The crowd melts away one by one. No fight today, folks. Just a broken girl in the middle of a hallway, trying to disappear. A few people loiter, watching, whispering, waiting to see what happens next. Kenzie stares at Piper, and I wait for some triumphant display or Kenzie-style verbal judo. Instead, Kenzie reaches out to Piper, placing her hand on the walker.

“I had no idea things were so bad,” she says. “If I had known—”

Piper swats her away, and as she does, Kenzie tilts her head toward the ceiling, trying to stop a tear that escapes defiantly, streaking down to her neck along a jagged pink line I’ve never noticed before. A scar, the same still-healing hue as Piper’s, slices from her jaw to her collarbone.

When she catches me looking, Kenzie flips her hair back in front of her shoulder, hiding the scar no one can see, the one she let make her ugly anyway.

Piper yanks her walker away from both of us, teetering unsteadily. Dr. Layne’s words ring in my head: you can let people in or you can let your scars push people away. Piper pushed Kenzie away. Kenzie pushed back. And they both ended up alone.

Now Piper’s cutting me out, too.

She glances up at me with empty eyes, and when she does, a realization settles on me: I can’t fix this.

No more than I can fix the scars on my face.

But there’s something I can do.

I turn so I’m next to Piper, keeping my steps in line with hers.

“You’re making it worse. Just go away,” she whispers, her voice tight. “I don’t need you to stand up for me.”

“I’m not. I’m standing up with you.”

Piper lifts one hand from her walker, wobbling to the side as she pushes me away from her.

“Just go!” Her words ring loud even above the noise of the hallway. “Everyone is looking at us. You hate that. So Just. Walk. Away.”

“No.”

Piper’s face flushes red as she stops again, midstep, and raises her hands wildly in the air.

“It’s a freak parade, then! Hey, everybody. Step right up to see the show.”

Half the people around us turn away in embarrassment. The other half can’t look away.

“The burned girl and the psychopath, for your viewing pleasure!” she yells.

“It won’t work this time,” I say. “You can’t cut me off before I leave, because I’m not leaving.”

Piper groans and continues to scoot-step her way down the hall, edging her way through clusters of people who jostle her and her walker. When she veers into the bathroom, I veer, too.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she says.

She turns to me inside the bathroom, yelling so loud that a terrified freshman drops her paper towel on the floor and scurries between us to escape.