“Oh, really?” Colleen’s eyebrows shot up. “Chemistry?” I didn’t know why I hadn’t predicted how un-chill she would be about this. I tried to think of a way to pivot, but a stream of people had entered the wings and a familiar voice made me freeze. Kira. She was talking to a group of parents with their young daughters in tow, some I recognized as Level A students.

As much as my feelings about Kira had changed over the last year, she looked the same—the white-blond hair pulled into a chignon, the swanlike neck and ramrod-straight posture, the air of royal benevolence as she addressed the little bunheads who looked up at her in awe, hanging on her every word.

My first impulse was to disappear without her seeing me, but I held my ground. Colleen and Jude standing by me helped, but there was something else, too. Something I was finally beginning to understand. I loved ballet with all my heart, but I didn’t want to be like Albrecht and love it blindly. I didn’t want to be like the Wilis and destroy it, either. I didn’t even want to be like Giselle and save it without holding it responsible for the damage it had done. I wanted to love the good parts of ballet and defuse the dangerous ones. And a dangerous one was standing right in front of me.

CHAPTER THIRTY

“I’M GOING TO TALK to her,” I said. “I’ll just be a minute.”

Jude nodded. “I’ll be in the lobby when you’re ready.” Before he walked out of the wings, he squeezed my shoulder, signaling that he understood I had to do this without him but he was with me all the way.

“I’ll come with you,” Colleen said to me.

“Are you sure? I mean, I’m not her student anymore, I don’t have to worry about casting next year…” I broke off. Both of us hoped that Colleen would get into the ABT summer intensive and then be asked to stay at the school next year, that she wouldn’t even have to work with Kira again. But if she didn’t, she’d have another year at KDBS, and it was a really important one. She’d be auditioning for companies, and she’d need attention and support.

Colleen shook her head. “Kira wouldn’t not cast me in stuff because of a grudge. She’s not unfair in that way. It’s more like she doesn’t get how she’s unfair? And regardless, this is important to me, too. I’m ready to talk to her. I want to.”

I steeled myself and we linked arms and approached Kira just as the parents and daughters were exiting the wings. My legs were shaky, just like they’d been when we walked up to her on Nutcracker cast list day last year. But inside, I felt different.