The face in the mirror didn’t make sense anymore.

21

THE CHOIR ROOM TRIO

NESSA: ok so the first real rehearsal tomorrow is the moment of truth

EVE: Why?

SOPHIE: because that’s when you have to get brody to fall in love with you/trust you/etc

NESSA: what she said. stay late. go to the library or whatever. tell him youll meet him. my mom or dad can drive us home after.

SOPHIE: then you’ll start sitting with me at lunch. sorry, nessa.

NESSA: i cant come? [GIF of Rachel from Friends going “Aw pretty please?”]

SOPHIE: that just gets too complicated

NESSA: i was kidding genius. ill pass thanks. plus the cast has been sitting together a lot and i prefer my theater friends to Fake Eve—no offense eve. did you notice that literally zero theater girls got in the top 50? maybe we need to change our search to someone who really hates musicals. also, isnt that a form of prejudice?

SOPHIE: moving on nessa do your best to find out his passcode to his phone

NESSA: on it. we need a tech genius on this. eve could your bro help

EVE: If Abe knew who wrote the list he would actually punch him.

NESSA: and … the problem is…???

EVE: oh come on

SOPHIE: ok goodnight

NESSA: remind me what your job is again

SOPHIE: my job is managerial

NESSA: omg goodnight

EVE: see you tomorrow

SOPHIE: light eye shadow. straightened hair! the shirt with those sleeves!

NESSA: oh boy this is gonna be a disaster

22

NESSA

Eve came into rehearsal that Monday afternoon right as the musical director told the ensemble to leave and asked the two leads to stay to begin work on their songs. Eve, newly dolled up, sat quietly in the theater’s back row. She gave Nessa a little wave.

“It’s never too early to dive in!” Mr. Rhodes chirped, turning his sheet music to the show’s big ballad, and Nessa loved him so much in that moment.

As she and Brody began to sing, Nessa spotted Eve look up from the pages of her notebook and gaze at him. Gross.

Brody made the love in the song feel real, even if he sang like a toddler who had just jumped into ice-cold water.

But didn’t Eve know that he was a bad guy in real life? He wrote the list! How could she like him? Who was this girl who didn’t tell Nessa about boys asking her to dances? This girl getting crushes on monsters?

She felt the urge to mess with the harmony a little so Brody would make a mistake and maybe freak out at her and yell or something, so that Eve would remember he was mean.

Nessa believed Eve when she insisted that all the attention from the kids in school bothered her. But that day, coming to school with the “new look,” Eve hadn’t exactly seemed devastated. She even swished her straight hair behind her shoulder a couple of times in a move Nessa could only describe as Sophie-rific.