Mary Katherine is the first one to openly stare. I walk in behind Well and Tucker. Jacob gives me a wave without looking up from his computer, and Geneva winks and holds out her arm. She’s written Louise in cursive under a rabbit doing a one-armed push-up. But Mary Katherine pokes Evan in the ribs, and they both stare. For an eternity. It’s like that game where you try not to blink first, except I would be happy to lose if they’d let me. Finally, Well sees it and says, “Whatchu lookin’ at?” in his best Jersey accent. They roll their eyes, but at least it gets them to stop staring.

My pulse is high and fast when Mrs. Nicky marches in. I’m worried she’s going to pull me aside in front of everyone. But she just launches straight into her preproduction speech of the day, giving me a quick wink as she begins.

“Three weeks, people. Three weeks. And we are going to need a miracle beyond fairy-tale proportions to get us show-ready in that amount of time. Lou, pass out the scripts with the stage directions we were working on before the Thanksgiving holiday so rudely interrupted our schedule.” I start passing the black binders around the room. “And if one of you, just one of you, flubs a line that reveals you are not, in fact, off book, and you have not memorized your lines completely and to perfection, I’ll have a fifth grader recruited in your place. Is that understood?”

Everybody says, “Yes, Mrs. Nicky,” and for once today, nobody is thinking about me. Then Mrs. Nicky takes up her own binder, and that’s that.

“Aren’t you freezing?”

It’s the end of the week, and Well and I are sitting on the curb out in front of school, waiting for Dan to pull the bus around for the boys’ last tennis match of the season. Well is in the gray shiny T-shirt and navy shorts that are the tennis team’s uniform. He also has a neon-green knit cap with googly eyes pulled down over his ears.

“Of course I’m cold. And more to the point, why, for the love, are we still playing in December? Tennis is a fall sport. Fall. Golden leaves and mellow sunshine. Not snow. Surely you should call a match for snow?”

“Aren’t they indoor courts?”

“That is not the point. The point is that I’m telling my dad I’m quitting next year. What?” He reads the doubt on my face. “You don’t think I will? I’m doing it tonight. Three-second, firm-pressure pinky promise.”

This is Well’s new thing. I made the mistake of telling him Andrea’s coping strategies.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“It’ll be good for you, and it will bring me luck.”