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Fundamentals of Acting was just a freshman elective, a stop on the road to my English degree and nothing more. But by the end of the semester, I was no longer content simply to read Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet —I wanted to be Juliet. The next fall, I switched my major to drama and theater and began soaking up the art form with other theater students, including Avril and a bumbling young theater major named Ben Hughes who discovered his talent lay not in acting but directing. We dubbed ourselves “The Misfits” after the 1961 John Huston movie starring Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, mostly because none of us felt like we fit in anywhere else. We were a tight-knit group in and out of the classroom, writing and performing student productions, blocking our scenes, and trying our hand at improvisation. We pooled together our meager dollars to root through vintage clothing stores in Chicago for authentic costumes and crazy props.
    We fought off butterflies fluttering in our underfed stomachs each opening night, peering through the thick black curtain and counting heads under the houselights of the campus theater. We were young romantics, dreaming of somehow making a career out of pretending.
    What’s the best part of acting? It’s the indescribable feeling of being someone you are and someone you’re not, all at the same time. Acting is finding a character that’s in you, forgetting yourself, and then bringing out this whole other person. Character is all that matters when you’re onstage.
    “I never do this,” Sydney told me one night outside Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre after a midseason performance of Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie . She handed me her business card, which I was understandably leery to take. We stood outside the theater chatting, wrapped in heavy wool scarves and thick winter coats to stave off Lake Michigan’s bitter winds. Her cheeks were pink from the chill, and I remember thinking she wasn’t made for exposure to the elements. Her trademark designer glasses, oversized purple frames, fogged with every breath that puffed out of her round face.
    “Call me next week if you think you can stand talking to a real agent,” Sydney said, as if there were hardly a worse thing a person could do.
    “Sydney will be thrilled you’ve landed a role in the first New York revival of Apartment 19 in thirty years,” Avril said now.
    “I know, but I’ve wanted to avoid ‘the conversation.’”
    “Which conversation?”
    “The one that follows a thirty-year-old actress who hasn’t worked in a year. The gentle pep talk your agent gives you when she knows your career is over.”
    Avril waved my argument away with a brush of her delicate hand. “You’re crazy. Sydney will be thrilled you’re here. You should call her this morning to let her know.”
    “Avril, Sydney and I haven’t spoken in six months,” I confessed. “We stopped talking after Grease ended, when there wasn’t a job out there for me and we both felt awkward with her ‘something will turn up’ talks.”
    “But all that’s changed now. You’re back on your feet, on Broadway no less. Sydney will love hearing the news.”
    I blew across the surface of my coffee again before taking a sip. The flavor was strong and black, and by the time I took my second sip, I realized that Avril was right. Sure, I was broke, and going back into the world of unemployment in six weeks, and my acting job didn’t involve any real stage acting. And, yeah, I was single without prospects and almost every stitch of clothing I owned was still locked away in my checked suitcase, lost somewhere in the dungeons of LaGuardia or maybe Philly. But I wasn’t going to worry, and not just because I had a good cup of coffee and a temporary roof over my head. I had at least two other incalculably good things going for me: my vivid memory of God’s well-timed rescue, and my belief He could do it again whenever He pleased.
    “I’ll call her,” I