I dropped into my seat next to her as the conductor moved through our car, calling, “Tickets!” Most people just held out their phones, but we held out our paper tickets to be punched, and then she handed them back to us—we’d gotten round trips and would need them to get home again at the end of the night.
It wasn’t until she walked away that I realized I’d been half expecting the conductor to look at us and ask what we were doing there, somehow suss out that we were doing something we weren’t supposed to. And even though next year at this time we’d both be on our own, in college and probably allowed to take whatever trains we wanted—it didn’t change the feeling that right now, we were doing something we shouldn’t, and it seemed to me like it would be obvious to everyone around us.
“It was a good call to change seats,” I said, handing my ticket back to Stevie. She zipped both of ours into the inside pocket of her clutch. “Way better than spending the entire ride hiding and panicking.”
Stevie laughed. “Well, I thought so.” She glanced toward the car we’d just left—we could see just a little of it through the swaying window at the back of our car. She turned to me again. “Do you think she saw you?”
“I don’t think so.” I shook my head, trying to get rid of the lingering canyon-vertigo feeling. “Thank god. I would have been in so much trouble.” I squashed my coat down next to me, wishing that we could have found a three-seater in this car too, since the two-seaters were tight if you needed to turn and talk to someone.
“Would they have pulled the nuclear option?”
The nuclear option was what my parents had held over me but never ever followed through on. And because I was aware that it was in their arsenal, I had made sure never to go too far over the line—which meant, I suppose, that it had been a successful deterrent. It was the worst consequence they could come up with, the one floated in those times when they’d found out I’d gone off campus when I was supposed to be in class, or lied about not having any work when I had a massive essay due, or forgot the fender bender I’d gotten into until they got the insurance claim.
It was simple but devastating: I couldn’t be in the plays. I didn’t think they would have made me drop out of a current production, but I’d never wanted to test it.
“They might have,” I said, knowing full well as I said it that there was no might about it. If my parents found out I’d lied to them and gone into the city alone, I wouldn’t be allowed to be in King Lear—and possibly not the musical, either. “It would be really ironic,” I mused, leaning back against the seats that were never as comfortable as I wanted them to be, “that I’d go into the city to save my part and then not be allowed to play it because I went into the city.” I shook my head. “That would be like ‘Gift of the Magi’–level irony.”
Stevie’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“You know, the O. Henry story. The girl sells her hair for a pocket-watch thing for a Christmas present—”
“No, not that,” Stevie said. “I meant, what did you mean about going into the city to save your part?”
My eyes went wide as I realized what I’d just done. I’d been intending to tell Stevie the plan just as we were pulling into the tunnel to lead us into Grand Central, well past the point of no return. But there was no time like the present, I figured as I turned to face her more fully. “So okay, here’s the thing,” I said, giving her a smile. “What if we—”
“Kat.” Stevie’s eyes narrowed. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything,” I said, talking fast, just wanting to get to the point where she was fine with this. “Here’s my idea. Mr. Campbell has the premiere of his play tonight at eight. And so I thought we could go and see it, since the reservation is so late!”
Stevie folded her arms, her face impassive. “You just now thought that?”
I decided to drop any pretense—I hated lying to Stevie, and it wasn’t like she was buying it anyway. “Okay, fine. I thought it back at home. But listen, it’ll