Kate in Waiting by Becky Albertalli (ereader with android txt) 📕

before we get out. After that, I immediately find Anderson, sweeping him into the BTF before the first period bell.

When I tell him, he shrieks.

“You did WHAT?” He bursts out of his stall, and the next thing I know, we’re jumping up and down next to the urinals. He flings his arms around me, kissing my cheek over and over. “Holy shit, yes!” He presses his forehead to mine. “Is it, like, a thing? Are you telling people? Have you told Raina and Brandie? Can I tell Raina and Brandie?”

I beam up at him. “Go for it.”

Turns out, he doesn’t even have to. “So, Kate,” Raina says, “What was up with all that face sex in history?”

“Whaaaaat?”

“You and Noah. Not even eye-fucking, Kate, you had this little smile—”

“The lip thing!” Andy says triumphantly. “Raina, yes! I’ve been telling her this for years.”

“And Noah’s face, Kate. Like, when you leaned forward and your hair did that curtain thing?” Raina says. “He was not okay.”

“He should sit with us at lunch,” Brandie says.

But before we even step into the cafeteria, we’re interrupted by a breathless Devon Blackwell. “Hey.” He blinks twice. “Zhao just called for a double dress rehearsal, so we need you to head to the auditorium.”

“Now?” Raina asks.

“Right now. You can bring your food—she’ll fill you in while you eat.” He pauses, catching his breath. “Sorry, I just had to track down every single one of your afternoon teachers. For the whole cast. And crew.” He shuts his eyes briefly. “It’s a theatrical emergency.”

Scene 76

As it turns out, Ms. Zhao’s freaking out about hats. Many of which are bulky or tall or conical. “This is totally on me,” Zhao says, rubbing her forehead. “We need to make sure they don’t interfere with your dancing.”

Naturally, Mr. D serenades us with a song called “You Can Leave Your Hat On” while we finish scarfing down our lunches, picnic-style, in front of the stage. This is followed by a chaotic twenty minutes in the dressing room—hangers flying, fabric flapping in every direction. Only the hardest-core people, like Lana, have performed in their costumes so far, so it’s the first time we’re all competing for space to change clothes. It’s disastrous.

I end up sharing the little bathroom stall with Raina, standing back to back as we wriggle into our gowns. “It sounds like Geostorm out there. Like not even one natural disaster. It sounds like every natural disaster.”

“Right? Who knew getting dressed was so violent?” I say—and right on cue, something crashes, and everyone goes, oooooooooh.

“We’re okay!” shouts Colin.

I grin down at the tiles. Someone bangs on the door. “Hurry up!”

“Don’t you dare rush the queen,” Raina yells back, and maybe normally I’d feel a tiny twinge of eek-hurry-up. But not today. Today I don’t feel rushed in the slightest.

Stepping out of the bathroom, my eyes cut straight through the pandemonium, instantly finding Noah in the doorway. For a moment, we just stand there, at opposite ends of the room, smiling. He’s dressed like a king, in the same gold tunic and crown Colin wore two years ago as Prince Charming in Into the Woods.

“Wow,” Noah mouths, pressing his hand to his forehead.

I look down at my gown and shrug.

Truthfully, I don’t know how I ended up with one of the tiny handful of rented costumes this year, but I did, and I love it. It’s the palest pink silk, drapey and expensive feeling, high waisted with gold rope accents, and no hat. Just the subtlest tiara. I don’t want to say it’s exactly like Rapunzel’s costume in Tangled, but I mean. It’s pretty damn close.

And even though it’s just the dress rehearsal for the dress rehearsal, I have this opening night, center stage sort of feeling. I can’t seem to wind my heart down.

For the next few hours, I barely see Noah—even when we’re both backstage, someone’s constantly pulling one of us aside for hair or costume adjustments. In the end, I mostly stick with Matt, who’s in basically every scene with me anyway. We settle in with our backs against the iconic mattress pile—in our case, twenty pre-stacked mattresses that roll in on tiny wheels. There’s a ladder attached to one side, and at this point, I think half the cast has climbed up there to test it out. It’s actually super comfortable, but Bess and Suman would murder us if we messed around with it during a run-through.

Either way, it’s nice just leaning against it—and I guess we must look cute in our costumes, with the mattresses stacked behind us, because people keep Instagramming us. At one point, during a lull between our scenes, Devon Blackwell dumps a stack of unfolded programs and a stapler beside us.

“We got this,” Matt says, carefully creasing a bundle of papers into booklet form. Then he hands them to me, and I staple. “Hey, so, what’s the game plan for Saturday?”

I glance around before responding—and even though Anderson is, of course, onstage at this very moment, I keep my voice low. “Okay. He’s still saying he doesn’t want a party, but obviously we can’t have no party.”

“Obviously.”

“So I was thinking we’ll just set up the cake and stuff in one of the dressing rooms between the matinee and evening shows.”

“Excellent.”

“And maybe a sleepover after the cast party, but that’s just us and the squad. And Noah,” I add, blushing. Matt opens his mouth like he’s about to ask something, but I cut him off quickly. “Oh, and Raina got those giant number balloons. Did you know they don’t make seventeen? So she’s getting one and seven.”

“He’s totally gonna swap them around and tell everyone he’s seventy-one,” Matt says.

“To be fair, seventy-one-year-old Anderson’s going to be a next-level badass.”

I can already picture it. He’ll have a full set of perfect teeth, which he’ll brush every five minutes. And he and I will spend every day chilling on the porch with our husbands, texting memes and selfies to our grandkids—who, let’s face it, will probably