Earlier during our session, I’d made the mistake of looking at one of those websites that compared fetuses to fruits and told her that her baby was the size of a butternut squash. “Fine,” Birdie said after a few moments of silence. “We can be mad at each other.”

Even then, I knew that Josie’s dancing had nothing to do with my injury. Still, I couldn’t get past the injustice. I guess I still hadn’t let it go.

Class finally ended and Josie came out, wrapped in her white parka. Someone called her name and she paused in the middle of the parking lot. The boy she’d been talking to in class jogged over. They laughed at something, their breaths turning into wispy clouds. Every time I thought the conversation was ending, one of them made an oversized gesture and kept going.

I jammed my hand onto the horn, feeling a deep satisfaction when Josie and the boy jumped like startled squirrels. Josie squinted into the windshield before saying something to the boy and then trudging over to the car.

“That was so unnecessary,” she said, clicking on her seat belt. I shrugged and pulled out of the parking lot. “Why are you picking me up, anyway?”

“I was already out.”

“Before noon?” She put her hand to her chest in mock surprise. I didn’t dignify that with a response, and we settled into the tense silence that had become our norm. We hadn’t said much to each other since our fight about ballet. So it surprised me when I stopped at a red light and Josie asked, “Did you see me do the combination?”

“Yeah,” I said slowly.

“And?” Josie looked at me. “What did you think?”

That confused me even more. We never asked each other for critiques. “I don’t know.”

“Scale of one to ten,” Josie said.

“Five.”

Josie scoffed and looked out the window. I knew that would shut her up. I enjoyed a full minute of silence before she asked, all huffily, “What should I do differently, then?”

“Oh my God, I don’t know, Josie. You have a dance teacher. Ask her.”

Josie narrowed her eyes. “You’re in an even worse mood than usual. Is it because you haven’t seen Jude in a while?”

“Excuse me?” My fingers squeezed the wheel. I’d gotten so good at avoiding Jude that his name affected me like an electric shock.

Josie smiled haughtily. “I ran into him at lunch and he asked how you were doing because he hadn’t seen you in a while.”

“What did you say?” I asked casually.

“Not important. So is that why you’re so grumpy?”

“No.” I switched on the radio and turned it up, my go-to move when Josie was being annoying, and spent the rest of the drive ignoring her.

CHAPTER TWELVE