I spend over an hour walking the halls, waiting to be told dogs aren’t allowed, feeling the strangeness of being in a place I’d imagined so often. When I was a teenager, I used to fall asleep imagining this place. Imagining my foreign life. Ever since I gave up my acceptance, and particularly since Aimee died, my wandering mind has come here, to this life, to this world—a dependable fantasy as intoxicating as dreaming of a crush.

I walk past classrooms and see some of the afternoon classes where students are engaged in history lectures, public speaking practice, and, in one particularly lively class, a deep dive on Lee Strasberg.

The big stage at Avalon Playhouse is locked, and I see it’s empty and dark through the small window in the door, but I do walk past a black box theater where a guy and a girl are onstage in front of the rest of their class, both gripping books rolled open to the relevant page.

He steps toward her and puts a hand on his chest, saying, “You think this is easy for me?”

She shakes her head. “No, I don’t, I—”

He doesn’t come in early enough, so the interruption seems false when he says, “You think I like being this kind of man?”

“Of course not.” She sounds tearful and intimidated.

I recognize the book in the girl’s hand. It’s a sleepy drama about an abusive husband and his battered housewife who murders him in the end. I used to practice these scenes when I was doing auditions. I played it differently than that.

I lean on the doorframe. It makes the door open farther, and everyone turns to me when they hear it.

“Oh, look who it is,” says the teacher. I know from the ledger outside that it’s likely to be someone named Professor Lehman.

For a moment, I forget myself and think she recognizes me as Lana Lord. But then I remember.

“Hi,” I say, putting up a quick, apologetic hand. “I’m so sorry to interrupt. I was watching. You guys are great.”

“Come on in, Meggie,” Professor Lehman says. She tells the class, “This is Meg Bryan, she was a student of mine. And it looks like she’s stolen Maureen again.”

I hear a few of them snigger and repeat my name. I roll my eyes and take a moment to think the worst of them. The old wow, your name sounds like Meg Ryan bit. I guess it’s nice that people still know who she is, her rom-coms living on.

“Meggie was good,” says Professor Lehman, head moving to follow me as I walk a little farther into the room. “Untapped potential. She never let herself break through, and then she quit acting before she got there. A shame to see a natural talent go to waste like that.”