Normally, everything about that smug little speech would have made me snap. But for the first time, I felt Josie’s questions seeping into my brain and stubbornly taking root there. Maybe ballet had taught me to be quiet. To keep my anger and hurt inside. Maybe my outbursts meant that strategy wasn’t working for me anymore. But if I wasn’t the quiet, dedicated ballet girl, keeping her head down and moving forward even if things were unfair, then who was I? And if ballet was so unfair, why did I miss it so much?

Josie sprayed a vanilla fragrance on the back of my neck and plumped my waves with her fingers. “Voilà,” she said.

I stared at my reflection. I looked amazing. Every curl, every sweep of silvery shadow and blend of pink on my cheeks and lips, was perfect. Josie had put a lot of work into this, even though she was mad at me for threatening to murder her this morning.

Josie shoved the perfume container back into her closet and unplugged the curling iron. My eyes caught again on the picture of us from years ago, and a surprising thought occurred to me. Maybe Josie didn’t keep bringing up all this stuff about ballet to be a jerk.

Maybe she did it because she cared.

On my way to pick up Margot, I couldn’t stop thinking about The Nutcracker. Kira. Chinese Tea. The choreography. Paul and Jake. It was all a big mess in my head.

When I stopped at a red light, I caved. I brought up The Nutcracker score on my phone, scrolled to the Grand Pas de Deux, and hit Play.

As soon as I heard the familiar harps floating peacefully up and down the scale, everything started to feel okay again. And even though I was in traffic, inching past strip malls and car dealerships, I was really somewhere else: December last year, in the Epstein Theatre, performing the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy for the first time.

Onstage, I touched the stiffness of the pink tutu extending a foot and a half away from my body. Felt the weight of the glistening silver crown, secured onto my head with bobby pins. Danced the movements that had become so familiar to me and yet never lost their specialness.

The Sugar Plum Fairy was a beautiful puzzle. She was a fairy, obviously, so she was delicate and whimsical and dainty. But she was also a powerful, benevolent ruler. It took me ages to figure out how to dance like that. Took thousands of little adjustments to my arms and legs and fingers and feet as I stood behind Juliet and Spencer, practicing as their understudy. Once I finally got the perfect balance of delicacy and power into each arabesque and piqué, I polished them until it all felt natural, like I had always moved that way.