I wander around the foyer area until I stumble upon some steps leading down to a door that must lead to the backstage area. Yahtzee! My heart’s beating more aggressively as I race back to my seat. Maybe I should have done this before the show, so I wouldn’t be nervous the entire time. We’re three minutes from curtain.

As I settle in, I turn to Penn and Shane for distraction. “How did you two meet, then?”

“England.” Penn grins.

I wait a second for him to elaborate, but he doesn’t.

I arch a brow. “Wow, what a tale. Tell it again.”

Shane snickers. She opens her mouth like she’s about to go into more detail, but she’s cut off as the lights dim and the show starts.

Each student duo is doing a five-minute scene from a well-known film. Before each performance, a student dressed all in black walks out and tells us blah-blah and blah-blah will be performing a selection from insert movie here.

I’m having some trouble paying attention to the other budding actors. Penn and his fiancée keep whispering and smiling at each other disgustingly between scenes. I am a third wheel and my gut reaction is to analyze them, figure out when and how they’ll end up breaking up.

Why do I do that?

Why do I constantly project worst-case scenarios on people? I think of myself as a fairly happy-go-lucky person. Love isn’t logical, and it can’t be measured properly with a statistic, and it’s not black and white, and I don’t know why I ever thought breakup shit was funny.

Penn and Shane snort together again as a new group comes onto the stage. I should have sat by myself in the front row.

After what feels like an hour, but has to have only been twenty minutes, the narrator student announces Zarar and a woman named Patty performing a selection from Titanic. Zarar’s wearing a cream-colored long-sleeve shirt and tan pants with suspenders. I am here for it.

Of course Zarar would choose to do a scene from Titanic. Zarar and a woman in her forties start the scene where Jack and Rose walk around the ship and Rose looks through Jack’s drawings. Zarar is decent! But I keep having to cover my mouth with my hand, trying not to laugh.

When they wrap the scene, the two of them bow and we applaud. I don’t want to make my presence known yet, so I don’t stand and cheer obnoxiously like I want to. As soon as he clears the stage, I grab my backpack and race out.

I wait in a nook down the stairs, in the narrow hallway that leads backstage. I brace myself when the stage door opens, but it’s the forty-something woman, not Z. I blow out a breath and step back as she walks by.