In that moment, the months of overtime and the stress of clicking "purchase" just before the tickets sold out vanished. The magic wasn't just on the stage; it was in the shared breath between the "Popular" girl and the girl who finally felt like she could fly.

His daughter, Maya, stood beside him, her face illuminated by the massive emerald posters of Elphaba and Glinda. She’d been singing "Defying Gravity" into her hairbrush since she was six. Tonight, for her sixteenth birthday, the hairbrush was being traded for the real thing.

The flickering neon of Times Square always felt like a heartbeat, but tonight, it pulsed with a specific, electric green.