I opened my mouth and then closed it when I realized I didn’t have a response.

“And if you can’t,” she continued, “you could at least take the opportunity to broaden your horizons in college. That’s all we’re saying.”

“Anyway,” my dad said, “we don’t need to get this all figured out right now. We can talk about it when you’re back from Teri’s, okay?”

“Yeah,” I said after a moment, trying to get my priorities back in line, remembering a beat too late that I shouldn’t be annoying my parents right now. I needed to go into the city tonight—that was what was important, and I shouldn’t have lost track of that.

“Sounds good,” my mother said. She gave me a small smile, and I gave her one back.

“Okay,” I said, grabbing my keys. “See you guys tomorrow. Two?”

“Noon,” my mom said, raising an eyebrow at me.

I just nodded and gave her a smile, all too aware of Rule #5: Don’t push your luck.

“You guys look great,” Teri said from where she was sprawled on the couch.

I smiled and flounced out the skirt of my dress. It was my current favorite, a mid-length dress with a fitted bodice and a bright pink skirt that billowed out and spun around me if I turned quickly, which I did constantly when I wore it, of course. I had paired it with ankle boots—I figured it was going to be too cold in the city for flats tonight, and there was practically nothing I hated more than my feet being cold. I had used my magic curling iron on my hair. I’d found it online and it was amazing: it did all the work for you and gave you perfect beachy waves every time. It was way better than what I’d been doing before that, which was watching YouTube tutorials and then completely failing to re-create the results. My hair was now in soft waves that I knew would fall out in a few hours, no matter how much hair spray I used.

Stevie was wearing a gorgeous jade-colored jumpsuit with long sleeves and a cinched waist, and pointy-toed heels. Whenever I wore flats and Stevie wore heels, I felt that it threw off our whole dynamic, because suddenly she wasn’t where I expected her to be, but instead was a few inches higher. Stevie always liked to add to her height whenever possible, whereas I avoided heels if I could. I’d tortured my feet enough over my dancing years and figured that they really deserved a break.