Asad brings the lights back up in the auditorium. The floor seems a million miles away as I peer over, sending my stomach churning. My mind darts back to a memory of me leaning out my bedroom window. My dad yells, “Jump,” but my feet won’t listen. He pushes me, and I fall, watching the ground zoom toward me.

I step back quickly from the glass before the memory burrows too deep. As I do, a group of girls walk onto the stage, Kenzie at the helm, her tight-pinched face even snartier than usual.

“That girl really thinks she’s something, huh?” I say.

“Kenzie King? She owns this place.”

Asad points to the sign at the back of the theater, which I can barely make out by squinting. THE KING FAMILY THEATER.

“As in, she literally owns it. Her family donates buttloads of money every year to the drama department, so Kenzie naturally thinks she runs it—and everyone in it.”

He rubs his palms together in excitement. “Shall we listen in?”

He cranks up a dial on the panel in front of him, and the sound of the girls’ footsteps fills the room.

“Umm…creepy voyeur much?” I say.

Asad laughs and turns the dial louder.

Kenzie’s voice wafts through the speakers on the walls, already in the middle of a sentence.

“It’s her I’m worried about. That whole circle-of-trust disaster was so embarrassing, although who can blame that kid for not wanting to touch that…thing. And I honestly think she has no idea that she smells like a walking old-folks home.”

My muscles tense as I inch away from Asad, hoping he won’t take a whiff to confirm. Instead, he flicks a switch, silencing the conversation.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know—”

I shrug. “I’m used to it.”

“You shouldn’t be.” Asad’s face contorts as he taps a switch back and forth, flickering a small light at the back of the stage on and off. I step farther back from the glass, less afraid now of the height and more of Kenzie noticing the light and looking up to see me watching her like a stalker. “We should say something to her. You should say something.”

I lean against the control panel, trying to be casual even though all I really want to do is get out of this small space that has suddenly filled with the hospital-drenched scent of my lotion.

“Right, because people like me can just walk up to people like her and say, ‘Please like me. Pretty please’? Girls like that are just one of the irrefutable laws of high school—like gravity. No matter what I do, they’ll always be there.”

Kenzie and her entourage file out of the auditorium, their mouths still moving even though Asad has momentarily silenced their mockery.