An awkward silence fell. I didn’t feel like busting out my homework again, though. So I glanced behind me at her neat desk. Beside her laptop was a thick packet of paper. I recognized it—she’d had it at Waffle Country on Saturday, when she was practicing her movements for the bench scene.

I picked it up. WHAT HAPPENED IN THE ATTIC was printed on the front page. “What’s this?” I asked.

“It’s the script for a new Broadway musical,” Diya said, reaching for it. When I gave her the script, she ran her fingers over it like it was a rare jewel. “It’s about three sisters who’ve been locked in an attic their whole lives, and you don’t know why, and there was a fourth sister, but nobody talks about her. You find out later the other sisters ate her. It’s a comedy.”

“Uh, okay?” I smiled. I didn’t know if I was more surprised about the concept of this musical or the fact that I was smiling. My mood was so abysmal I wouldn’t have thought it was possible.

“It’s hard to explain, but it’s really amazing,” Diya said.

“Why do you have the script?”

“One of the casting directors saw me in a musical theater song contest I did a couple of years ago in Pittsburgh. He reached out last month and sent me the script. I did a video of me reading lines and singing, and the casting people liked it. But they said stage presence, timing, interaction with a cast, all that stuff is important for knowing who’s right for the part. So they’re going to see a few different girls in live productions. They’re coming to see me in Singin’ in the Rain.”

“Oh my God. That’s… wow. That’s great, right?”

“Of course it is. Only, the role I’m up for, the youngest sister, does a ton of goofy physical comedy. The casting people know I can sing and act, but they don’t know if I can be stage-funny, you know? And Kathy Selden isn’t funny. I mean, she has one funny scene in the beginning, on the bench when she’s meeting Don, but then she turns into a boring romantic object.”

“But you’re really good in that scene. Maybe it’ll be enough to convince them?” Her pantomiming at Waffle Country made even more sense now. She needed to nail that bench scene.