“About the audition?” I ask, grabbing a knife and cutting board. “I’m going to do it, I guess. I’m not that good, so he’ll probably just put me in the ensemble. Or he might not want me to be in the show at all.”

“Is that what you want to do?” Pilar asks.

I line up my knife and cut the stalk away from a fennel bulb. “I mean, not really.”

Lex makes a sound as if she’s about to interject, but the bell on the door rings. “Hi, welcome to Pilar’s,” she calls, turning away to go to the counter.

“There are always more options in every choice than you first think,” Pilar says to me. “Try to find all of them before you make your decision.”

“I can audition for the show. Or I don’t audition for the show, and I ruin my chances of getting the scholarship.” I aggressively cut another fennel stalk. “That’s basically it.”

“You could tell someone what happened,” Pilar says. “Another teacher? One that you trust?”

I shake my head. “That won’t do anything. Nothing really happened anyway.”

“It sounds like something happened.”

“Lex is exaggerating.” What does Pilar expect me to do? Go to the principal to tell him that Mr. B looked at me during a meeting and then told me to audition for the musical? Yeah right. “Anyway, that scholarship is the whole point of me going to this school,” I say. “I’ve worked so hard for it. I don’t want everything to be ruined because some teacher decides he doesn’t like me.”

“Protect yourself, Shay,” Pilar says. “Men with power over you are dangerous.” She raises her eyebrows and gives me a knowing look.

I let out a short laugh. “It’s not like that.”

She hums quietly, tilting her head to the side. “You are a very powerful person,” she says eventually. “Never forget that.”

“Yeah,” I say, and then I turn my attention back to my potion.

Chapter 6

Young Americans fed up with the rat race are protesting by moving to large communes in Kansas and Nebraska, where residents engage in collective farming. This form of social protest is meant to express their disillusionment with the promises of the American Magical Way and reject the culture of overwork that pushes American youth to struggle for years in a grueling education system, often with little economic benefit.

—“Disenchanted American Youth Join a Mass Communal-Living Movement,” The New York Times