They give the assistant director his “appendix” back. Michael Corrigan laughs, hands over his face, and rocking back and forth in the chair in Aiden Martin's living room, before he accepts it. He blinks more. Michael's eyes dart around the room like a fly. His sentiments are short. He smiles and thanks everyone.

He hates it.

What a waste of a good yam, too.

The gag gift goes over pretty well with everyone – the second the jar labeled “Michael's Appendix” comes out, most of them break out into laughter. Michael's immediate friends cover their mouths and turn away, shoulders trembling. The guy was gone for almost two weeks during rehearsal to have his appendix removed, and no one would let him forget it. But when Michael Corrigan finally gets out of the chair, Esther Walters, the assistant choreographer, takes his place. She smiles. Her brows are pulled slightly out of line. Nerves dance through her feet.

“So, we love you,” Amy Johnson starts. She was our Belle, and a damned good one, at that, but the underlying fidgeting and insecurity in her posture made it difficult for any compliments to sink in. “But we also hated how hard you drilled us for Be Our Guest.” Chuckles.

Esther Walters' jaw clenches, and she looks down for a second.

“And we thought long and hard about your gift.” She turns to her audience. Her voice wavers a fraction. “Someone, I don't remember who – ”

Me.

“ – suggested...” Her eyes scan us. “I...don't think they're here, either.”

I'm less than a foot away, standing above everyone's heads. I'm literally holding Esther Walters' gift. I have literally everyone's gifts in a box at my feet. Amy Johnson asked me to keep track of them for this, and I said I would.

“But we thought, being so devoted to your craft, we wanted you to lighten up a little. So...” Amy Johnson turns to me and takes the small but stout gift without looking at me. It's meticulously wrapped with three different types of ribbons.

I wrapped it. I watched a YouTube video to make it as pretty as possible for Esther Walters. They asked me to a couple of days ago. She deserves something nice for basically being bullied by half the cast.

Esther Walters starts tearing it apart. A plain, white cardboard box reveals itself first. Her face reddens as she sees what's inside. “Are you kidding me?” she laughs, reaching in and pulling out Christmas ornaments, all different depictions of gingerbread men getting a lap dance.

I sigh, frowning, and trying to hide it underneath everyone giggling and gasping. I glance down into my glass of Coke and lean forward. “I'm going to go get some more pizza,” I tell Amy, but she doesn't really hear me. “The gifts are labeled in the box.”

She looks at me. “What?”

“Pizza.”

“No, we need you,” she says. Her expression is a little harder than a second ago, and her fingers curl into her palms.

I think she doesn't like the idea of having to dig through the box for anyone's gift. “I'll be right back.” When she looks down at it, I shuffle away for another slice of pizza. The kitchen is in plain sight of the living room, but its size makes it feel farther away, like a Victorian kitchen separated from the rest of the house. Its shiny, smooth surfaces slosh people back and forth like water in a bathtub, and the restraint on colors makes the house flow with a kind of fluidity that leaves the hairs on my skin perked up. It's easy to slip away.

When I look back, Jasper Gonzalez is in the chair. He was our assistant stage manager. The guy's already lightly buzzed. His head swings too easily back and forth, and his words have a gentle slur to them. He's a senior.

I could walk home. I doubt anyone would really miss me, either. I'd be home in about an hour if I caught the bus. If I took the train, half an hour minutes. Even if I walked, it'd be almost two hours, but I'd rather be there than here right now.

“Hi.” I turn, and Aiden Martin slides up beside me, brows raised. His easy smile is so warm, so gentle, characteristic of who Aiden is as a person that it makes me uncomfortable when he isn't smiling. “Are you not hungry, Tom?” he asks, looking down at my paper plate with a single piece of cheese pizza. He blinks less. He doesn't cross his arms. He leans over the counter slightly, towards me, but not aggressively at me. Even under the harsh white lights of the kitchen, he is still pretty good-looking, and his features are still soft. “Don't make me regret getting more than one box of Hawaiian.”

“No one likes Hawaiian pizza,” I tell him. There's two slices missing (from me), but other than that, no one's touched the stuff. “I'm fine eating just cheese. It's going to go to waste, now. Why did you get two boxes at all?”

“Because I remember you said you liked it,” he says. “And you're my guest. Why wouldn't I?”

