“I don’t know, Blair,” said Mom. “You’d miss out on so much. Don’t you want to be a normal kid for just a little bit longer?”

“What do colleges think of homeschooling?” asked Dad, pointing his fork at her. “What would this do to your transcripts?”

“You guys. I’m not trying to be a normal kid! I’m trying to follow my dreams, here.”

“I say if she wants to be a homeschool freak, let her,” said Jade. “Then we wouldn’t have to go to the same school.” Jade was a freshman, thinking she was all that, wearing more makeup than she was supposed to and talking back to Mom and Dad. She was starting to get really annoying. Why did she have to say things like that? It was like she had forgotten that we had ever been best friends. If she was snarky enough, maybe she thought we’d all just poof into thin air.

I picked at my brussels sprouts. Why do parents even make brussels sprouts? Does anyone in the entire world like them? I mean, I know they’re healthy, but man, at what cost?

“Dad, you’re thinking too small,” said Blair. “Transcripts? I don’t care about transcripts. I’m not trying to go to Yale. I’m trying to get accepted into a professional company.”

“But your grades are so high,” said Dad, looking a little crushed. Mom cared about your friends, your social life, your dental hygiene, and your general happiness. Dad cared what your report card said. “You won the science fair that time, remember? With the lava lamp . . .”

“In fifth grade,” said Blair flatly. “Do you realize how much these girls who get hired practice? Seven, eight hours a day! They aren’t making homemade lava lamps!”

They said they’d think about it. I already knew what would happen. Blair could be persistent when she wanted to be. Whether it was a custom-made tutu or a summer dance camp in Chicago, what she begged for, she usually got. She had Dreams. A Passion. She was Going Places. We were just standing in her shadow. Jade, with her eyeliner obsession and bad attitude, could try all she wanted to get out, but I was just fine in the shade.

Sure enough, a few weeks later, Jade and I headed off on the bus while Blair got driven by my mom to Milwaukee every day. She had dance for seven hours and would then come home and race through math workbooks, checking all the right boxes to make sure she kept our parents happy. But she was no longer Blair who danced. She was a dancer named Blair. And it felt different.

Other times, she felt like the same old Blair. That Halloween, she somehow convinced Jade to be the third Sanderson sister from Hocus Pocus, and we won the costume contest at Town Hall. I still have the picture of us leaning over a cauldron, crazy-eyed and wild-haired. That picture would probably go in my time capsule, too.