She beams and flips back around in her seat, smiling up at her mom. Her mom smiles back, and for a second I feel another twinge of a memory: a velvet dress with a taffeta skirt that made me feel so fancy that I had to twirl in it at least every thirty seconds. Mom bought Junior Mints at intermission for ten dollars a box, which seemed extravagantly wonderful.

“Do you get sick of it?” Asad whispers to me as the lights dim in the theater and the orchestra crescendos a warm-up note, releasing the butterflies in my stomach that I get every time a performance begins.

“What?”

Asad nods toward the girl.

“That.”

“Nah. Questions aren’t bad. It’s the silent starers that get old. Like my skin somehow makes me unapproachably subhuman,” I say. “It’s just skin, people; it’s not me.”

Asad smiles, his teeth white against his skin and the darkened room.

“What’s so funny?” I ask.

“Nothing. I was just thinking how much you’re going to love this.”

35

The gist of the play is this: shunned from society for her green skin, Elphaba becomes best frenemies with her roommate, Glinda.

Elphaba becomes the infamous Wicked Witch because she fights cruel discrimination, and Glinda becomes the Good Witch because she lacks the courage to defy the all-powerful Wizard.

But it’s not the plot that keeps Asad on the edge of his seat, mouthing along with the words, and me entranced beside him.

It’s the music, thick with life.

I lose myself in each song.

My heart aches when Elphaba sings about how she’s not the kind of girl boys love. I’m glad Asad doesn’t look at me during that one.

Then Elphaba flies on a broomstick, soaring higher and higher, her black cloak floating behind her as she tries “Defying Gravity.”

The notes reverberate through the theater, her voice rising along with the orchestra, the pulsing beat rushing through me. I’m that eight-year-old girl again sitting by my mother, wrapped up tight in the music.

When Asad turns to me, I realize I’ve been death-gripping the armrest between us.

“Right?” he says.

When Glinda and Elphaba reconcile toward the end, thoughts of Piper and our fight needle me. I touch the phoenix around my neck as Glinda sings of how their friendship has changed her for good.

When the stage lights fall, the reality of the houselights hits me hard. I stand to leave with the rest of the row, but Asad puts his hand on my arm.

“I always stay until they kick me out.” He jerks his head toward the exit sign. “Once we go through those doors, the magic ends.”

The ringleted girl in front of us waves as she files out of her row.

“Toes-up!” I say, sticking up my thumb. She laughs and gives me a thumbs-up before she disappears into the aisle.

“You liked it, right?” Asad says.