Jessica was around a lot these days. The following morning, for example, she shook Naomi awake and reminded her of her outgrown toenails. Terrible for dancing—especially with rehearsals for Grand Prix beginning on Monday. So the first thing the girls did on Saturday involved Jessica holding Naomi firmly by the shoulders as Naomi snipped her toenails down to the line. The activities that followed were different types of cuttings.

For breakfast, Jessica divided Naomi's portions. Then it was dancing straight into the afternoon, while Jessica watched and corrected Naomi in the standing mirror. Lunch was the same. The evening was the same. Dinner was the same. The night was the same. The girls were, more than they had been in the past two weeks, attached. Where one was, there was the other, and for it to have been any other way would have meant that too many things, like the toenails, would eventually be outgrown.

Before Naomi slept, Jessica made clear that the bedroom's floor space was insufficient as well. If they were serious about getting into the New York City Ballet one day, and they were, Naomi would need a real studio with a metal barre and flooring and all the other unmalleable things a dance studio offered. In other words, they needed the Riverside Performing Arts Theater. Jessica was, Naomi knew, right. So she packed her tights and all her equipment and set her alarm for eight the next day.

Jessica woke her at seven.

She explained that more time awake really meant more time to rehearse. Which meant that Naomi could make her routine tighter, which ultimately meant that the earlier she woke up, the higher her chances would be of getting accepted into the New York City Ballet. Naomi quickly showered, changed, and leaped down the stairs. When she got to the landing, she noticed how quiet the rest of the house was. It was a Sunday morning so she knew she'd be the only one up. In fact, she counted on it. Except that when she got to the living room on her way out, she heard snoring coming from the couch.

She had assumed initially that it was her father. She didn't know why—she'd never seen him sleep on the couch before—but somehow it felt like the right conclusion. But when she got closer, Naomi saw it was her mom lying there. Fast asleep with a blanket lazily covering her midsection. Next, she noticed an open bottle of wine on the coffee table and its accompanying half-full glass. Naomi walked around the couch and fixed the blanket over her mother. She'd never seen her mom out here drinking wine before, and she wasn't sure what to make of it. But she wasn't sure she had the time to think about it either. Jessica was already urging her to hurry. "We have to get going! You need to rehearse!"

Naomi gathered herself.

Scurrying out the door, she convinced herself that a lot of adults drank wine on Saturday evenings; her mother was no different. If anything, her mother was the same, and she could drink as much wine on as many Saturdays as she'd like.

On their walk to the theater, the girls brainstormed the best routine to impress the judges from the School of American Ballet at Grand Prix. They figured if George Balanchine had founded the New York City Ballet, the School of American Ballet, and taught Valentino, then the most effective strategy for demonstrating Naomi's commitment to all three would be to perform a piece from one of Balanchine's own ballets, The Nutcracker.

Jessica warned Naomi that the ballet was a bit juvenile, but eventually the girls decided to use that to their advantage. At Naomi's level she could make the moves she'd been practicing since she was twelve look flawless. The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy would come especially easy for her, given how often she had rehearsed it in her standing mirror. At home, the pain had made the ballet memorable. Onstage, the pain would make the ballet perfect.

The Riverside Performing Arts Theater was usually dark and closed off on Sundays since the dance academy wasn't there to bring it to life with their practicing. But every other Sunday, like today, the building opened up for the community choir. They came here for a few hours a day to rehearse songs and hymns, but for Naomi, it also meant that the theater was open for anyone else to use. Namely, her.

Naomi and Jessica went up the main entrance steps, where they pushed the double doors wide open. The choir was already there. They had taken up the entirety of the main stage and had mics, speakers, and instruments scattered across the raised platform. Some members were walking idly about, others were seated. They weren't even wearing matching gowns like Naomi had expected them to, but despite this inconsistency, their harmonies were flawless. Their voices layered on top of one another and wrapped high into the air. Naomi wondered how they could possibly know to match their voices that well when they couldn't even match their clothes. The dance academy relied on that kind of sameness.

