I dodge around my RA, who is tacking a flyer up on the community board, and swing around the corner.

This time, I’m lucky because I have these friends. And this brilliantly creative, perfect, ridiculous idea, whole and glittering and glamorous. A totally wonderfully absurd idea that has not stopped sparkling in my imagination, that hasn’t stopped whispering possibilities and plans in my ear. That feels like a roller coaster. That could work, if we can pull it off. The idea is too bonkers for any adult to catch on to, if we do it right.

I march through the second-floor lounge.

Of course we’ll do it right. Every one of us is creative, clever, crafty. And for all of us, success has always been our only option.

Not even at the worst moments, at my most exhausted, my angriest, my most frustrated, icing my knees, gritting my teeth through injuries, have I ever once considered the idea that I could fail. Never once.

I knock on their dorm room door, crack it open a bit to peer inside the dim room. I see the fluff of the fancy performance tutus Katherine and Nevaeh have hung on the walls, and then the static cloud of Katherine’s hair and her sleepy face when she sits up on her elbow in the top bunk. Nevaeh is stretched out next to her. They’ve been napping together, snarled-up limbs and snores as usual.

“Hey,” I whisper to Katherine. “So I was thinking. Do you really want to do it? Are you really sure?”

There’s a long, long moment of silence while Katherine stares at me, and then a sudden flurry, shaking Nevaeh’s shoulder.

Nevaeh sits up, her hair wrap askew. “What, what, what?” She reaches over to click on the light and sit up all the way.

I slip into the room and go up on my tiptoes, clutching the rail of the top bunk. Pull myself up on the lower bed, bounce a little. “I just need you to be sure. I need you to swear it.”

“The burlesque show,” Katherine says slowly, her voice dipping so low I can barely hear her.

“The burlesque show,” I whisper back.

“I don’t know why we’re whispering,” Nevaeh whispers, and pokes my shoulder. “What the hell do you think we were saying?”

“That we have terrible, wonderful ideas!”

Katherine is frowning and punching at her phone. “Darn it, Taylor, pick up,” she mutters. “Ha! There. Tell him, Addie,” Katherine orders, turning the screen to face me.

“We’re doing it,” Taylor says, leaning into the camera, before I even open my mouth. His hair is perfect, of course. He smirks.

“Only if you’re sure!” I yell over Nevaeh’s and Katherine’s excited voices.

“Of course I am.” He’s beaming. “This is the best adventure ever.”

I pull in a breath. “Then let’s do it,” I say.