I watched her go, feeling like it wasn’t really about the blazer and more about taking a moment to adjust to the new reality. I picked up my phone again, opening up my browser to look up movie times. As I did, I saw among my open windows the Echo Theater website. I clicked on it now, looking at the poster showing tonight’s premiere of Navel Gazing—a woman in a bikini, an orange held over her belly button.

I looked at the show information and was starting to scroll through the website when suddenly an idea—a possibility—occurred to me. I sat up straighter, my heart pounding, my thoughts racing.

It was a great idea.

We probably shouldn’t do it.

But it would be a lot of fun.

It would save Stevie’s night and make up for the fact that her dad wasn’t coming though for her. She’d have a birthday celebration to remember, as opposed to just feeling disappointed.

And also… it would give me a way to solve the problem that had been haunting me ever since Advanced Acting, about what I could do about the casting. It would fix things, and not just for me—for Stevie, too.

It was high risk… but also really, really high reward.

Stevie returned from my closet and stopped short. “Okay, what’s going on?”

“What do you mean?”

“You look like you did that morning you kidnapped me and we went to Six Flags.”

“I didn’t kidnap you,” I said automatically. It was last spring, on a perfect bright and sunny day, and Stevie thought we were just going for coffee when I’d gotten on I-95 and headed for New Jersey. I knew if I’d told her at the time what we were doing she wouldn’t have agreed, but once we got there, we had a fantastic time, our parents never found out, and it was one of our top five best days.

“You kind of did.”

“I was just thinking…,” I said slowly, trying to figure out in real time what to say and what to leave out, “that we should go.”

“Go where? Teri’s house?”

“No. Well—kind of. Why don’t we go into the city?”

“To New York?” Stevie stared at me. “By ourselves?”

“We can still do your dinner. We have the reservation, your dad left his card…”

“My mom is not going to let me go into the city alone. Not at night.”

“You were planning on going in alone,” I pointed out, helping myself to a sour gummy peach slice.

“Yeah, to meet my father at his office. Not to go gallivanting around Manhattan.”

“I can assure you we won’t gallivant. It will be a gallivanting-free zone.”

“You know what I mean. I don’t think your parents would be okay with it either.”