“You know, the O. Henry story. The girl sells her hair for a pocket-watch thing for a Christmas present—”
“No, not that,” Stevie said. “I meant, what did you mean about going into the city to save your part?”
My eyes went wide as I realized what I’d just done. I’d been intending to tell Stevie the plan just as we were pulling into the tunnel to lead us into Grand Central, well past the point of no return. But there was no time like the present, I figured as I turned to face her more fully. “So okay, here’s the thing,” I said, giving her a smile. “What if we—”
“Kat.” Stevie’s eyes narrowed. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything,” I said, talking fast, just wanting to get to the point where she was fine with this. “Here’s my idea. Mr. Campbell has the premiere of his play tonight at eight. And so I thought we could go and see it, since the reservation is so late!”
Stevie folded her arms, her face impassive. “You just now thought that?”
I decided to drop any pretense—I hated lying to Stevie, and it wasn’t like she was buying it anyway. “Okay, fine. I thought it back at home. But listen, it’ll fix everything,” I said, my voice rising. The guy sitting across the aisle, reading a thick fantasy novel, frowned at me, and I leaned closer to Stevie and dropped my voice a little. “Just think about it. Mr. Campbell is concerned about our dedication, and he can’t cast the play because of it. But! If he sees that we’ve shown up, gone out of our way to support his art, he’ll realize how dedicated we are. He’ll see how serious we are. It’ll help us for the Lear casting, and the musical, too.” I smiled at Stevie and leaned back, but she wasn’t looking at me.
Stevie was looking down at her clutch, snapping and unsnapping the closure. “I thought…,” she said, then shook her head and took a breath. “I thought that you wanted to go into the city to celebrate my birthday.”
“I do,” I said firmly. “And we will! We get to do both! We’ll get to see the premiere of a play and go to Josephine’s. Best night ever, right?”
“We aren’t going to have time—”
“We are,” I said, speaking over her. “That’s the best part. The reservation’s not until nine thirty, and the show starts at eight. It might be a super-short play, in which case, no problem. But if it’s not, maybe you duck out a little early, go down to Josephine’s, and I’ll be right behind you after I put in a good word for both of us with Mr. Campbell. Perfect, right?” Stevie nodded, but she still wasn’t looking at me, and I felt a tiny, guilty pull in my stomach. “Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad,” Stevie said immediately. I could sense that she wanted to say something else, and sure enough, after a moment of silence, she took a breath. “I just—why you didn’t just tell me this back home?”
“I’m telling you now!”
Stevie gave me a look. “Come on.”
“I mean…” I hesitated. “It’s kind of Six Flags all over again, you know?”
“How is it Six Flags?”
“You didn’t want to go when I told you where we were going—”
“You mean after you’d kidnapped me, you always forget to mention that part—”
“And if I’d asked, you would have said no, but once we were there, we had the best time. Right?” Stevie nodded slowly. The toddler’s head started to creep back up over the seat again—I could see straight-across bangs, then wide blue eyes. I made a funny face at her and she dropped down immediately. “I just think that sometimes… you stand in the way of things that would make you happy.” It was something I’d been feeling for a while but never said out loud to my best friend.
Stevie drew back slightly, frowning. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s not a bad thing,” I said quickly, “just that sometimes you say no initially to stuff that’s really fun. Like Six Flags.”
“I don’t…” Stevie shook her head and snapped her clutch open and closed a few more times. “I don’t do that,” she said, her voice quiet.
“Okay.” I figured we had lots of time in the future to talk about the fact that Stevie did, in fact, do this. “So… you’re good with going to the play?”
Stevie looked out the window and let out a long breath, like she was preparing to say something. But when she turned back to me, she was smiling ruefully. “I mean, do I have a choice?”
“It’ll be great,” I said quickly, relief flooding through me. “It’ll be so great. We’ll get to see it, and then go to Josephine’s, and it’s just going to be the best night ever.” I nudged her with my shoulder and settled back into my seat, smiling.
We rode in silence for a few stops, and I was on the verge of asking Stevie for Ophelia again—it was hard to be without your phone—when she turned to me. “Just don’t put everything on this, okay, Kat? I don’t think Mr. Campbell is going cast you based on your showing up to his play or not.”
“I know that,” I said, trying not to feel stung by this, “obviously. But it can’t hurt.”
“I just think he’s going to decide what he’s going to decide,” Stevie said, shaking her head, “and that you don’t need to, like, make a pilgrimage to show your devotion.…”
“It’s not that,” I said, starting to get annoyed. “And it’s not just for me. It might help you, too, not that you need it.”
“Wait, what does that mean?” Stevie asked, frowning.
“Come on,” I said, rolling my eyes at her. “You know you’re the best actress in the department.”
“It’s not true. You’re—”
“Not as good as you, and I know that, and it’s fine. It is,” I said firmly, knowing she was about to start arguing this. “But it can’t hurt, right? For Lear, for the musical…”
“Yeah,” Stevie said. She looked at me for a moment, almost like she was deciding something, then took a breath. “That might not actually… matter as much.”
My head whipped around to stare at her. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” she said, turning her clutch over on her lap, end over end, “that I’m thinking about… not auditioning for the musical.”
“What are you talking about, not auditioning for the musical?” I asked, hoping this was just a really weird joke I didn’t get yet. “We always do the musical. The musical’s the whole spring.” It was, too—because there were songs to learn and choreography to memorize, and because the orchestra and band were involved (sometimes too involved, like when we did City of Angels last year and the band had gotten way too into the jazz element of it all and Ms. Wallace had had constant fights with the band director about saxophone volume), the rehearsal time was longer. As soon as we struck the set for the Shakespeare play in February, the rest of the year was the musical. I had a serviceable soprano, but Stevie had a brassy alto with a belt—which meant while I was stuck singing love duets, she was usually getting fun, showstopping numbers, and sometimes I’d see her face as her applause just kept coming after she’d killed it, just waves of it rolling in as she kept trying to start the scene again but the audience wouldn’t let her. It was like seeing someone’s unfiltered happiness. “You love the musical.”