The bell rings, but I stay put, soaking up the blood with my brown paper sack. I wait until halfway through the next class period to emerge from my hole. When I do, I peek around the curtain first before venturing out. I pick up a stick of forgotten lip gloss on the vanity, a shiny pink shade just like one I used to wear.

In the mirror, my reflection gawks back. My tightened skin tugs down my bottom eyelids, revealing so much pink moistness that my eyes look like they’re threatening to turn inside out. Cora says it gives me an endearing puppy-dog look. I think it makes me look like an extra on The Walking Dead.

I push up my drooping eyelids with my fingers.

Those girls have no idea that I used to be a normal girl with friends, and eyeliner in a pencil bag, who reapplied lip gloss between classes and covered my sun-induced freckles with foundation. They mocked me without even meeting me.

If my life were a Greek tragedy, I would have been a major mean girl in my life before the fire. At least then I’d learn some poetic lesson about kindness in a classic cosmic twist.

But I wasn’t a mean girl. I was a normal fifteen-year-old who went to football games on weekends and spent way too much time rehearsing for the spring musical. I was a daughter. A friend. A brunette. A singer.

I was a million things.

I release my eyes and fade back into the scars.

Now, I’m only one thing—the Burned Girl.

And between this backstage diva blitz and back-row Captain Clueless in science, I may have seriously miscalculated my ability to disappear.

By the time Uncle Glenn picks me up at the end of the day, my body aches from my full day of “being normal.” My beleaguered muscles scream at me as I climb into his truck.

“So how was it?” he asks, chipper to the max. Aunt Cora probably coached him on how to keep upbeat about my foray into normalcy.

“Fine.”

“Make any friends?”

“Loads. I’ll probably have to hold auditions.”

Glenn smiles and puts his hand on my arm. “That bad, huh?”

I slouch in my seat as we drive past a row of jocks flirting with field hockey skirts. Glenn and I both pretend not to see them turn to look as we pass.

“It’s whatever.” I shrug. “It’s high school. I’m just ready to go home.”

I use the term loosely, of course. My real home would be a place I could retreat after a day like today. I’d turn the corner onto our street and enter my own little refuge. Just Dad and Mom and me, and the calming assurance that I don’t have to be anything or anyone else.

“I’m sure you are,” Glenn says. “I hate to remind you, but the support group is today.”