Aiden Martin also likes me. Don't ask me why, because I don't know, but thank God the guy knows how to wear a mask so well. You'd never know it. At times, it hurts to know.

“How're you enjoying the party?” Aiden asks. “You look tired.”

“It was the last show today. I think most people are tired.”

“Everyone’s more energized than tired,” Aiden says. “It’s your first show. For the next one, you’ll see.”

“The next one,” I mutter. Like I’ll want to do this again. Like I’d need to do this again at all. “I'm graduating, Aiden. Need I remind you that this was just a requirement for the scholarship?”

Aiden purses his lips. The easy smile stays put. It is unbearably warm. “Aw, and here I was, thinking you enjoyed yourself so much that you’d want to do it all over again next year.”

“Funny,” I sneer, leaning forward. “Like I’d undergraduate and do it all again next year. You should be a comedian.”

He laughs. The sound is restrained but still unrelenting and bright. Aiden's gray eyes close and then linger on me in the seconds that follow. Behind us, the cast and crew laugh at Jasper Gonzalez's gag gift. He glances away and pours himself a drink. “Are you having a good time?” he asks, and there's such a gentleness to it.

No. I don't feel like I should be here. I'd admit that I liked building the sets, but that isn't enough for me to drop two extracurriculars and yearning to be back in the depths of the school's library. I could be at home, studying. Buckling down and crying in my bedroom while Mom works in her office because I'm afraid I'm not getting into Harvard like she wants me to. This is like I'm trespassing into another world that I have no right to be in, but I'm still, somehow, a ghost that no one processes is there.

I don't want to say that. I don't want to say that to him, either. I'd feel like I'd be disappointing him.

Aiden stares at me. His head is cocked to the side slightly, and his features are still so soft. He's always like this – with everyone. Patient and waiting, but with me, it's like holding your breath. Cautious. Nerves. He almost vibrates like a hummingbird. It's kind of adorable in a painful way.

“Aiden,” someone calls from the living room. “Get your ass over here!”

Aiden turns back to me and smiles. “That's my cue,” he whispers. “I hope my gift is good.”

“It won't be,” I whisper, rolling my eyes. Even if Aiden wasn't the head or assistant of anything, the person in charge of pretty much everything backstage, Mrs. Daye, treated him as one. When the box with Aiden's name appeared, I wrapped it for him. A little better than everyone else's. The guy's popular enough with everyone that to not get Aiden Martin one is probably some form of sacrilege.

He still chuckles and walks away.

I drift slowly back into the living room.

After rifling through the box (though how, I don't know, I even went the extra mile with putting visible name tags on all the gifts), Amy Johnson shoots me a glare that hovers somewhere between How-Dare-You-Disappoint-Me and How-Could-You-Do-This, though it still makes me feel shitty. My feet start moving before she finds Aiden's present and holds the box behind her back.

Aiden sits in the living room chair, poised and open and eager-looking. He takes one sharp breath and his breathing pattern changes. His shoulders are stiff. His feet tap on the floor. He receives yelps and hollers and the occasion “Hey, good lookin'!” and “Hot stuff!”, and it makes him snort and wave them off.

Amy Johnson leans forward, smiling easier than I've seen in a while. Her attention is unequivocally on him. “So...Aiden,” she starts, “you've basically, helped Mrs. Daye with everything backstage since the show was announced last year. You've, pretty much, always been there to help anyone – cast, crew, costumers – and for that, we're grateful for it. Hell, if it wasn't for you, half of the ensemble's costumes wouldn't be finished.”

A few people clap. More holler.

Aiden waves them off again, smiling. His ears are pink with embarrassment.

“And because you had your hands in everything, distracting us from doing any work – ”

Aiden winces.

He must know how good-looking he is.

A few of the others giggle.

“ – we decided we didn't want to get you a regular gag gift.”

He glances at me. His expression barely falters.

I do not like how that sounds.

“So, instead of an appendix, or lap-dancing gingerbread men, we wanted to get you something perfect to match...you. So, we got you...” She holds the bag in front of her.

Aiden takes it. His easy smile fractures so minimally that it's hard to notice unless you are really paying attention, but the whole room is waiting with bated breath that the sound of Aiden snorting breaks the silence. From the bag, there's a box. From that, he pulls out a clay sculpture of Mrs. Daye's probably now-dead succulent.

