Act 3

Chapter 1: Jack     Just breathe, I told myself as my castmates zipped around me, taking last swigs of water or popping a Ricola before making their next entrance. You’ve done this a million times before.   Once again, I’d found myself waiting in the dark, preparing to step onstage and back into the spotlight. I mouthed the lyrics to my song, reciting them under my breath. Even though I was no stranger to the thrills of an opening night, this particular evening felt different.   The action behind the curtain, however, was the same no matter what stage I was on. Dancers stretched out their hamstrings, getting ready for the kick line in the big production number. Dressers raced to their next “quick change,” carrying laundry baskets piled high with colorful costumes. Stagehands set out props as vocal warm-ups rang from every dressing room and stage managers shouted commands into their headsets—“Light cue 23 . . . and go!”   I wasn’t at my middle school, a place where just a few months ago I’d played the lead in a production of Guys and Dolls. I wasn’t at the local theater in my hometown of Shaker Heights, Ohio. I wasn’t even on a Broadway stage.   No, I was in a place that seemed to feel somehow more exotic—a fantasyland nestled in Michigan, a utopia where pianos were as common as lawn mowers and you were more likely to be sore from a dance class than a sunburn, a place where being able to hit a high C and knowing all the lyrics off the Hamilton cast album just meant you were one of the cool kids. A place my best friend, Lou (or Louisa Benning, as she was known on her camp forms), had spent hours describing in detail—from the acoustics of the practice rooms to the pine smell of the cubbies where you stored your dance shoes. I was, of course, at Camp Curtain Up.   Lou had been dropping hints about Camp Curtain Up (or CCU, as she liked to call it) from the moment the curtain fell on Guys and Dolls this past spring.   “I heard Sebastian and Tanner are both going to soccer camp,” she said one day at lunch. “And now that I’m an eighth-grader, I’m going to be gone for two weeks. I bet it’s going to be preeetty empty here in the summer.”   Another day I found a pamphlet for the camp tucked beneath the windshield wiper of our family minivan. Gee, I wonder how that got there?   Underestimating Lou Benning would have been a mistake. I’d known her tactics from last fall when she tried to convince me to audition for Into the Woods. So until my driveway was covered in comedy and tragedy masks drawn with sidewalk chalk, I knew we still had a ways to go.   “You know, I heard on the radio that the Reptile Expo is going up at the I-X Center the same week that I leave for CCU,” she said, standing in my kitchen one day, holding one of my mom’s homemade fruit pops. “At least you’ll have something to do while I’m gone. I know how much you love a Gila monster—”   “Lou, before you throw a parade,” I cut her off, “you should know, I talked to my mom last night.”   “Oh yeah?” she asked meekly, a stream of pink juice dripping down her wrist. “And what did she say?”   Of course I asked my parents if I could go to a place that Lou referred to as “the Hogwarts of Musical Theater.” The only reason I hadn’t mentioned it to them sooner was that I’d never actually been to a sleepaway camp—a fact to Midwesterners that seemed as strange as saying you’d never tried corn on the cob or gooey butter cake.   “My mom said, ‘Sure.’”   If I wasn’t holding a sticky juice pop, I was fairly sure my best friend would have leaped into my arms right then and there.     ***     It was such a relief to have Lou joining me at CCU, but the second my mom eased our minivan up to the camp’s Broadway marquee–inspired Welcome sign, we were forced to split up.   “Jack, it says here that you’re in cabin three,” my mom said, flipping through the welcome packet. “Oh, and it looks like boys’ and girls’ cabins are on opposite sides of the camp.”   Uh-oh, I thought. Guess our two-man show could be getting some new costars.   Enter Teddy Waverly!   The wheels of our car had barely crunched to a halt before I was dashing out the door to the cabin marked with a big wooden “3.” Inside were six metal bunk beds, each stacked with a mattress, many with sleeping bags already rolled across them. The only other person in the room was a dark-haired boy, busy unpacking his stuff onto a lower bunk. He was taller than me and wore a white polo shirt tucked into a pair of crisply ironed navy blue pants. Above his loafers, his pant legs were rolled up, revealing an inch of tan, sockless ankle, and his hair was shiny and sharply parted, like he might be carrying a comb in his pocket.   “The top bunk is free,” he said, giving me a crooked smile. “I’d take it, but I had a fall at my last camp and busted my lip on the way down. I figured I shouldn’t chance it.”   “Oh.” I gulped. “Yeah, that’s probably smart,” I said, slinging my backpack to the bunk above him. This probably wasn’t a good time to confess that as an only child, I’d never actually slept in a bunk bed before.   “I’m Theodore Waverly,” he said, reaching out a hand. “But most people call me Teddy.”   I was immediately struck by his firm grip. I wondered if it was maybe something he’d learned from his dad or from watching people play presidents on TV.   “Hey, my best friend, Louisa, goes by her nickname, too,” I replied. “Were you here last year? You might know her.”   “Nope, this is my first time.”   “Yeah, me too,” I said. “Well, she’s in the eighth-grade unit as well, and if this place is even half as cool as she says, I think we’re gonna have a great summer.”   “Here’s hoping.” He smiled.   “Oh, I’m Jack, by the way. Jack Goodrich.”   “Nice to meet you, Jack Goodrich,” he said, pronouncing the consonants in my name with precision. “Do you need some help with your bags?”   “No, my parents are unloading the car right now,” I said, pointing my thumb to the door. “What about you?”   “Parents?” he asked. “No, I took the train from Chicago myself. They arranged for someone at the camp to pick me up from the station.”   “Oh.” I hesitated. “I meant bags. You good?”   “Right.” Teddy nodded, frowning a bit. “Yes . . . I am good. Thanks.”   When I met up with Lou again at the first-day cookout, she was with her bunkmate, a shy girl from Detroit, Michigan.    Enter Kaylee Cooper!   Kaylee spent the whole hour completely silent, shrinking into a baggy gray hoodie like she was trying to disappear. It wasn’t until auditions later that day when she opened her mouth to sing and a HUGE belt voice rang out that we realized how special the person was hiding beneath that pile of gray fabric. Lou immediately became the president of her fan club and her cabin BFF, making sure Kaylee always felt included in camp activities.   Rehearsals for the end-of-camp showcase started the next morning. We wasted no time before we started piecing together a collection of songs and dances that we would perform for the entire camp on our final evening. Between rehearsals we’d wedge in dance classes, acting workshops, even stage-combat lessons, so by the time we made it to dinner, we were practically collapsing into our tater tots. What made it even better? Everyone here seemed to be just as Broadway-obsessed as Lou and me.   Things that would brand you a weirdo in Shaker Heights were just part of the daily routine at Camp Curtain Up. It wasn’t uncommon to stumble upon an impromptu Spring Awakening sing-along or someone practicing Roxie Hart’s monologue in an empty hallway. Kids gathered around campfires not to tell ghost stories but tales of doomed Broadway flops like Carrie: The Musical or Bring Back Birdie. If there was ever an argument, it was never over anything personal (there was just a lot to be said about which Elphaba really does the best riff in “The Wizard and I”). And when you passed two campers walking arm in arm, sharing a pair of earbuds, it didn’t necessarily mean they were crushing on each other. (Most likely they were just listening to a Pasek and Paul power ballad.)     ***     “Let’s play a game,” Teddy announced to the mess hall on our third day of camp, wiping his fingers on his Lou Malnati’s T-shirt. (In our seventy-two-hour friendship we’d only found one thing to disagree upon: As a New Yorker, I took pride in the fact that we not only invented musical theater but also made the best pizza. Teddy saw things differently, proclaiming the Chicago deep-dish to be the cuisine supreme . . . you know, like a maniac. Just to spite me, he’d taken to wearing a ratty T-shirt from his favorite pizza place, Lou Malnati’s, even though it was oversize and covered with bleach stains.)   “What game?” Lou asked, looking up from her fruit salad.   “It’s called Stephen Sondheim Sludge Bucket,” Teddy declared.   “What?!” Kaylee giggled.   “It’s easy,” Teddy said, holding up a soup bowl. “You pass this around and everyone has to take a bite of food off their plate and add it to the bowl. And you also have to name a musical by the greatest composer of all time—Stephen Sondheim.”   I knew I liked this guy.   “Once a title has been said, you can’t repeat it. And if you can’t think of one,” he continued, now with a smirk, “you have to eat whatever’s in the bowl!”   A chorus of ewws swept across the table.   “Aw man,” Kaylee said, shrinking into her chair, stuffing her hands into her oversize hoodie. “I barely know any Stephen Sondheim shows.”   “Well, in that case, why don’t you start,” said Teddy, handing her the empty bowl.   “Okay.” Kaylee sighed, slithering a spaghetti noodle off her plate and into the ceremonial dish. “Into the Woods. Everyone knows that one.”   Lou and I shared a sentimental look as she took the bowl from Kaylee and added a strawberry.   “Sunday in the Park with George.”   “Sweeney Todd,” a boy from my cabin announced, plopping a dollop of sour cream into the bowl.   “Company,” a girl said, pouring in a splash of chocolate milk.   “West Side Story,” another camper chimed in, adding a pickle.   “Follies”—a french fry.   “Gypsy”—an Oreo.   “A Little Night Music”—a hard-boiled egg yolk.   All around the table this continued, each Sondheim show becoming more and more obscure and each food item looking more and more unsavory. The next thing I knew, I was staring down at the pile of steaming slush, my mind drawing a complete blank.   “Uh-oh,” Teddy jeered. “Have we actually stumped the great Jack Goodrich: Nerd King of Nerd Mountain?”   “Gimme a sec,” I breathed.   “You got this, Jack!” Lou cheered from down the table.   Suddenly a lightbulb went off in my head. “Saturday Night!” I cried. “Sondheim’s first musical.” I handed Teddy the bowl triumphantly. “And one of the few shows he wrote that never made it to Broadway.”   “Oh no,” Kaylee whimpered, watching Teddy examine the garbage bowl. “The only other musical I knew was Sweeney Todd. If he gets even one more show, I’m gonna have to eat that, right?”   Lou frowned, patting her back sympathetically.   Teddy sighed, looking down at the bowl and then back up at Kaylee. “Well, I’m sorry to say . . .” He hesitated for a second. “That I will not be sharing this delicious meal with you, because I can’t for the life of me think of a single one.”   And with that, he plunged his spoon into the muck and scooped out a heaping pile of sludge.   “Ewwww!” the table erupted as he shoveled it into his mouth. “Gross!”   “Whatever.” Teddy shrugged, chewing with his mouth open. “I always eat weird stuff to gross out my parents. It’s just one of my things.”   Kaylee hugged Lou in relief as Teddy scraped the remaining bites from the bowl.   It wasn’t until that evening as I lay in the bunk above him that I realized there was no way Teddy was truly stumped. At his showcase audition on the first day, he sang “Everybody Says Don’t,” a tune from the little-known Sondheim musical Anyone Can Whistle.     ***     I hadn’t realized how close Teddy, Kaylee, Lou, and I were getting until our counselors started calling us the Four Musketeers. It probably didn’t help that by the end of the first week we’d taught ourselves the four-part harmony to Jason Robert Brown’s “The New World,” and would bust it out on walks and during games of capture the flag. Nor did it help that on the day our dance teacher taught us Bob Fosse’s choreography to “All That Jazz,” the four of us performed it at the dance mixer while the new Beyoncé song thumped in the background. And when showcase numbers were announced and Kaylee got assigned the difficult but showstopping song “He Wanted a Girl” from the musical Giant, we all crowded in a practice room so she could get comfortable singing to the three of us.     ***     Run-throughs turned into dress rehearsals, and as we neared the end of the second week of camp, we found ourselves backstage, sparked with the frenzy of another opening night. Counselors and campers from other units filed into the empty auditorium, eager to see what the eighth-graders had been rehearsing for the past two weeks. Duets gave way to solos and soon there was only one more number before I was set to perform. Lou and I had been paired to sing a beautiful song called “Runaways” from an obscure off-off-Broadway musical called The Flood. Under any other circumstance I would be frantically rehearsing with her in the dressing room, singing our lyrics double-time to make sure they were locked into our memories, but tonight I felt myself pulled by an invisible thread to the stage-right wing.   “Next on deck is Teddy Waverly, performing ‘Why?’ from tick, tick . . . BOOM!” our counselor Astrid said into her headset, alerting the backstage cast and crew.   I stood in the dark, watching as Teddy took his place on a stool downstage center, bathed in the yellow gleam of a follow spot. The sparse intro played as his gaze lifted upward, his eyes twinkling from the footlights. Despite being a total goofball offstage, tonight he seemed focused, almost freakishly relaxed. It felt like he was just sitting across from me at the mess hall, not in a five-hundred-seat theater, every ear listening in.   “He’s really good, huh?” a voice said from behind me, causing me to practically jump out of my dress shoes.   “Sorry,” Lou said, stifling a laugh, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”   “It’s okay,” I whispered. “I just didn’t know you were there.”   As Teddy moved into the bridge of the song, Lou squeezed in next to me to get a better view.   “With only so much time to spend   Don’t wanna waste the time I’m given . . .”   “Think we’ll all be here next year?” Lou asked.   “I dunno,” I whispered, keeping my eyes fixed on Teddy. “I hope so.”   As he arrived at the end of his song, he flipped into a sweet, clear falsetto for the final note. For a moment there was only silence, then the audience burst into resounding applause.   “We’re next,” Lou said, taking my hand. “You ready?”   “I think so,” I said, giving her a squeeze.   From behind us, Astrid spoke in a low voice, calling a light cue into her headset. The blackout bloomed slowly into brightness, revealing a picnic blanket a stagehand had set up for us during the scene change. I turned to my friend one last time before our entrance.   “Thanks for convincing me to come here.”   “Anytime,” she whispered, stepping onstage and into the warm, comforting glow of a spotlight. Louisa   Chapter 2: Louisa     “Yay!”   “You two are so good together!”   Kaylee and Teddy were waiting for me and Jack in the wings as we exited the stage, eagerly reaching out for hugs. Our duet from The Flood had gone really well. I was almost starting to take our onstage chemistry for granted, since we’d had so many opportunities over the past year to perform together. We could still hear the applause from the crowded auditorium, where furiously spinning ceiling fans did little to keep the sweltering heat at bay. It didn’t matter, though—everyone was having such a good time cheering on their fellow campers that they barely noticed how hot it was.   “Thanks, guys!” Jack beamed. “And, Teddy, you were awesome.”   “Totally,” I chimed in. “We got to watch you from the wings before we went on. So good!”   “Yeah well, now Kaylee gets to wipe the floor with all of us,” Teddy said with his lopsided smile. As if on cue, we suddenly heard Astrid, our favorite counselor, thanking everyone over the sound system for a “fabulous evening.” There was one final number, she announced, and Jack, Teddy, and I simultaneously turned our attention to Kaylee, whose face instantly tightened in a nervous, but determined, expression.   “You ready?” I whispered, squeezing her arm. She nodded, then slowly, almost painfully, unzipped her gray hoodie and handed it to me like a turtle handing over its shell. Earlier that day, I’d had to work hard to convince her not to wear it onstage.   “I’ll look fat without it,” she’d fretted in our cabin, digging her hands into the hoodie’s pockets and stretching it like a tarp in front of her. Even though I’d only known her for two weeks, I’d come to recognize this as her signature move.   “No you won’t,” I’d assured her, then tried my best to channel my friend Jenny Westcott’s fashion sense by assembling an outfit that she’d feel comfortable wearing. As I looked at her now, I knew Jenny would be proud of my work. High-waisted jeans made her look taller and more mature, while a turquoise scoop-neck T-shirt looked lovely with her skin tone. Finally, some silver hoop earrings that we’d found buried in her suitcase would add a little sparkle around her face when the stage lights hit them just right.   “You’re beautiful,” I said, giving her arm one more squeeze. “Now go get ’em.”   Jack and Teddy patted her back as she walked past us toward the stage. We all exchanged a look, anticipating the thrill of her performance.   “I already have chills, and she hasn’t even started singing yet,” whispered Jack. Teddy and I both nodded in agreement as the accompanist began to play Michael John LaChiusa’s gorgeous introduction, and tears immediately sprung to my eyes as Kaylee’s one-of-a-kind voice floated through the auditorium:   “He wanted a girl who hates dusty roads   He wanted a girl who cries porcelain tears . . .”   Kaylee’s voice was pure magic; it seemed to come out of every pore in her body, not just her mouth. As shy as she had been on the first day of camp, she was now in utter command of the auditorium, singing with heartrending emotion about unrequited love. When she finished the song, it took everything in our power not to rush the stage like crazy fans rushing the field at a sporting event. Instead, the three of us grabbed one another’s hands and jumped up and down, shrieking with pride. With each jump, I recalled thinking last year that nothing could beat my first year at Camp Curtain Up. But the formation of the Four Musketeers this year had proven me wrong. How the heck was I going to make it through the good-byes in the morning?     ***     “We just have to stay in touch to remind each other all the time how special it was.”   The show was over, and Kaylee and I were walking toward the big end-of-camp bonfire, discussing how we were going to manage our post-CCU sadness. The air outside was much cooler than inside the auditorium, which meant Kaylee was once again wearing her gray hoodie, happy and safe inside her zippered security blanket. But now, instead of digging her hands into her pockets, she hooked one arm through mine, while her other hand held a flashlight, its beam of light dancing across the uneven path in front of us.   “Deal,” I said, leaning into her shoulder. “Let’s start a ‘Four Musketeers’ group text after we leave tomorrow.”   We found Jack and Teddy already sitting on a log by the bonfire, animatedly chatting about something. This had become a familiar sight over the past two weeks. They just never seemed to run out of things to talk about.   “Aren’t you two sick of each other yet?” I joked as we approached.   “Oh, we are,” Teddy deadpanned. “We just don’t want to hurt each other’s feelings.”   Kaylee and I rolled our eyes.   “You guys,” she said, shoving Teddy’s shoulder, “move over. Make room for us.”   “Oooh,” teased Jack, “give the star a showstopping finale and suddenly she’s the boss of everybody.”   “Oh my God, shut up,” Kaylee said, instantly embarrassed. She still wasn’t used to being referred to as a star.   As the boys scooted over on the log, allowing us to join them, Teddy cleared his throat in that I-have-something-important-to-talk-about way.   “So, Lou,” Teddy said, a somewhat accusatory tone in his voice, “what we were actually talking about before you got here is very serious. I just found out that you and Jack have never heard of the Ghostlight Festival.”   Before I could even respond, Kaylee grabbed my arm, aghast.   “Wait, hold up—you don’t know what Ghostlight is?”   I turned questioningly to Jack, who shook his head and shrugged.   “Looks like we have some explaining to do, Lou.”   “Sorry, guys,” I ventured, cautiously, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”   Kaylee and Teddy exchanged a look like I’d just said I didn’t know the difference between an up-tempo and a ballad.   “Apparently we’ve been living under a rock,” Jack said, prompting Teddy to nod aggressively.   “A big rock,” he confirmed, “a boulder, a mountain . . .”   “All right, all right!” I interrupted. “How ’bout instead of making fun of us for being clueless, you explain what Ghostlight is?”   “Sorry,” Kaylee said, giggling. “It’s just—you know—I assumed you would have heard of it, ’cause, like . . . you guys are the biggest MTNs here.”   “In case you forgot, MTN stands for Musical Theater Nerd,” Teddy added, poking Jack’s foot with a stick. Before Jack could react, Kaylee succeeded in grabbing the focus back with the sheer volume of her voice.   “Okay, so here’s the deal!” she explained, “Ghostlight is this big theater competition that happens over one weekend in the fall, and a bunch of schools from around the Midwest enter with, like, shorter versions of musicals.”   “Which is perfect, since Jack and Lou are both short,” Teddy quipped.   “Oh my God, I bet you couldn’t be serious if someone paid you!” Kaylee shrieked with exasperation, sending some unseen creature scurrying into the brush behind us.   “Careful, Kaylee,” warned Teddy. “Your voice could send all the little squirrels and chipmunks into cardiac arrest.”   “You’re just jealous of her vocal placement,” Jack said.   “We’re all jealous of her vocal placement,” I chimed in, making Kaylee squirm self-consciously.   “Can I continue, please?” Kaylee asked, planting her hands on her hips.   “Yes, please,” I urged, then turned to shush the boys.   “Okay,” she went on. “So kids do these thirty-minute presentations of shows, like Godspell, or Hairspray, or South Pacific—”   “—and what’s awesome,” Teddy interjected, “is that students direct them.”   “Wait—how does that work?” asked Jack, perking up. “Who decides which kid gets to direct?”   “Well, there’s a teacher who supervises,” Teddy explained. “Usually the drama teacher—”   “Or the science teacher who does drama after school, if you go to a school like Rustin Middle instead of Cavendish Prep,” Kaylee interrupted, adopting a strong urban accent as she pronounced the name of her school, then a posh British accent when she pronounced Teddy’s. We all liked to make fun of Teddy for going to a rich-kid school. He didn’t seem to mind, though—he had a good sense of humor about it.   “Whatever,” said Teddy, rolling his eyes. “Some grown-up is there to, like, guide and support while a student—”   “—usually an eighth-grader—”   “—directs it, and then at the festival, each school presents their show, the judges fill out these scorecards, and at the awards ceremony on the last day—”   “—Teddy’s school wins!” Kaylee announced, catching Teddy off guard.   “What?”   “Please!” Kaylee threw him her most incredulous look.   “When’s the last time Cavendish lost? Ten years ago?”   “No!” Teddy blurted out defensively, then offered more quietly, “Eleven.”   “For real?! Okay, so, like, they haven’t lost in over a decade,” Kaylee continued, leaning in toward me and Jack. “Meanwhile my school? Never even made it into the top ten. So of course Teddy thinks Ghostlight is ‘awesome.’ The rest of the schools basically go to see how they’ll win, not if.”   She dug her hands into the pockets of her hoodie, smiling smugly at Teddy. I glanced at him only to find that he, for once, had no witty comeback. Rather than let him off the hook, Jack and I dug in even more.   “Well, I’d love anything that let me win every time,” Jack said mischievously.   “Yeah, sounds like a real blast, this Ghostlight thing,” I said sarcastically. “Kaylee, why doesn’t your school skip all the hard work and just give Cavendish the trophy now?”   “Exactly,” said Kaylee. “As my dad likes to say, ‘The game is rigged.’”   “All right, all right,” said Teddy, throwing his hands up in surrender, “I see where this is going. But it’s not like I had anything to do with them winning. I only competed in Ghostlight for the first time last year, and I had a really small part.”   There was a brief pause as we all waited for him to continue. Teddy took a breath, then looked at us sheepishly and announced with a sigh, “I was the Fiddler.”   “As in the Fiddler on the Roof?!” I exclaimed. Teddy quickly turned from sheepish to full-blown embarrassed (because despite the show’s title, the actual fiddler wasn’t really a role).   “Look—the kid who directed it thought it would be cool if I stood on a box upstage in profile for the whole presentation,” he sputtered. “Ya know . . . symbolically.”   By the time he said the word symbolically the three of us were doubled over with laughter.   “Whatever!” he protested. “We won!”   It was one of those nights you never want to end. Jokes turned into comedy routines, moments became instant memories, and promises of everlasting friendship were made over and over again. But once the bonfire died down and other campers started shuffling back to their bunks, I began to feel sad, silently acknowledging that it was almost time to leave. It was too soon for tears—I’d have plenty of time for those in the morning—so instead I just stared wistfully into the glowing embers. After a few minutes of quiet, Kaylee stretched her arms above her head and let out a big yawn.   “Yo, I’m beat, you guys,” she said. “I gotta go to sleep.”   “Me too,” I said, rising to my feet. I turned to Teddy and Jack, who remained seated on the log, their faces only partly lit by the fading glow of the fire.   “You wanna walk with us? Kaylee’s got a flashlight.”   The boys exchanged a look, and I don’t know why—but I suddenly had the sense that they were waiting for the other one to respond.   “Um,” Teddy said finally, looking down at his feet, “I’m gonna hang here a little longer, I think.”   I looked at Jack, who glanced first at Teddy, then at me.   “Yeah,” he said, tugging at the bottom of his sweatshirt. “Me too, I think.”   “All right, well, don’t get attacked by a bear,” Kaylee cautioned with a smile, clicking on her flashlight and heading off into the darkness. I hesitated as I realized that this moment marked the unofficial end of camp. Tomorrow would be nothing but one long good-bye.   “Okay, then—night, you guys,” I said, brushing bits of bark off the back of my jeans. “Great job tonight.”   “You too,” they sang out in unison, Teddy extending his arm toward me with a congratulatory thumbs-up.   As I turned to follow Kaylee, her flashlight beam already far ahead of me, I couldn’t help but think that my innocent question—“You wanna walk with us?”—had somehow put Teddy and Jack on the spot. A new, strange thought started to creep into my head, but I was too tired, too sad, too full of emotion about my friends and my time at CCU to give it much attention. I’m probably wrong, anyway, I thought, scampering across the rocky path to catch up with Kaylee, they’re just two friends who aren’t tired yet.