“It still looks good,” Stevie assured me as she pulled out her phone.
“You’ve got pretty good reception down here,” I said as I reached for Ophelia.
“Wait—” Stevie said, trying to pull her phone back from me.
“What?”
“Just let me—Teri’s calling.” Her screen was buzzing and lighting up, and I let go of the phone just as Stevie tried to yank it away, and then everything went wrong, all at once.
The phone flew up, turning end over end in the air. Stevie grabbed for it, but her fingers closed around nothing, and as I watched, helpless, the phone hit the platform, bounced off, and then fell straight down, until it landed with a muted thud on the subway tracks.
Stevie and I looked at each other in horror. I set Brad down as I leaned forward to look. There was Ophelia, faceup next to a crumpled pack of cigarettes and a Skittles wrapper. This was Stevie’s phone and it was lying on a subway track. It was so awful, and so not what was supposed to be happening, that I couldn’t even get my head around it.
“Oh no,” I breathed.
“My phone,” Stevie said, her voice high and panicky. “I can’t—what are we supposed to do?”
I held out Brad’s leash to her and she took it. I leaned over more, looking down onto the subway tracks. It wasn’t that far, really—and weren’t track workers always jumping up and down and fixing things? They had to be, right?
“Kat,” Stevie said, her voice sharp, like she’d just read my mind. “Get back here.”
“But—” I started, just as I felt a whoosh of air and heard a rumbling sound. We both looked to the left. There were lights coming around the curve of the tunnel, and a moment later, a train was barreling down the track—but it looked like a maintenance train; it didn’t even stop. And now that it was moving fast enough to blow my hair back over my shoulders, I realized just how stupid and reckless it was to think I could hop down and back up again safely.
The train disappeared into the tunnel and I made myself lean forward to look, half-afraid of what I was going to see. There, on the tracks, were some shards of glass and metal—what was left of Stevie’s phone.
Ophelia was no longer synching. She had finally drowned.
“Oh my god,” I said, staring, stunned, at what was left of Stevie’s phone. “It wasn’t my fault—it was an accident. I can’t…”
“My phone,” Stevie said, her voice sounding strangled as she also stared down into the subway tracks. “My phone is in pieces—my purse is locked in an apartment we can’t get into.…”
“It’ll be okay,” I said, because I felt like someone should say this, even though I really didn’t think that it was going to be.
“How is it going to be okay?” Stevie asked, wheeling around on me, her cheeks flushed. “How are we supposed to get around? How are we supposed to find anything or anyone?” She stopped and her eyes widened. “Oh god. How are we going to hear from Cary when his uncle comes back?”
“We can still find Mateo, right?” I asked. If we couldn’t, what were we supposed to do with the dog? We couldn’t show up to a theater with a dog in tow. “Do you remember his address?”
“Why is that my responsibility?”
“Um.” I stared at her, wondering why this needed to be spelled out. “Because he’s your stepbrother, and I don’t have a phone.”
“Well, I don’t have one either now, thanks to you!”
“How is it my fault? It was an accident—”
“You were the one who said we should come into the city tonight—and now my phone is destroyed. And yet somehow, it’s still, magically, not your fault. Because nothing ever is!”
“What does that mean?” I snapped back. Why was Stevie acting like we weren’t in this together?
“Nothing,” she said, but in the way that meant she wasn’t going to tell you, not that there was actually nothing to tell.
There was a charged, awkward silence between us, one that I could practically see, like it was a living organism. I didn’t know how we’d gotten here. I could understand that Stevie was upset about her phone, but that didn’t mean she got to take it out on me. We didn’t usually fight like this—when we fought, it usually felt like we were saying what we needed to say to clear the air, and then we could hug and put it behind us. This felt different, dangerous and spiky and not at all done with us yet.
“But you do remember Mateo’s address, right?” Stevie hadn’t answered me before, and we needed to focus on this and not just stand around with no plan. “And the trains we’re supposed to take to get there?”
“Why is this what you care about?” Stevie raised her voice, and I saw a few people glance at us and then walk a few steps away down the platform. Clearly, we were the new Richard and his boyfriend/husband.
“Because he’s our best chance to get back into the apartment!” Brad shrank back slightly, pressing himself against Stevie’s legs. “Losing your phone doesn’t change our time frame, right?”
“What time frame are you even talking about?”
“Us going to Columbia, getting the keys, dropping the dog off, and being in the theater district before eight.”
Stevie narrowed her eyes. “You still want to see Mr. Campbell’s play? After all this?”
“Of course.” I stared at her. “Don’t you?”
“I never wanted to see it in the first place! I know you won’t understand this, but I don’t care about Mr. Campbell and his precious opinions and getting in his good graces. It doesn’t matter to me. I didn’t even—” Stevie stopped herself.
I folded my arms, trying not to look as stung as I felt. “You didn’t even what?”
She took a big, shaking breath. “I didn’t even want to audition for Lear. I just did it because I knew you’d freak out if I didn’t.”
I took a step back from her. It was like she’d just pulled the solid ground out from under my feet. “You—what?”
“This!” Stevie said, pointing from her to me and back again. “I didn’t want to do this. And it seemed easier—”
“How is it not important to you? Our senior year, being in the shows together? You would throw that all away?”
“I’m not going to keep acting!” Stevie burst out. “It was just a fun thing I did in high school, but I’m not delusional enough to think—” She broke off.
“So,” I said. I was on the verge of tears but didn’t want to show it; my voice came out high-pitched and shaky. It was like she’d just reached right into my chest and yanked at my heart. “You think I’m delusional—”
“I think you can do whatever you want, but we don’t have to do the same stuff all the time, and you don’t seem to get that.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “You’re trying to turn this around on me, but you’re not being honest. You love acting and you’re pretending like you don’t and this is—”
“I swear to god.” Stevie was staring daggers at me. Brad was looking between the two of us, his ears back. “If you say Six Flags—”