I walked closer to a series of the papers to try and understand what they were saying. There were the circles with the subway letters and numbers in them, and I tried to make sense of it as Brad nudged my hand with his head, like he was trying to tell me he wanted to be scratched. I hesitated—what if he had fleas and that was why he was itchy?—then gave him a quick scratch behind the ears. When I stopped, he nudged my hand with his head again, more aggressively this time, and I tried not to laugh as I scratched him again. The papers made no sense to me—the leaflet on top seemed to contradict the one below it—and I took a breath, then tried to read them calmly, without emotion, the way my dad told me he always had to break down briefs and court decisions. I was starting to read them again when I looked over and saw a guy heading toward me. He had pale skin and bleached-blond hair and looked like he was in his early twenties. I gave him a half wave, figuring that easier than trying to decode the MTA’s flyers would just be to ask someone what was happening with the trains.

“Hi,” I said, with an apologetic smile. “Do you know—” But I never got to finish, because the guy was suddenly much closer to me than I’d anticipated, and I could see the flash of a blade in his hand.

“Gimme your phone,” he said, his voice low and menacing. “Now.”

CHAPTER 10

Kat

In last year’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I’d had a stage fight with Dara Chapman.

I’d played Helena, even though I really wanted Hermia, which Dara got, despite the fact that I was shorter than her. Stevie was Titania, and the whole thing had been set at a Coachella-esque music festival; the critic in the local paper had hated it. We’d worked through the fight choreography for weeks, but in the tech rehearsal, when we were just supposed to be marking, one of the punches that she was supposed to have pulled went wide and hit me, hard, right in the stomach.

A gut punch.

It had left me gasping and fighting to get my breath back, but even more than that—it had been the shock of it all, the unexpectedness of it. And that was exactly what I felt as I stood on the subway platform, watching Stevie disappear uptown in the B train without me.

It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, I repeated to myself like a mantra. Stevie had seen me not get on the train. She was going to come right back.