But the biggest thing of all was the original works festival. It had started as a small idea, as I’d been suddenly aware of all the people at the school who were interested in writing, or directing, or acting—but somehow weren’t involved in the theater program. Maybe they wanted to do more than one thing. Maybe they’d never been cast and had eventually given up. But whatever the reason, there were a lot of talented kids and I had time on my hands. So I decided to try to get it started. I loved the idea—all short plays, student written, student directed, student acted. I’d known, of course, that Mr. Campbell was going to be against it. I’d just underestimated how much.
To say it had been a fight would be to do a disservice to the word “fight.” We’d had a terrible meeting with the headmistress after Mr. Campbell had basically blacklisted it, proclaiming that if you participated in my festival, you would not be considered for casting next fall. The meeting had been beyond intense, with me calmly stating my points while Mr. Campbell screamed about the fact that he wasn’t going to let his theater be used for amateur junk. The headmistress just arched an eyebrow and pointed out that it wasn’t his theater—it was the school’s.
In the end I’d prevailed. We would have a weekend in the theater in April, before musical rehearsals were in full swing. And nobody would be punished for auditioning. We’d been able to generate a lot of interest when we announced that Andrea and Scott Hughes were going to serve as playwriting mentors, and that Amy Curry, who would be in New York shooting a movie this spring, would also be helping out when she could. (Amazingly, we’d found the day after the party that she’d followed both me and Stevie on her private Instagram. We’d been able to transition that into emailing occasionally, but both of us were very careful not to bug her too much, hyperaware of don’t bother the movie star who for some reason is putting up with us.)
But after all the fights to get it off the ground, the original works festival was fun. I was getting to write my own stuff, which I was loving, and getting to act and direct. It definitely wasn’t as polished as the productions Mr. Campbell put on, but that was okay. I had ended up doing what my mother wanted me to do—changing the system. And I was just hoping it would turn out well and be able to continue even after I graduated, a small legacy that I could leave.
I hadn’t auditioned for any conservatories after all (my parents were thrilled). I’d applied to mostly liberal arts schools with good theater programs. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do yet. Maybe I’d audition. Maybe I’d direct, or keep going with playwriting. Maybe I’d take a different kind of writing course or I’d discover I loved something I hadn’t even considered yet—Russian literature or sports psychology or calculus (probably not calculus). But mostly, I wanted to try a lot of things. I wanted to see what there was to see.
The three tones sounded in the lobby—they meant that it was five minutes to showtime. I grabbed a program from the stack and started to head to my seat. As I crossed the lobby, I saw Mr. Campbell standing by the entrance, greeting the parents he knew, ushering people in. I met his eye and he looked pointedly away.
“Hi, Mr. Campbell,” I said cheerfully as I got closer. He continued to look right past me, but I was not about to just take that. “Hi, Mr. Campbell,” I said, louder this time. I saw the parents around me notice—that a teacher was ignoring a student.
He must have noticed too, because he finally turned to me and gave me a curt nod. “Katrina.” He strode away and I allowed myself a small smile. Getting an opportunity to prove that you were more mature than your teacher who was almost forty had been an unexpected silver lining in all the events that had transpired. Because of everything that had happened, it was hard for me sometimes to even remember how I used to think about Mr. Campbell—the pedestal I’d put him up on. And while I was glad things had turned out like they had, occasionally I missed that kind of clarity. It’s always easier to believe someone is perfect and never wrong. Easier—but never true.
I hurried down the aisle, looking around for my group, rising up on my toes to try and see better. I’d started taking dance classes again—just two a week. I was slowly getting back into ballet shape, but I’d also been trying modern and occasionally jazz. I was having fun with it. It had taken me a while, but after I stepped away from the theater program, I’d started to remember a lot of other things I’d loved and had pushed aside—like dance. And I’d come to realize that just because I wasn’t going to do it professionally didn’t mean I had to cut it out of my life entirely. And my modern class was in the city—which was a bonus, because that was where my boyfriend lived.
“Hi,” I said, finally seeing him and giving him a smile as I took the seat on the end. “Sorry.”
“No problem,” Cary said, helping me drape my coat over my chair, and then giving me a quick kiss.
“Gross,” Grady said from Cary’s other side.
I made a face at my brother as I settled into my seat. The one thing that turned my brother from a middle-aged man back into a ten-year-old was any public display of affection. But Cary and Grady had gotten along right from the beginning—Cary dropped a few of his fun facts and my brother was won over. “You won’t always think it’s gross,” my dad assured him from his other side. He glanced at his watch pointedly. “Cutting it close.”
“But I made it,” I said, and my mother leaned over from my dad’s other side and caught my eye. I knew she was silently asking if I was okay. I nodded and she gave me a small smile.
“While we were waiting for you, I was able to lock down some more research dates with Cary,” my dad said. I gave Cary a look, and he just shrugged happily.
After he sold the painting to the Pearce, my dad had done a follow-up story, and then an entire profile. It had turned into a huge news moment. Everyone loved the hook—the unrecognized painting, the millions just hanging on a wall, the chance by which it was discovered. He was now considering a book, about unexpected discoveries of all different kinds, and as a result was spending a lot of time with my boyfriend. But they got along great, which I loved, even as I pretended to be annoyed.
My mom had taken him under her wing and introduced him to financial people, who set up trusts and funds and all kinds of things to protect him and his sudden windfall and keep most of it tied up in investments. But college—and any grad school—would be more than covered. And his aunt and uncle had retired and moved upstate to a house Cary bought for them. We’d gone to visit last week; his uncle still took credit for setting this all in motion when his car broke down in Pennsylvania, but Cary had just looked at me and smiled. Both of us knew that if anyone deserved credit… it was Brad.
Cary reached over and took my hand. We were just having fun—seeing where it went, neither of us making any long-term plans. Teri and her boyfriend, Dustin Alberta, were also apparently still going strong, though we had yet to meet him.
I looked down the row, liking what I saw. Stevie’s dad had come in early from the city and had claimed the seats for us as soon as the doors had opened. Which had been a good call, since we took up the whole row—Stevie’s dad, Joy, Stevie’s mom, Margaux, Margaux’s now-wife Allison (they’d eloped last month), Matty, my mom, my dad, Grady, and Cary.