Page 23

“Tell us, Kenzie...” she begins, sweeping her arm out like she’s greeting an imaginary studio audience. I almost laugh. “Who’s been the biggest role model for you as a dancer?”

Now I do bark a laugh. “Wasn’t that one of my questions?”

She shrugs. “I told you some of them were good.”

“They were all good, even if they weren’t fun enough for you.”

She smacks her notebook down in front of me. “Answer the question, Kenzie!”

I make a show out of shoving the notebook back over to her side of the table.

“Fine. My biggest role model is Catherine Stewart.”

Moira snorts.

I cross my arms. “If you’re going to laugh at my answers, I’m not going to give them to you.”

“Oh come on. Your biggest role model is not actually Catherine Stewart. That’s the biggest suck-up answer I’ve ever heard. Like, really, your boss?”

“It’s true,” I say, my arms still locked over my chest. “She is.”

“But she’s so...”

“She’s stern, yeah,” I answer, “and she doesn’t mess around. She knows what she wants, and she makes it happen. I don’t think many people realize just how hard Catherine works for what she has. The school didn’t just fall into her lap. I mean sure, she inherited it, but the place was halfway to losing its reputation when she took over. She’s only so strict because that’s what it takes. She’s fierce, and she’s protective. If she knows a dancer has potential, she will not let anyone or anything get in their way.”

I don’t realize how much I’ve said until I pause and realize I’m out of breath. My heart is pounding, and I can feel my cheeks getting hot. I barely stop myself in time to keep from blurting out all the things Catherine has given me.

She picked me up for competitions my mom couldn’t drive me to. She gave us extensions on the due dates for my academy fees. She made sure I always had everything I needed to dance to my full potential, but what really mattered is the way she looked at eight-year-old me and saw something, something nobody else seemed to have time to notice.

She looked at me and saw someone who grew up just like her, like a tiny speck teetering on the edge of some huge abyss. She gave me something to hold onto. She taught me to be strong.

“Wow,” Moira says when I don’t go on. Her eyes are wide and searching as they travel over my face. “Okay, so, you’re saying there’s like a...hidden soft side to Miss Catherine, under all that...incessant meanness?”

“Some people don’t have the luxury of being soft.”

Moira presses her lips together. “That doesn’t mean they have to be cruel.”

“She isn’t cruel. She’s just—”

“She called me tubby.”

The end of my sentence crawls back down my throat. Moira stares down at the table, and I can see a flush start to creep up her neck.

“I heard her comment on my weight, like, multiple times,” she murmurs. “It was all years ago, but still, I don’t see that she’s changed much since.”

I open and close my mouth a few times, searching for words that don’t come.

As much as I don’t want to believe Catherine would go that far, part of me can hear exactly how she must have sounded when she said it.

“So yeah, that’s the kind of thing your role model does, just so you know.”

I swallow and try again. “Moira, she shouldn’t have said that. I...”

My eyes drift to the camera screen, where the little red circle is still blinking to show we’re recording this.

“Can we shut that off?” I ask, jerking my chin towards the camera after I’ve looked back at Moira. “It’s distracting, and I want to—”

“Make sure there’s no evidence when you call her out in private and then keep supporting her in public?”