“Oh god, yes. I’ll text Teri and see if she wants to meet us at the diner.”

“And just what are you going to text her on?”

I laughed. “Can I borrow your phone?”

“Thank you,” she said. “I mean, it’s been my phone for a whole five hours, so…” As she talked, Stevie pulled out of the parking lot, and I made sure to look straight ahead, so as not to be tempted to look in the rearview mirror and see what was behind me.

Because after all, there was coffee and a diner breakfast in my near future. I had a brand-new crush, I had to decide what I was going to do now that I wouldn’t be in this play, not to mention that I needed to talk to my parents about why I needed another phone, And beyond that—I would just have to figure it out as I went. Like Stevie always said, I had to eat the whale one bite at a time.

I finished texting Teri just as Stevie pulled into the diner parking lot. She immediately responded that she’d be right there. “We good?” Stevie asked.

I smiled at her. “We’re great,” I said, unbuckling my seat belt, already dreaming of pancakes. “Let’s go.”

PART SEVEN February

Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, And say my glory was I had such friends.

—William Butler Yeats

CHAPTER 31

Stevie

Ten minutes to places!” The assistant stage manager, a sophomore named Greta, stuck her head into the green room and looked around.

“Ten minutes, thank you,” we all chorused. She nodded and hurried away.

“How are you feeling?” Teri asked, grabbing my arm and, as usual on opening nights, looking a little bit green.

“I’m feeling great,” I said, as calmly as possible. We’d all learned, over the last four years, that if you displayed even a hint of nervousness, Teri was liable to forget her first few lines. But if everyone was calm and collected, she got past her early jitters and was able to shake them off entirely by her second scene. “You’re going to be fine.”

Teri nodded and adjusted the collar of her skirt suit. Mr. Campbell had decided on a modern-day setting of King Lear. In this version, King Lear was actually the CEO of LearCorp, and the play was about the company being broken up, hostile takeovers, everyone in business attire.

Despite a rocky start, the show had really come together. I’d loved playing Cordelia, and I couldn’t wait for everyone to finally see it. I looked around for Kat, out of habit, and then realized what I was doing.