“What else, what else?” She strokes her chin. “Oh, I like long wheelchair rides on the beach, and I’m a Taurus.”

The boy goes next but can’t finish because he starts crying. Something about a campfire and an exploding gas can. Called it.

The girl with no burns talks for a full ten minutes about her invisible injuries from a propane-leak flash fire when she was a baby. What could she still have to talk about?

Hearing everyone swap burn stories morphs me back to the unit, where patients wear percentages and burn degrees like badges of honor.

I’m 60 percent mostly third-degree burns, which are the nasty buggers that devour every layer of skin, taking everything along the way—hair follicles, sweat glands, fat cells, and nerves. My hands achieved fourth-degree status when the flames reached all the way to my bones. I had a bunch of second-degree wounds, too, but those are kind of a joke among burn circles. They’re red and oozy and impressive, but they mostly only eat away the top layer of skin.

The funny thing is those shallow burns hurt like a mother when they’re fresh, but the deeper ones you don’t even feel. Nothing left to feel with no nerve endings. For these burns, the real pain doesn’t start until later, with the skin grafts and the cleanings and the nurses ripping off gauzy skin with tweezers.

When a wound’s that deep, it’s the healing that hurts.

I realize everyone in the circle is looking at me.

“What am I supposed to say, again?”

“Something about yourself. It’s up to you how much and what to share,” Dr. Layne reminds me.

Heat prickles up my neck. All the eyes in the circle wait to hear the details of my scartastic tapestry.

“My name is Ava. I moved here recently from central Utah. I guess I’m a student at Crossroads High now, and I’m a junior.”

They wait for more, and when I deliver only silence, all eyes turn to Dr. Layne. Pink Zebra Girl speaks first.

“Ummm…aren’t you going to tell us about your scars?”

Dr. Layne interjects.

“Piper. We’ve talked about this before.”

“I think she knows she’s burned, Dr. L.” She turns to me with her hand over her mouth in mock surprise. “Oh my gosh…did I totally just let the cat out of the bag?”

“Piper! Enough!” Dr. Layne says sharply, smacking her hand on her clipboard. “Over the next few months, you are going to all share as much or as little about your stories as you are comfortable with telling. There will be no right amount, and no right answers.”

Her gaze lingers on the girl in the wheelchair, who smiles back innocently. Dr. Layne proceeds to tell us how we will focus each week on a new element of empowerment.