Your social media needs to be scraped clean of any evidence of a wild life or a connection to the public eye; celebrities prefer significant others who the press will assume is a staff member at events because they look so ordinary. You can find celebrities at their jobs—in a dugout or an international screening of their new movie—but those aren’t where you should pursue a celebrity because, there, they are at work. Instead, catch them in their element: the most exclusive restaurant in the city or the bar where, since they were in the same fraternity as one of the bouncers, they let loose without fear of repercussions. If you research them, which isn’t hard to do because their entire lives are plastered online, you will be able to find them in a place where they don’t put their public mask on like a sheet of grass where they tiredly walk their dog every morning.

I like to play around on the piano, though I’m no pro. What I don’t enjoy is pausing to turn pages, or worse, spreading them out and propping them up in front of me. Pages fly every time the air conditioner kicks in. For some songs that’s fine, but who really wants to hear page six of Hey Jude?

You’ve heard the 13-year-old’s YouTube video play noisily on the L-train. You’ve watched the 25-year-old on the platform bop his head to his favorite Travis Scott song, one that he’s decided to play on repeat via a speaker tucked into his backpack. And I know you’ve witnessed the 76-year-old grandfather seated in the Quiet Car of the Amtrak pick up his daughter’s call unknowingly on speakerphone. Each time, I imagine your ears perked up. With furious taps, you texted your friend, reiterating how you just don’t get it, you just don’t. You figured you’d shoot them a few glares, certain that the fiery red lasers coming from your eyes would signal them to move to headphones, move cars, anything. I get it.

‘Good aardvark, with a long nose and a hairy snout.’

I could hear the words coming out of my friend’s mouth, but assumed my ears were deceiving me. Surely I misheard him.

Most of Jacob’s victims were pretty baffled, but he always got away with it. Their usual response was a very polite delivery of something like, ‘Very well, thank you.’ Or ‘Oh yes, good afternoon to you too.’ As intended, they had interpreted his ambiguous cacophony as, ‘Good afternoon, babble, friendly babble …’ And would end up blaming themselves for not hearing correctly.

The morning after Astrid sprains her sternum at the Baptist Indoor Beach Party, I arrive at orchestra rehearsal with my cello. I tighten my bow and swipe its horse hairs across a crumbling mass of dark rosin. Orchestra is my favorite class. I relish every early morning musical moment before enduring the rest of my sophomore schedule. I take my seat in the second chair of the cello section next to Milo, who plays third chair and can barely read music. The first chair, which belongs to Astrid, the virtuoso of the 1995-96 Trojan Orchestra, sits empty.