We’re in the SOTA theater, sprawled out over the seats with the house-lights on. Somebody reads their piece on stage. Heather and Isaiah give feedback. I fidget, stare up at the blinding overhead lights. Tuck my hair behind my ear. Untuck it. Wiggle my toes and refocus my attention on the stage. Someone (anyone) is reading and I’ve heard their piece enough times already that I know what they’re going to say a second before they say it. I think about my own piece, look down at the crumpled paper in my lap, at the words that have begun to lose meaning with all the times I’ve said them. 

This is rehearsal week. It’s long, mundane, and exhausting no matter how much coffee I drink, but I am aware, even as I drift off and am jolted awake again by a crash backstage, of how precious this time is to me. I will remember this rehearsal week as I remember all others before it, as the kind of anxious monotony that is enjoyable only when it’s over, and when Friday rolls around and we go on stage to share our work with friends and family, I know I will be excited as I was my Freshman year of high school.