“Well, I’m glad you’re getting to celebrate with him,” I said, giving her a smile, even though it pained me to see how her whole face had lit up. I exchanged a glance with Teri, who shot me a look that clearly said we’ll see.
Ever since the divorce, Mr. Sinclair had a habit of flaking on Stevie that filled me with an incandescent rage. In moments where I could manage to give him the benefit of the doubt, I could see he wasn’t being cruel on purpose. But he would invariably get busy and cancel plans, and Stevie, being Stevie, would tell him it was fine, even when it clearly wasn’t. And he would, for some reason, choose to believe this, and the cycle would start all over again.
Because it wasn’t fine, and I knew it bothered her. She never came out and said this, but then, being best friends with Stevie was sometimes like being in a Pinter play: you had to learn what was happening by what wasn’t being said.
But there had been too many instances in the past for me to forgive him, or trust now that he’d come through for her. I’d picked Stevie up late on too many occasions, going to the diner just to try and salvage a night she’d spent waiting for her dad, who’d invariable cancelled; tried to comfort her when she was red-faced and shaking and blinking back tears after he’d missed the final performance of the fall play Arcadia—his last chance to see it; tried not to see the look on her face when she would see my dad waiting for me after the curtain call with flowers that always made him sneeze.
“Joy shouldn’t be allowed to go by that name,” I pronounced as we passed the dumpsters—not a single vaper to be found. “Like, people’s names need to be somehow indicative of their personality or they’re just misleading.”
“Should there be a rule?” Stevie grinned at me.
“There should be a rule!”
“Like people named Sunny are required to be happy, at least some of the time.”
“You can’t be named Saylor if you hate the water.”
“And at least you’re safe,” Stevie said. “Since you like cats.”
“This is true,” I said, “for all the good it did me.” We didn’t have any pets, despite the fact that I’d begged for one for most of my childhood.
“Well, Ryan Camper’s in the clear,” Teri said. “He loves camping.”
Stevie smiled. “That’s great.”
“Wait, so do you have plans?” I asked, slightly annoyed that we’d gotten derailed before remembering that I was the one who derailed us. “I heard there’s going to be a party at the Orchard.…”
“I do have plans,” Teri said, shooting me an apologetic smile. “Ryan and I are going to Netflix and chill.”
Stevie just frowned; I jumped in. “You’re going to what now?”
“We’re going to watch movies together! I call him—or he calls me—and then we start the movie at the same time, so that we can talk about it as we watch.”
“I think you should call it a different name then,” I said, shaking my head. “That—means something else.”
“But you’re welcome to come Netflix and chill with us,” Teri went on, clearly not getting this. “I have a great lineup of movies tonight and all the best snacks.…”
I slowed down as we approached the theater building, my heart starting to pound again.
“What?” Stevie asked.
“Just,” I said, taking a deep, shaky breath, “about to go and meet my destiny.”
“I’m really glad that you’re keeping this in perspective,” Stevie said, raising an eyebrow.
“Don’t you want to find out the casting?”
“Of course,” Stevie said a little too quickly. “Of course I do.”
I gave her a look as we started walking again. From the beginning, I’d been more focused on these auditions. I was the one suggesting we prepare our monologues and scene work; I was the one who’d wanted to debrief every night after each callback, speculating and theorizing for hours about what Mr. Campbell was thinking, which way he might be leaning. I’d just put it down to Stevie being sure she’d get Goneril and not even having to worry about it, but now I wasn’t so sure.
Emery Townshend was hurrying up behind us, doing that walk that’s almost running but not quite. “Well,” I said, letting out a long breath and nodding at Emery, “at least we’ll know soon. T minus forty-five minutes until the list.”
“Oh,” Emery said, turning to look at me, her eyebrows flying up. “Did you not hear?” We all just stared at her blankly and she smiled—Emery loved to be the one to break news. “I heard it from Erik. The list isn’t going up today.”
I grabbed Stevie’s arm and felt my stomach plunge as I stared at Emery. “Wait, what?”
CHAPTER 2
Okay, don’t panic,” Stevie said as we stepped inside the theater building.
“I’m not panicking. Who’s panicking?” I said this louder than I intended to, and Eric (with a c) looked up from where he was sitting on the couch next to Jayson and Erik (with a k).
“Um—you?” he ventured.
“Do we know for sure the list isn’t going up today?” Stevie asked, her voice calm and reasonable. Stevie, for reasons passing understanding, didn’t want to keep acting in college or try to do it professionally. She had it planned out—she wanted to go to Northwestern for undergrad and then Harvard for law school, just like her dad had done. She intended to be a lawyer, also like her dad. And while I disagreed with this career path entirely, since she would be throwing her talent away—it would be like Simone Biles going into taxidermy—I had to admit that there were times when I could see it, Future Stevie methodically working through some contract, taking the legalese point by point.
“Well, that’s what I heard,” Emery said. The thought that the list wouldn’t be up today had honestly not occurred to me. It would be like the sun rising in the west—it just wasn’t what was supposed to happen.
I crossed the lobby and sat on the floor, trying to steady myself, my back against the side of the couch.
Mr. Campbell would sometimes complain, when he was passing through the lobby and we were all lounging around, eating (or throwing) snacks, that this building wasn’t even ten years old and we’d turned it into a rec room. He wasn’t wrong—I’d probably spent more time in the theater department lobby than anywhere else in the school over the last four years. If I had an open and wasn’t going off campus, I’d always hang out here. Even if I was just doing homework while curled in one of the overstuffed armchairs, I still preferred to be over there than anywhere else. It was our headquarters, our hideaway, our clubhouse. The theater building was home. All the rest was just a school.
Stevie shot me a look as she came over and sat on the couch behind me, and Teri joined me on the floor. “I don’t think you should worry,” Stevie said in a half whisper, widening her eyes toward Emery, across the room on the opposite couch. “You know how she is.” She pulled at her hair, and it tumbled down from her makeshift bun in one long sheet, like she was a cartoon princess.