I shrug. “I’m trying something new.”

Ed Ferrero is this stoner theater kid who sells his sketchy homemade energy potions to tired students in the back parking lot. The concentration he sells them at is totally illegal. You have to get a prescription to use an energy potion that strong. Everyone who uses them looks wired as hell, and I’ve heard that their magic currents get all jumpy. But hey, they’re awake, which is all that Ed promises.

“Trying to get that last minute in with Mr. B?” Ed asks. “You and Ana really waited to the very last second for this.”

I let out a weird chortling laugh. “Mr. B actually asked us to audition. I think he, um, wanted more choir people.”

“Ahhhh,” Ed says, like everything makes sense to him now. “Yes, yes, more diverse singers for our foray out of white-person theater. Got it. What part are you gunning for?”

“I’d be cool with a small part.”

He nods sagely. “There are no small parts, Shay. Only small actors.”

Okay, Ed. That would probably be encouraging to someone who liked theater more, but I honestly want to have as little stage time as possible. I give him a tight-lipped smile anyway.

“I’m hoping for Hector,” he says quietly. Hector, if I’m remembering my Wikipedia skim correctly, is the Puerto Rican male lead.

Ed is white—his dark hair and patchy stubble mostly make him look like his Italian dad. But I’ve passed him talking on the phone to his mom after school in Spanish enough times to know he’s Latino.

“You’ll be fine,” I say. “I don’t think you have much competition.”

“I heard Brittany say that Mr. B was thinking about doing color-blind casting, though,” he says mournfully.

“Color-blind casting?” I repeat. “Like . . . Kevin Cho playing Hector?”

“Or our fearless leader, Brittany Cohen, playing Valeria,” he says, smiling serenely.

“Huh.”

“Yup.” He stretches his arms up, then folds them behind his head and leans back against the wall. “Who knows, though. Mr. B picked this musical because he could cast Mikey as Oscar.” Mikey is the one Black senior who does drama. It makes sense that Mr. B would have him in mind for Oscar, the Black male lead. “And then there’s me and Mateo. One of us could play Hector.”

That’s where Ed ends his list of all the Black and Latinx people in drama. Literally three people.

Mr. B leans out of the auditorium doors. “Men, you’re up. Come on backstage.”

Ed bounds to his feet, gives me a little salute, and strolls off to follow Mr. B.

No wonder Mr. B was out trying to drag in every brown person he could find. If he was planning to go with that color-blind casting idea, it would be an awfully pale production of Bronxtown Brooms.