“What’s with the makeup?”

“What’s with the screwed-up relationship with your parents?” she ricocheted back to my court, opening the door for me.

Touché.

I flicked the back of her ear. “For the sake of full disclosure, if you cage in on me tomorrow at school, I’m going to hurl your ass into the fountain and scrub every inch of that face clean of makeup.”

She grinned. “I ain’t doin’ that no more. Pinky promise.” She gave me her pinky. I wrapped her pinky in mine and pulled her into my body, kissing her unmarred cheek. She gasped. I drew back, smirking back at her before she had the chance to freak out.

I stepped down her porch stairs, feeling surprisingly light, even though it was my birthday, and my birthdays were the worst days of my life.

I stopped at the last squeaky step, turning around, knowing she was still at the door.

“Hey, Texas?”

She rested her forehead against the door, smiling at me sleepily.

“You should open up a little.”

“So should you.”

“I think I am.”

It was the first birthday in the last five years where I’d actually cracked a smile. Which was insane to think about. It made me feel guilty as hell. No wonder Mom, Dad, and East had called me all day. They probably thought I’d finally offed myself.

That this time I had a deer-on-the-road moment I managed to seize.

Grace bit her bee-stung lower lip in a way that told me she was fighting one of her make-the-world-melt grins.

“I think I am, too.”

Grace

I was cleaning up the auditorium, doing my job as a stage assistant, the evening my first phoenix feather finally peeked out of its ashes.

It was the day after my almost-kiss with West. Tess and Lauren were the last to leave, after staying late and rehearsing some of their scenes together. Lauren was still struggling to get all her lines right. She blamed it on a recent breakup with her boyfriend Mario. Tess had been working the angle of passive-aggressively coaxing her into convincing Professor McGraw to switch roles. She argued that Stella didn’t have as many lines and her role wasn’t as emotionally draining.

“Seriously, Lor, just tell Finlay and McGraw you’ve got too much on your plate. Switch to Stella. You’ll get an A+ and would only have to memorize half the lines.”

I tidied up around them, moving the mop around their feet. They both waved me goodbye, with Tess’ eyes lingering on me a moment too long, as if noticing my existence for the first time. I had no doubt it had everything to do with West snatching me from the auditorium the other day.

After I finished mopping, I rearranged all the props backstage, hanging the costumes on the racks.

Humming “No Me Queda Más” by Selena to myself (because: ’90s and Selena were double the win), my thoughts wandered to West. Specifically, to his relationship with his parents. He was angry, that was for sure. He’d been cagey about them, but from what I’d pieced together, they were struggling financially, and he was breaking his back trying to help them.

About to turn the lights off, I paused on the threshold between the stage and the backstage, peeking through the burgundy curtains. I loved the stage’s floor. It was my favorite. It was full of scratches and dents, from actors and dancers wearing it down over the years.

Beaten and broken, it was still capable of creating the greatest magic.

Without really meaning to, I found myself taking a step toward the center of the stage, swallowing hard.

“You need to open up.”

West’s words tickled the bottom of my belly.

Another step.

“Don’t roll over and play dead.”

The next one was my grandmother’s.

“If you’re not scared, you’re not being brave.”

Before I knew what was happening, my feet hurried across the stage.

Tap, tap, tap.

My heart accelerated, my mouth dried up, and my breath stuttered in my throat.

I stopped and stood there, in the middle of the stage.

Alone.

Brave.

Scared.

But undefeated.

I took off my pink ball cap, took a deep breath, and let out an earth-shattering scream that pierced through the walls and made the entire place shake. It lasted long seconds before subsiding, its last echoes still dancing in my lungs.

I smiled and bowed to the rows upon rows of empty red velvet seats.

I imagined the auditorium full of people. They were clapping and cheering for me, rising to their feet in a standing ovation.

I felt a little part of my phoenix peeking out of the ashes.

Not an entire wing, but one lonely perfect feather.

It was red. The color of my scar.

It reminded me of myself.

“There’s a fight this Friday. I thought maybe you changed your mind about coming.” Karlie was plopped on her bed next to me, her nose stuck in a textbook.

I scrunched my nose, hugging her pillow to my chest as I leaned against her headboard. “Why would I change my mind?”

“For one thing, rumors travel fast, and Tess has been telling everyone West freakin’ St. Claire whisked you away from the auditorium last week. People think you two are bumping uglies now. The one interesting thing to ever happen to us in, like, five years, and you forget to tell me about it.” She rolled her eyes, turning a page in her textbook and running a marker over an entire paragraph. “I’m five seconds away from dumping your ass, Shaw. You’re a bad best friend.”

I laughed, throwing the pillow in her face. “There’s nothing to tell. We’re just friends.”

“Riiiiiight. And denial is just a river in Egypt.”

“I’m not in denial.”

“Not even a teeny-tiny bit?” Karl dropped her textbook in her lap, pinching her fingers together, looking at me through the gap between them with an impish grin. There was no point telling her about a kiss that hadn’t happened and was promptly branded as a mistake by West before he backed out of it.

“I swear, it’s totally platonic. He is a commitment-phobe who loves variety. I’d be an idiot to fall for a guy like that.”

I am the idiot who is halfway there.

“You don’t choose who you fall in love with.”

“Maybe, but you do choose how to act on things,” I countered.

Karlie rearranged her limbs, sitting crisscrossed on her white duvet, leaning against her poster-filled wall. Pearl Jam and Third Eye Blind and Green Day. Her room was a nineties shrine, including a Discman on her nightstand, Beanie Babies on her bed, and an old-school see-through phone.

Karlie was born at the end of 1999. The last day of the year to be exact. December thirty-first, at eleven fifty-eight at night. That made her obsessed with the era, and whatever Karlie liked—I loved. It was the natural, courteous thing for me to do to join her obsession for moral support.

“Look, I’m studying how to become a reporter, and call it an investigative knack, but I ain’t buying what you’re selling, Shaw. The reality is you’re both single, and hot, and you spend a lot of time together.” She popped her watermelon gum in my face.

“He also spends a lot of time inside other girls, like Melanie and Tess,” I murmured.