IT IS A TRUTH UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED that if you are the daughter of a librarian who was also the president of your kindergarten’s PTA, your father will volunteer to be a chaperone to the Homecoming Dance just to destroy any prospects you might have for a good time.

“Get! Pumped! Get! Pumped!” Dad cheers as he sashays out of his room in a silver sequined jacket that catches the living room lights and throws stars against the walls. “Are you ready to—Rosebud, why aren’t you dressed?”

Oh, I guess I never gave him the memo.

I sit on the couch with my two best friends on either side of me and slowly sink into the cushions. I don’t meet his gaze.

“She won’t come,” Quinn fills in for me.

Dad gives a start. “But it’s your last Homecoming! You can’t all be sitting it out! You’re going to be crowned, aren’t you, Quinn?”

Annie throws up her arms. “That’s what I’m saying!”

“It’s just a crown,” Quinn replies, “and it might not go to me.”

Dad pouts. “But Vance! You asked him to the—”

“He’s not going,” I say. If I could melt into the cushions and live among the dropped food crumbs and lost pennies, I would. “Sometimes things just don’t work out.”

Because sometimes you’re fooled not once, not twice, but three times by a selfish asshole who thinks that you leaked that footage. I wouldn’t even know how to leak it—who would I send the video to? How would I do it? With a sassy subject line reading I REIGNED VANCE IN? It’s ridiculous.

I thought he knew me—or at least trusted me.

But apparently not.

“Oh, Rosebud, I’m so sorry. I would stay home with you, but…I can’t. They’re expecting me to chaperone.”

“It’s okay, Dad. You can go and tell me how it is,” I reply.

He finishes tying his bow tie and comes to sit on the coffee table in front of me. “Okay, but I just want to give you a little piece of advice first.”

“I really don’t need any.”

“I know, but humor me?”

“Ooh, Space Dad has advice!” Annie says, clapping her hands. “This has to be good!”

“Speak wisdom to us,” Quinn agrees.

Why are my friends like this?

Dad leans forward, his elbows on his knees, and says, “Amara up, Rosebud.” Then he stands, grabs his keys from the bowl on the end table, and leaves. When he’s gone, the apartment is quiet, until he starts up his beat-up Ford and it chugs out of the complex. Quinn and Annie exchange a confused look. “Amara up?”

“Princess Amara, maybe?”

Amara up, Rosebud.

Mom used to say that to me all the time when I was afraid to do something. She would kneel down to me, tap me on the nose, and say in that gravelly voice of hers, “Amara up,” every time I tried to let my what-ifs and anxieties get in the way.

Amara wouldn’t sit at home, dateless and alone, instead of going to a dance. She’s the princess of the Noxian Empire, the purveyor of justice, the hope of a dying star. She wouldn’t cower, and she wouldn’t hide. She would go—alone, if she had to.

What am I doing, letting Vance Reigns dictate how I live my life? So he pissed me off, so he blames me, so he’s making me go to this dance alone—this is my Homecoming Dance. And my best friend is going to be crowned Homecoming Overlord and they’re thinking of staying home with my sorry ass and—

I push myself to my feet and turn back to my two friends on the couch. “We’re going.” I force the words out.

Annie and Quinn blink up at me.

“Wait, what?” Annie asks. “But I thought—”

“We were going to stay here and watch Starfield reruns,” Quinn finishes.

“Sure, we can do that—after I see Garrett’s face when you take the crown from him,” I reply, and march off toward my room to squeeze into my dress and sharpen my eyeliner to kill—because I’m going out.