Back at the ladder, Molly keeps adjusting and readjusting her grip on the rungs. She stares at the shattered planks ahead of her as if studying how she’s going to surmount them.

“This is from the original Broadway run,” Marcos whispers as my panic attack putters to a final stop. He taps the swirl of trees on Drew’s Playbill cover. The boy knows his theater. For the briefest moment, we lock eyes without any anxiety. Into the Woods is a show we both know, and he freely admitted it, without worrying about what it might “say” about him.

“How do you know it’s the original?” I ask.

“I just know…” he replies bashfully. “Look inside. Is there a message?”

As predicted, at the top of the inside page is a handwritten date: July 29, 1989. Beneath it, a note in faded blue ink:

Stanley, what a totally perfect night. I know you’re worried I’m gonna go to college and become this stuck-up prick who doesn’t have time for his cousin, but I promise to never leave you alone too long with those nutjobs. I’ve always got your back. Thanks for turning out so cool.

-Ricky

P.S. If there’s anything you ever want to talk about, something you can’t tell your dad about (and DEFINITELY not my dad), I’m a phone call away. I’ll drop everything.

“Shit,” I whisper as Marcos and I finish Ricky’s inscription to the teenaged Reverend, amused but shaken down to our dampened socks. Ricky’s sendoff to his cousin, the young Reverend, lingers in the air, sharp and dissonant like a final piano note.

“Thanks for turning out so cool.” Spoken too soon, Ricky.

If I’m putting the timeline together correctly, the summer of ’89 was the last time the Reverend and his cousin hung out before Ricky left for college. A few months later, at Christmas, Ricky found the magazine the Reverend stole from him, took him to a gay bar, and launched both of them down the nightmarish rabbit hole to Nightlight.

“If there’s anything you ever want to talk about…” Ricky sensed the truth about his cousin and told him he could call him any time. I’m pretty sure that call never came.

The Into the Woods Playbill is such a mysterious relic of the past that I almost forgot the ghoulish present in front of us: Drew Schreiber, stone-cold dead, a trail of plum-colored bruises circling the ligature marks on his throat where the noose caught him. In his pocket was a Playbill with a message from Ricky to the Reverend—what was he doing with this?

“Why would he do this to himself?” Marcos asks, transfixed by the body. “He seemed okay…”