“So it’s like we’re seeing into the past?”

“Sort of. My dad used to say, ‘The past is all around us.’ He also used to make up this story about how stars are peepholes to heaven so our loved ones can check in on us.”

Piper almost chokes on her popcorn.

“How very Lion King of him.”

I laugh, and my breath spirals away from me. Piper and I stare up at the sky, the trampoline swaying slightly beneath us. The night air nips at me, but I can barely feel it through my second skin.

Piper props herself on her elbow.

“What if he’s right? What if your parents are up there, watching your life?”

My eyes focus on the black nothingness between the stars.

“I sure hope not.”

Piper gives me a rough shove in the arm.

“Then stay,” she says. “Ditch the quarantined Quasimodo act and give normal an actual chance.”

“No way. I put in my two weeks as the Crossroads sideshow and now I’m free,” I say. I’ve served my time. Why would I subject myself to more? Still, Piper looks at me so hopefully, for a second I feel bad she’ll have to cruise the hallways alone on Monday. “Don’t worry. You’ll be fine without me.”

Piper scoffs. “Always am. It’s you I’m worried about. Two weeks ago, you showed me a picture of a girl in a truly hideous Rizzo wig who you clearly miss. I highly doubt you’re going to find her sitting in a dead girl’s room, pretending you died in that fire, too.”

“Exactly. Because that me is gone.”

Piper sits up on the trampoline, the whites of her eyes barely visible in the dark.

“Then let’s find her.” She pulls a sheet of paper out of her back pocket and smooths it out on the trampoline between us. “Auditions are on Friday.”

“ ‘Crossroads High Clubs,’ ” I read out loud. “Spring Musical” is circled in black marker. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Hear me out.” Her voice is quick and excited. “The first step is to do something you used to do. Reclaim that part of yourself.”

I imagine myself before the fire, standing on the stage of my old high school. My mom holds up her cell phone, and my dad claps loudly, doing that embarrassingly loud whistle with two fingers. But stages belong with singing and ponytails and bathing suits and makeup on the growing list of Things I Lost in the Fire.

“This face does not belong under a spotlight, unless the goal is to scare small children.”

Piper laughs. “Yeah, you definitely have a face for radio.”

“I have a face for living under a rock. Is there a club for that?”

Piper gasps and points to an item halfway down the list.