The car seats were cold, the whole structure dark. Her mother had her sunglasses perched on her head anyway, ready for their reentry into daylight as they pulled out onto the street and rolled through a stop sign without stopping. Her mother was not what you would call a rule follower. Like just last month, Ilanka had been the one to point out to her mother that missing the first week of school to go to Saint Petersburg to see her grandparents hadn’t been the best idea. That most people planned to take trips like that when school was closed. Her mother didn’t care; Ilanka had had to beg her to even write a note of explanation for the main office. The only rules she liked to follow were her own.

“Make sure you do your homework right after school,” her mother said at the first traffic light. Had she actually said the words “good morning” to Ilanka at home? Earlier? Ilanka couldn’t be sure.

“It’s Friday,” she said.

“I’ll try to get there this afternoon, but I can’t make any promises,” her mother said, not caring what day it was.

“I understand,” Ilanka said.

She preferred it when her mother didn’t come to watch practice. Because when she did, she always had criticisms that she called “pointers” or “tips” or “just a small thing.” It wasn’t that her mother didn’t know what she was talking about—she’d performed in a cabaret show in Brighton Beach for years when she was young, doing circus-style acrobatics while dangling from a rope. It just felt different somehow when her mom said things her coach might say. And when her mom criticized her, it made Ilanka want to tell her she was tired of all the rehearsals and routines and … what was the point, anyway, of rhythmic gymnastics if she wasn’t ever going to run off and join the circus? They’d performed on a stage in the middle of Times Square once, and that had been fun, but otherwise?

No one at school liked her. Ilanka knew that. She wasn’t even sure her so-called friends liked her. Why would they? She was never really around to do anything with anybody after school or on weekends. She was popular on social media, at least. She’d systematically friended and followed cool strangers and influencers, and it had generated momentum in follow-backs, and she now had a healthy number of friends, even if they weren’t IRL ones.

On the drive, Ilanka scrolled through all her feeds and caught up on stories and checked new likes on her last post and then posted a selfie of no consequence, which, if you trusted the “How Good Is Your Selfie Game?” survey she’d taken, was a sign that she needed to put her phone down and get out of the house more but whatever.