She listened. She actually listened! It shouldn’t be earth-shattering, but it is. I take a sip of hot chocolate to give me a second to breathe. If she’d asked me a month ago, I wouldn’t have had to think twice about it. But now all I can say is, “I—I’m not sure.”

She plunges ahead. “We’d get a real apartment this time. Stay in one place. Make a real go of it.”

I fiddle with my jacket zipper. This is confusing. I’m so happy she isn’t going to make me sing in front of people anymore. But I’m terrified of what it’ll be like, just the two of us again. I look at Ginger talking to Melissa by the front doors. What about her and Dan? What about Well and my new school?

“Can I think about it?” I whisper over my hot chocolate.

“Yes. Of course. One day at a time, baby girl.”

We don’t say good-bye. We don’t know how. But I wave to her as Ginger and I drive away, and she waves back. I know I’ll see her again in just a few weeks, but still I have to take short, quick breaths to keep from crying as she disappears in the rearview mirror.

On the way home, I take the spearmint candy out of my pocket and snap a piece off to dissolve in my mouth. I feel pretty good after our talk—hopeful even. Like Mom and I are actually learning to talk to each other. It’s not until I’m lying in bed in my blue room that night that I realize Mom never really answered my question. She never said we’d quit the shows.

It’s Friday night—opening night.

Mary Katherine is in the bathroom with Geneva, who looks like she’s about to poke Mary Katherine’s eye out with a pencil. But then she tucks the pencil between her teeth and dabs at the corner of Mary Katherine’s eye with her fingertip. Geneva is also our makeup person.

“Are we almost done here? My mom’s just dropped off sushi,” Mary Katherine whines.

Geneva might still poke her eye out yet.

“Yeah, we’re done.”

I let Mary Katherine, our Cinderella, brush by me in a swirl of burlap skirts. She hates this costume, the dirty rags of “Cinder” before her makeover to a princess.

“She thinks the fajitas we had catered are too heavy for her delicate stomach,” Geneva says, jabbing the eye pencil into her hair like a chopstick. We roll our eyes at each other in the mirror. We don’t have time to deal with Mary Katherine right now. So after Geneva draws a big unibrow and hairy mole on herself as the witch, I ask, “Are you all set?”

“Yep. I’m good. But you better check on Maxwell. He looks like he’s going to puke.”