We head back to campus through the quiet backstreets. It’s February but there’s still bunting on every streetlamp, and the holiday lights are still up on most houses. The cold smells like wood smoke, a smell I didn’t know I loved until I moved here. Behind the black and bare trees, the sky is a wide, gray sheet of ice. Nevaeh and Taylor link arms and go back to arguing about the male gaze. The two of them are a matched set, tall and lean in long black puffy coats. Katherine pulls my mittens out of my pocket and hands them to me, and then keeps my gloved hand in hers. I can’t stop thinking about the burlesque dancer in the photo, her shine and energy, her beautiful skin.

We sign in at the campus gates, turn toward the quad, and join the stream of kids heading toward the afternoon block of academic classes. Taylor stops so suddenly I bump into his back. Our classmates are jostling past us, but he doesn’t notice; he just starts talking, his hands waving, his tawny brown eyes bright.

“Hold up now. How did we not think of this?”

“What, Taylor?” Nevaeh says patiently.

“A pop-up show,” he says to me. He pokes Nevaeh in the shoulder. “We were just talking about it last week. Those kids in the eighties—”

“That fundraiser!” It’s a yelp very unlike her, and her smile is broad. She hooks her arm through mine, lowering her voice. “It’s brilliant. This is brilliant!”

I don’t know what’s brilliant, but Katherine’s face has lit up.

“Oh! Wasn’t it—music kids in the seventies? They needed some money in order to enter a contest!” Katherine says in a stage whisper.

“No, it was eighties dance kids who wanted money for costumes,” Taylor says.

“And one of their moms was related to someone in some band?” Katherine says.

“R.E.M.,” Nevaeh says. “And the whole band came.”

“And they put on a secret show!” Katherine says, clapping her hands.

“Wait, what was secret? Why was it secret?” I bounce from foot to foot, starting to freeze standing here. I hate feeling lost like this.

Nevaeh prods us back into motion, down the path that splits off to the campus chapel and the roofless gazebo where students sometimes perform in summer.

Taylor leans against the railing of the gazebo’s steps. “Lakeshore wouldn’t go for it, obviously,” he says.

“So they invited students to a one-time-only, after-curfew, top secret music club at a top secret location,” Nevaeh explains. “They charged so, so much for tickets.”

“And they raked it in,” Taylor finishes triumphantly.