Ashlyn is seriously one of my favorite people. Her song “Wondering,” the one she wrote for our production of HSM, is probably the best ballad in the show. She’s got major talent. And she’s really easy to talk to, especially about music and goals and stuff. Also, she throws a mean Thanksgiving after-party. At first we were friends just because of E.J., but now Ashlyn and I have our own thing going on.

At the party, we were in the kitchen, talking about songwriting. The thing is a lot of theater people mostly sing and dance to songs other people have written—unless you’re Lin-Manuel Miranda. But that’s a whole different level. In high school it’s mostly about performing other people’s work. But Ashlyn wants to be a professional songwriter someday, so she works at it all the time. What I love is that she has this dream and she’s going for it. I told her how much I admired that, how I’ve never been great at going after my dreams or, you know, thinking I’m good enough to go after them. Although it has definitely gotten better since I went to camp. I came home from camp a lot more confident. Like seriously a lot more.

A big part of it, I think, is I had never studied performing the way I studied math or English, really focusing on it in a serious way as a craft, working on technique, doing characterization homework, running scene studies. At camp, they called us students of performance, which helped me a lot to reframe how I think of theater: like it’s not just a hobby; it’s something I’m really serious about.

Our camp acting teacher, Mrs. Darlene, spent a lot of time on what she called the actor’s presence. Basically, she said, if you wrap yourself in too much of a cocoon when you’re performing onstage, you might as well be singing into a hairbrush in an empty room. You have to be a butterfly and carry your performance out into the theater, flying over every audience member. That’s a lot, I know. But it makes sense, at least to me. When I texted Kourtney about it, she wouldn’t stop calling me a butterfly for like a week. But it’s a pretty good metaphor. It’s way better than imagining the audience naked, which I never really got.

Then there was the camp vocal coach, whose name was Larz. I’m pretty sure that was his theater name, but whatever. He was all about vocal projection. He’d stand way in the back of the theater and try to hear us, while insisting on no shouting. His whole thing was that improving your stage voice wasn’t just about volume and breathing exercises—although we had to do a lot of those, too. We did a lot of tongue twisters and stuff to make sure we enunciated our words. In our cabin in the mornings, we used to compete in doing the Larz tongue twister exercises with a mouthful of toothpaste. Pilar was the queen at it.

“Projection comes from confidence, from believing in your own talent,” Larz said. “It’s almost like a reverse spotlight that starts from within you and shines out onto the audience.”

I know, now I’m supposed to be a spotlight and a butterfly, but I realized these instructors were right. It all starts with you believing in your own talent. And if I was ever going to get past the chorus, I had to start believing I deserved to!

And yeah, it helped that E.J. believed in my talent, too. It gave me that extra boost of confidence. And, um, I guess it wasn’t even just his believing in my talent…it was like he believed in me, as a person. Does that make sense? He wanted to hear what I had to say, and encouraged me to lead more when we were in a group.

Anyway, we were growing really close, me and E.J. We had classes and rehearsals together. Then we’d run our lines and staging on our own. Mrs. Darlene said that feeling comfortable onstage came from not being nervous about your lines or the choreography, that if you practiced to the point where you had no doubt about those details, you were free to just perform, let your talent take over.

So E.J. and I had this whole camp routine. We’d go to classes and then spend our free time rehearsing together. We’d eat dinner together in the mess hall, too, sometimes joined by my cabinmates. And then he’d walk me back to my cabin. One night, when he was walking me back, he grabbed my hand. We stopped by the lake. It looked so much different at night than during our daytime open swims, when it was packed with people playing Marco Polo and lifeguards whistling for buddy checks. At night, it was calm and really beautiful. So yeah, it’s a little cliché, but E.J. leaned in and kissed me. As soon as he did, I got all tingly. It was like a surge of electricity through my whole body. At least, that’s how I described it to Kourtney when I texted her after lights-out.

After that night, E.J. and I were a couple. There wasn’t some awkward status talk or anything. It just happened. We were together. We were having a show-mance.