Willa's group went third. The girl with glitter started a half beat early and corrected with a smile she had practiced. Number 11 forgot the drop and hopped instead, then flushed so hard Willa felt it in her own face. Willa hit the suspend. She felt the shoe grip and release. On the turn she spotted the exit sign, a red word that did not care about her family. The drop met the floor on the right part of her shin, not her knee, the way she had taught herself on Mr. Alvarez's tile when she put a towel down so she would not crack the church. She rose on the count, not after it.
"Thank you," the teacher said, which meant next group, not you are beloved.
They sat along the wall. Willa's heart was a hand knocking. She drank water. She did not wipe her shoes. Across the room, Coach Moretti sat with her arms folded, not performing pride. When Willa's eyes snagged on her, the coach touched two fingers to her own sternum, a small reminder: breathe there. Willa did.
Names and numbers for the minute were called in a different order, not a ranking, or a ranking disguised as alphabet. Fourteen came after twenty-two and before three. The speaker clicked. A woman asked, "Do you have music, or will you use counts?"
Willa stood. Her mouth was dry in a new way. "I can do it in counts. Or if there's a piano, the slow part of the hymn, the one that sounds like a question. I don't know the official name."
The man in the leaf-colored sweater looked up, interested against his will. "You want live?"
"If that's allowed. If not, counts are fine. I know it without sound."
A younger staff person uncovered the piano halfway, enough to reach the keys. "Hum a bar."
Willa hummed. Her voice was thin and on pitch. It was the hymn Sam had played badly on the radio, the one he said his mother used to hum when the pasta water took too long. She had built the minute on its question, not on its answer. The pianist found it. He played less than she feared, which was a kindness.
She walked to the center. The brown shoes made a soft sound, canvas, not the clean tick of leather. She did not bow the way the glitter girl had bowed. She nodded, because a nod was what she had.
Then she danced.
It was not a trick reel. There was no kick that tried to reach the balcony. There was a phrase that started small, in the hands, as if she were inviting a knot through rather than yanking it. She traveled on a diagonal. She suspended where the hymn asked a question and did not answer it early to please the table. She turned, not the most rotations in the room, but on the music, and when the shoe's thin toe slipped a half inch she adjusted her shoulder and stayed in the sentence. She dropped, rose, reached toward a person who was not in the room, and pulled the reach back before it became begging. The last four counts were almost still. Stillness was the hardest thing she had practiced, because in the basement stillness felt like being caught.