"I'll come," she said. "I'll sit in the back. I won't clap off the beat."
Patricia's mouth tightened, not in anger this time. In recognition. "That was an ugly thing to say."
"It was accurate about how you talk," Willa said, and then, because she did not want to win a war in a lobby, "I can clap on the beat. I know how."
"Bring your shoes," Patricia said. She heard it. She almost smiled, a small broken weather. "They're already on you. I meant— bring yourself. Let's go before I say something else I'll have to unpack in a hallway."
***
The pavilion had the tired brightness of a day that had already chosen its favorites and was letting everyone else finish. Willa slipped in behind her mother and took a seat high in the back, windbreaker zipped, brown shoes tucked under the bleacher lip where they would not become a conversation for strangers. She could see Audrey on the side, black costume, pale shoes, hoop earrings bright as small moons. Audrey looked like the poster of the life. She also looked like a girl whose jaw was clenched so hard the earrings trembled.
A last across-the-floor was called for the seniors the state school still wanted a second look at. Audrey went. From the back, Willa saw the thing the hallway never showed: the moment before the run, when Audrey's hand shook once and then went still by force. She danced clean. She danced a little safe. On the turn the picker had cared about, she was exactly on time, and the safety made the landing pretty and slightly empty, the way a thank-you note is empty when it has been copied from a book. Willa knew the feeling. She had danced that way in the church basement on days when she imagined her mother in the doorway.
Audrey came off breathing through her nose. The navy blazer woman spoke to her for less than a minute. Audrey nodded, smiled the correct size, and walked toward the bleachers as if she had just remembered a coat. She climbed until she found them. She looked at Willa's feet first.
"You're here," she said.
"Callback," Willa said. She did not decorate it. "Not the money yet. Saturday."
Audrey sat on the bench in front of them, sideways, so she could see the floor and her family and neither fully. Sweat had darkened the hair at her temple. Up close she was less poster and more person, a red mark from the costume's strap, a nick of tape on her heel where the perfect shoe had argued.
"Belland liked the turn," she said. "They don't like how careful the rest was. The state woman asked if I'd be willing to train alongside younger students in their summer intensive. She said some of their best recruits come in arrogant and leave honest. She didn't say arrogant. She said 'highly polished.' I heard arrogant. Maybe that's me hearing it."