I stood there for a moment, just taking it all in: the squeak of people’s shoes on the floor, the snatches of conversation as people passed by—“So I told him that he needed to call first. I told him!”—the maintenance workers in their orange vests, two besuited men running flat out for a train, their long coats streaming behind them, a little kid spinning around in the center, looking up.

As I stood there, occasionally getting jostled by someone in a hurry, I suddenly felt very clearly that I was seventeen, and in from the suburbs for the night. Everyone else seemed to know exactly where they were going, and I hoped it wasn’t painfully obvious that I had never once been here on my own, without someone to lead the way and tell me where to go.

“Okay,” Stevie said, shaking me out of these thoughts. She looked down at her watch. I saw some tourists with suitcases walk by us, then pause, also stopping to look up at the ceiling. “So we have—what, three hours? Maybe a little less, since we need to get to this play. Where’s Mr. Campbell’s theater?”

“In the theater district,” I said confidently, even though I realized as I said it that I’d left the exact address in my phone, which was currently on Teri’s coffee table. But it would be fine—I could always google it on Stevie’s. “On Tenth Avenue.”

“So we’ll have some time. What do you want to do?”

I looked around at the people passing by me, heading off for their own New York night, and thought about it. Suddenly, I could see the bright side to being here for the first time without supervision—I was in the city alone. With no parents and no agenda…

“We could just wander and see where the night takes us!” I suggested. Stevie frowned, and I wasn’t able to stop myself from laughing. My best friend always preferred when there was a plan. “Or…” I thought for a second. “We could go to the Ghost Robot premiere? We could line up and see if we could see Amy Curry.”

“The one at the Gansevoort?”

“That’s where the after-party is,” I said. “But I’m sure we could find out where the premiere is.” I reached for my phone, only to realize a second later, once again, that I still didn’t have it. “Could you look it up?”

“I’m not sure I want to stand outside in the cold on the chance that maybe we’ll see a glimpse of a movie star.” Stevie shook her head. “How about we go to the Drama Book Shop? That’s in the theater district, so we’ll be close.”

“Oh, let’s go there,” I said. “Mr. Campbell will love that we went.”

“It’s also a really cool store.”

“I mean, that too.”

“Awesome,” Stevie said with a nod, looking happier about the whole situation now that we had a destination. “Just let me figure out what train we should take.…”