for a while, until she had to get home to get ready for her phone date, which was when we both realized that we could use some bux.
“What are you going to wear tonight?” I asked as the barista started to pull two more shots, the espresso machine hissing steam. “I feel like you want to look good, but not like you’re trying too hard. You want to look…” I searched for the words and finally just waved my hand expansively. “New York.”
She laughed. “That’s very helpful.”
“Want to get ready at mine? You can borrow anything you want.”
“Could I? That would be great, actually.”
“Of course.” Since I wouldn’t be at Josephine’s tonight, if Stevie was wearing something of mine or if I helped her get ready, it would feel a little more like I was there with her.
“Iced double soy latte with sugar-free vanilla,” the barista called, sliding the drink across the counter.
“Thank you,” we chorused together.
“So,” I said, taking another sip of my drink, ready to get back to the only thing I’d been thinking about since we’d left school. “What do you think Mr. Campbell meant when he was talking about loyalty? He meant Dara, right?”
“Probably,” Stevie said with a barely audible sigh and a shrug as she snapped her lid back on with a little too much force and headed over to the sweetener station. I beat her there and handed her some napkins. “Thanks,” she said, wiping off her cup.
I tipped my head to the side, studying her. “What’s going on with you?”
Stevie turned to me, sweeping back her hair and frowning. “What do you mean?”
“Do you not care about this? About what Mr. Campbell is thinking? About the Lear casting?”
“Of course I do,” she said, maybe too fast. “Of course. I care. I just…” She looked down and dropped her napkins into the trash. “Kat, I actually should—”
The door to the Starbucks opened and my eyes widened. “Look,” I said quietly, grabbing Stevie’s arm and nodding toward the door. “Speaking of.”
Dara Chapman was walking up to the counter, pulling off her beanie as she went. She turned her head and our eyes met across the bux. Both Stevie and I gave her hey nods—tipping your chin up first rather than down. Dara raised a hand in an awkward wave, then turned back to the counter, looking up intently, like she was studying the board of drinks. Stevie and I exchanged a glance, and I knew right away we were thinking the same thing: let’s go. When we’d stepped out into the chilly afternoon, I turned to my best friend. “Weird.”
“So weird.”
Until the start of the school year, Dara had been one of the stars of the theater program—and she and I found ourselves up for the same parts more often than not. I’d assumed this fall’s auditions for Arcadia would be no different. I really wanted Thomasina, but I was worried Dara would get it, and I was prepared for a marathon of callbacks, both of us duking it out. But Dara didn’t show up. We were all worried about her that first day, thinking that something awful must have happened. You weren’t supposed to be eligible for callbacks if you didn’t make the first day of auditions, but everyone knew that Mr. Campbell would make an exception for one of us if something had gone wrong. But the next day, at callbacks, we found out the truth—Dara was fine. Nothing had happened. She just hadn’t auditioned. She’d essentially left the theater program for no reason whatsoever, just in time for senior year, right when you get to the mountaintop.
When we’d asked Dara why she hadn’t auditioned, she’d just shrugged and said she wanted to try something else, which nobody believed. And as we started working on Arcadia, it became clear to all of us how hard it was to reconcile hanging out with the theater kids when you weren’t in the play. Dara didn’t know any of the inside jokes, she couldn’t chime in when we talked about rehearsals, and with every week, we all just seemed to have less to say to each other. Dara stopped sitting at the theater table at lunch as much. I’d heard she’d even joined mock trial as an alternate, and I saw her hanging out in the halls with people I didn’t know.
She came to the opening night of Arcadia, and I remembered looking out to the audience and feeling a jolt as I saw her there.