“It’s okay,” I say. “It’s kind of painful anyway.”

I slide my mutant appendage into the pocket of my jeans. The boy, breathing out a heavy gasp of relief, drops his hand.

I look at the floor as the wave pushes away from me around the circle.

“Close your eyes,” Asad whispers to me.

I squint out of one eye as the boy in black leads the circle, which centers on a Polly Pocket–size girl I know little about other than that she often skips through the halls, arm in arm with Kenzie. I mumble a comment about her cute pixie haircut when it’s my turn.

But I’m not thinking about her hair. I’m not even thinking about the painfully obvious break in the circle of trust on my left where the boy wouldn’t touch me.

I’m thinking about the boy on my right with hazelnut skin, who did.

14

I silently curse Piper.

She put this idea in my head with all her juicy-details talk. This is exactly why I didn’t tell her Asad is the nice boy on crew. She’d make this into a whole thing when there is absolutely no way this could ever be a thing.

Boys clearly belong on the list of Things I Lost in the Fire.

My sophomore-year boyfriend was the last boy for me. Josh and I shared lingering embraces in the hallway, long, late-night phone conversations, and even a post-football-game kiss once below the bleachers. It was mostly tongue mingled with Juicy Fruit and awkwardness, but it was my first and final kiss, so my mind graciously remembers it as romantic and lovely and full of just the right amount of sexual tension, autumn chill, and body contact.

When Josh came to visit me in the hospital, I refused to see him. Mostly, I couldn’t bear to see him see me. I wanted to remember the way he looked at me Before, that night beneath the bleachers when I hid my nervous smile behind my hair, and he brushed it away, his eyes fuzzy as he leaned in.

The fire could at least spare me a memory—one fading snapshot of when a boy looked at me like a girl he could love.

But that’s all it is—a memory. Boys don’t think of me like that anymore.

And neither do I.

Still, I peek at Asad’s fingers interlaced with the wrinkled ones protruding from my compression garments. When we open our eyes, he lets go. I look away, hoping no one caught me staring like a weirdo at our briefly intertwined digits.

Tony breaks us into cast and crew, and I sit cross-legged next to Asad on the wooden stage, awaiting orientation on how to be the Best Darn Stagehand in the History of High School Theater! Asad leans back on his arms, his legs outstretched in front of him.