A tear swells in Eve's eye, blurring the sight of the photograph she held in her hand. A portrait of a girl, smiling with braces. Long brown hair tied into two ponytails on the sides, hanging loose in the back. Thick-rimmed glasses frame her rich brown eyes. Eve focuses on the girl's eyes. Two orbs of incredible depth, complete worlds of magnificent beauty and sorrow. Inside the girl's eyes, Eve sees a million moments, flashing like a subliminal movie. Eve looks at the girl's hair and remembers running her fingers thru it. She looks at the girl's cheek and remembers carressing it. She looks at the girl's lips and remembers kissing them. Debora. The name holds a thousand meanings. It is a deep sea of memories and feelings. Debora. The first thought that Eve had in the morning, and the last before sleeping. A constant, around which all over thoughts revolve. Debora. Eve's rising sun and waxing moon. The wind on her skin, and the flower in her pocket. Debora. Beloved. Cherished. A dream, once lived, that Eve has awaken from.

There is a ring at the doorbell, and Eve hears her dad getting up and walking to the front door. She looks in the mirror on her dresser, wiping the tears from her face and sniffing. She pulls a tissue from the tissue box on the dresser and blows her nose, balling the tissue up and tossing it in the wastebasket beside her dresser. Holding the picture of Debora out for a last look, Eve puts it back into the mirror frame next to the other pictures. There are still a collection of pictures, half of them of Debora by herself (taken by Eve), and the other half of Eve and Debora together. "You and Debora are inseperable," Eve's father would say. "If I didn't know you better, I'd think that you two were in love!" Then he would laugh. Eve knew that when her father laughed, he was subconsciously aware of the irony of his statement.

"Oh well," Eve would think. "What Dad chooses to ignore, won't hurt him." There is a disturbing efficiency to parental denial.

Eve picks up her eyeliner and fixes the smudges made by her tears. She had done her eyeliner extra fancy tonight, pointing with a slight upward curl on the outside. Kelvin told her to "dress up" for his drama club meeting. He said that the members always dress up for it, regardless of whether there were any rehearsals. Eve decided on a green medieval velvet dress that her father bought her to wear to renniassance fairs. She only attended one fair and then lost interest, so she kept it for prom. But she never went to prom. So tonight was the dress's night.

Eve put her hair in two small braids, pulling them into the back, and letting the rest of her shoulder-length hair hang. She conditioned it extra so that it would shine. Eve is excited and nervous. She hasn't been to any kind of social event since the lame senior party that she and Debora ditched. Eve is hoping that this will help get her mind off of the fact that Debora was in another state, going to college. Finally, a Saturday night when Eve doesn't spend the whole night reading Debora's old love notes, listening to Evanescence, and crying.

"Eve!" Dad calls from the living room. "There's a cleverly-dressed young gentleman here to pick you up!"

Eve steps back from her mirror and looks herself up and down, turning her body to look at the back.

"I'm coming!" Eve calls back to her father. "Just a second!"

"Women love to make men wait," Dad says in the living room, chumming it up with Kelvin. Dad thinks thinks that Kelvin is taking Eve on a date.

"Yeah," Kelvin says. "I think it's an excercise in power."

Dad laughs.

Picking up her small purse and making sure she has everything, Eve habitually kisses her index and middle fingers on her right hand and touches them to a picture of Debora. She stops on her way out the door, realizing what she just did, looks at the picture, and shakes her head, swallowing her tears. Kelvin doesn't want a weepy girl at his drama meeting.

"Have fun!" Dad says as he watches Kelvin escort Eve to his car. He breathes a sigh of relief. Eve's intense, two-year friendship with Debora was starting to worry him. It's good to see her dating boys. It was good that Debora went to college out of state.

"I love your dress!" Kelvin says as he backs out of the driveway. "If I didn't want to scare your father, I would have worn that!"

"I think you startled him enough with the make-up!" Eve says. "That's pretty badass. You look like The Crow on Broadway. So what kind of meeting is this? Are you guys rehearsing or something?"

"Not sure," Kelvin says. "We never have any structure to our meetings, except for the time it starts and ends. We just dress up, show up, and feel what kind of energy is buzzing around. Sometimes we just chill, sometimes we have in-depth discussions, sometimes we do improv games, sometimes we work on scripted material."

"Do you guys do any Shakespeare?" Eve asks, looking out the window at the passing houses.

"No," Kelvin says. "The only scripted material we do is written by us. We strive to always do living theater. We avoid dead theater."

"That's cool!" Eve says.

"Yeah, we're like drama renegades," Kelvin says. "We don't conform to dramatic convention. We don't need a stage or a theater. All the world's a stage."

"Hey!" Eve says, pointing her finger at Kelvin. "I thought you didn't do Shakespeare!"

There is a moment of silence, and they both laugh.

"Shakespeare didn't write that," Kelvin says, sobering the mood. "He channelled it. Truth is eternal."

"Indeed," Eve says.

They arrive at the meeting place, the house of two of the members.

"This is Rani and Tristan's house," Kelvin says as they pull into the driveway. "They're married, unofficially. They're quite the couple. Rani is Japanese, and Tristan is English. Kinda like John and Yoko, except they do theater instead of music."

"Cool," Tristan says, pulling down the sunvisor to check herself out in the mirror one final time before she gets out.