Last spring, she saw a flyer at the laundromat, taped crooked above the busted change machine.
Little pink silhouettes, sparkles, “Beginner Ballet” in big looping letters.
She stared so hard the dryers could’ve caught fire, and she wouldn’t have noticed.
Then she looked up at me like she’d just seen a golden nugget.
I read the price and felt my stomach knot.
“Daddy, please,” she whispered.
Those numbers might as well have been written in another language.
But she was still staring, fingers sticky from vending-machine Skittles, eyes huge.
“Daddy,” she said again, softer, like she was scared to wake up, “that’s my class.”
I heard myself answer before thinking.
