And a reminder of what we’ll lose if we fail.

“Then don’t,” Danica says, emotion thick in her voice as she storms off stage right.

Makayla and Arjun clap after every take.

“This is great,” I say, flipping through my notes for eloquent critique. “You are great.”

Fitz rolls her eyes, but a small smile tugs on the corner of her lips.

We’re about to take it from the top when my phone buzzes in my lap.

“It’s Delia,” I say. “Take five?”

Danica swallows her sip of water. “But I am in the zone.”

Fitz nods in agreement. “Fitzgerald who? I am Adina! Queen of Infernodelle!”

“We’ll run it again,” Henry says.

Okay. I can miss one run-through. It’s no big deal. I hand Henry Fitz’s phone and hop off the couch to take the call on the studio side of the basement. Pushing the door open to enter Dad’s studio, I answer the FaceTime call and it’s Delia and Hannah, together, at Reid’s house.

“I switched out Reid’s music,” Hannah declares.

“You’re my hero,” I say.

It didn’t occur to me until I saw Reid freaked over his Albany Institute music—which he found at home, on his desk, untouched by me, for the record—what an excellent and embarrassing way that is to mess with him. With Hannah’s help, he’ll have a selection of Star Wars songs transposed by yours truly into the entirely wrong key for his next rehearsal.

“Last week he asked me to mess with you, but I said, ‘I’m not messing with Natalie. She lets me borrow her clothes and gives the best advice.’ Ask Delia, she was there.”

Delia nods. “It’s true.”

My eyebrows scrunch together. “You take my clothes?”

“The point—” Hannah pauses, now using the phone as a mirror to apply lip gloss “—is that he won’t suspect a thing.”

“Thanks for messing with him for me,” I say.

Hannah shrugs. “This is an opportunity to smash the patriarchy. Plus, Sephora.”

The sisters viewing Reid as a symbol for the patriarchy?

It’s worth the obscene amount of money I will most likely spend on makeup for them.

“Natalie.”

Henry’s voice accompanies the knock on the door. I didn’t realize I’d locked it. Subconscious. But I’m keeping my friends on the down low about the fact that Reid’s pranks aren’t entirely one-sided. So I say goodbye to Delia and Hannah and tuck my phone back into my pocket before I swing the door open.

“Sorry,” I say, passing Henry and grabbing a pizza bagel on my way back to the couch. “Bat mitzvah Pinterest emergency.”

“I don’t even want to know what that means,” Arjun says.

“You really don’t,” Fitz confirms.

“Should we refocus on Melted?” Henry asks. “I have some—”