“My suit is here,” Nevaeh says. Her eyes are gleaming. “I can feel it.” She pulls off her hat and shakes out her Afro, fluffing it with her fingers, then takes off toward the men’s section. Katherine heads to the racks of lingerie. We need to assemble the under-pieces to strip down to, between stuff we buy and stuff we own. Taylor grabs a shopping basket to pile it with things from the home section.

I follow him, because I’m still no closer to figuring out my act, and until I do there’s no point in trying to figure out a costume.

I glide my fingers along the length of hanging textiles, more than enough tapestry-like curtains to layer on the walls to make our performance space feel warm and intimate. Then the giant crates filled with pillows for seating. A velvet love seat cushion, a tasseled, embroidered throw pillow, a silk quilted pouf. Taylor is in the next aisle wearing a glittery reindeer-horn headband, sweeping votive candleholders and clear glass vases to fill up with fairy lights into his basket, and anything else shiny that catches his magpie eye. We’re lining up full baskets at the counter, slightly alarming the clerk.

Nevaeh whoops.

“Fourteen-dollar three-piece suit!” She thrusts a loaded hanger into the air. “It has pinstripes, y’all. And a vest!” She’s already found her hat, a fedora-looking thing she’s wearing cocked over one eye.

“Try it on right now,” Taylor commands, and hustles her into the dressing room, a closet with fabric stapled in front of it, almost knocking off the headband.

Katherine’s cheerfully singing along to the Christmas carols somewhere on the other side of the room, hangers clacking together as she browses, and I leave my stack of pillows to go find her.

There are a couple of prom gowns on top of her basket, bustier-style, ready for crafting into fabulous bustiers for burlesque performers. Now she’s browsing the floor-to-ceiling shoe shelves, examining a pair of cowboy boots.

“These would be so good for a cowboy act! Or a rodeo thing. Ooh, with a lasso,” she says, and you can see her brain start to scheme. In thirty seconds she’ll have the choreography planned out for me. We’ve been trying to brainstorm an act since Friday night, and they’re not impatient yet, every time I shake my head, but I worry they will be soon.

Katherine offers the boot to me. I take it but shake my head. “I don’t think I’m very country.”

“Ooh, maybe you’re rock ’n’ roll,” she says. She snatches a busted lace-up black boot and waggles it at me.

I open my mouth to say Probably not that, either, but instead what comes out is, “I’m sorry about Jack.”

She looks at me, head tilted. “Why? What’s going on?”