When the conversation turns to who’s hooking up with whom, I step away to go to the tiny powder room. I don’t want to think about human sexuality, let alone talk about it. I flip on the light, which is an ornate little antique chandelier. The room is done in pink subway tiles, a pink pedestal sink, and a pink tile floor. It’s a lot of pink and it’s kind of swimmy. I lean toward the mirror and stick my tongue out. It’s an alarming dark shade of red and green, mixed. I catch sight of my star necklace, which I still wear because I like it. For my superstar, Hunter had said when he gave it to me on opening night of Enemy. I finger the pendant, remembering how my heart soared with the knowledge of his belief in me, and with the romance of the gift. I loved the romantic part of our relationship so much that it clouded my view of what was real. What else am I failing to see?

I stare at my face, trying to imagine myself twenty years older, searching for my birth mother in my reflection. I can’t find her. I look at myself until my face goes strange and foreign and I don’t even know who I am. But then, I’ve never known who I am. Not really.

I get out my phone, and in the process lose my balance and stumble into the door. So I sit down on the toilet and scroll through my messages until I get back into the ones Sam and I were exchanging when she was talking to me, making me laugh, making things beautiful for me.

I don’t want to lose that.

I type: Sam? Are you okay?

I wait a minute before adding, I’m sorry. I’m not sure I’ve done something I should apologize for, but does it matter? I am sorry. Sorry if Sam had the wrong impression, sorry if I hurt her, sorry if I did anything that led to this.

The sounds from outside the bathroom are so happy — music and laughter and screwing around. Random words make it through the closed door. Everclear. Hunter. Asshole. Watermelon. Necklace. Sorority. Blow job. Nachos. And hysterical laughter.

But my heart is heavy with worry for Sam.

I write: I don’t want to lose your friendship. You’re so important to me.

She’s the first person I’ve truly been myself with, even when I don’t know who “myself” really is. She listened. She understood. She accepted me as I was, as I am. She made me feel like anything is possible. Will I ever have a friend like that again?

I ache to connect with her, to know she’s okay. And then it occurs to me that there has always been one thing that Sam responds to, one place I can always, always find her.