I took my own advice, pumping more energy and exuberance into every movement. Jude never took his eyes off mine, not once. Something just… clicked this time. We were perfectly in sync. I could feel that we were dancing something unique and wonderful and extraordinary. A dream.

As I danced, I thought back to last Saturday in the car with Colleen. I’d realized then how much Kira’s voice had gotten into my head over the years. But I honestly couldn’t hear it anymore. Everything I’d learned from her—about movement and music and grace—was mine now. Just mine. I could do anything I wanted with it.

I used to look at Kira with such admiration. She carried generations of ballet in her body, put there by her teachers, and their teachers before them. She was like a living ballet archive, bringing the past into the present with each class she taught. But Kira was not ballet. She was only one person. Now it was my turn, and Colleen’s turn, to preserve the good things we’d learned from her and destroy the bad. Now it was our turn to dance not for her and the past, but for us and the future, whatever that future happened to look like.

When we finished rehearsal, Jude and I gathered our things, breathing hard. Silently, we walked out of the auditorium, through the lobby, and out the doors. It was like a spell had been cast over us, and if we spoke, it would be broken. When we stepped outside, Jude couldn’t contain it anymore.

“That was—I mean, that was so—” He was moving his hands through the air, trying to physically grasp on to the right words. “No offense to my cousin, but that?” He pointed back to the school. “That was a different level. God, people who just judge something and decide it’s not for them without giving it a chance miss out on so much. I wish they could understand that.”

My eyes shot to his because I knew he was thinking about his dad. I hated that he was still hurting over it, and I worried that he still hadn’t forgiven himself for lying. Still, I was glad he felt secure enough to bring it up around me, even indirectly.

“And you,” he went on. “You’re unbelievable. When you do those grands jetés it’s like time stops and you just hang in the air.”

I smiled, enjoying his compliments again, feeling energized by his enthusiasm, and falling even more deeply in love with him.

“I think you’re becoming a balletomane,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“A person who really loves ballet.”

“Well, yeah, that sounds right.” As his eyes found mine, all his wild energy focused on me. I forgot to breathe for a second.

“My old school is doing Giselle in a couple of weeks,” I said, recovering. “We should go.”