“I just…” He looks up, and his face glows in the light of Times Square. “I’m picturing these billboards a few years from now. Our names are gonna be on them, you know?”

“If we’re lucky.”

“I know we will be.”

I smile at him, and then I pick up another nugget. I love doing this—talking about our dreams as though we’re certain that they’re gonna come true. But then, out of nowhere, I think of something that makes me feel as though a bucket of cold water has been dropped on top of me.

“Do you think you’ll get a callback?” I ask.

“What?” Adam says with his mouth half-full.

“For the audition,” I say. “Do you think you’ll get a callback?” I already know I won’t get the part, but I hadn’t had a chance to ask Adam this question until now.

“I—I don’t know. I mean, I didn’t think it went great,” he says. “I don’t think I will.”

“I hope you do,” I say, and I truly mean it. From the start, we both knew only one of us could get it, and if it’s not me, then I sure as hell want it to be Adam.

“Well, we already got lucky with the Hamilton tickets,” Kimmie says. “Who’s to say we all can’t get lucky again?”

Just like that, my doubts go away. She’s right. Maybe tomorrow I’ll have to go back to worrying about the million things that have been on my mind lately, but tonight, as I sit in the middle of Times Square next to my two favorite people in the world, it really, truly feels as though anything is possible.

3

ON MONDAY, ENGLISH LITERATURE LETS OUT EARLY, so I run down to my locker to drop off my books before lunch. The second I swing the door open, familiar images stare back at me—photo-booth pics of Adam, Kimmie, and me, a magazine cutout of Idina Menzel, and a Dear Evan Hansen Playbill that I managed to get signed by a few members of the cast after waiting in the cold for hours.