“Ooh, fun,” Teri said, clapping her hands together. “Well—the city part. Not the abandoning part.”

“I’m not abandoning you,” Stevie said, rolling her eyes.

“I’m just kidding.”

“I know you are.”

“What are you doing? Seeing a show?” Teri asked.

“My dad’s taking me to dinner at Josephine’s.” Stevie’s tone was offhand, but she wasn’t fooling me. She’d been looking forward to this for a month.

Stevie had turned eighteen last week, and like always, she didn’t want a big fuss made for her birthday. I had never understood this—I loved when a big fuss was made. To mark the occasion, she’d done a high tea with her mom at the nicest hotel in town, and then she and Teri and I had gone to the movies and had pizza afterward. But I did arrange for cupcakes and candles post-pizza—you can’t celebrate a birthday, especially not one as big as eighteen, without a little sparkle.

She was celebrating with her dad tonight—he had somehow gotten a reservation at Josephine’s, the tiny fancy restaurant in the West Village that celebrities were always being photographed at.

Stevie’s parents had gotten divorced two years ago. I wasn’t totally surprised when it was finally official—Stevie had been spending more time at my house after rehearsals, and always wanting to sleep over at my house, not hers. It was still hard to watch her go through it, and it made me realize how little I’d considered my own parents’ marriage. It was boring and steady, like background music, a TV left on in the other room, nothing I had to worry about.

Stevie’s dad moved into the city and got an apartment in a doorman building on Central Park West; her mom stayed in their house and went back to using her maiden name, Pearce. It seemed like this was just the new normal, but a year ago, Stevie’s dad got remarried. Joy Lampitoc was an accountant at Stevie’s dad’s law firm. She had three children from a previous marriage, which meant that Stevie suddenly had three stepsiblings. They were all older than us, and they all lived in New York City. Stevie had never said anything outright—all she would say was that they were fine, that she didn’t know them well. But it was clear to me that all three of them—Mallory, Margaux, and Mateo—were mean jerks. Anyone who wouldn’t make Stevie feel welcomed and included couldn’t be anything but. I assumed they had gotten this from their mother—Joy had, as far as we’d been able to tell, never once smiled.

“It’s just you guys, right?” I asked. “Not the stepmonster?”