Esme talked about how she spent most weekends at the physical therapist, forcing various bones back into place. She talked about ballet like an arranged marriage, inevitable and unromantic, something she’d known about herself longer than she’d known herself. She compared her body to a rigged car that had been in a series of small accidents, haphazardly pieced together with duct tape and mismatched fenders, reliable and dimpled with dings. She was enviably even-tempered in the way that girls try and sedate themselves into being at that age. But she wasn’t performing, not really. It was as if thrusting all of her weight onto the tip of her largest toe meant everything else was easy. Her ennui gave her a wisdom that made other girls—eager girls—seem stupid, still basking in stupid fantasies of disappearing into the stupid lives of stupid men.