Patricia stood just inside, hair still perfect, face not. She saw the warm-up, the sticker half peeled on Willa's chest, the brown shoes dark against the pale lobby tile. She saw the coach. She saw, worse, that the building had gone on without her and had not collapsed.
Willa's first instinct was to hide the shoes behind the bench. Her second was anger, quick and clean as a match. Her third was the old one, the daughter one: make it easy, show the paper, become good news.
She stayed seated. She let her mother cross the lobby.
"You're all right," Patricia said.
"Yes."
"I was told you danced."
"Yes."
Patricia looked at the coach, then back at her daughter, as if the next question had a tax. "And?"
Willa could have made her work for it. The sting behind her eyes argued for that. The sheet on the brick was ten steps away and already true without her voice. She said, "Callback. Saturday. Not the scholarship yet. A callback."
Patricia's face did a thing Willa had not seen in the hallway. It opened a crack and then tried to close and failed. "Today."
"They posted it. It's not a speech."
"No," Patricia said. "I suppose it isn't." She looked down. The shoes were between them, worn, salted, still on. Her throat moved. "I told you not to wear those."