Helping out the stage crew with productions gave me a plausible explanation for late nights, if my mom ever asked. Plus, no one thought of the stage crew as a wild and crazy bunch. Tech nerds, such as myself, were always left to their own devices, and I enjoyed the sound mixing. It took what I’d been learning out of a controlled environment and threw me out into the wild.

“Maybe I should enter the talent show. That might get his attention.” Piper spun in the chair. She stopped when she spotted my face and cringed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring it up.”

“What would be your talent? And whose attention?” I scribbled cue notes on some tape and ripped it off, tacking it to the side of the board, not wanting to take that trip down memory lane.

She leveled her gaze at me.

And I nodded. “Ah, I see. So what will you use to dazzle him?”

“The talent show isn’t to dazzle. I need a date to prom and he’s my guy.”

“Why not ask him?”

Another duh look. “That’s no fun. I need to keep subtly dropping hints that he’s oblivious to in order to give my life a little excitement.”

Piper paused. “You should enter the talent show, since you don’t want to go to prom. You’re like some disgruntled cool girl who hates fun. You’re totally Julia Styles in 10 Things.”

I flicked a tiny ball of tape at her. It clung to her shirt. “I don’t have half her vocabulary.”

She flicked it off. “But you do have a school hottie checking you out.” She grinned and spun around again.

“And that’s all my work done for the day.” I grabbed my backpack and left before there were more questions about senior year rites of passage and anything to do with Dare. I’d sooner stand up naked in front of the whole school than enter the talent show. Unless sound mixing could be a talent.

Working the board at the studio had been daunting at first. There were so many buttons, sliders, levers and more. But over time and through trial and error, which had yet to lead to bleeding ear drums, I’d figured it out. So, coming here, I looked like a modern magician with how easily it all came to me.

All day during school, I’d dodged Dare. Why was he popping up all the time now? Was it like the thing that happened after you bought a new coat or bike or car and now you saw them everywhere? Had I not paid attention to how much our paths crossed before? Or was he making them cross now?

Why would he want to do that? Why would he care at all?

But he’d seen me heading to the studio. Was he trying to extort me, or somehow use that information against me?

As my anger built, so did a melody. It was one that needed a hammering drum accompaniment and a bit of metal guitar. He thought I’d roll over and let him screw up the side gig I had going? Not one little bit. I’d shoot lyrical nails at him, if that was a battle he wanted to wage.