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stepped into the light to meet it. She’s never been afraid of anything.
    Except us.
    She’s afraid of us being us.
    “You have to stay with me,” she whispers in my memory.
    But I can’t. If this is a risk she’s not sure she can take alone, I’ll have to lead. I’ll have to be a little ahead of her.
    I’m going to break a promise to Aly for the first time ever.
    I hope I’m not wrong.

Chapter Six
    Aly
    Johan snaps his fingers in my face. “Do not idle! Start in second, end in fifth. Do you think this is rocket science? Two, three, four, go. No, no, no. Alyona! Where is your energy?”
    Our three days of performances in Amsterdam begin tomorrow night. Then we’re off to Prague, Paris and Saint Petersburg. Zed and Adrian have been calling that part of the tour the Euro-P-ean Cities. We’re all sick of hearing the joke, but when Zed whispers it to me during class, I can’t help but smile. It’s a moment of relief exactly when I need it the most. All of us are exhausted from the intense schedule already. I have no idea how we’re going to get through the whole tour. I can’t feel my feet anymore, and I think my shins are made of thousands of tiny fractures.
    I rise on pointe, sink into a demi-plié, and then move into a glissade, ending in fifth. I press my lips together tightly and step forward into arabesque. Pain has a sound in my bones, like a scream that I’ve never let out in all of my dance career, in all my injuries. I stretch my leg behind me as long as I can make it, putting all the weight on my right leg, which wants to give the same way I want to sit down, the same way I want to give up. The same way I just can’t imagine sitting down because I’ve never given up. I’ve never sat down.
    Johan spins to the whole troupe, all twenty-six of us, there in the center of the floor, some people checking themselves in the mirror, but most everyone just standing still, grateful for a break, and we’re not even thirty minutes into our rehearsal. He raises his arms and then lets them fall.
    “Are you all asleep?” Johan yells, and his voice bounces off the walls. I flinch, and I’m not the only one. “Are you all asleep? You have no endurance! You have no drive! They came here for a show, not to see American dancers falling asleep on their feet.”
    No one says anything because there’s nothing to say. Glaring at me, Johan sends us back to start through the variation again.
    At the end of class, we all lie on the floor, sweat stinging our eyes and our muscles throbbing dully. I lie on my back, hands on my stomach, eyes closed. Everything below my knee prickles, like it’s fallen permanently asleep.
    Sakura pushes a water bottle into my elbow. “Alyona. What hurts?”
    “So tired,” I say instead of answering her. I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t in pain. Right now, it’s just registering slightly higher on the scale than other days.
    “It’s hard to tour like this,” agrees Sakura. “But four nights, three performances, and then we’re on to Prague!”
    “Not sure that’s helping,” Zed says, his voice low and quiet next to me. “Hey, Kitten.”
    “I can’t dance,” I whisper. “I’m going to be such a mess out there.”
    “On the upside,” Zed says cheerfully, “your hot mess is everyone else’s absolute best.”
    “My hot mess is still my hot mess,” I mutter, a little sullenly, and his fingers brush my sweaty hair out of my face. “I’m going to screw you up.”
    “You’re not going to screw me up.”
    “You don’t know that.”
    “I do, Aly,” Zed says, and I sit up, opening my eyes to stare at him. He leans away from me onto his hands. The corners of his mouth lift into a smile, and I can’t keep my eyes off the lines of his lips. “Not only that, I promise to help you. I won’t let you fall. Everything will be okay.”
    “You can’t promise that,” I say. “No one can.”
    “True, but I’m pretty sure my best is a pretty good promise,” he