Coach Moretti nodded once, eyes on the road. "Then they don't."
"Audrey thinks they're ugly."
"Audrey is seventeen and being looked at by strangers who can change her next four years. Ugly is a word people use when they're scared the room will sort them. It doesn't make her right. It makes her loud."
Willa turned that over. She had wanted the coach to call Audrey mean, so she could rest. The other sentence was harder and fit better. "She took my recital spot. Last spring. Not took. Mom said the studio only had one family slot in the show because we were behind on the fees, and Audrey needed the footage for her applications. I was supposed to do the Tuesday class piece. They put her in it instead. She already had three pieces."
"I heard a version of that," the coach said. "From the Tuesday teacher, not from a gossip. You stopped coming to Tuesday."
"I didn't stop dancing. I stopped coming where it cost money we were going to give her anyway."
"Where, then."
Willa hesitated. The places were hers, and saying them felt like handing over a key. "Church basement after youth group. The janitor's name is Mr. Alvarez. He lets me stack chairs and use the floor. And the community center track bathrooms have a mirror long enough if I stand far back. And sometimes the elementary gym before the custodian locks up, if I help put the scooters away." She swallowed. "I wasn't hiding it to be dramatic. If I said it at home it became a discussion about Audrey's knees and gas money."
"I'm not going to turn your basement into a press release," Coach Moretti said. "At the audition, if they ask where you train, you can say community and independent work with me since spring. That's true. The rest is yours unless you want to spend it."
"I don't."
"Good."
They drove past a row of bare trees. A woman in a camel coat waited at a crosswalk with a dog, and for a half second Willa's body thought it was her mother and prepared an apology. It was not her mother. The dog was wearing a sweater. Willa let her shoulders drop.