“She’s from a little musical you may have heard of called The Phantom of the Opera.”

Kenzie folds her arms, her painted black cat nose turned up, watching me struggle to maneuver Piper’s chair up the doorstep. With an audible huff, she scurries down the hall into the family room to sit on the lap of the massive football player who knocked Asad down in earth science and clearly violates Kenzie’s drama-kids-only rule. He’s dressed like a puppy, which makes zero sense, because there are no dogs in Cats.

Asad waves to us as he makes his way from the kitchen into the foyer.

“Piper, you look amazing, as always,” he says. “And, Ava, ho-ly crap. Hands down the best Phantom costume I’ve ever seen.”

“Hamilton, I presume?” I say, motioning toward his bright blue topcoat, complete with shiny brass buttons and a white ruffly scarf-type thing around his neck. He’s even drawn on a mustache and goatee.

“At your service!” he says, raising his Solo cup into the air.

Asad pushes Piper’s wheelchair with his free hand, guiding us into the kitchen, where people in various stages of costume commitment stand around drinking out of red cups. Guys dressed as French revolutionaries, girls with bouffant Hairspray hairdos, and six other guys dressed exactly like Asad and a few more with blue-striped polo shirts and arm casts masquerading as Evan Hansen.

It’s like a Broadway dressing room exploded.

The red sparkle of a pair of shoes on a miniskirted Dorothy reminds me that I still need to return the good-luck pair to the closet before Kenzie finds yet another reason to hate me.

Asad hands Piper and me each a cup, instructing us to only drink out of the large white cooler and not the orange one, unless we want a “little something extra.”

“Which we do not,” Piper says, pointing to the spokes of her wheelchair. “As I am already a rolling public service announcement on underage drinking.”

Asad dances with some equally rhythm-deficient crew people while Piper and I stand by the wall, nursing our drinks, trying to look completely occupied by our liquid consumption.

“Are we doing it? Are we normal teenagers yet?” I ask.

Piper laughs.

“Let’s see…standing awkwardly against a wall at a party. We’re on our way!”

In the middle of the room, Asad gyrates in a dance move that can only be described as a robot undergoing an exorcism. He doesn’t seem to notice or care about the girls next to me laughing at him. He jerks and twitches until his grand finale lands him on his knees on the floor, hands up toward the ceiling.

He reaches out to me. I shake my head.

“I don’t think so.”

Piper hands me her cup.

“Why not. It is a party, after all.”