“I’m going to dance the part of Marie,” she explains, speaking without moving her lips. “Do you know the story of The Nutcracker? Marie turns twelve, meaning she’s no longer a child but not yet a woman. She’s in between, you see, Sam—like me.”

She scurries ahead of me along the corridor that leads to the stage. I can see she’s gasping for breath and sense the nervous flicker of her fear. The narrow corridors are never-ending, and we lose our way. She starts to run and has to flatten the airy white flounces of her tutu against her body to prevent them from scraping along the dark walls.

Breaking into a run to keep up with her, I notice the glittering, silvery fingerprints her fright leaves on the walls. I get the feeling she isn’t running toward the stage but away from it.

“In the ballet, Marie has a dream and in that dream she dances for the very first time en pointe. She falls in love for the first time, she becomes an adult, and never again will she believe that toys have souls. But they do, don’t they, Sam? Everything has a soul, and everything recurs.”

I don’t know, but her desperation is overwhelming me and so I say, “Of course it does, Maddie.”

She sets off again and I pursue her. The labyrinth seems to have doubled or tripled in size. We race back and forth, and then the theater bell rings once and then a second time.

“I must find the stage!” she cries desperately. She stops, and turning to face me, she beats the wall with her fists.

Closing my eyes, I listen and hear the murmur of the audience. I take her by the wrist.

“Come with me,” I say.

She lets me pull her after me, tripping along on the points of her ballet shoes like Marie in The Nutcracker, and I can feel her pain, as if she were walking on broken glass. The murmur grows in volume as we near the stage. A beam of light splits the darkness, illuminating tiny, floating specks of dust. I can already see the red velvet curtain, already hear the sounds of the instruments in the orchestra pit and the stage manager preparing to pull the cord that will haul up the curtain for Maddie’s entrance . . . But then Maddie freezes.

“Sam,” she croaks, grabbing both my hands with hers. “I’m so scared.”

“What of, Maddie?”

“Going out there,” she whispers, glancing around her in panic. We’re standing very close to the edge of the stage. I hear a rustling sound and muffled conversations. There are hundreds of thousands of people on the other side of that curtain: I can feel the heat of their bodies. The stage lights emit a low hum. The air is heavy with expectation.