I was scared; that’s the long and short of it. I’d never traveled outside the state of Ohio, and even inside of Ohio I’d only really ever left home to visit Cincinnati, which is where my dad’s parents lived. Both trips seemed overwhelming, but in pictures D.C. seemed mostly comprised of clean, white, official-looking buildings surrounded by evenly cut, extremely green grass, and since I grew up in the suburbs, evenly cut, extremely green grass was basically my understanding of nature in general.

But in pictures—not to mention in TV shows and movies—New York seemed huge, unpredictable, gray and crowded and noisy and mismatching. There was Central Park, sure, but in the aerial photographs our social studies teacher showed us, even that seemed overwhelming—thick-topped trees hiding what, I didn’t know, but probably not a bunch of suburban-looking grass, and all of it surrounded by that gray maze of buildings.

When I’d come home and told my parents, neither of them seemed to register the wobble in my voice, instead almost immediately—as was their tradition—taking up diametrically opposed positions on the whole thing. My mother was appalled that a place as “unsafe” as New York was even an option, and my father rolled his eyes and complained about how sheltered I was. By the time they were done, a few slammed cabinet doors later, the wobble had been out of my voice. I’d told my mom all about how many chaperones would be with us; I’d told my dad how excited I was.

A few months later, I’d taken my seat on that spring day with a sketchpad clutched to my chest and two full bottles of Pepto-Bismol in my backpack, remembering my dad’s advice to “stay tough” and my mom’s to keep all my money in the flat fanny pack she’d bought me to wear beneath my pants.

And then Sibyl Michelucci sat down next to me.

She was new, had moved to our school from Chicago, and basically she was one hundred times cooler than anyone in our class. By extension, she was also obviously one million times cooler than the person with two bottles of Pepto-Bismol in her backpack. She’d been to New York “uh, a lot” of times, because her dad was an architect and also because the entire dream of her life was to be on Broadway, and her parents were “like, so supportive” and took her to see a show at least twice a year. On the bus ride she started sing-a-longs that no one hated (magic!) and a game of truth or dare where no one got embarrassed (sorcery!).