14-year-old Claire Goldsmith attends the Dads’ Dance at her dance school recital. This is the first year that Claire is old enough to participate in the annual father-daughter dance. Though she has been waiting for this, everything changed one day when Claire’s father “tilted and slumped over sideways” (2). Though Claire doesn’t explain what happened to her father, he’s now unable to dance with her.

Claire’s friends, Alanna Salas and Katherine Byrne, attempt to console Claire, but she shrugs them away. Claire thinks back to happier times with her father, especially when he taught her how to swim. He’d always promise to catch her, though he now can “barely even catch himself” (4). 

A year before the Dad’s Dance, Claire has an outdoor sleepover for her 13th birthday. She invites her dance school friends Alanna and Katherine, and her best and only friend from middle school, Roshni Shah.

The girls talk about how cursed Claire is because it always rains on her birthday (it has rained on seven of her previous birthday parties). When Roshni lightheartedly laughs at Claire’s misfortune, Claire feels like her friends are mocking her, causing her to raise her