“No!” My mother holds both hands in the air as if warding off attack. “I didn’t say that. What I’m saying, what I’m talking about right now, is prioritizing.” She launches into it, she talks about Grimshaw’s transcript, as one’s permanent record, how it communicates to the future. “Who you are, what you’re capable of, it really sends a message.” It’s like if she talks enough, she’ll arrive at some actual logic, if Grimshaw ever wants to … “I don’t know, get a certificate, perhaps, or look into community college.” She keeps talking, as if she can talk her way to reality, when actually we have floated farther and farther away from it, until reality is a distant shore and we’re so far out to sea we don’t even know what direction we’d row in to get back there. And still the principal keeps talking, about how dance should be thought of not as a career, but an avocation, part of a balanced life. She, for instance, although very busy in her profession, loves to sing, “just loves it,” how singing helps her keep her perspective, just let it all go, while I try to think of a single time I have heard this woman sing and can’t come up with one. Grimshaw has long since gone numb. Her face is stone, and her eyes don’t move. Eventually, Mrs. Pentz stops talking, rubs a spot on the desk she just noticed, and asks if there are any questions.

I raise my hand. “Are you on crack?”

After we get thrown out of the principal’s office, there is still more school left in the day, but we go to our bench in front of the school to wait for Rack and Angel. I feel like crying. I’m so ashamed of my mother I can’t take the cigarette when Grimshaw offers one to me. Ankle-deep in dead leaves, I keep my head in my hands.

“I’m really sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.” She lights up. “I’m the stupid one. I should have left town last summer while I had the chance. Now it’s too late.”

“Is Mike gone?”

“Yup.”

I look at the street where I saw the gold Corvette on the last day of school, as if it will always be there, some ghost of it lurking behind those bushes. It occurs to me that I just saw Mike, but she broke up with him, so it doesn’t seem relevant enough to mention. So much is different now, anyway, not just that it was lush and green then and gray and cold now.

“I feel like we’ve just been checkmated,” I say.

“Why does Nanci Lee hate you so much, anyway?” she asks. “She’s so committed to it.”

“I don’t know. I think she might be like Iago, she just likes evil for its own sake. It’s fun for her, messing with people and destroying their dreams.”

But when I look up, Grimshaw is smiling broadly at me.

“What?” I ask.