"In the bag."
"Shoulders."
"I know my shoulders."
"I love you," Patricia said, because it was true, and because she was afraid of the other true things.
Audrey opened the door. The cold took the sentence and did not give it back. "Love you too," she said, automatic and real. "Don't hover by the judges. They hate hovering mothers. Hover by the door if you have to hover."
Patricia watched her daughter walk toward the lights in a black jacket that shone like a promise somebody had paid to keep. She sat with her hands on the wheel until a car behind her honked, politely, the way people honk at the start of important days.
***
Calder Academy sat in a brick building that had once been a school and had not forgotten. Tall windows. A stone name over the door with the year worn soft. Inside, the air was warmer than Willa expected and smelled like rosin, floor cleaner, and somebody's orange. Children and a few teenagers stood along the wall in black warm-ups, their shoes a parade of leather and new canvas and one pair of pink boots that had nothing to do with anything. Numbers were being written on stickers at a table.
Willa felt the brown shoes announce themselves. A girl about her age glanced down and then away, not cruel, just quick, the way you look at a fact you are glad is not yours. Willa lifted her chin a half inch because her father had said feet follow the face more than people admit.
Coach Moretti spoke to the woman at the table in a low voice, showed the form, and came back with a sticker, 14, and a nod toward the locker corridor.
"Bay three," she said. "Change. I'll be in the house seats, left side, not in your eye line unless you need a face that isn't a stranger. You don't need to look for me. I'll be there anyway."
The garment bag unzipped to a plain black long-sleeve warm-up and black shorts, soft from washing, a size that would not swallow her. No sequins. No name. Willa changed in a stall because the open bay felt like a test she had not studied. The warm-up fit. She put the brown shoes back on over the clean socks. The blister complained once and then agreed to be quiet if she tied the left shoe a finger looser.