“Succulent, nooooo!” a few people wail in unison, breaking out laughing after.

His eyes scan everyone, expression bright and a little flushed, but they linger on me a bit longer than everyone else. He closes his eyes and presses the sculpture to his forehead. His hands twitch around the fake pot. He hates it. Aiden Martin hates it with every fiber of his being. Worse, it wasn't his fault that Mrs. Daye's succulent was desecrated.

I remember that day. Mrs. Daye chewed him out, her beloved plant in both hands, stripped of its thick leaves to its core. Aiden didn't blame the real culprit, John Abrams, who, out of his own stupidity, didn't realize it was real. It was Mrs. Daye's good luck charm (though she also, just, had a thing for succulents). If I had ever seen Aiden Martin mad, it was then, but he hid it pretty well.

Pretty well.

Aiden's jaw clenches for a moment, disguised as a swallow. “Shouldn't you be giving this to you, John?” he laughs. “You're the one who picked it into oblivion.” Aiden offers it to him. “Here. You want it?”

“You should've told me it was real!”

“It was!” Aiden says. “Oh, my God!” He laughs again, bright and gently strained. He glances over everyone's faces, lingering on me. His shoulders are rigid. His feet tapping harder against the rug. “I love it. I love it so much.”

I hope he throws it away so he never has to see it again.

There are three more gifts to come after – one for the director, including a bouquet of flowers; one for the main set designer, Mr. Lee; and one more gag gift for the assistant publicist, Mary Flusser – before everyone breaks out into smaller groups to enjoy the after party. People descend on the pizza, barely touching the Hawaiian. Low bass from the speakers plays out with background music. The lights stay on.

I find a group of some of the stage crew I worked with. People I actually talked to. I slide up beside Andrew Larsen and Emily Tomlinson. If Mom's not going to pick me up until ten tonight, I might as well try to enjoy myself. “Hi, guys.”

They look at me. Their brows knit together slightly. “Hi, there,” Amanda Thompson says, her words easy and steady. She was the second in command after Mr. Lee, a senior graduating with a burning passion for all things backstage. “I...sorry, I don't remember your name. Did you work on the show?”

“Yes. I'm Tom?” The name offers no recognition. “I started out in costuming before transitioning to building sets.” I turn to Emily. “We textured the castle together for, like, two days? You talked to me about your boyfriend at Mercer Prep.”

“I don't...” Emily Tomlinson's eyes narrow. “Was that you? I thought that was George Montgomery.”

“Don't you go by 'Sprocket'?” Andrew Larsen asks. “That's why we don't remember. We called you Sprocket.”

“No, that's Jessie.” I point to the gangly blonde teen across the living room, fingers a bit too long for his hands. Fumbling and always a bit too anxious. Aggressively proud of his personalized wrench collection.

“Oh, yeah,” he drones out.

“You were the one who was, like, sick for half the show, right?” Amanda Thompson asks.

“No, that was Caroline P. She had mono. She's over there.” Caroline Phillips' wedged between Carly Spencer and Matthew Rubens, clearly enjoying the attention.

There's a long pause as people stand a bit straighter, turning their gazes away from me. They glance at each other as if they hold the answer to this conundrum, but I know better. I hold no presence. Teachers have to remember names. The student body doesn't. “Theo,” someone ventures, certain the name is right. It's not a question, but more a confirmation.

I don't correct them. Something inside me breaks a little when I can't muster the courage to say my own name, but to correct them feels too petty. A part of me yearns for them to know who I am, but it isn't enough to override the disappointment. Instead, I force a laugh and say, “It's okay. I just can't believe they got Michael an appendix.”

It livens the mood in a pinch. Everyone starts pitching their own gag gifts for Michael Corrigan, pitching their own gifts for everyone (and the soft haze half of them have when talking about what they’d get for Aiden is strange to me), and I linger in the group for as long as possible before I find myself drifting out. It's in my favor, as well, because I'm tired. More mentally drained than disappointed. It's been this way since I got to Brookfell Academy, taking up space but not enough to be seen. like motel art. There, but also not.

I go to the bathroom and successfully hide for twenty minutes.