Issue 15 Responding

There were two things Cat Hastings dreamed of as a little girl: the first was to be a star, and the second was to be loved, truly, wholly, deep-down loved by another person. And when Cat was in high school, there was no time of year she loved more than spring. Really—she loved it more than Christmas, Halloween, and the Fourth of July, more than all of them combined, because spring meant the school musical.

There wasn’t much she was good at that time in her life, in her own estimation. She was in AP literature, but got Cs in math, and didn’t get her driver’s license until the month before she left for college. She was holding on tight to that last little bit of baby fat and had never had a boyfriend (though she had gotten laid). But she was good in those musicals, good enough to think she could go to college for theater, and God, did she love being in them.