She shrugs. “We’ll talk about it.” And with that, she seems to push it out of her mind, her face brightening. “I’m glad I got to tell you my news! Aren’t you glad you picked up for your mother this time? Now go get some beauty sleep.” She kisses her fingers at me, and I smile through her usual reminders about vegetables and skin care, her cheery, air-kissing goodbye, until she finally hangs up.

I sit there in front of my laptop with a falling feeling in my chest, pressure behind my eyes, tingling in my fingers, breath catching in my throat.

I shouldn’t have opened my mouth about the money. She doesn’t even want me to try to get a job in a serious dance company, let alone do a program that you have to pay for.

She wants the whole world for me, but it’s not the world I want, bright lights and diets. Whittling me down to the good parts, she’d say. So they can see how wonderful I am inside and out, as if my body’s hiding a secret.

That’s not the kind of famous I want to be. I don’t know how to explain that I want to be a groundbreaking dancer. I want to change the dance world, make a mark. Learn from the best, become one of the best. Make the world shape itself to fit me. Most of all, just dance.

Angles, not Los Angeles.

I put my head down on my desk so I don’t have to look at my reflection in the screen, and then I sit up to google again, but this time instead of grants it’s “how to make money fast” and “make $6,000 in three months” and then “what is a pyramid scheme,” and an hour later I close my laptop and stare at the wall and try to let myself give up on Angles and my own idea of a future in dance. There are other ways to make it as a dancer; I know there are.

I push my chair in, pace my small room, shake out my hands. I can’t stay still.

It’s not too late to apply somewhere I could afford. It’s not too late to grit my teeth and start planning auditions to dance companies. It’s not too late to come up with some very practical plan. Right. So many other ways.

I stop in the middle of the room. Stuck to my bulletin board, the picture of Mohadesa Rabei, mid-assemblé, I tore out of a brochure.

But so many reasons why Angles is the only way for me.

Thundering heartbeat. Then another.

I push open the door of my room, march down the hallway.

A fire blooming in my chest, so fierce and roaring that I’m trembling.

I am talented, and I am ambitious, and I am lucky.