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“I thought you wanted to win today.” I glance up to watch her take another few steps until she’s level with where I’m sitting, but she props her hip against the wall instead of joining me on the ground. “I thought you were serious, Kenzie.”

“I was.” I sound hoarse, and I pause to swallow. “I did want it. More than anything. I think maybe that’s why I drank. When I woke up late today, at first I panicked about missing the competition, but on the way here, I realized...maybe I ruined my chance today so it would be easier to give it all up. I need to be at home more, clearly. I need to be there for her. For Chris too. Even if I’d won today, I couldn’t have taken the scholarship. Even though Moira...”

Her name sets off a pulsing strobe light of emotions, flashing by too fast for me to latch onto any of them.

“She shouldn’t have done that,” Catherine says.

“No, she shouldn’t have.” I shake my head. “She was trying to help, but...”

“But you’re not a charity case.” Catherine sighs and shifts her stance. “You’re stronger than that, or at least you always have been. This drinking...I’m not impressed, Kenzie. You’re better than that.”

I’m too busy letting her first sentence play on repeat in my head to feel the crushing sensation of shame.

I’m not a charity case.

That’s exactly what I said to Moira, and the hairs on the back of my neck lift when I hear it come out of Catherine’s mouth. That simple but earth-shaking question Moira planted in my mind shakes and thrashes to get my attention.

Why?

Why do I think being strong means not getting any help, not letting anyone in, not letting anyone see any part of what I handle every day?

“You’re better than everything happening at home too.”

I snap my head around to face Catherine, the comment enough to spark something to life in my chest.

“‘Everything happening at home’ is my mother. She’s sick, Catherine. She needs help.”

She sighs again, and the sound fans the sparks into a crackling flame. “She needs help she’s refusing to get, and she’s dragging you down with her. I’ve said it to you for years: you need to—”

“I’m sick of rising above!”

My shout rings out loud enough to make her eyes widen. She stops in the middle of her sentence with her mouth hanging open.

“I’m sick of it,” I repeat, quieter this time but fueled with just as much fire. “I’m sick of pretending. Every time I’m here, or at the studio, or anywhere, I’m pretending. I’m not rising above anything. I’m just hiding it inside me, and you know what? I think that’s what’s dragging me down. I’m not like you, Catherine. Maybe I’m not strong. Maybe I’m not going to have it all like you do. Maybe I’m not your perfect prodigy. I’m just a girl with a fucked up family and an even more fucked up set of ideals.”

I’ve never spoken to her like this. I’ve never even raised my voice to Catherine before, and she stares down at me like there’s an alien inside my body.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Kenzie,” she says after a few moments, “but I do know that if you’d shown up and danced today, you would have won, and you wouldn’t have to be having whatever this...meltdown is. That scholarship was supposed to be yours. It was supposed to help you.”

A sarcastic scoff bursts out of me. “So I should have said yes to Moira? Weren’t you just saying she shouldn’t have done that?”

“It’s not how I intended things to work out, but if you take it, you’ll at least be putting the nine thousand dollars where I intended it to go.”

I go rigid, and my ears whine like I’ve just been hit over the head.

“What do you mean?”

She shifts to lean her back against the banister and crosses her arms over her chest. The blunt ends of her bob sway where they’re tucked behind her ears.

“I knew no one could light a candle to you, Kenzie. I knew if you went for a scholarship like that, you’d win. I believed in you. I always have. I was sick of seeing you throw your future away, and unlike Moira Murray, I understand that opportunities we earn are the only ones that matter, the only ones that aren’t insults, so I made the anonymous donation along with a few instructions. I wasn’t going to tell you, but now...honestly, I don’t know what to do with you, Kenzie.”

I don’t know if it’s the bomb she just dropped or my raging hangover, but either way, the room is spinning again. I draw my knees in close and rest my chin on them to steady myself.

“Do with me?” Something about that tastes bitter in my mouth as I say it back to her.

“Yes. You’re letting all of your potential slip, and I don’t know what else to do about it.”

“You couldn’t have just...just talked to me?” I ask, squeezing my eyes shut to keep the stairwell still. “You really created a whole scholarship to...what? Teach me a lesson?”