“What are you working on?” I say.
“AP Physics,” she says. “Not my best subject by any means.”
“So why do it?”
“I picked APs based on how I could schedule them. Fifth period was either AP Physics or British Lit, and I did BritLit last year so decision was made for me. I have first period AP Bio, third period AmLit, fourth Psych, fifth Physics.”
“Only those?” I say. “You slacker.”
She laughs. “They wouldn't let me take more than four. Plus between those and the ones I took sophomore and junior year there are only two left I haven't taken.”
“Which ones?”
“American History,” she says, “And French.”
“You speak French?”
“No I do not. Hence not taking the AP.”
I've been sitting on the floor of the catwalk, but there's an empty chair next to her I've been too nervous to ask to sit in. But she switches textbooks, taking the one that was on the seat of the chair, so I take that as an invitation to sidle in.
“Why do you work so hard?” I say.
She jumps. “When the hell did you get there!”
“I apparated.”
“Right, right.” She jots down a note and hits a button on the lighting board without looking up from her book. “I need a time turner, apparate to the Parliament of Magic or whatever they call it.”
“Not a Harry Potter person?”
“Lord of the Rings loyalist.”
Thin ice, Josey.
“I don't think I'm hyperbolizing,” she says, “when I say that if I don't get an A on my next Physics test, it is going to be literally the worst thing that has ever happened to anyone currently living on the entire planet and any planet with any sort of life form as well.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
She nods, almost to herself, and turns a page.
“Why do you work so hard?” I say again.
“Well,” she says. “When I was eight my parents took me to England, and we went around all the landmarks and everything, Stonehenge, Tower of London, all that stuff. We were with some tour group. And one of the places we were the Oxford and Cambridge campuses.”
“Oxford's better,” I say. “That's where they filmed the Harry Potter movies.”
“Oxford doesn't have a vet program,” she says. “Cambridge has a whole department for it.”
“You want to be a vet?”
“I do indeed.”
I feel myself smile. “I feel like everyone wants to be that when they're a kid and then they give up and become dental hygienists.”
“Guess what my mom is?”
“She's a dental hygienist? Eesh, I'm sorry.”
“No, she's a private consultant to the police. I just felt like freaking you out.”
“Your mom's a detective?”
“Pretty badass, huh?”
“I have got to meet your parents,” I say.
“Josey!” someone on the floor yells. Both our heads snap up. “How about getting to the spotlight, please!”
“Sorry!” she calls down, and she highlights one last sentence before shutting the book and walking over a few feet to the spotlight. She turns it on and aims it at the stage. I follow her. Her pretty hands are shaking. “I shouldn't have missed that,” she murmurs.
“It's just rehearsal,” I say.
She shrugs a little and shakes herself off.
Down onstage, Alea, who plays Adelaide, is preparing for one of the weird musical numbers where she dances with a lot of girls and they're all pretty much naked. It's cool that they're that confident and very strange that the school is letting them wear those costumes. Alea is playing Theo's love interest, but they hardly have any scenes at the same time, which is also kind of strange. They've been rehearsing this scene over and over, so he's barely done anything this whole time we've been here. He's hanging out in the first row of the audience with his feet up on the armrest of his seat, probably listening to some of his bad music, or possibly sleeping, or possibly both. He's not texting us, that's all I know.
Josey moves the spotlight around a little. “Boring, boring,” she says. “There's a reason I'm gonna make you do this job.”
“So ever since you were a kid you wanted to be a vet at Cambridge.”
“Yep.” She adjusts the spotlight again. “Can't let baby Josey down.”
“I wish I knew what I wanted like that.”
“Eh, maybe it's better that way. Baby Josey puts a lot of pressure on me.”
“So have you already applied?”
“Yeah,” she says, “I applied there and Early Action at Penn, because you can do one in and one out of country at the same time.”
“UPenn?”
“Yeah. Not a twelve hour plane ride away. And a very good vet program. Not as good as Cornell's, but I'm not going to live in Ithaca, I don't hate myself.”
“Pennsylvania's not that far, I guess.”
“Yeah, but...you know. It''s never been the dream.”
“Yeah.”
The light bounces off the sequined costumes and reflects back at us, and I can see her more clearly than I have since we've been up here in the dark, and the sudden flash of her reminds me that God, she's so beautiful. So pale and tall and dark haired and perfect profiled and puffy lipped. She's basically the actress they'd hire to play a teenage Angelina Jolie for the flashback scenes.
And I'm me.
“Josey?” I say.
“Yeah, firefly?”
“Do you ever get jealous?”
“Of you, you mean?”
“Or any of the girls before me.”
“Sure,” she says. “But, you know. You steer into the skid.”
“Uh-huh.”
She looks at me and bites her cheek while she smiles. “Aaaand sometimes you get a little petty,” she says, and shuts off the spotlight just when Alea's about
