Arden & Company’s campus boasted, according to its website, “three robust performance spaces in the heart of the forest,” including the “storied outdoor amphitheater, the state-of-the-art main stage, and the intimate black-box theater.” The campus was much busier than town, as members of the company started arriving for the day: actors carrying scripts; dancers in soft leggings and high buns; directors and designers with pencils tucked behind their ears, clipboards clutched importantly. Touchstone went to meet the other members of the Young Company at the black-box theater, while I reported to the costume shop, which was housed in the same building as the main stage. The building was a sweeping spaceship of glass and steel, modern and sleek, totally at odds with the woods. It was so intimidating that I began to wonder if I’d been given the internship by mistake. Sure, I could thread a needle and use it just fine—somebody needed to sew up all the rips in Ros’s clothing, patch the knees of their favorite jeans—but I’d never worked on a sewing machine and couldn’t tell you what a bobbin was (though I knew it was a thing). I was, quite honestly, shocked I had gotten the job, and more shocked still when I saw that Arden & Company was perhaps semi-legit. I wondered if Benna Bloom, the shop’s director, had made a mistake.

The costume shop was a large room on the first floor with the same sweeping windows as the Lily Pad, which made you feel like you were nestled in the trees even as you worked. The shop had a row of desks with fancy-looking sewing machines and dress forms that even in their headlessness managed to look at me accusingly, like I didn’t belong there. A handful of people were bent over the sewing machines or pinning muslin over mannequins, but I didn’t see Benna, who I was supposed to check in with. Instead, I saw an extremely sour-faced ginger cat curled up on the windowsill. He opened one eye on my arrival, and I moved to pet him.

“Don’t touch that cat,” came a voice. One of the people hunched over the sewing machines had looked up. She was about my age, with a thick, heavy ring in her nose, purple-dark hair, and a cloth tape measure draped around her neck.

“It’s for your own good. He looks handsome, but he’ll bite your face off.”

The cat hissed, confirming.

“Are you Cecilia Gilbert? Benna’s in a meeting.”

“Celia. But yes.”

“I loved your essay,” she said matter-of-factly. “I mean, your costumes were good, too, but your essay. About your dress-up bin? And hemming the pants for your friend so they could wear them in real life, and how clothes helped people become a different version of themselves? You hit on so many things I think about when I design.”