“This lovely green-haired goddess is Geneva,” announces Well. “She’s just finished a stint as a fairy in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the performing arts center downtown. It’s the only reason the school let her dye her lovely locks.”

Geneva stands and gives a salute. There’s a half-finished bird drawn on her wrist. “Hiya, Lou. Maxwell here has talked a lot about you in the last forty-eight hours. A lot. So I’m glad you’re here, and he can finally shut up.”

I look at Well and he shrugs.

“When are you going to start calling me Well?” he asks Geneva.

“When I’ve known you as many years as Well as I have as Maxwell. So”—she pretends to look at her watch—“six years and counting.”

“Whatever.” Well turns to the only person who has yet to look at me. “That geek over there with the laptop who is completely ignoring us is Jacob. Jacob is a budding sound engineer who also likes to play Dungeons and Dragons in his spare time with his virtual friends.”

Jacob’s technically in uniform, but just barely. I see a red T-shirt peeking out from under his collar, and his Sperrys have neon-green laces. “Don’t knock it,” he says without looking up. “I still catch you there on a Saturday night.”

Well totally ignores this and turns back to me.

“And this, Lou, is pretty much the sixth-grade division of the theater department. We hold our own.”

I turn to him. “What do you do in theater?”

“Me?” Well puts a hand to his chest. “I act, of course. I am a thespian.”

Tucker throws his other pom at him. And Geneva, after checking her watch for real this time, adds, “You’re about to be a tardy thespian. We all are if we don’t make a run for it.”

Somehow, and one of these days I’m going to figure out how, I managed to get through a traumatic self-help test, three classes, and lunch without actually thinking about the fact that I had signed up and would eventually have to go to an acting class.

But when I walk into the dance studio where theater is held, I realize I am in serious trouble, and all the panic that had stayed barely in check since I walked in this morning comes flooding out. I can’t act. I spend every minute of every set Mom and I do pretending I’m invisible. I have to get out of here.