“For lack of a more sophisticated term, it was amazeballs,” I say.

Asad laughs lightly and kicks his feet up on the chair in front of him like he has no intention of ever leaving.

“I knew it. Of all people, I knew you especially would get it.”

“Especially me?”

“Yeah, especially you,” Asad says unapologetically. “Because you’re different, and that’s the point of the whole thing. The world casts us into roles based on snap judgments. We look at people, but we don’t see them.”

The stragglers dotting the nearly empty theater are getting up now, putting on spring jackets and shoulder shawls. Asad makes no move to leave, even when it’s just us and a few men in white blouses and black vests sweeping up ten-dollar Junior Mints boxes.

“So when you look at me, what do you see?” I ask.

“Oh, you’re a tough one. Closed up like the final curtain,” he says. “But the thing I see most is how you’ve changed everything since you got here.”

I laugh, and the towering room swallows up my voice.

“Me? How could I possibly change anything?”

“It’s like the song in the play—people change us,” he says. “Like we’re all just pool balls, bouncing around a table. Some balls are random, but some balls find a pattern in the chaos, and when they hit us, they change our trajectory. And you, Ava Lee, are a big fat eight ball. You slammed into me and into that school and you’ve inspir—”

I hold out my hand to still Asad’s, which he waves around as he talks.

“Don’t say it,” I say. “Don’t you dare say it.”

Asad frowns and his hands fall. “What’s so wrong with being an inspiration?”

“Because real inspiration is Elphaba, fighting corruption and evil. Not me.”

“Hello? We’re in high school. Our demons may be smaller, but that doesn’t make the fight—or the bravery—any less real.”

A man in a vest tells us we need to go. Asad stands up reluctantly and stretches before hooking his arm through mine to escort me down the long aisle. At the end of the red carpet, he turns and looks back at the theater, rows and rows of empty seats, now somehow a little less magical with the lights on and a woman with a jet-pack vacuum sucking up stray Junior Mints.

“All I’m saying is I’m braver just from knowing you. I got into a fight, for crying out loud. I dropped a curtain on Kenzie’s head and threatened the principal. I don’t do things like that,” he says. “At least, I didn’t. Until you. So I’m glad I could be here with you tonight, and I’m glad your ball hit my ball.”