Jessica grabbed Naomi's hand, insisting that they didn't have time to listen. She pulled her past the rows of seats and circled backstage where they descended the staircase and went into the tunnel that fed to the girls' dressing room. Walking inside, Naomi exhaled heavily and found an ottoman to plop down on. She hadn't realized they'd both been running.

The dark dressing room wasn't ready for them. There was spilled makeup on the vanities, and the chairs were all out of place. It was clear that the janitor hadn't come by yet. But now that they were here, the melodies from the choir were silenced. Behind all this concrete in a small room of the enclosed basement, hardly any sound penetrated. All Naomi could hear was her own breathing and Jessica pacing nearby.

Naomi fished her phone out and checked the time. Eight o'clock.

"You know, I hear at NYCB all the dancers turn their phones off the moment they set foot in the building."

Naomi turned around. "Oh, I wasn't—" But Jessica was ready.

"It keeps them focused and professional. That's what I hear, anyway."

Naomi switched her phone off and slipped it into her bag. "How do they get calls and texts then?"

Nonchalantly, Jessica told her, "They don't. Not when they're dancing."

Naomi nodded. It made sense. "Dance, above everything else" seemed like a mantra that dancers from the New York City Ballet would repeat to themselves before they went to bed at night. Opening her bag, she exchanged her sweats for tights and then sat on the floor. She tucked both knees in to get a better look at her toes. The big one was the darkest this time. Once, Naomi used to wish that she had squared feet like some of the other girls in the academy; then at least the pain would be equal across all her toes. But now she'd come to realize that maybe having all the pain in one place wasn't so bad as long as her other four toes could make up for what the big one couldn't anymore. Corns swelled on the sides of her pinky toe, and there was a new blister on her metatarsal.

Digging through her bag, Naomi uncapped her tube of Tiger Balm and rubbed the numbing gel into her ankles where swellings were prone. Then she tore off strips of athletic tape with her teeth and wrapped her toes individually to cover all the freshest scars. She made sure her pointe was still flexible and the tape wasn't too tight. Then she covered the damaged feet with soft lambswool and finally pushed them into her pointe shoes.

"Perfect," Jessica commented. Then she called, "Let's go."

Naomi had danced this ballet numerous times before, so she knew the entirety of The Nutcracker by heart. She could easily run through it twice from memory alone but her technique, it seemed, was not as effortless. Jessica made that apparent. She was standing in the spot Valentino usually occupied during classes to instruct. But there were more corrections than anything else, mostly to do with Naomi's posture and the extension of her legs. Throughout the day, as Naomi tried to fix herself, her right ankle kept resisting. She stretched the joint a little more and occasionally paused to roll her heel out of the discomfort. None of it helped.

Close to the end of the variation, she wobbled. Jessica warned her, "Don't stop, Naomi."

Naomi drew a breath and glanced down at her ankle before she took her next turn.

"Chin up," Jessica commanded.

Then into Naomi's turn Jessica said, "Faster."

The rigidity in her ankle, however, would not let up. Neither would Jessica. The pair of them fought one another at accelerated counts until Naomi's pointe finally slipped. Her entire body weight crashed down onto her ankle right before she just barely caught, steadied, and froze herself.

Jessica's voice sank into a rumbling vibrato. "Keep going!"

The tone of the outcry was dark and unfamiliar. When Naomi turned to look at her best friend, she realized Jessica's voice wasn't the only thing that was unrecognizable. There was something different in Jessica's expression. Something angry. It seemed, to Naomi, that although she herself had stopped spinning and her ankle had finally gotten to rest, Jessica was still baring teeth.

But like power resurging through a dark house, concern glazed Jessica's face, and she ran over to inspect Naomi's foot. She held her ankle gently, inspecting it with narrowed eyes. Tutting, Jessica stood up straight, declaring that Naomi's pointe shoes were the source of the problem between Naomi's ankle and herself. She declared this pair of pointe shoes dead.

Naomi had only danced in them for three days.

Jessica then took her arm and quickly suggested they go home and break in one of her unused spares. Naomi nodded. She tried not to flinch when her best friend looped her arm through hers. Pointe shoes were fragile, unreliable things. This wouldn't be the first time they caused more harm than good. Perhaps that pair simply could not keep up with her and her best friend. Briefly, Naomi glanced at Jessica.

