The gestures and attitude of burlesque are easy for us to pick up. The body language, the smiles—we got over being embarrassed about smiling at each other sexily real fast, and we find ourselves reveling in those versions of ourselves who aren’t afraid to gleefully accept your admiration and adoration: Yes, we know we’re amazing and talented and beautiful too.

The hard part is literally the pulling off the clothes. We may have mastered the sexy smile, but we still sometimes clench our teeth instead because it is so, so hard to strip and dance. And also remember to study for midterms and finish the readings and practice things that aren’t burlesque, but oh my god, stripping off a corset.

There’s a new, weird rhythm to our lives, in this countdown to the first show: rehearsal, class, study, fall over trying to take a corset off, rinse, repeat, and all of it seems normal and like it’ll be this way forever, so we forget we shouldn’t be complaining out loud in the coffee line about the painful red marks the boning has left along our rib cages and torsos, but honestly that could be from any of our rehearsal costumes over the years, and we’re all getting a little hysterical from the buildup and excitement.

Wednesday, our final costume craft night in Katherine and Nevaeh’s room, we’re being rowdy, and all of a sudden a sharp knock comes on the door. Katherine throws her entire body off the bunk bed to snatch our wigs and a corset off the desktop and plop down on top of them.

“Come in,” she says, barely suppressing her laughter. Nevaeh and I can’t suppress ours at all, seeing her flailing around like that.

“Studying?” the RA says.

“Explosions,” I gasp.

“Formulas,” Katherine chokes out.

“Science,” cries Nevaeh, and we’re cackling again.

“Right,” the RA says, but we can’t answer her, and she gives up on us. “Keep it down a bit, will you?”

On Thursday, I’m so distracted in technique that Madame George has to correct the angle of my neck and shoulders, as if I’m a first-year. I’m still flushed a bit with embarrassment when I collide with Gavin outside the locker room.

“I was thinking,” he says.

“Aw, good for you!” I say pretend-cheerfully, patting his shoulder and not paying a lot of attention.

“And I thought, why does she look so familiar?”

I scrunch up my face at him. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He falls into step with me as I head down the hall, pulling out my bobby pins. I always mean to just leave my hair up all day, since I’ll be practicing again after dinner, but it starts to bother me thirteen seconds after I leave rehearsal in the morning.

“On the invitation,” he says. “That’s you.”

We stop in the stairwell.