Thin.

Our family was always so excited about When Blair’s in New York. We’d all go to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. We’d see the Rockefeller Tree lighting. It seemed so sure, as if we had looked into a crystal ball and sealed the future ages ago. But that feeling was getting further and further way. The Joffrey was becoming less a plan and more of a desperate hope we were all clinging to. Like if only Blair could get into Joffrey and go to New York, all her issues would magically disappear. She couldn’t be in such a competitive program if she was sick, so obviously, she would get better. This wasn’t just another recital or competition. This was her dream. This is everything I’ve worked for, Blair would say, staring in the mirror.

The audition tour was making a pit stop in Chicago, and Aleksander had secured Blair a spot. She would be taking a class from a Joffrey instructor while another one took notes on everything from the size of her head to the point of her toes. Blair couldn’t just be great, she had to be the best; spots were limited and she needed to land a scholarship, too. I helped her count fouettés at night in her room—forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine—until she collapsed on her bed in a pile of exhaustion.

In the fall, Blair was in her company’s production of Giselle, playing Myrtha, queen of the ghostly spirits. She’d been so disappointed that she hadn’t gotten the role of Giselle, but Myrtha was still known as one of the hardest parts to dance in all of classical ballet. Her performance was supposed to be stunning and spooky. Instead, it seemed like she couldn’t stretch as high or keep her legs as straight as she used to. She even tripped out of her final arabesque, and she sobbed about it on the car ride home.

You were amazing, Mom had promised her, and she was. But nobody said that she stole the show.

After her Myrtha performance, Blair became even more obsessed with getting into the Joffrey. Everything seemed to hang on this one audition, this one moment. It was the reason for her extra rehearsal time in Milwaukee, the reason for her new leotards, and the reason she had to wake up at 5:00 a.m. every morning to do stretches. It was her Get Out of Jail Free Card, too. Blair didn’t have to help in the office because she had to practice. Blair was allowed to snap at Mom and Dad because she was stressed about her audition. She didn’t have to do homework because she needed to focus on Chicago. If I so much as rolled my eyes at Mom, I was sent to my room, but Blair could stomp around like the entire world was against her and we were all just supposed to nod sympathetically. Even I was starting to get annoyed.

Blair had begun therapy soon after landing her Myrtha role because talking to someone “would help with her stress,” Mom had told Jade and me, but I knew it was really because Blair was disappearing inch by inch. Every time I hugged her, there was less to put my arms around. Weeks before the Joffrey audition, however, she stopped going. Apparently she didn’t have time when she needed to be perfecting her grand jeté. She wasn’t even answering phone calls from Caleb.