I pull my headphones out of my bag and put them on over the wig, trying to block out today. We paint together for the rest of the hour, mostly in silence, me mulling over today’s photo disaster, Piper no doubt fuming at her Kenzie run-in, and Asad trying not to get mocked again. I brush up and down the canvas, finishing the final curves of the yellow brick road.

Follow the path. Click the shoes. Go home.

If only life were so scripted.

When we’re the last three in the auditorium, Asad and I lug the canvases to the back wall, and when we return, Piper is sitting on the edge of the stage, her legs dangling, staring into the dark auditorium with her empty wheelchair behind her.

“So you wanted to face a fear today, huh?” she says, her lips half smiling but her eyes in full blaze.

“Yeah. And I failed.”

Piper gestures toward the empty auditorium.

“We got a stage.”

“And?”

“And screw the yearbook photo. Face an even bigger fear.”

“What? Sing?”

Piper nods. Asad jumps up and pulls the curtains all the way open, his usual smile returning.

“No. Way,” I say.

Asad strides to the end of the stage.

“Here, I’ll go first. Warm the place up a little.”

He faces the empty auditorium, hands outstretched toward the invisible audience, face contorted with artistic anguish as he sings an off-key (okay, not even key-adjacent) version of “Circle of Life” from The Lion King complete with an earsplitting vibrato that makes Piper grimace. When he finishes, he takes an over-the-top bow, his black shock of hair falling dramatically over his eyes.

“Well, that I can follow,” I say.

“A dying cat could follow that,” Piper says. “Pun intended.”

“Haters gonna hate.” Asad grabs my hand and pulls me to my feet, half dragging me to the front of the stage.

Piper waves me forward, rolling her eyes. “It’s just us, Ava. One of us who loves you to pieces, and one who is clearly tone-deaf.”

Asad scowls at her. “Rude.”

Facing the darkness of the theater, I tighten my hoodie around my waist. The last time I sang on a stage, Sara was in the audience with Mom and Dad. My people—unseen but buoying me up from the darkness.

Now, only empty seats look back, and I’m definitely not the same girl looking out.

“Just sing the audition song,” he says. “You know it, right?”

I nod. After years of singing along with my mother as she brushed her fingertips up and down my arm at bedtime, I know it by heart.

But that was before I traded lullabies for lotion and spotlights for stage crew.

I’m not even sure I can sing anymore.

I stand at the lip of the stage and sing the first word, which comes out shaky and uncertain.