I pause when I get to a picture of Josh, standing in the high school parking lot, arm around some girl with long, beach-wavy hair.

I x out of the photo quickly. This is exactly why I don’t look. This recon mission isn’t about my past, anyway.

I type Piper’s name and spot her easily by the neon-striped compression garments radiating from her profile pic. The rest of her photos are classic Piper—oddly angled black-and-whites of her wheelchair spokes, close-ups of her burns, angsty poems about scars and endless tattoo variations of phoenix wings. But her photos only go back to mid-January, nothing about the crash on New Year’s Eve, nothing about Kenzie.

I try “Kenzie King” and tap on a close-up of a windblown, beach-in-the-background girl.

Bingo.

Her account is private, but through some sleuthing, I sift through her friends’ accounts, finding photos of her and Piper wearing massive New Year’s Eve glasses and top hats, grinning into the camera. Before that, more pictures of them with the girl with the pixie haircut huddled under blankets at football games, in sequined dresses for homecoming, and standing arm in arm on the lip of the stage.

In what bizarro universe were Piper and Kenzie friends?

I scroll through the pictures of the past that Piper has clearly tried to delete. And if I’m going to survive in Kenzie King’s theater, I need to know why.

The next afternoon, Dr. Layne goes on forever at support group about the power of fear, but all I can think about is getting a minute alone with Piper.

Piper rolls her eyes as the crying boy—I think his name is Braden—talks about how he’s afraid he’ll never play the piano again because of the whole one-hand thing, and then he launches into how his girlfriend wants to get freaky, but he’s scared she’ll be grossed out by his scars.

“Thank you for sharing,” Dr. Layne says over Braden’s muffled sobs. “I want you all to think about the greatest fear in your life right now. How can you take back control? Grab a partner and discuss.”

Piper turns to me and nods toward Braden, who continues to wipe his face with a tissue.

“Forget the scars, he’s gonna blow his first time by crying the whole way through it. Blubbering is not hot.” She props her head on her hands and grins wildly. “Speaking of which, time to dish on your backstage Romeo.”

“Nothing to tell. He’s on stage crew and didn’t recoil at the sight of me.”

Piper nods, eyes blazing like I’ve just read her a page out of a smutty adult novel.

“Hot. It’s just a matter of time before you’re making out behind the curtain.”