Feeling her eyes on her, Jessica turned. "What's wrong?"

Naomi swallowed. "Nothing. I'm just glad you're here."

Grinning, Jessica doubled down. "Glad to be here."

* * *

When Naomi and Jessica stepped into the dressing room at the theater on Monday morning, the other girls were already there. Naomi had hoped that no one else would come this early. That way, she could undo and redo herself in preparation for her first rehearsal for the Grand Prix. If only for the peace and quiet, at least. But the other girls, it seemed, had had similar ideas, and now Naomi was staring into the sea of them occupying the space.

Jessica suggested tomorrow she set her alarm even earlier. Six in the morning should be good.

Naomi shouldered her way inside the dressing room. She lowered her chin as she went, but no one was about to stop her to hold a conversation, and she knew that already. Not a single dancer in the Riverside Dance Academy, besides Jessica, had made a point of speaking to Naomi. At first she thought it was because they didn't have anything in common, or they were just as shy as she was. But the years went by regardless; so, in the end, it didn't really matter.

Naomi found her seat on a bench in the corner and opened her bag to get changed. She told herself she didn't have time for their gossip anyway. She knew that she needed to focus on what was to come for the next two months instead: early mornings, late evenings, more drastic forms of cutting. She didn't need other girls to get her through that. She didn't need them at all.

Naomi looked over her shoulder toward a vanity where the other girls were sharing numbing gels and passing out tiny pills that they all swallowed without water. At another table, girls were rolling out the bottoms of their feet on a communal tennis ball. In the corner, some others were placing themselves on the scales Valentino kept propped there. Everyone had to discover their own unique way of making their body bend in ways it was not meant to in order to dance. In here it was obvious, like swallowing capsules of ibuprofen to kill the pain and rubbing Preparation H—a hemorrhoid cream—all over their toes for the anesthetic relief. But onstage, no one could tell. So long as their makeup was bright and they were all able to stand on pointe, it did not matter what they did back here.

"Competition. That's how you better start seeing them," Jessica told her. "In fact, it's probably how they already see you."

Staring into the sea of girls in the dressing room Naomi asked, "You think so?"

"Definitely," Jessica said quickly. "And if not already, then soon. In that case, better to have a head start." Naomi examined them—the other girls. Valentino's classes were famous, after all, because under his instruction dancers became exemplary. Sharp. When his dancers entered the Grand Prix, they were all the other girls could whisper about. And Naomi wanted that. They all did, even if secretly.

In that way, it made sense for Naomi to not be too friendly to the other girls in the academy. What was the point of being nice in here only to do everything in your power to be better out there? They would be lying to each other, and they would know it. The thought made Naomi's stomach knot. Jessica was different, of course. She didn't care about the competition or being the best. She danced because she liked it. In here, that was rare.

Realizing that, Naomi turned to her best friend as she was eyeing the other girls and gave her a quizzical look. Jessica, usually, couldn't care less about who was competition and who was not. Those things had never meant anything to her before. But as her best friend turned to give her a knowing look, Naomi grasped the fact that it clearly meant something now, and for good reason. The stakes were higher—this was her career. And these girls were in fact her competition. If Jessica was taking it this seriously, maybe Naomi should too.

Naomi was out of the dressing room and in the dance studio in under ten minutes. There, she realized, she was in first position. There were no other dancers here. Just her, Valentino, and his intern. Naomi thought back briefly to what her best friend had said about having a head start and exhaled.

Valentino turned at the sound of the door shutting on its own. "Naomi." His voice bounced off the walls when he saw her. "You're early."

She nodded proudly, stepping farther inside.

"How do you feel?"

Jessica gripped her hand. Naomi answered, "Ready."

Valentino smiled. "Okay, well, since you're here, why don't we go ahead and fill out the Grand Prix application form?" He retrieved the piece of paper and a pen from his intern and walked back over. He asked her the simple questions first, name, age, address, weight. Then came the only question Naomi cared for: "Which schools are you interested in?"

