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wanted to go to acting camp?”
    “‘Wanted to’ is a slight exaggeration. My parents kind of pushed me into it. They think a summer at Mansfield will help get me into college. I play baseball, so there’s that . . . but so do a million other guys, and after I got the Fiddler thing, they thought maybe the combination of sports and theater would make me stand out from the crowd. It’s all they can think about these days—my getting into college.”
    “Tell me about it. My mom actually snuck an SAT prep book into my suitcase.” I grinned. “Not that I mind—it makes an excellent lap desk for my MacBook.”
    He nods. “Just once I wish one of my parents would say, ‘No matter what happens with college, we have faith in you—we know you’re going to be fine.’ But they don’t. Instead they keep saying, ‘Where you go to school will determine the course of the rest of your life.’ Oh, and sometimes they like to add, ‘But, hey, we don’t want you to feel like you’re under too much pressure,’ right after that.”
    “Right,” I say. “Which of course makes it all okay.”
    “Of course.. . . The crazy thing is, my mother dropped out of college halfway through her junior year and my dad went to state school in Indiana. So why they think I can only have agood life if I get into the Ivy League . . .” He shakes his head.
    “I know. My mom did go to Penn—and now she’s struggling to make ends meet as a middle-school English teacher, so you’d think she’d know that going to a good college doesn’t solve all your problems. But she’s just as bad as your parents. It’s like mass hysteria or something.” I stop in front of the rack I’d been looking for. “Here—these are the Restoration costumes. Cool, right? Look at this one.” I pull out an elaborately ruffled man’s outfit, with puffy pantaloons and a long striped overcoat.
    “Wow. Amazing. Do you know what play that was for?”
    “They’re all tagged.” I pull the paper tag out of the collar and squint at it. “ Tartuffe in ’02 and The Country Wife in ’09.”
    “Wonder if we’ll end up wearing something like this.”
    “You’d look good in it.” I hold it up to him. “It brings out the stripes in your eyes.” I hang it back up. “Do you know what play you’re going to be in?”
    “Not yet. Will you be here for the performances?”
    “I hope so. Amelia will need me to pin hems and sew on buttons right up until the last minute, don’t you think?”
    “Definitely. We’ll find a reason for you to stay.”
    I focus on rearranging the plastic cover so he won’t see the pleasure in my eyes at his we . “Come on—I’ll show you the hats.”
    It seems relevant to mention at this point that I’ve had twofairly serious boyfriends since entering high school.
    The first was Samuel Ellerstein. He was cute and fun, and I felt cute and fun when I was with him. He laughed at my jokes and he laughed at his jokes and he laughed at every one of life’s little absurdities. He even laughed when I ran into him with his arm around Janet Rollins at a movie theater on the night he had told me he was having dinner with his grandmother. I liked that he was lighthearted and didn’t take anything seriously, until it hit me that anything included me, his girlfriend. So we broke up. It wasn’t too painful. He laughed and I shrugged.
    Tyler Gustafson broke my heart a little bit more. Not in any permanent way, but my tears soaked a few pillowcases before I got over him.
    The thing about Tyler is that, compared to Samuel, he was perfect—I mean, he took everything seriously. He was one of the most intense people I’d ever met: When he’d talk about global warming or the (wrong) direction our country was heading in, his eyes would glow with fervor. His skin radiated heat when he was discussing politics or a great book—I swear you could put your palm on his arm and actually feel his energy. It was amazing to feel that intensity directed