Kaity doesn’t look away from her screen as she nods. “Love her to death.”

“Are you guys going to be auditioning for our short film?” I ask, hoping I sound neutral.

Kaity nods again, giving me a brief glance, before returning her attention to her phone, which is covered in Baby Yoda stickers. “Yeah, auditions are next week, right?”

I hum in agreement. “Is the drama club running lines together?”

“Some of us, yeah. I think Linli is running lines with her boyfriend,” Kaity says, referring to the president of the drama club, who’s almost definitely my pick for the lead role in our film.

“Oh,” I say, trying not to smile at the opening. “So you and Sofia are also running lines with your boyfriends?”

“Unless the blond guy over there wants to date me, I don’t think so,” Kaity says with a rueful grin. “And Sofia would rather die than spend time with Matt after their breakup. It was messy, to say the least.”

So Sofia isn’t hung up on her ex. Rosie has a chance. I have to tell her as soon as I can—maybe it’ll make up for this morning.

Instead of letting any of that show on my face, I shrug. “From what you’ve told me, Matt is an asshole. Who can blame her?”

Kaity laughs. “Not a single person.”

The rest of stats goes by normally. Mr. Ogarrio talks more about his dog than actual numbers, Kaity looks up cute brunch places on Instagram, and I scroll through Letterboxd reviews. A particular review of Hereditary (2018) makes me raise my eyebrows—poorly rating the movie because of a bird decapitation doesn’t sit right with me when the whole point of a horror film is to be horrifying, but I don’t have the energy to fight a random reviewer about genre expectations, so I scroll past it—and that’s about as wild as class gets. Life as a senior in second semester is oddly boring.

Now that college apps are done, most of the seniors have mentally checked out of all of our classes. Senioritis is rampant in the hallways, clear in the way none of us seems to do much other than lounge around at every possible opportunity.

I’m not exactly as laid-back as some of my other classmates, since the Golden Ivy Film Festival is still occupying the back (and most of the front) of my mind, but I’m grateful that my classes don’t require as much work as they did in the previous years. I can’t imagine having a full course load and having to organize everything for the short film.

Thankfully, Mr. Ogarrio is more than happy to indulge the class with yet another tale about his dog. I keep expecting him to ask Emmitt to introduce himself, but he doesn’t, even though some of the people around me are shooting Emmitt furtive looks.