“He does,” Teri said, smiling as she spun the R charm on her necklace. “But he still might have some friends around here. Remember, I told you how he comes into the city sometimes to do his modeling?”
“You should absolutely set Stevie up with one of Ryan Camper’s friends,” I said, widening my eyes very slightly at Stevie. “Especially if they’re models.”
“Um… I don’t know…,” Stevie murmured. I popped the top on my Diet Coke and offered her the first sip, but she shook her head. I took a grateful gulp—was there anything better than cold Diet Coke? Stevie knew my hierarchy: fountain was ideal, then cans, and then if you had no other option whatsoever, bottled.
“Hey, how’d the project go?” I said, turning to both Stevie and Teri, both of whom shook their heads in unison. Stevie and Teri were in AP English together, which I was very jealous of. The only non-theater class Stevie and I had ever had together was sophomore year PE, in which we’d both almost failed because we’d spent the whole time talking and almost no time memorizing the rules of volleyball. “That bad?” I asked. I held out the Dorito bag to them again, feeling like they both could use a snack.
This group project had seemed doomed from the start. Teri never wanted to be the one in charge, or the one making any decisions, and Stevie avoided confrontation at all costs—so, fairly predictably, their terrible third partner, Bryce, had taken over and was counting on them to do all the work, despite the fact that he hadn’t even read the book, and still seemed to believe The Mill on the Floss had something to do with dental hygiene.
“Well, the two of us had planned on doing the class presentation,” Teri said.
“You know, since we don’t think George Eliot is a man,” Stevie continued, annoyance creeping into her tone.
Teri nodded. “We’d practiced and everything. But then Bryce jumped up and just started talking.…”
“You should have told Bryce to knock it off! And also that he might want to try, you know, reading the book,” I said, and Stevie snort-laughed, my favorite kind of her laughs, since it meant that she’d been caught by surprise. “Did you?” I asked, looking at my best friend, who just shook her head.
I wasn’t surprised. Stevie didn’t like drama, or arguments, or yelling—at least, not offstage. It had shocked me to see she was always the one volunteering for any scene where you got to scream and cry and rage—her hand was always the first in the air in Scene Study when we were doing Mamet. Offstage, though, she liked things quiet and calm, everyone getting along, whereas I never minded a little volume.
But even as I would nudge her about it, I understood that was just who she was—it was who her whole family was. Stevie had grown up as an only child in a house filled with priceless art, with thick woven carpets on the floor that seemed to muffle everything. Whenever I was in Stevie’s house, I automatically started speaking more quietly. You couldn’t imagine anyone yelling in her house—not in front of the Rothkos.
“Want me to have a word with him?”
“No,” said Stevie and Teri together, and I tried not to be insulted by that as we took the four steps down to the north exit together, three sets of feet falling at the same time.
We pushed open the door and walked outside, heading across campus, past the faculty parking lot and the dumpsters people were always vaping behind. The theater building was separate from the rest of the school, and big—two stories, with a main stage, a black box theater, a tech shop, a costume shop, and classrooms.
I drew in a breath—there was a dampness in the air that meant snow later, I was sure of it. “It’s going to be cold tonight,” I said, glancing at Stevie. “Might be even colder in the city, since you’ll be walking around.”
Stanwich was forty-five minutes outside Manhattan by train, an hour by car. It was a commuter town, which meant you never ever needed to specify which city you meant. You always meant New York—nobody was ever talking about Hartford or Boston or New Haven.
Stevie pulled her coat on without breaking her stride, switching her purse expertly from shoulder to shoulder as she did. “I don’t think I’m going to be spending a lot of time walking, but thanks for the tip.”
I pulled my coat over my shoulders without actually putting it on and turned to Teri. “Are you busy tonight? Stevie’s going into the city and abandoning me.”
“Ooh, fun,” Teri said, clapping her hands together. “Well—the city part. Not the abandoning part.”
“I’m not abandoning you,” Stevie said, rolling her eyes.
“I’m just kidding.”
“I know you are.”
“What are you doing? Seeing a show?” Teri asked.
“My dad’s taking me to dinner at Josephine’s.” Stevie’s tone was offhand, but she wasn’t fooling me. She’d been looking forward to this for a month.
Stevie had turned eighteen last week, and like always, she didn’t want a big fuss made for her birthday. I had never understood this—I loved when a big fuss was made. To mark the occasion, she’d done a high tea with her mom at the nicest hotel in town, and then she and Teri and I had gone to the movies and had pizza afterward. But I did arrange for cupcakes and candles post-pizza—you can’t celebrate a birthday, especially not one as big as eighteen, without a little sparkle.
She was celebrating with her dad tonight—he had somehow gotten a reservation at Josephine’s, the tiny fancy restaurant in the West Village that celebrities were always being photographed at.
Stevie’s parents had gotten divorced two years ago. I wasn’t totally surprised when it was finally official—Stevie had been spending more time at my house after rehearsals, and always wanting to sleep over at my house, not hers. It was still hard to watch her go through it, and it made me realize how little I’d considered my own parents’ marriage. It was boring and steady, like background music, a TV left on in the other room, nothing I had to worry about.
Stevie’s dad moved into the city and got an apartment in a doorman building on Central Park West; her mom stayed in their house and went back to using her maiden name, Pearce. It seemed like this was just the new normal, but a year ago, Stevie’s dad got remarried. Joy Lampitoc was an accountant at Stevie’s dad’s law firm. She had three children from a previous marriage, which meant that Stevie suddenly had three stepsiblings. They were all older than us, and they all lived in New York City. Stevie had never said anything outright—all she would say was that they were fine, that she didn’t know them well. But it was clear to me that all three of them—Mallory, Margaux, and Mateo—were mean jerks. Anyone who wouldn’t make Stevie feel welcomed and included couldn’t be anything but. I assumed they had gotten this from their mother—Joy had, as far as we’d been able to tell, never once smiled.
“It’s just you guys, right?” I asked. “Not the stepmonster?”
“Yes, and don’t call her that,” Stevie said automatically, even though I could tell she was trying not to smile. “Joy’s not so bad.” I made a hrm noise that meant oh really, but Stevie continued on. “When my dad called to make sure I was free, before getting the reservation, he said that he wanted it to be just the two of us. So that he could ‘see me off on the path to adulthood.’ ”