RYLA
Plus, there was the whole Robot uprising.
CASEY
Right, that too.
—Dave Stuart, Ghost Robot 5: Ghost in the Machine
CHAPTER 30
Kat
Tell me again,” I said as I curled up on the couch and looked at Teri. She was positively glowing, her whole face alight. I was not quite so happy or well-rested, but that might have been because I’d gotten about five hours’ sleep. As soon as Stevie was awake and ready, I was going to suggest a Starbucks run. I needed it injected directly into my veins. I yawned behind my hand and tried to get myself to focus, then grabbed a handful of the gummy candy on the coffee table. “You and Ryan Camper broke up?”
Teri rolled her eyes. “Ugh, yes. He was way too possessive and jealous. And there was no trust there! Dustin is so much better. I can already tell.”
“Dustin, your new boyfriend,” I said, trying to keep up.
“Yes,” Teri said, beaming. “He’s so sweet and so cute and so nice and super polite—which makes sense. I mean, he is Canadian.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, trying to keep my face very still. “And this all happened… last night?”
“It was a really eventful night.”
I smiled at that as I bit down on a sour gummy peach. Breakfast was the most important meal of the day, after all. “So—” I started, just as the guest bedroom door opened and Stevie came out in her pajamas, her hair up in a messy bun. “Morning.”
“Hi,” she said around a yawn, and came to sit next to me on the couch. “Have you guys been up long?”
“Not that long,” I said, moving over to make room for her. I met her eyes and widened mine slightly. “Teri was just telling me all about her new boyfriend.”
“Oh,” Stevie said, looking from me to Teri and back again. “No more… Ryan Camper?”
“Nope,” Teri said, with a wide, I have a crush on someone smile taking over her face. “Dustin is so much better than stupid Ryan.”
“Dustin lives in Canada,” I said, glancing at Stevie again and trying to keep my face from betraying anything.
“Your… boyfriend who lives in Canada!” Stevie said, smiling at Teri and then shooting me a fleeting look that was gone in the blink of an eye. But I knew exactly what she’d been saying with it—that this was getting ridiculous. Teri had seen Avenue Q too—how did she not hear this?
“Yeah,” Teri said, hugging a pillow to her chest. “Dustin Alberta.”
I bit the inside of my lip hard enough that tears came to my eyes. “Hrm,” I said, nodding a few too many times. “That’s great, Teri.”
“I’m really happy if you’re happy,” Stevie said, and I could tell that she meant it.
Teri beamed at us both. “Thanks, guys.” She reached forward for the candy again. “So how was your night? How was Josephine’s? Did you see any celebrities?”
Stevie and I looked at each other, and I started laughing. “Well,” I began as Stevie shook her head.
“I want to tell it! Oh my god, Teri, so it started at Grand Central—”
I frowned. “Grand Central? Why are you starting it there?”
“With Mallory.”
“I mean, you could start it there, but I wouldn’t.”
“See, this is why I wanted to tell it.”
“No! I am. So—”
Teri’s phone beeped with a text, and I heard mine beep as well—though technically it was now Stevie’s phone—from back in the guest bedroom. Teri grabbed her phone from where it was resting on the couch next to her. As she looked at it, her whole expression changed. “Guys,” she said, her eyes still on her phone.
“What?” Stevie asked. “What is it?”
Teri lowered her phone and swallowed hard. “The list is up.”
* * *
Stevie and I drove in silence to the school. Most of the snow had melted overnight—there were just patches of it here and there. Teri had taken her own car, and we’d lost sight of her almost immediately, due to Stevie’s geriatric driving style. For once, though, I didn’t mind it. I was tempted, as Stevie passed by the entrance ramps for I-95, to tell her to just turn onto the highway. We’d drive north, pass New Haven, and finally try Mystic Pizza. Or south, back into the city. We could pick up bagels on the way, go to Columbia and find Matty and his friends. Or see if Cary was working a shift at Maverick. We could go to Dumbo and get Brad from Margaux, take him on a walk down by the water. We could stay in the not-knowingness a little bit longer.
“Eric didn’t say anything,” Stevie said again, even though we’d been saying variations of this to each other ever since the texts on the group thread had come through. He was the one who’d spotted the list when he’d been on a bike ride this morning. But he hadn’t included a picture of it, or any takes on the casting, just the information that it was up. No exclamation points, no emojis. And then the thread had gone quiet as everyone had jumped into their cars and sped over to the theater.
“What do you think that means?” I asked. A day ago, this would have been all-consuming. I would have been desperately trying to get any information that I could, and would have been playing out all kinds of scenarios, and trying to get Stevie to drive faster, to get there sooner. I would have been convinced that this casting, this part, this theater department, was the only thing that mattered—it was all everything had been leading up to. And now?
Now I wasn’t so sure.
“I guess we’ll find out,” she said, her voice quiet. Maybe she was also trying to grapple with the fact that on the surface, nothing had changed since yesterday. But absolutely everything felt different.
The school was deserted—not that surprising, since it was nine o’clock on a Saturday. Stevie parked in the senior parking lot, and we headed over together to the theater building. I could see the group crowded around the door, everyone looking at one piece of paper.
The list was up.
As we got closer, Stevie reached down and grabbed my hand, gave it a squeeze. I smiled without looking at her and squeezed her hand back.
The crowd around the list was most of the senior thespians. I was sure that word would soon trickle out to everyone else, but for right now, it was just us. Somehow, a list had gotten printed out and taped to the door, so either Mr. Campbell had been here to do it or he’d emailed the list and gotten someone else to do it for him. But he wasn’t anywhere that I could see, and I was very grateful for that at the moment.
It felt like the walk to the double doors had never been so long, and I was trying to tell myself that whatever it was had already been decided. There was nothing that could be done about it except for me to cross from not knowing into knowing. Teri was standing right in front of the paper, and as I got close, I tapped her shoulder. She turned, and when she saw it was me, her eyes widened and she took a step back. I could feel her—and most of the other seniors—watching us as Stevie and I stepped up to read the list.
It was already covered in blue and black pen signatures of people indicating they were accepting their parts. The black letters on the white page swam in my vision for a second as I tried to make them make sense. Jayson had gotten Lear, as we’d all known he would… Erik was Gloucester and Eric was Kent…