A shield.

A star.

What are these scars?

Am I this skin?

All trapped within?

A broken body.

A broken girl.

Or is there more to me than this?

This patchwork quilt

of shame and guilt.

For once, I'm starting to believe,

Beneath this skin,

There's still a me.

Of ash,

Of smoke,

Of scars—

A girl.

Her wings

In waiting

To unfurl.

48

With zero warning, exactly twelve hours before facing down my first postfire audience, Piper returns.

On the morning of the play, as Asad and I leave earth science, I see her at the end of the long science hallway, her face twisting in pain with each scoot-step of her walker.

Piper makes her way slowly through the crowd, her eyes glued to the linoleum as everyone turns in the same not-so-obvious way as on my first run of the hallway gauntlet. Stares. Whispers behind hands.

Rumors about the Girl Who Took the Pills. The girl who is walking, painfully slow, right back into everything she tried to escape. Because I didn’t fix it.

When Piper stops at her locker, she balances on one side of the walker to rip off the two straggler cards that have managed to hang on for her less-than-triumphant return. A few feet ahead of us, Kenzie also watches Piper’s glacial approach. I nudge Asad when I notice the cell phone in Kenzie’s hand. He shakes his head.

“Forget about her,” he says. “It’ll be a big scene.”

A searing flame of anger shoots through me as I think of Kenzie’s texts, every nasty word.

Everyone hates you

I grab my own cell from my backpack and pull up the number that’s been torturing Piper.

“A big scene is exactly what I want.”

I head straight for Kenzie, but she’s moving away from me now, threading her way down the hall. She pulls a blue envelope out of her backpack and hands it to Piper.

“…from all of us,” I hear her say. “We were so worried about you.”

I grab the card before Piper can.

“You were so worried about her?” I say. “You can drop the act, Kenzie.”

She stares at me, speechless.

“We all know what kind of a friend you’ve been,” I say.

Wildfire itching pours over my body as Kenzie turns to me, along with half the hallway. Another day, another me, I would have run away with my tail between my legs. But not today.

Not when Piper needs me.

You know you should have been driving

“What are you doing?” Piper hisses to me through gritted teeth. “Everyone’s staring.”

“Let them,” I say.

Around us, I can feel bodies closing in, trying to listen. A few boys start chanting, “Fight, fight.” Kenzie shifts her weight uncomfortably.

“This isn’t my fault,” she whispers. “I didn’t do this.”