Nevaeh grins at her and goes back to her phone, scrolling through the photos she took tonight. I close my eyes and try to enjoy Katherine’s hand stroking my hair, her soft, absentminded humming. Listen to Taylor and Nevaeh debate filters and face tuners. Nevaeh is a true-blue Insta celebrity, #nofilter, makeup and skin care and natural-hair tutorials and a ridiculous number of followers. She started practicing makeup to hide, I think; she used to hate how she looked in photos. It took her a long time to build her confidence, but it’s grown along with her skills. Makeup is art now, never camouflage. She takes a billion photos of everyone and everything every day, but always lets me see ones of myself before she posts them, and she doesn’t argue or try to talk me out of it when I say no.

When she makes an unexpected strangled noise, Katherine and I both bolt up.

“Oh, shit, you need to see this,” she says, waving her phone. She spins around so we can see the screen and cranks up the sound. I recognize the song from the party with a jolt—the striptease—oh no, why did I do that?

“Give it,” I say.

Taylor scoots over to peer at the screen, bumping me out of the way. “Well, holy hell, Ms. Adeleina.”

“I know!” Nevaeh says. I lean over Taylor, and she pushes the phone into my palm. The video loops to the start, and I cradle the phone with both hands. That’s me. Skin too pale (thanks, Michigan) and dark hair wild. Pouring across the floor like water. Radiating confidence.

“That’s me!” I say. I hear the surprise in my voice. Of course I’ve watched all my onstage videos, studying every rest and breath, making sure my technique is solid. I hate photos, but video shows how I move. This, though—I’ve never seen myself like this before. Katherine leans against me to watch, her hand over her mouth.

“Oh, look at you,” she says, in a hushed tone. “Oh my gosh.”

“Look at that rack,” Taylor says.

“Taylor,” Katherine says, but there’s a grin in her voice.

“Haven’t you heard that dancers shouldn’t have boobs?” I say, rolling my eyes. I wish them away sometimes, when I’m struggling into sports bras and then compression binding them for rehearsal wincing as I tape before performances, gritting my teeth as I peel it off after.

I watch the video again, letting it loop. There I am, everything unbound. It was a performance, pretending to do a sexy striptease, but the thing that gets me is the way I am radiating confidence right there, looking beautiful and powerful. It’s kind of amazing.

“I love this,” I say. I do.

Nevaeh snatches the phone back. “And now I am going to post it to show the world how hot you are,” she says, her expression challenging me.