It had been a cold and dreary day, the kind Rose liked to think of as Thomas Hardy weather, complete with leaden sky and ashen leaves. The kind of day poets made into romantic melancholy but which often left her feeling just plain grumpy. She had been walking home from dance class, willing herself not to shiver as the sweat turned to ice crystals on her back. She’d been too lazy to change properly and had just thrown her parka over her thin, damp leotard. Rose was busy hypnodzing herself into being warm, saying it like a mantra over and over in her head. She crashed right into Nancy Emerson.

Nancy began apologizing before Rose could get a word out. Her nose was running, and her eyes were red.

“No, it was my fault,” Rose said, but Nancy burst into tears and made no effort to brush them away as they rolled down her face.

“It’s not that,” she said, sniffing.

Rose waited a moment out of politeness. There didn’t seem much point in hanging around. But when Rose turned to go, Nancy grabbed her arm. “I’m in trouble,” she said. “I don’t know what to do.”

It was one of those moments when you have to decide whether to be virtuous or your usual selfish self. Rose felt around in her duffel for a dingy tissue and made some sympathetic noises.

“This is really stupid,” Nancy said after she’d blown her nose.

“It’s okay.”

“I’ve just got to face it.”

“Face what?”

Nancy looked up. She was short and pudgy, with the kind of very white skin that comes out in red spots in the cold. Her blonde hair was straggly and her eyes puffy but she was cute in spite of it, like a cuddly piglet in her pink down jacket.

“You’re the Cleer girl, aren’t you?” she asked. “Rose?”

Rose nodded. It wasn’t the time to get into explanations about her name being Rosecleer, an obsolete name that had somehow appealed to her mother.

“Look,” she said to Nancy, “I don’t know what your problem is, but I’m freezing. Want to come over to my house for hot chocolate?”

Nancy nodded gratefully and came tagging along, still sniffling.

“You a cheerleader?” she asked, eyeing the big duffel that was full of Rose’s dance gear. Rose laughed and said no, she wasn’t the cheerleader type. Nancy confided her hopes of getting on the team. “I may not make it, ’cause I’m so short,” she said. “But I’m gonna try hard.”

Something changed inside Rose then; a subtle shifting of the heart. Suddenly Nancy was a real person, not a cute piglet. Rose slowed down for her to catch up. They walked along companion-ably for a bit and then Nancy stopped.

“I feel a lot better now.” She swiped at her nose with the ragged tissue. “Thanks.”