Cora’s lips seal into a tight line as she rubs hard into my shoulders, working the lotion into my thickest scars. The wide bands of skin grafts pull in from my neck, my back, my arms, gathering like steel suspenders. Until recently, Cora had to help me put on my shirts because I couldn’t move my arms high enough.

I hold my arms out to let the lotion air-dry before we begin the task of getting my compression garments over my tacky skin. I snake each leg and arm through the tight fabric, and Cora zips me up. She rubs lotion on my face last, using one finger to spread it across the graft lines that dissect me.

“I hear Crossroads does a musical every year,” Cora says nonchalantly, like she didn’t make sure the school I’ll be going to has a stellar drama program. Like we both don’t know I haven’t sung a single note since the fire. Before, I couldn’t stop singing. Pouring my heart out to the showerhead microphone. On the highway with Sara with the windows rolled down. At the dinner table, subjecting my poor parents to my latest Broadway obsession.

With all the smoke and tubes and surgeries, who knows if I even can sing now. Dr. Sharp says my throat has healed and all, but I have my doubts. Not that it matters. The girl who loved spotlights and solos doesn’t exist anymore.

My eyes drift around the room where Sara and I used to have cousin sleepovers every few months. Even though I lived an hour south, in Utah’s farm country, we’d grown up in each other’s rooms, sharing each other’s lives. She called my mom Momma Denise, and I called hers Momma Cora.

Now I just call her Cora, and this room feels more foreign than familiar.

Most of Sara’s things were gone when I arrived from the hospital, but a few haunting echoes remain—clothes in the closet that fit me, Sara’s pointe shoes on a corner shelf as if she’s going to sashay in at any moment, and, of course, the vintage Barbie collection that stares at me from behind the glass of a massive curio cabinet. Apparently, the dolls are super valuable. Not that Cora and Glenn would ever sell them or anything else in here.

Cora’s tried in her way to make this space my own, though. Framed pictures of my parents on the desk. On the walls, Broadway musical posters like I used to have at home.

But this is not home.

And I’m an interloper—an impostor trying to fill the space of two girls when I’m barely even one.

Cora holds my chin so I’m looking right at her again.

“Promise me you’ll give this a real chance. That you’ll let people in.”