The music, when it starts, is familiar enough to make my eyes prick with tears. It’s my audition piece for Angles. My choreography was heavily ballet-inspired, to capture all my dance interests, to show them my breadth of experience and ability. And now it fills me with a quiet kind of joy.

“Thank you,” I say to them, and Nevaeh blows me a kiss.

Jack smiles wide at me. I think he can tell that I’m so much less nervous. I nod, lift my chin, and lift up on my toes, a graceful swoop of my arms, a turn, a bend, my back arched, closing my eyes to listen to the music as I move. I won’t dance my audition piece, but I’ll let it move me. It’s easier to pretend that Jack pointing his lens at me is the same as Nevaeh snapping photos at the coffee shop, but the shutter noise is flickering fast. When he slips behind me, I get goose bumps, then shake them off, pull all of myself around me like a cloak, and I dance, in the spotlight, throwing off shadows behind me.

Jack and I are kind of dancing as he slips around me, moving in close as I sway to the side, rising to his feet as I go into a spin, catching his eye for long, long moments, and then I leap, gliding through the air, landing softly, turning my head and lifting my chin.

With a graceful twist of my wrists, I sweep my hands down my bodice to my waist, slowly sink to the floor, skirt puddling around me, and bow, arms extended to each side.

I jump when the shutter goes off loud at my ear. “Holy crap!” I say, twisting around.

“Sorry!” Jack says. He rises to his feet and lifts his camera again, gets a picture of my upturned face. He looks at the screen and then back at me. “Good,” he says. He’s really close to me, and he’s not moving.

“Can I see?” I ask, holding out my hand, but he shakes his head.

“Not yet,” he says.

“Would you show them to me first, before you show anyone?”

“Of course,” he says.

“But don’t photoshop them.”

“I’d never,” he says. “I promise you’ll like them.”

I nod but don’t respond.

“Just a few more,” he says. “Then we’ll be good.”

He suggests one final pose. I sit on a stool and shrug out of my cami, hold it clasped to my chest. Nevaeh arranges my hair against my naked back and sweeps powder, maybe glitter, over my shoulders. When I look down, I see my love handles, and the need to clap my hands over my midriff is overpowering. I take a breath, keep perfectly soft and still.