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It's Ginny who answers the door, but if gossip has already begun to fly through the drama department about the fateful kiss between Nick and Sammy, she pretends to ignorance.  "Hi, Sammy," she says, offering the Upper East Side hug and air kiss one practices when one has to be careful of one's costume and make-up.  Ginny assumes Sammy's there to see her.  "What brings you to my little corner of utopia today?"

"My Sunday rehearsal was suddenly canceled," Sammy says.  "So I thought I would come here instead.  Is Sylvia home?"

Ginny nods.  "Make yourself comfortable," she says with a breezy gesture toward the living room.  Then she calls up the stairs toward the landing from which the bedrooms extend.  "Oh, Miss Sylvia!" she says, sweet-voiced as a Southern belle.

Sylvia's voice, less musical, floats back.  "Yes, Miss Virginia?"

"You have a guest!"

Sylvia takes a minute to set aside whatever she's doing and come down the stairs.  When she sees Sammy, she seems surprised.  "Hey there.  What's up?"  Then a menu of possible catastrophes opens in her imagination, and she looks stressed.  "Wait.  Seriously.  What's up?"

"Nick Hurley canceled rehearsal," Sammy says, waiting for Ginny to wander off.  She slumps forward, elbows on knees, chin in hand.  "Everything is all messed up." 

Sylvia seems a little lost, but as teen-super emergency mode shuts off, she leans against the corner of the couch and looks baffled.  "Um . . . is something wrong?  I mean, was rehearsal canceled for a scary reason?"

"Scary."  Sammy laughs.  It isn't a pleasant sound.  "You could say that.  I know I'm scared."  At Sylvia's puzzled glance she adds, "It's going to be all over school tomorrow anyhow, so you might as well know now.  We kissed each other at rehearsal last Friday night.  And it was nice.  Real nice."

"You and Nick?"  There's a long pause.  Of course it was Sammy and Nick.  "On stage or, like, in the dressing room?"

Sammy looks for any signs of judgement on Sylvia's face.  Seeing none, or at least seeing nothing extreme, she takes a deep breath and goes forward.  "On stage.  In front of everybody."  She continues, and her words come out rapidly.  "We were rehearsing and it was going perfectly.  We had talked before about ending it with a kiss because it is that kind of song, but decided it might be over the top for the show so normally we just hug and press our cheeks together.  This time though, he was dead on and I was dead on and the emotion was pouring out of the music and for whatever reason I thought it would be a good idea to kiss him and he apparently thought it would be a good idea to kiss me too and..."  Sammy looks miserable.  "And it was real.  There was no acting.  I could feel it, and I think he did too, judging by the way he looked at me and the way his voice sounded...  Then I got scared, and backed off real quick, and asked him to back off too.  I told him I couldn't keep kissing him, that I was dating Elrod."  Sammy is on the verge of tears again.  "Its not that I don't like Elrod anymore.  He's great.  Its just..." A little sob escapes from her body.

Sylvia looks pained and sympathetic.  She's not gushy like Ginny, so she doesn't rush in for the hug, but her hand finds Sammy's back, and her eyes have that pinched and worried look she gets when someone presents her with a problem she can't immediately solve.  "It's okay," she says gently.  "You're upset because you feel guilty?"

Sammy snuffles and nods.  "Yes.  I messed up everything.  I messed up with El.  I messed up Nick.  I probably messed up our part of the Winter Concert.  I probably messed up being in El's band next summer.  And I messed up... <choke> Christmas!"

Sylvia gives a measured response.  She's used to Ginny, for whom everything in the world is an obstacle thrown up in her path to glory.  "Do you think anyone really noticed?  I mean, besides you and Nick.  I'm thinking from the audience it would just look like a really good acting job."

"I don't know," is Sammy's despondent response.  "I'd say you were right except that she was there -- Torrance -- and she wants El.  I bet she went running to spread the good word to anybody who would listen.  I still could get away with it, claim she was full of it except then Nick went and canceled rehearsal.  He didn't call me, he got somebody else to do it.  If he starts acting weird, or if the performance goes from great to meh, people are going to notice, and they're going to start wondering whats up."

"Who cares what people notice?"  It's a rhetorical question, perhaps, something programmed into Sylvia after years of being the reluctant oddball.  "Have you talked to El?"

"No.  We haven't been talking as much or seeing each other as much for the past couple of weeks.  I've been busy getting ready for the Winter Concert with Nick, and El's been busy getting ready for Christmas and talking to college recruiters.  I haven't seen him since Thursday night, and the last text message I got from him was on Friday night.  I figured if I publicly acted like it was no big deal, then it wouldn't be and there'd be nothing to talk to him about.  At least not until I had time to figure out if it happened just because Nick and I both got caught up in the song, or if there's more to it than that."

Sylvia is still grappling with the social dynamics of romance.  She has to go with her gut, and fourteen years of girl-power conditioning from Mitzi, Carolyn, and the Girl Scouts.  "If there's something more to it, that's something to be happy about.  You and El might not work out, but you're dating, not married."

Boggled, Sammy looks at Sylvia and exclaims "But its Christmas!" as if that explains everything.

How can Sylvia argue with that?  She looks perplexed and can't restrain her bull-headed practicality anymore.  "You want to be in love with El?  I can make you be in love with El.  You want El to love you?  I'm your girl.  Substitute any pair of names, any emotion.  Slap a diaper on me and call me Cupid."

Shocked, Sammy sits up and back a little and looks at Sylvia warily.  "No.  That would be cheating. Besides," she gets a sad smile on her face.  "its not really about love or lust or any of that.  Its about hurt.  No matter what I do or don't do, somebody gets hurt here.  During the holidays, when people are supposed to feel happy, somebody is going to be sad because of me.  And I'm going to be sad because I know that.  And odds are good for me totally screwing up two perfectly good friendships with two perfectly nice guys, never mind the boyfriend girlfriend stuff."  She stands up.  "I probably ought to just go on home.  This isn't anything that can be fixed."

"It'll be okay," Sylvia repeats, grateful Sammy didn't take her up on her offer, "but you're right.  This is the kind of thing you probably just have to survive.  When you get to the ice-cream-and-chick-flick stage, Ginny and I are here for you.  And Sarah.  Well, Sarah would probably go ADD.  Colin.  Colin probably loves ice cream and chick flicks."

This gets a small smile.  "So long as its not one where everybody dies at the end.  I couldn't handle that right now."

"Nobody's going to die over this," Sylvia says, but as soon as she says it, she looks unhappy with herself.

"What?" Sammy says.  "You... you don't have that whatchimacallit see into the future thing, precognition, do you?"

"No," Sylvia says.  "Just a habit of tempting fate."  She winces a little.  "There are all kinds of things I feel like I can't say anymore, not without creeping myself out.  'It's all going to be okay,' is one of them.  I always feel like I'm making a promise that doesn't mean anything, and I hate that.

"This Nick thing?  It'll work out one way or another.  Is it okay to say that?  I don't want to sound callous, but that's pretty much the only guarantee I can give.  If it gets really bad--like life-threateningly bad, not that that's going to happen--then I've got your back, and you know we could spin Torrance Shipman like a ten-cent top if we wanted."