It was a procedural question. At the Youth America Grand Prix, ballet schools from across the country came to judge new talent and offer them scholarships to attend their schools. Dancers also got the chance to pick which schools they were interested in. Usually, dancers put down their top three. But for Naomi, there was only one option. The School of American Ballet. Because of its ties, almost every dancer who did well there ended up dancing for the New York City Ballet. This was the single path that made sense for her. And so she said that.

"That's it? One school?" Valentino asked.

She nodded. It didn't matter which other schools gave her scholarship offers. She would just turn them down anyway. This, the School of American Ballet for two years, then straight to the New York City Ballet, was what she wanted. All she wanted. The application form should reflect that.

Naomi looked up at Valentino and smiled. Together, the girls said, "Yes. One school."

Worry flashed across Valentino's face. "Are you sure about that, Naomi? You do realize that putting at least three schools makes you a more competitive prospect, and it's never a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket."

It was all Naomi this time when she answered. "I'll be competitive anyway. They'll see that onstage."

Valentino watched her carefully. But she only moved to the barre where she began her stretches. Still, even then, he waited. He waited when the other dancers began to file in, during rehearsal, and after it ended. Valentino Beaumont finally wrote down the School of American Ballet as Naomi's only option when it was nighttime in his office, and all the dancers had left, and Naomi still hadn't found him to reconsider.

Arriving home, Naomi saw the newspapers and the assorted fabrics on the floor but her mother wasn't among them. She must have been in the kitchen. When Naomi got there, however, the stove was on and the pots were steaming, but it wasn't because of her mom at all. "You're cooking?"

Ethan Morgan looked up at his daughter and laughed. It was an embarrassed one, with clenched teeth and high shoulders. "Yes, I am cooking," he said. "Your mother ran out to get some stuff from the store so she asked me to go ahead and start dinner." A silence hung in the air before he added, "Relax, it's mostly leftovers."

Ethan Morgan was California born and raised; he even claimed to have been a surfer at one point. So it was somewhat unusual for him to cook, especially when Aja had been born with whatever culinary magic people were born with in Jamaica and had brought that into their family kitchen.

"How was your day?" he asked.

Stepping farther into the smoky room, Naomi wondered if her father even knew that she had started rehearsing for Grand Prix today. Had she told him? Did her mother tell him? If he did know, surely he would have said something? Or did he just not care? And this was often the problem with silence. You never knew where it started or stopped; you only knew that it existed.

"It was fine," was what she ultimately decided on. "Yours?"

"Good," Ethan answered. "Filled two cavities back-to-back today, and that's about as interesting as it got for me." He laughed at himself, stirring the pot on the stove thoroughly and giving Naomi a smile over his shoulder.

Jessica pointed to Ethan's attire—a button-up and dress pants—and folded her arms. She said, "Doesn't your dad get off at five?" Then she pointed to the clock up on the wall. It read eight.

Naomi glanced back at her father. Looking away she asked, "Did you just get home from work?"

Ethan nodded, setting down the kitchen towel and turning down the gas. "Yeah, I had some extra patients that took me pretty late today but don't worry, dinner won't be long. I promise." He wasn't facing her.

Naomi stayed silent.

Her father was the one who spoke again. He turned the burners off completely then moved to open the cupboard and gather plates. "Actually, why don't you set the table, Naomi?"

She nodded and filled one arm with three porcelain plates and utensils and the other with three place mats and quickly went to distribute them on the dining table. Jessica followed her as she set each of them down, and when she pulled out a chair to sit, Jessica did the same. Across the table from each other, they sat in silence. Naomi went to take out her phone from her pocket and Jessica kicked her under the table.

Naomi pulled her arm back. Maybe dancers at the New York City Ballet didn't use their phones at the dinner table either. Maybe they used the time waiting for food to mentally rehearse instead. Under the table, her feet began to perform. Jessica smiled. Naomi kept her eyes on the place mats.

Her dad brought over the plates of food shortly thereafter. Mountains of steaming rice were toppling over into the curry chicken, and the aroma quickly filled up the dining room. Aja had established long ago that these were the portions that were served in her house. She often told Naomi that this was what a real meal looked like, and that the rest of the United States had gotten it all wrong. But Naomi knew, especially with Jessica looking at her, that she couldn't eat all of this. Ballet costumes stopped after a certain size.

