I had never had a best friend before I met Stevie. I’d had ballet friends, and a different “best friend” every year in my class in elementary school, and in middle school, I was part of a group of four girls and we wore lots of Best Friend jewelry and accessories. But when I met Stevie, everything that had come before suddenly seemed so trivial. It was like Stevie and I saw each other, and recognized something. You, we both seemed to say. You’re my person. And that had been that.

“I’ll take that,” Stevie said as we all started down the hallway together. She reached for her coat, but I shook my head.

“I’ve got it.”

“What do you mean, you’ve got it? There’s no need for you to carry my coat.”

“Why not? It’s not like it weighs much.”

“Kat—”

“We were just debating the list,” Teri interrupted as Stevie reached for her coat again and I sidestepped her, nearly crashing into a very tiny freshman boy. “Jayson for Lear, Kat for Cordelia—”

“Don’t jinx me!” I cried. I passed one of the benches that lined the hallway and ran a few steps over to knock on it, accidentally waking up the girl who’d been napping there. She glared at me; I shrugged and saw Stevie mouth, Sorry! to her as we hustled past.

“You for Goneril…,” Teri continued, ticking roles off on her fingers.

“Well, that’s a given,” I said, joining them again. “Though I think Stevie should probably be Lear. Queen Lear.” Even though I knew Mr. Campbell wasn’t going that way—he’d only read guys for Lear—if anyone could pull it off, it was Stevie. She was more talented than me—she was more talented than basically everyone else in the department, except maybe Jayson, who was so good he got cast as Othello when he was only a sophomore.

Stevie and I didn’t compete for the same roles. I was usually cast in the more comedic, ingenue-y roles, and Stevie tended to play older characters, and she could handle meaty dramatic stuff better than anyone else. She could disappear into roles in a way I really didn’t even understand, and sometimes during rehearsals I’d be so captivated, watching what she was able to do, that I’d miss my own cues.

More than that, she made it look effortless. I knew the hours of work I put into every part, the time I spent drilling my lines, the rehearsals where I could feel the gap between where I wanted my performance to go and where it currently was. But with Stevie, it was like watching someone do the thing they’ve always known how to do. She could casually toss off something that would have taken me months of preparation, and not even seem to realize what she’d just done.