She tells me to go check out my room, where I find perfect pink paint reaching all the way to the ceiling. I write on my calendar on April 30 in big red letters: SURGERY!

Before I can finish, the sight of the empty curio cabinet stops me short.

The dolls are gone.

No longer locked, the glass door of the cabinet opens easily. I place Mom’s handbell inside. The bare shelf guts me as I think of Cora on eBay, selling what the fire left to the highest bidder.

For me.

So I can hit my star.

I call Tony to ask if my audition slot is still open.

“Yours if you want it,” he says.

I tug up the corners of my eyes in my reflection.

“Yes,” I say into the phone. “I want it.”

And into the glass, I smile at the girl grinning back.

25

The first person I want to tell is Piper, but since she’s still MIA, Cora drives me to her house after school.

Her house is perfect—like straight-out-of-a-sitcom immaculate with a porch wrapping around the side and a cobblestone walkway winding through a manicured yard. The only thing that doesn’t fit in the suburban fantasy is the makeshift plywood wheelchair ramp covering the front steps.

I knock three times before Piper answers, red-eyed and wearing a tank top and shorts with no compression garments. Without her pink/zebra/neon skin covering, I can see her scars more clearly. Her right arm and thigh are bright red and purple, much sharper than the muted hues of mine.

I hadn’t realized how raw her scars still are, or how much mine have healed.

“Where have you been?” I say.

Piper shields the afternoon sun with her hand.

“I told you. Bad day. Wasn’t in a headshrinky kind of mood.”

She waves me into her house, which is just as perfect on the inside. A marble-floored hallway leads into a foyer with fresh-cut flowers on a table.

“I’m going to audition!” I say, unable to wait a second longer. “And that’s not even the best part.”

She holds up a finger to stop me, her eyes duller than usual as she turns her chair toward the kitchen, where a woman stands elbow-deep in a sink, scrubbing the stainless steel sides so hard her whole body shakes.

“Mom, this is Ava. From group.”

Her mom looks up, eyes redder than Piper’s but equally lifeless, then puts her rubber-gloved hands over her heart.

“Oh, you poor thing.”

“Wow, Mom. Not cool.” Piper rolls down the hallway, waving me after her. “Don’t mind her. Her emotional whack-o-meter broke when my leg did. Plus, my ortho appointments always send her into a blubbering cleaning frenzy. She’ll be polishing for a week after this last one.”