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York.”
    Of course I’m always talking about New York. New York is the theater kid’s Jerusalem. When I was seven, I had four different stuffed animals all named Manhattan, and one enormous plush frog named Juilliard.
    I take the flyer.
    â€œOne of the best arts high schools in the whole country,” she says, like I’m new. “Holding auditions for a few more scholarship students for next year.”
    I’ve applied to Brentwood every semester since I was a freshman. My mom fought me on it at first, but I think at this point she’s resigned herself to the fact that I’m never going to get in, so she just signs the forms without arguing. I mean, it’s Brentwood , so to get accepted you not only have to dance like you’re in Black Swan and belt out a B over high C like it’s a middle G and cry on cue through a memorized six thousandlines of Shakespeare, but you have to do it all at once, while having a 4.0 and forking over a hundred thousand dollars and giving the admissions director a blow job, apparently, but once you’re in, you’re in, it’s Brentwood then Juilliard then fame and fortune, and even if not, it’s New York City, baby, and the most important part of this equation is Brooklyn Bridge at midnight and tiny dogs in Chelsea and the Staten Island Ferry and that ex-girlfriend (don’t think about that, should I think about that?) and the answer to the goddamn equation is the absolute value of not Nebraska .
    â€œI’ve never even been called for an audition,” I say. “I think they just shred my applications on sight by now. ‘Etta again?’ Zzzzt .”
    â€œThis is different,” she says. “Read the damn flyer! Talent search. Starts with the audition and all the paperwork comes after. I have a friend who works there, and she’s implied that they’ve been getting a lot of applications from overinflated entitled egos delicate-flowering around the place.”
    â€œSo they’re starting with the auditions?”
    â€œMaybe they want to see people in person before they can be dazzled by the credentials. Meet someone who sparkles in person, not just on paper.”
    â€œSomeone like me?”
    â€œYeah, kiddo. Someone like you.” She hands me another piece of paper. “And this, m’dear, is a group of kids getting together to practice for the auditions together. Maybe makesome friends, get some practice in?” It’s in the same community center as my chorus and my ED group, meeting just a little while after ED.
    The thing is that it feels like a sign.
    The thing is the Brooklyn Bridge at midnight and tiny dogs in Chelsea and the Staten Island Ferry.
    And the thing is that she just called me sparkly, and the last time anyone even hinted that I was sparkly, I was at Cupcake making out with a girl and covered in actual glitter. And now I’m standing here just sweaty and too-tight-leotarded, just me.
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    I change into my uniform—what up, Mary Janes, missed you not—in the car and mess my dreads up because the last thing you want to be is too pretty when you’re a (not) lesbian at an all-girls school. I definitely need to look like I’m not trying to pick anyone up. Uglying-down is an old habit at this point, but it’s the first day back and it feels weird. Maybe because this is the first time I’m doing it by myself instead of half-naked in the backseat of Natasha’s car while we draw on messy eyeliner and change out of the disco clothes we wore only for the drive to school, just on principle. I smudge my lipstick.
    Saint Em’s is very old-British-boarding-school style, except it’s not an old castle, just some thirty-year-old building trying to look like an old castle in the middle of nowhere, but the first thing you see when you walk in are those bright-green metallockers, so, very subtle, school. Plus girls are gross and