Gabriel spends a few minutes trying to find a good piece of skin as his canvas. I’m too nervous and excited to even care when he and the woman scrutinize every inch of my exposed body. We narrow it down to a spot on my ankle right between where the scar-free skin of my feet bleeds into the roughness of my calves.

“I can do half the bird in the ankle, kind of flying up into the scars,” he says. “Like it’s rocketing through them.”

“Let’s do it,” I say.

I lean back in the chair as he props my ankle up and draws an outline of his creation on my leg. When I approve, the boss-woman gives a nod and Gabriel gets to work. Asad holds my hand.

“Oh, it’s not so bad.” I unclench all my muscles as the little drill nips at my skin like a series of tiny rubber-band snaps that sting and fade, sting and fade.

“After what you’ve been through, I’m sure this is a walk in the park,” Gabriel says. He talks while he draws, asking about how I like Crossroads and how I got burned. Even though I’ve never met this guy before, I talk, too. When I tell him about Piper, he pauses.

“That’s rough. She’s a cool girl.”

I love him for using the present tense.

Before I can stop myself, I’ve basically told him everything about my life. About the fire. How I’m in The Wizard of Oz, and how it’s my first time onstage since the scars and how much I’ve missed singing and all things Broadway.

He tells me the only musical he’s ever seen is Cats, but he loved it. He keeps working, his lips moving slightly and I realize he’s singing softly beneath the whir of the drill. When I recognize the tune, I join in, and we sing the final chorus of “Memory” together.

Asad shakes his head.

“Cats? Seriously, dude?”

Gabriel shrugs, eyes still trained on my ankle. “What can I say? I’m a sucker for the classics.” He smiles up at me. “Killer voice, by the way. That auditorium won’t know what hit ’em.”

I fight the urge to flick my eyes away from his.

“Thanks. You too.”

Gabriel holds his rubber-gloved hands in the air triumphantly like he’s about to launch into an encore: “Voilà!”

He points to my skin, where he’s captured a phoenix in midflight, her wings stretched out on either side, blazing red and orange and yellow just like Piper’s. Straight as an arrow, her head and beak point fixedly at my scars.

Gabriel reaches out his hand for mine to help me up, and when I’m on my feet, he spins me beneath his arm slowly.