As I stood there, occasionally getting jostled by someone in a hurry, I suddenly felt very clearly that I was seventeen, and in from the suburbs for the night. Everyone else seemed to know exactly where they were going, and I hoped it wasn’t painfully obvious that I had never once been here on my own, without someone to lead the way and tell me where to go.
“Okay,” Stevie said, shaking me out of these thoughts. She looked down at her watch. I saw some tourists with suitcases walk by us, then pause, also stopping to look up at the ceiling. “So we have—what, three hours? Maybe a little less, since we need to get to this play. Where’s Mr. Campbell’s theater?”
“In the theater district,” I said confidently, even though I realized as I said it that I’d left the exact address in my phone, which was currently on Teri’s coffee table. But it would be fine—I could always google it on Stevie’s. “On Tenth Avenue.”
“So we’ll have some time. What do you want to do?”
I looked around at the people passing by me, heading off for their own New York night, and thought about it. Suddenly, I could see the bright side to being here for the first time without supervision—I was in the city alone. With no parents and no agenda…
“We could just wander and see where the night takes us!” I suggested. Stevie frowned, and I wasn’t able to stop myself from laughing. My best friend always preferred when there was a plan. “Or…” I thought for a second. “We could go to the Ghost Robot premiere? We could line up and see if we could see Amy Curry.”
“The one at the Gansevoort?”
“That’s where the after-party is,” I said. “But I’m sure we could find out where the premiere is.” I reached for my phone, only to realize a second later, once again, that I still didn’t have it. “Could you look it up?”
“I’m not sure I want to stand outside in the cold on the chance that maybe we’ll see a glimpse of a movie star.” Stevie shook her head. “How about we go to the Drama Book Shop? That’s in the theater district, so we’ll be close.”
“Oh, let’s go there,” I said. “Mr. Campbell will love that we went.”
“It’s also a really cool store.”
“I mean, that too.”
“Awesome,” Stevie said with a nod, looking happier about the whole situation now that we had a destination. “Just let me figure out what train we should take.…”
“And we should have the clock as a meeting place,” I said, nodding toward it. “If we get separated for any reason, meet there.”
Stevie looked up from her phone, her brow furrowing. “Separated?” she echoed. “Why would we get separated?”
“It’s what my mom always used to say,” I explained. “When we’d all go into the city, and she and I would be going to the American Girl store or the Frick and my dad would be taking Grady to the Natural History Museum or the Morgan Library or whatever.”
“The Morgan Library?”
“It was, like, Grady’s favorite place. I don’t even know. But we’d always have it as an in-case-of-emergency meeting place. Not that we’ll need it. But just to be on the safe side.”
“Well, we need a meeting time then too,” Stevie said, in her practical voice. “Otherwise one of us might be hanging out by the clock for hours.”
“Eleven-eleven?” I suggested with a grin. I was always pointing out when it was 11:11 and insisting we make wishes on it, which Stevie was always was telling me was ridiculous but went along with anyway.
Stevie laughed. “Of course you’d pick that. Sure. Eleven-eleven at the clock if for whatever reason we get separated. Which we won’t.”
“Of course we won’t. This is just in case.”
“Okay,” Stevie said, scrolling through her phone, “it looks like we’ll take the shuttle across to Times Square, and we can walk from there.”
We headed over to where the subways were, crossing the huge expanse, which seemed more crowded than usual. Everyone was walking fast, like they all had somewhere they needed to be right now.
Stevie had her own MetroCard from the last time she was in with her mom, and she took it out of her wallet and tucked it in her coat pocket. She’d told me when we got our tickets on the platform that she was pretty sure there was enough on it so that I could use it too.
“Do you think we should get something to eat on the way?” I asked, falling into step next to Stevie as we made our way through the crowds. “Like a pretzel or a slice or something? Since dinner’s not until late—”
“Stephanie?” We both stopped and looked over. There was a woman standing next to us, sunglasses perched on top of her head even though the sun was going down depressingly early now. She was squinting at Stevie, head cocked to the side. “Is that you?”
I glanced at Stevie, wondering if she knew this woman. She was in her late twenties, with long, blown-out dark hair and perfectly applied makeup. She was dressed all in black, with boots, also black, that had spike heels that had to be at least five inches. She was carrying a big black leather bag and a duffel from a luxury brand, its logo printed on it over and over again.
She didn’t look familiar to me at all, but Stevie was giving her a wan smile and a half wave. “Hi, Mallory,” she said. I stared at her, realizing that this must be Stevie’s stepsister. I had never met any of Stevie’s siblings, and the only pictures I’d seen had been from the wedding, in which Stevie’s smile was bright and fake, and hurt me a little to look at. Mallory was the oldest, and in publicity; Margaux was the middle child, and though apparently she did something in fashion, her job mostly seemed to be traveling the world and taking gauzy selfies; and Mateo was the youngest, in college, just a year older than us. And even though I knew these three people existed, it was still strange to be confronted with this whole other part of Stevie’s life that I knew very little about, and wasn’t a part of.
“I thought it was you!” Mallory said, giving Stevie a kiss on each cheek, like we were in France. “What are you doing here?”
“Well, we—that’s my friend Kat,” Stevie said, gesturing to me, and I waved, hoping I wouldn’t get kissed. “We just got off the—”
“This is such a coincidence!” Mallory interrupted. “But like the good kind! What’s that called? Kismet?” She looked from me to Stevie, but just when I took a breath to answer, she was speaking again. “How are you? How’s your boyfriend?”
“Oh,” Stevie said, looking uncomfortable. From everything Stevie had said—or not said, but let me infer—her stepsiblings had never wanted anything to do with her, so I wondered why Mallory was doing this, double-kissing her cheeks and being fake-chummy, even if she was getting massive details wrong. “We—um—broke up.…”
“That’s great,” Mallory said, clearly not listening at all. “Listen, I’m so happy to run into you, because I’m dealing with this thing and I do not have time to handle it because I have to get this train—I’m going upstate, to Bear Mountain. Have you been? There’s like a lodge, and a spa, and I need it, let me tell you.” She started to run her hand through her hair, but it got stuck on her sunglasses. She plucked them from her head like she was surprised to see them there, then dropped them into her purse.