“Maybe it’s for the best, Blair,” Mom said. “Maybe ballet—”

“You hate ballet, Mom,” she snapped. “I got the memo.”

“I don’t hate ballet!”

“You do! You’ve always hated it! You want me to fail. You want me to spend the rest of my life renting out cabins to doctors from Iowa. Well, guess what? I have a dream. I have a passion. I’m not just quitting ballet!”

Mom slammed her hands on the table, pushed her chair out, and went upstairs. Dad followed behind. He squeezed Blair’s shoulder as he walked around her. I went over to my big sister and looked at the shiny brochures.

“Maybe you should do art,” I suggested. “You’re good at drawing.”

Blair sighed and yanked on my ponytail, wiping her eyes. “Oh, Abby. You don’t get these things. You’re just a kid.”

This was something that eternally bugged me. Just a kid. Like kids were stupid. Like we couldn’t know things. I knew plenty of things. I knew that Minnesota called itself the Land of 10,000 Lakes even though Wisconsin had more. I knew that the sun was actually a star and 400 times larger than the moon. I knew that Saturn would float if you put it in water. I knew that the Stormtrooper hitting his head in Star Wars: A New Hope was actually an accident but they left it in.

And I knew my mom really did hate ballet. She hated it when she wrote the huge checks for new tutus, she hated Aleksander and how snobby he was, and she hated how often we had to go to Milwaukee. But mostly she hated what it did to Blair. How my sister would make a mistake in rehearsal and cry for hours. How when she didn’t get the lead in Giselle last year she hadn’t come out of her room for two days. How she stretched so far it seemed as if she would break. How she was forgetting how to eat—first a little here and there, now entire meals, soon entire days. How she would walk by mirrors and suck in her cheeks. The way she would grab handfuls of side fat that weren’t there. How she was disappearing into thin air.

“Here,” I said, handing her our Planet Pirates book. “Your turn.”

“Thanks, Abby,” she said. “I need a little fantasy in my life right about now.” She smiled, and I exhaled as if I’d been holding my breath all day. That one small smile felt so important to me. Life wasn’t over, even though there would be no Joffrey. We’d still have our comic, as small as it could seem.

“Are you dorks having a lovefest?” Jade bounded into the kitchen, opening the fridge, headphones in. “It’s like the Hallmark Channel in here.”

“Aww, feel left out?” said Blair. “Come be our bestest friend, Jadey-Pants.” She made kissing noises and faces, and I copied her. Jade rolled her eyes.

“Freaks,” she said, grabbing a soda. But she smiled, too, just a little. I saw it. I swear.