This is so risky. Especially considering how dark things got in the dressing room. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to remember it. I’ve never allowed myself to remember the accident as thoroughly as I fear I’m about to. Not even the other night with Kiera.

“Do you remember driving back from that party? We were in your dad’s car. Leaving that guy Sam’s house.”

Aimee’s jaw sets bravely. “Yeah.”

“Do you remember … what happened?”

The room goes tense for the first time. It’s funny how you can tell.

“What do you mean?” she asks. “We were listening to music and you were being—”

“We were fighting. But do you remember on the corner of”—my gut roils—“Mangrove and Ponce de Leon…”

A hand goes to her mouth slowly. “There was an accident.” She looks scared of her own words.

“Yeah,” I say. Then, all at once, “Hailey, you’ve been dead for over a decade.”

There’s a unified gasp from the audience, and then, after the perfect amount of time, Aimee storms offstage. She has to; since we changed the lines, no one knows that it marks the end of the scene, the end of the act. Luckily, it works narratively.

As soon as she’s gone, I let my chin fall to my chest. I crouch and cover my mouth, with a thousand-yard stare into the wings.

I hear Aimee whisper-shout, “Curtain! Now!” to the crew member, and at her word, they shut the curtains on me, marking the time for intermission.

The lights go down as they do and the theater erupts in applause.

I step offstage, feeling a little nauseous.

At the best of times, I used to feel weird onstage. The excitement moves through the body, churning and agitating and vanishing and appearing again, as strong and unpredictable as an angry ocean.

I wasn’t worried about tonight, for the most part. We got to a pretty good place in rehearsals. It was kind of the equivalent of cramming for a test versus studying the whole semester—it’s all fresh.

But now that we’re changing it on a dime like this, it’s basically experimental theatre. I’ll have to talk about what happened. Out loud. For real. For the first time in my life. I’ve barely thought about it to myself until the last few days.

In the wings, Aimee is texting and talking on her walkie-talkie furiously, making sure everything is in place. She’s mentioning missed cues no one noticed and worrying that the mic is picking up on the creaking of the floorboards. She’s telling them to pay attention, because things are going to be unscripted.

It’s a bold choice, and the shocked looks on the weary stagehands’ faces show it. But Aimee doesn’t back down.