“You’re pissed about the prank war,” I say.

“Our play became a punishment and an exercise in team-building for you and Callahan.”

“I’m sorry! But snapping at me in front of the group? Codirecting with Danica? I know you’re friends… or maybe more? I don’t even know! What’s going on?”

“I wish I knew!” Henry admits. “I know we have fun together. Dani is going through the senior stress too. It’s nice talking to someone who gets it.”

Henry’s delivery is so casual it hurts. We have been best friends for almost a decade… but now Danica gets it? I know I’m not applying for college yet, but Henry knows that I understand the stress of it—the monetary stress, the making-a- momentous-decision stress. I can be there for him if he talks to me. But I guess he has Danica now.

I can’t figure out how to say any of that though—so I pivot back to Melted.

“We’re supposed to be codirectors,” I say.

“Honestly, I’m not sure I want to be a codirector at all,” Henry admits. He exhales, as if saying these words out loud are a relief. “I’ll still come to meetings, but I need to take a step back. I’m not qualified to direct a musical. I don’t want to direct a musical. Or to be in the middle of you and Reid.”

Henry doesn’t want to codirect with Danica.

But he doesn’t want to codirect at all.

“Are you… breaking up with me? Directorially speaking?”

“Three’s a crowd,” Henry says. “And I need to focus on college applications and taking on more at the restaurant.”

“What changed?”

Henry shrugs. “Nothing. Everything. I don’t know. I love writing and I loved our low-stakes drama club. It was always supposed to be chill. Just for us. Fun. But it can’t be that now. Not with an entire budget on the line.”

I shake my head. “We’re supposed to be Jacobson and Chao.”

“We still are,” Henry insists. “Just meant to be a writing duo, I guess.”

Henry walks away… and I’m so confused. We put in so much work. And I know we have to put in more work to adapt Melted into a musical. But still. Now that our show is happening, for real, Henry wants to… step back? Because Melted is no longer… chill? Is it not chill to want to put on a decent show? To protect what we created? Henry and I have always been on the same page about everything, especially theater, and for the first time… we’re not.

But the whole point of writing and pushing so hard for Melted—outside of saving a flailing drama club—is so we can do this together, before Henry graduates and everything changes.

Maybe it already has.

CHAPTER ELEVEN