I noticed Imogen’s mouth fall open. I noticed Wynezra drop her head in her hands. I even noticed Holden, wide-eyed, as he seemed to study the very fabric of reality around him. Surely, there was a tear in the multiverse that had sucked him into this alternate dimension.

Before I could notice another thing, I closed my eyes, cleared my throat, and said:

“But soft! what light through yonder window breaks?

It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,

Who is already sick and pale with grief,

That thou her maid art far more fair than she…”

I barely had to think the words. They just… came out of me. Like they had always been there. A part of the bedrock of my very being. In the window of my mind, I saw nine-year-old Imogen standing on the balcony of a cardboard castle tower. (Technically, she was standing on a small ladder. The magic of the moment, however, made that cardboard castle real.) Meanwhile, I—nine-year-old Ezra Slevin—stood off to the side, hiding behind cardboard shrubbery, lost in a character who was lost in her eyes.

“She speaks yet she says nothing: what of that?

Her eye discourses; I will answer it.”

Imogen had yet to hit her Jack Skellington–level growth spurt. She was still swimming in baby fat, and she was beautiful. Her face was a perfect, da Vincian circle—rounder than the puff sleeves of her princess dress—eyes wandering dreamily across the lights of the stage. She pretended to prop two chubby elbows on the cardboard balcony railing and rested a cherubic cheek in her palm.

“See! how she leans her cheek upon her hand

O! that I were a glove upon that hand,

That I might touch that cheek!”

That was it.

I was done.

I opened my eyes—only to discover that the world had become a still frame. Wordless, breathless, frozen.

Finally, the dilation in the space-time continuum seemed to catch up with itself. Everyone shot up like the earthy shock wave of a meteor impact, exploding with applause. Even Jayden Hoxsie applauded, which was a conundrum of sorts. The notable exception was Wynezra, whose jaw appeared to be flying south for the winter.

And then there was Imogen. She was clapping, but she was also staring at me with complete perplexity. Like I was an alien.

Like I was someone she didn’t even know.

Ziggy didn’t waste a moment announcing the official roles. He vanished behind the mobile whiteboard and scribbled furiously with his purple dry-erase marker. It was during this brief interval that—flash—Wynonna and I were back in our bodies.

Thank god. I wasn’t too keen on going home to a place that wasn’t my actual home.

“Oh man,” said Ziggy. “Oh man, oh man. Are you guys excited? Because I’m excited.”