred of them, laddering from center stage to the right edge.
    “But that’ll hurt!” someone blurted out. Vanessa recognized TJ’s voice. “This is messed up. We won’t be able to dance.”
    Other freshmen chimed in. “Auditions are in a month,” a boy said. “This will ruin our chances—”
    “Silence!”
    It was the boy in the gray mask. “You will bleed for us,” he commanded, and the room fell quiet. “Ballet requires the bond of sacrifice. Now take this and do it swiftly, or there
will
be consequences.”
    Without saying a word, Steffie took the scalpel. She raised her right foot to her knee as if practicing
en barre
, her silhouette long and arched. She glanced over at Vanessa and winked.
    No
, Vanessa mouthed, too late, as Steffie plunged the knife into her foot. One of the freshmen next to Vanessa gasped. Without flinching, Steffie pulled it out as quickly as it went in, a bead of blood on its tip.
    The masked upperclassmen closed in around her; they chanted something too soft for Vanessa to hear as Steffie crossed to the space where the floor met the wall. There, she dragged her foot across the wooden boards until she’d left behind her own thin smudge.
    She stepped back, and the boy in the white mask approached her. He held out a wad of gauze and a roll of tape.
Zep
, Vanessa thought, hoping he’d glance at her again. Instead, he leaned forward and spoke something in Steffie’s ear. Vanessa felt a twinge of jealousy as she watched him kneel and take Steffie’s wounded foot in his hands, his fingers gentle as he bandaged it.
    Vanessa watched as Elly, Blaine, and five others performedthe ritual, the boy in the white mask wiping the blade with an alcohol-soaked cloth in between each cut. When they were through, the boy in the gray mask turned to her. “Come forth,” he said in a raspy voice, and held out the scalpel.
    Barefoot, Vanessa stepped toward him. The upperclassmen closed in around her, chanting,
You’re not