“I’m fine,” I say.

“That… wasn’t fine,” Reid says.

Wow. Is Reid insinuating that I am… too serious?

I exhale. “Rehearsals just make everything feel more real. Mrs. Mulaney has made it sound like everything will go back to almost normal next year if we can fill the seats and convince the school committee. I want that.”

“Me too.”

I want a world where Dad’s job is secure and I am directing not-serious plays, the senior in charge. A world where Reid is wrapped up in band activities and conservatory auditions and we don’t have to keep renegotiating the terms of interacting with each other.

“I never thought I’d be the serious codirector,” I say.

“Natalie, this music is new to everyone except us. Learning it is supposed to be fun.”

“You’re… not wrong.”

Through the door window, I see everyone is back from break, so Reid and I should probably be back too. We walk toward the music room and Danica, Emerson, and Toby are sitting on the choir bleachers, Toby twisted around, his back to us, waving his arms animatedly.

Reid pushes the door to the music room open.

“—but Natalie doesn’t have to be such a Nazi about it.”

I blink, the shock of Toby’s words sending me backward. Toby is the quietest cast member. Toby doesn’t speak unless it’s a line. Toby… is a total asshole.

Reid slams the door closed behind us. “Excuse me?”

Toby whips around so fast his glasses fly off his face, landing on the chair he was previously kneeling on. His cheeks are flushed, embarrassed. “Um, I—” he stutters.

“What did you just say?” Reid asks.

“I, um. I understand that we’re on a tight turnaround. But I just think—” Toby inhales “—Natalie doesn’t have to be such a, um, Nazi about it.”

I am on fire. “Really, Toby? You’re going to call me, your Jewish director, a Nazi?”

“That’s fucked up, Toby,” Danica says, crossing her arms in my defense.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Toby says dismissively. “It’s a figure of speech. You’re intense. You knew what I meant.”

“Just a figure of speech,” I say, turning toward the piano. “That doesn’t make it okay.”

It’s another casual Nazi reference in colloquial conversation, like words don’t matter. Nothing new in America, a country that has, you know, actual Nazis. I hate it. When you’re a Jewish person in America, when you have a name that identifies you as such, you listen to a lot of ignorant, triggering bullshit that no one even thinks twice about. I cringe every time a Twitter mutual casually refers to themselves as a grammar Nazi. No. Killing a comma does not equate to fascism and genocide.

Toby opens his mouth and… does not apologize.

He says, “Chill, Natalie.”

Yeah. No. I can’t do this right now.