“I want you to do it because you can. I can’t walk. That crying kid at group can’t play the piano. You can’t look in the mirror. But you can sing.”

During drama, Asad not-so-subtly mentions the sign-ups while we sort through the disheveled costume closets backstage. He pulls a ginormous Pepto-Bismol-pink hoop dress from the back and holds it up to me.

“I really think you could get it.”

“Getting it and actually doing it are two totally different things.” I push aside the layers upon layers of satiny fabric. “And this dress? Are you trying to get me to audition or run away screaming?”

He stuffs the dress back in and puts a Tin Man’s hat on his head, locks his arms at ninety-degree angles, and does an indescribably bad robot dance. I put on a pointy black witch hat as he swaps out the tin hat for a lion’s mask with a matted mane.

“ ‘Courage cannot erase our fears.’ ” He strikes a nowhere-near-ferocious pose. “ ‘Courage is when we face our fears.’ ”

“Newsies. Too easy.” I pull off his mask. “And too easy to say for someone hiding up in his lighting booth.”

“Touché, my friend. Touché.” He reaches deep into the closet, pulls out a pair of ruby-red shoes, and places them in my hands.

I click the heels together. Three clicks—POOF!—you’re home. Dorothy had it so good.

The sound of someone else’s feet entering the stage makes us both look up, and I chuck the shoes back into the closet. Asad presses one finger to his lips as Kenzie’s unmistakable voice reaches us.

“I know Piper put her up to this,” she says.

“It’s not even a big role,” says a high-pitched voice that I think belongs to Kenzie’s sidekick with the pixie cut.

“That’s not the point,” Kenzie snaps. “This is all some twisted revenge plot. Piper blames me for the crash, so she’s throwing her new friend in my face.”

Asad holds up the dress as if to ask if I’ve signed up for auditions. I shake my head decidedly.

“Maybe she won’t even get the part,” Pixie Cut says.

Kenzie scoffs.

“Of course she will; what kind of monster could say no to her?”

“You,” Pixie Cut says, making me almost like her.

“I am not the monster here,” Kenzie half shouts. “I’m legit worried about her. She doesn’t even know she’s a laughingstock, walking around with that wig like Piper’s little dress-up Troll doll. Letting her on this stage is just cruel.”

She lowers her voice, but it still reaches us through the curtains.

“Unless it’s the part of the witch who gets smashed by a house. That part she can have.”