Ethan set Naomi's plate down before his own. As he grabbed the hot sauce and took a seat, he asked, "How was class?"

It wasn't class, she wanted to say. It was rehearsal. For Grand Prix. How don't you know that? "It was good."

Naomi watched her father obliviously nod in response and wondered how skilled she had become at acting. Onstage, she faked everything, just as she was supposed to. All the highs and lows of her performances were cued, counted, and rehearsed so she could bring to life someone who was not her. But this dining table wasn't a stage. This building was a home, not a theater, and yet she found the lights a little too bright as she fought to suppress her own emotions long enough to perform whatever feeling would give her the most approval from a crowd. Right now, that was a hesitant father and a hypercritical best friend.

Ethan looked up and, still chewing, asked, "How're you holding up?"

The easier answer slipped out again. "Good."

A few beats passed between them. Ethan swallowed and rested his fork on his plate. "You know," he began. "You don't have to practice every day. If you're not up for it, you can stay home. I'm sure everyone would understand, Naomi."

The walls began to shift but Naomi kept her eyes on her plate. Who was "everyone"? Surely not Valentino, who she was sure would punish her the moment she stepped in the studio again. Definitely not the other girls, who would smirk confidently to themselves, knowing she was weaker than they were. Didn't he know dancers didn't take days off?

"I'm fine."

Her father watched her momentarily. "No one would blame you if you wanted to take a break, Naomi."

Jessica scoffed.

"I already told you, Dad. I'm fine." Then Naomi looked at him and added, "I promise."

Ethan looked as if he was about to say more before he sank back into himself and whatever words he was going to utter dissolved in his mouth. He cleared his throat and picked up his fork. It had been like this a lot since the funeral. Her father would attempt to connect with her but he'd always come up just short of being able to scale the wall Naomi had put up. Really, it was years in the making. Before ballet, Ethan had been the parent Naomi went to about everything. But over the years, Aja had invested more time into ballet with Naomi, and after a few years of the Riverside Dance Academy, Naomi became synonymous with ballet. As a result, everything between her and her father eroded. These were the types of interactions that were left.

They sat and ate in silence for a few more minutes, and when that became too unbearable, Ethan took out his phone and began to scroll through it. For the remaining thirty minutes, dinner was just Naomi, Ethan, and Jessica sitting around the wooden dining table in the quiet.

Before bed, Naomi was using a pair of scissors to etch the bottom of her pointe shoes in order to give them extra friction, while Jessica stood in the corner. She was suggesting ideas for how Naomi could impress the judges from the School of American Ballet.

Then, suddenly, she said, "Do you think you make him proud?"

"Who?" Naomi asked, cutting into the bottom of her pointe shoes.

"Your father. If he was proud of you don't you think he would have remembered that today was your first rehearsal for Prix?"

"I'm sure he just has a lot on his mind."

"Naomi, you're his daughter. He should have known. Unless he doesn't care because he doesn't think you're good enough."

Naomi chewed her bottom lip.

"Are you?"

Naomi blinked. "Am I what?"

Jessica stepped forward once. "Good enough."

Naomi sputtered. "I—I am. Valentino said I had a chance at Prix."

"Yeah, well, I'm not convinced. And neither is your dad, apparently. And everyone else woke up earlier than you today." Jessica leaped up. "It's that stupid phone. It's distracting you too much." Jessica took the cell phone off the nightstand where Naomi had left it and threw it into the last of her dresser drawers.

"Jessica, wait!"

"Come on, you need to practice." She grabbed Naomi by the elbow and dragged her up. Naomi's grip on the pointe shoes slipped. The sharpened edge of the scissors dug into her skin. It birthed red against her palm.

Naomi flinched. "Jessi—"

Her best friend shushed her. "Principal dancers get hurt every day. Do you want this or not?" Jessica's fingernails were carving crescent moons into Naomi's skin. Naomi couldn't say no. She didn't want to. Her hand dripped velvet as tears dared her eyes but never got the courage to fall. She told herself it didn't hurt. She told herself it didn't hurt. She told herself it didn't hurt.

Jessica said, "Good. Let's start stretching."