“Here’s how this is going to work,” said Ziggy. “I’m gonna pass these scripts around. Then I’m going to give you five minutes to collect yourselves.”

“Five minutes!” said Imogen, in a high-pitched, last-dying-words sort of way.

“Then you’re going to tell me which character—or characterrrssss—you’re interested in. If you’re interested in any. And then you’re going to read—or dare I say, recite—the lines of your choosing. Then I’ll decide the role that I think you’re best suited for. This will all be very fast-paced, and I’m sure many of you will think I’m an unfair, authoritarian douchemonger, but we’re about a month behind schedule, so that’s how we’re gonna roll. Any questions?”

The entire theater was a mausoleum of silence. Ziggy hopped down from the stage and was already handing out scripts. If there were any questions, they were transmitted in the form of Morse code through our rapidly escalating heartbeats.

He handed the final script to Willow. She accepted it like a copy of her own obituary.

Imogen turned to me and gripped me rather insanely by the shoulders. Her eyes were canvases of painted madness.

“I need the next five minutes exclusively to myself,” she said, all in one breath. “Is that okay?”

It was a Shakespearean miracle is what it was.

“Yeah, sure,” I said, shrugging casually.

I hadn’t even finished saying “sure” before Imogen hugged me, and then slid off her seat and plopped herself on the floor. Seeing as we were in the front row, she immediately set to spreading the pages across the cold, painted concrete, drilling her focus into every line underneath the name Viola.

The miracles didn’t stop there. Holden raised a bored hand and asked, “Is there a bathroom? I have to take a massive number two.”

“Good god,” said Sebastian. “You wanna tell us the texture and consistency while you’re at it?”

“I would if I was a fortune-teller,” said Holden. “Rain check?”

He winked at Sebastian, who proceeded to make a visible retching motion with his face.

“Out the door, around the corner to the left,” Ziggy said, pointing in an ambiguously leftish direction. “The toilet paper’s running low, though, and I forgot to buy more, so wipe with trepidation.”

Holden was already jogging to the bathroom, shouting, “YOU’RE FIRED, ZIGGY.”

After Holden reached the door and slammed it behind him, Ziggy chuckled and said in a low voice, “There’s a brand-new twenty-four-pack under the sink. I just wanted to make him sweat.”

That comment seemed to push the imagery in Sebastian’s visual register into meltdown mode. He gagged.