“Hmm.” Jude kept squinting. “I guess it is my thing. I have a lot of things, though.”

“I remember.” Trampolines and baths and mysteries and green tea and knitting. “Is anything not your thing?”

Jude looked out the rain-streaked window. “Goat milking.”

I smiled even though I tried not to. “Oh?”

“Yeah, I went to the farm show when I was eight and milked a goat. They gave me a ribbon for it and everything. But even though the ribbon was cool, I knew that goat milking was not my thing.”

“God. So picky.”

He laughed. “But hey, back to the musical for a sec. Did you at least like any of the songs we did today?”

Jude’s singing drifted into my head, along with the cheesy dream of dancing with him, twirling under his arm… The cheesy dream that didn’t mean anything, I reminded myself.

“Not really,” I said. We were quiet for a bit after that. Every time a new song came on, Jude would point to the radio and raise his eyebrows, silently asking if I knew it. I would shake my head and he would sigh dramatically.

“Why are you going this way?” he asked when I turned into a small neighborhood instead of continuing on the main road.

“It’s a shortcut.”

“No way.”

“This way is two minutes faster than staying straight, sometimes three.”

“Wooow,” he said slowly. “You don’t know Broadway, Alina Keeler. But you do know the road.” He made his voice gravelly when he said “the road,” like we were in a noir film.

I breathed out a laugh, but it was kind of true. When I finally turned sixteen and a half last March and traded my permit for a license, my parents were so relieved they didn’t have to ride with me to ballet every day that they let me use the Honda whenever I needed. I was allowed to pick Colleen up, too, which was perfect. She lived about fifteen minutes away, and we weren’t in the same school district, so carpooling meant we got to spend more time together during the week, outside of class and rehearsal. The first time I came to get her, her father did a whole bit about examining my license—bringing out a magnifying glass while we rolled our eyes at the dadness of it all. But between Colleen’s ballet schedule and all the activities her parents had to drive her two younger brothers to, I knew they were more than happy to let Colleen ride with me.