How did I get into this? she thinks as she waits for the curtain to rise. Her makeup is done, and her costumes all fit and are ready to be changed into. Outside, the pit is playing the overture. She had gone through sound check. She knows all her lines and her tuna salad sandwich is threatening to come back up.

It's all Mitch's fault. He's the one who convinced her to audition for the school musical. He had made it sound like a joke, like one of JD's fantasies on Scrubs. He was just as shocked as she was when she got a callback. She could still see his expression when he realized she wasn't joking: A combination of amusement and confusion.

The callback itself wasn't too bad, but then she got the part and her life went to hell. All her free time was destroyed. her days were spent rehearsing and memorizing lines. For the past week she hadn't gone home until nine at night at the earliest.

She had known there were weird people involved in theater. She had watched Glee, her cousin;s actor boyfriend worked at TGI Friday's, she knows the horror stories. That doesn't mean she was ready to spend her time with a bunch of divas who sing every chance they get and blast show tunes too loudly in their cars.

She sees a couple of people in the wings engaging in what appears to be the awkward game. Their all-black ensemble tells her what she already knows: crew kids are crazy. Throwing away any rules of personal space their parents have attempted to teach them, they choose to hold on to each other when they aren't working. She would be jealous of the closeness they feel for each other if they didn't freak her out so much. A friendly hug would definitely calm her nerves.

She tries to focus on the task on hand: not ruining the entire production. The weird thing is that she felt perfectly fine all of tech week, but now that there's an audience, she'd rather sit through every episode of That Eighties Show. It's just stage fright, but it's bridging on crippling. It's actually kind of pathetic. She shouldn't have stage fright; she's Millie for chrissakes! Millie's too busy being thoroughly modern to be nervous.

She sees the Assistant Stage Manager raise his hand and picks up her suitcase. She watches, gulping, as the ASM lowers his arm and a crew member flies the curtain open. Rushing down center, she takes a deep breath.

"I've studied all the pictures," she starts to sing, "in magazines and books. I've memorized the subway map too." She crosses down right, feeling a tiny bit more confident, "It's one block north to Macy's and two to Brothers Brooks." If she didn't have to look hopeful and nervous she'd start to smile.

"Manhattan, I've prepared for you."