Zarar is back here in the green room, giving me assurance after assurance. Siri’s going to be in the audience. There’s so much in the set about her, and I haven’t worked up the courage to give her any sort of preview. Zarar is going to tape the performance so we can send it to Dawn.

“You’ve got this,” Zarar insists for the fifteenth time in the last thirty minutes. “I’ll be out there. If you need me, look at me.”

I lean forward to kiss him. “Okay, I’ve got this. Leave me.”

He shoots me a sideways smile and disappears out the door.

The audience is dark. The spotlight hits me as I take the microphone.

“Hey hey hey, I’m Jamie Federov, hello.” I wave. “Good day, sea of darkness, I hope you’re having a pleasant evening thus far.

“So FYI.” I lunge-step, lunge-step, lunge-step across the stage, making stupid faces. “I have intense stage anxiety, so if I collapse, run off screaming, or stare blankly into the distance at any time during this performance, that’s perfectly normal. Don’t be alarmed. We’re good.” I stop abruptly and stare into the distance with wide dead eyes for a good ten seconds. Some people start to laugh. I unfreeze. “Ah! That was a practice test and you passed. Good work. Normal comedians take a sip of water, I hyperventilate, we all have our quirks.

“So I’ve just come off of a pretty gnarly social experiment.” I pace the stage. “You know that show Love Island?” I freeze, looking around, nodding, watching interest spark in the few faces I can make out in the front.

“It wasn’t like that at all. Sorry you got excited for nothing. HEHE.” I do a weird jig and then go still, abruptly neutralizing my expression. “You guys. I successfully executed an impossible feat. Last week, I pulled off an actual Parent Trap scenario with my eighteen-year-old sister.”

I pause, gazing around. “Yeah, I see that interest cropping up again. You heard right, I’m not fucking kidding … I’m twenty-one and I can pass for eighteen, can you believe it?” A number of people snort.

“So, our parents are divorced. How many of you have divorced parents?” A sea of hands go up. “Relax, that was a rhetorical question. I know they’re all divorced.

“The Parent Trap sounds pretty innocent, so let me paint you a better picture here. We weren’t out to set our parents back up. We were two almost grown-ass women, out for like, Regina George–takedown, Mean Girls–level blood…” I switch to my Valley girl voice. “Because yo, um, that divorce really fucked us up,” I whine.

I get into it. Talking about Siri, and her emo angry ways, how our various issues complement each other. I weave in how our parents met and their overzealous obsession with Game of Thrones.