“WELL, WELL, WELL. LOOK WHO finally decided to show her face.” Darius paused in wiping down the bar as I walked into Molly’s Crisis. “Pardon me saying so, but girl, you look awful.”

I looked down at my Trenton Thunder sweatpants—a gift from Hugo after he’d been signed to the Trenton Thunder, the Yankees’ AA farm team—and my West Side Story sweatshirt from high school, with holes for the thumbs and a fine misting of Cheetos dust around the tummy area.

Awful was probably an understatement. I went to run a hand through my hair and pulled out a Cheeto.

“Well.” I took a seat at the bar, looking at Darius’s unmade face. “You’re not exactly beat yourself at the moment.”

“How dare you. I’m letting my skin breathe. Living life as the fabulous Miss Pixie Velvet does take a toll on the pores, honey.” He pushed his rag off to the side. “Even the most noncomedogenic foundation clogs eventually. Now. Where have you been hiding, why have you been hiding, and for the love of all that is holy, where is it you’ve been that has so many Cheetos?”

“My family’s bodega.” There was something itching the back of my neck. I reached into the collar of my sweatshirt and pulled out another Cheeto. I contemplated eating it, but that was a line I wasn’t ready to cross. “I mean, mostly I was in my room. But we’ve got a lot of Cheetos downstairs. Ma kept yelling at me about eating all our profits, but, whatever.”

“And why were you hiding in your room, Broadway baby?” he prompted.

“That’s why.”

“I see.” Darius pulled out a glass, filled it to the brim with ginger ale, and slid it across the bar to me. I drank deeply. “Also, who are you with all these ginger ales? Some little old man?”

“I like ginger ale, okay! It’s not a crime!”

“It’s a weird signature drink.”

“Are you offering me something stronger?”

“Try me again in three years, baby. So, let me see if I got this right: You didn’t get cast in Hello, Dolly!, you’ve been hiding up in Washington Heights, and now you’re sitting here in front of me in a truly tragic ensemble, drinking little old man juice and covered in the world’s orangest snack food.”

“That pretty much sums it up. Except you didn’t make me sound pathetic enough.”

“Jorge. You are not pathetic,” Darius said, suddenly serious. “You’re an actor. Actors get rejected. It’s part of the process. Does it hurt? Oh yeah. It’s the worst. But that doesn’t make you pathetic, or mean you stop trying. I’ve seen you dance. And even when you’re just singing, casually, here at the bar with Katy, I can hear that you’ve got something. You’ve got it. And if you want to make this happen, you can. It just might take a little more time than you’d like.”

“They said I was too soft.” I watched the bubbles in my ginger ale float up to the surface. “Not masculine enough. Too … gay.”

“Well, screw them and the surrey with the fringe on top they rode in on,” Darius snapped, angry. “You’re not too any of those things. There’s no such thing as being too soft or too gay. And if they think that’s a problem, that’s their problem, not yours. And let me tell you something else. I saw that Ethan Fox meat show. Nothing but stank and overacting. That man could not be more overrated.” Darius snorted. “At least here, when we overact, we do it on purpose.”

“Thanks.” Darius was a performer, too. And he probably knew all about being told he was too something. It was nice not to feel like I was alone.

“You’re welcome. Now, let me fix your face.”

“What’s wrong with it?” I touched my cheek self-consciously, rubbing at what was almost definitely orange dust.

“What isn’t.” Darius shot me a look. “I don’t have the right shade to do your foundation, but how about a little eye makeup?”

“Sure.” I shrugged. The Cheetos definitely hadn’t made me feel better. Maybe a new face would.

Darius went backstage and returned with his makeup box. It was an old-school Caboodle with a clear purple top, like the kind Ma used to keep her makeup in back when she was on the pageant circuit as Miss Puerto Rico. He hopped up onto the barstool next to me, brandishing a brush.

I’d played around with makeup before—Ma’s when I was little, Katy’s when I was older. I could even execute a pretty decent smoky eye, thanks to YouTube tutorials. But I’d never sat and had someone else do it for me. Sitting in the quiet bar, Barbra warbling on low in the background, with Darius’s makeup brush swishing across my face, was actually kind of meditative. I cleared my mind, let go of Ethan Fox and everything Hello, Dolly!, and just sat there.

I hadn’t expected that makeup would be the thing that helped me finally turn my brain off, but I’d take whatever worked.

“Done.” I opened my eyes to see Darius rustling around in his Caboodle. “Got it.” Triumphantly, he pulled out a small plastic hand mirror edged in lavender glitter. I think Ma had that one, too. “So?” He held it up expectantly. “What do you think?”

What did I think? What did I think? I didn’t even know what to think! Compared with this, the playing around with makeup I’d done had literally been playing around. Like a total clown. This was different. This was art.

With one finger, I traced the high, arched line of my penciled-in brows. My eyes looked enormous, framed by a swishy flick of thick black liner and Bambi-like fake eyelashes. Maybe the best part of all was the bright red lip. Total old-school Hollywood vibes. It made me think of Katy’s coat, the one with the Peter Pan collar. But it made me feel powerful.

But the thing I loved best of all? I still looked like me.

“Can you teach me how to do this?” I demanded.

“Can I? Yes. Will I?” Darius cocked his head, deliberating. “I’ll think about it.”

He would, though. I knew he would. I could tell from the way he was trying not to smile as he bustled back behind the bar, Caboodle in hand.

The door blew open, letting in a gust of wind and one Miss Katy Keene, wearing plaid pajama pants, a Western Queens Boxing Gym sweatshirt, and an enormous grin.

“Well, well, well. I haven’t seen this one in forever, either!” Darius exclaimed as he returned. “And here I thought I’d gotten lucky and you two had decided to stop bothering me.”

“Wow. Jorge. You look stunning.” Katy stopped in her tracks. “Like, literally stunning.”

“Thank you.” Darius preened. “I’m very good.”

“This outfit is … something,” she said diplomatically as she crossed toward me, “but your face.”

“Are we talking about my outfit?” She was covered in what I liked to think of as fashion debris, little threads and scraps and who knows what else. I started plucking little bits of fabric out of her hair like a monkey. “You’re wearing pajamas.”

“I am?” She looked down at her legs, stunned, like she had no idea she’d left the house in them. “Huh. Well. Doesn’t matter! I need to show you my dress! It’s good. I think. Really good. But I need you to look at it and tell me it’s good. Except … wait a minute.” Brow furrowing suspiciously, she reached up and pulled a Cheeto out of the collar of my sweatshirt. Another one? Seriously?! How many were hiding on me?! “Oh, Jorge.” Her face crumpled. “You didn’t get the part.”

Of course she’d known. I remembered sitting on Katy’s living room floor freshman year, crying and elbow-deep in a bag of Cheetos, because they’d given the role of Cinderella’s Prince in Into the Woods to some no-talent senior with a weak chin. Ugh.

“That part didn’t deserve him,” Darius said as Katy wrapped her arms around my middle. “Look at that face. He’s going to be a star. And he doesn’t need Ethan Fox to do it.”

“Darius is right. I am gonna be a star,” I vowed. I probably still had a couple days of Cheetos left—grief is a process, y’all—but I wouldn’t let this one setback stop me. I couldn’t. I’d had the same dream since I was four years old when Ma took me to see Peter Pan, and I realized that was what I wanted to do: fly. And that’s exactly how I felt when I was onstage. Like I was flying. I wasn’t going to stop chasing that feeling because of some pretentious director with outdated ideas about conventional masculinity who thought high art meant serving people stew.

Katy hugged me tighter, and I squeezed her back.

“Now,” I cleared my throat, “did you say something about a dress?”