She seems placated by this.

“Well, we’re going to bed,” Cooper announces after some moments pass and Jordan and Tania show no sign of breaking their embrace.

“All right,” Jordan says, his voice muffled in Tania’s hair. “See you in the morning.”

Cooper looks at me, his expression comically perplexed. “Okay,” he says. “Don’t try to open any of the windows or go out—even onto any of the balconies—without waking one of us up first to enter the alarm code, because if you do, it will automatically make a sound that will wake the entire neighborhood, plus notify the alarm company and the NYPD that there is an intruder, and they’ll be here in two to three minutes. But before they get here, I will already have shot you.”

“All right,” Jordan says, still speaking into Tania’s hair.

“We won’t try to go out,” Tania says, her own voice muffled against Jordan’s chest and the folds of his samurai robe. “We’re going to stay in Heather’s room with Miss Mexico.”

Cooper looks at me questioningly. I shake my head. “Don’t ask,” I say.

Chapter 27

For Immediate Release
Tania Trace Rock Camp
and Cartwright Records Television
present the first-ever
ROCK OFF

Thirty-six of the most talented teen girls in America will compete Saturday night at the Tania Trace Rock Camp for the title of Girl Rockrrr of the Year. The camp—which has been held for the past two weeks at New York College—helps to provide young women with opportunities they might not otherwise have had through music education.
“The purpose of this camp was to empower young women through songwriting and performing,” says Tania Trace, winner of four Grammy Awards and a mother-to-be. “Instead, these girls have empowered me with their strength and courage in the face of adversity.”
The winner of the Rock Off will receive $50,000 and a recording deal with Cartwright Records.
I’m staring at my reflection in the dressing room mirror. I look nothing like my usual self. That’s because I’ve been covered from head to toe—that is, on all the parts of my skin that are showing outside the neckline, sleeves, and sparkly hem of the dress I’m wearing—in airbrush foundation, my blond hair has been piled onto the top of my head with about a million bobby pins, my lips have been slathered in tawny lipstick, and false eyelashes have been stuck onto my lids.

“I look like a freak,” I say.

“You look beautiful,” Tania says as the stylist sticks one last bobby pin into my hair. “Like Miss Mexico.”

“Oh, I worked that pageant this year,” the stylist says. “I thought Miss Mexico was a brunette.”

“She’s not talking about the pageant,” I say.

The dressing rooms beneath New York College’s Winer Auditorium for the Performing Arts are state of the art, but purposefully designed to look like the old-fashioned ones they always show in movies, where the star is sitting in front of a mirror, framed by dozens of shiny round lightbulbs. For their performance in the Rock Off, the campers are being allowed to use the dressing rooms, but they still have to do their own hair and makeup, as well as provide their own wardrobe . . . except, of course, those girls like Cassidy whose mothers were savvy enough—or rich enough—to hire someone to be their daughter’s own professional stylist. This has already caused enough drama among the campers to give Stephanie hours of footage.

The judges of the Rock Off, however, get hair and wardrobe provided by Cartwright Records Television. That’s why I’m sitting in a vintage Givenchy gown, having bobby pins stuck into my updo. Tania’s personal hair and makeup people are working me over because somehow I got strong-armed into being one of the Rock Off’s celebrity judges.

I’m still not certain how it happened. Up until the last minute, I was telling Tania that she really needed to find someone else.

And yet, here I am, coated in Nude Beige Number 105 so my skin tone will look even in high definition.

“You’re not going to regret it,” Tania says from the makeup chair beside me. She has a large plastic smock covering the gown she’s wearing for the evening, which is black, slit up the side, covered in sequins, and made by Oscar de la Renta. “We’re going to have so much fun! It’s not like we have to worry about what to say either. Everything is going to be on the teleprompter. So don’t worry. Just read your lines.”

I smile nervously at her reflection in the mirror. It’s not the event that has me worried. I enjoy performing, even if it’s sitting in a judge’s seat, saying a bunch of lines written by someone else (so long as the lines aren’t too dopey).

We spent the day in rehearsals, running through what marks to hit when we walk out on the stage. As the evening’s official hostess and emcee, Tania has to walk out first, then introduce Jordan and me, before we each go to our judge’s seats. I tried to point out that there were plenty of better—or at least more current—celebrities they could have asked to judge instead of me, but Tania was still feeling insecure from what happened earlier in the week and said she needed “family only” around her.

Cooper, of course, will be in the auditorium the whole time, along with a half-dozen NYPD officers and almost every campus protection officer the college employs, including the department head, who stopped by the dressing room a little while ago to assure “Miss Trace” that her personal security was foremost in his and every single one of his officers’ minds.

“Nothing,” he’d said, his crinkled blue eyes becoming moist, “is more heartbreaking to me than what happened to that young lady in Wasser Hall. Nothing. I hope you will accept my deepest apologies and sincerest promise that that man will get nowhere near you tonight.”

Tania had been very gracious in assuring him that the incident wasn’t his fault. And it wasn’t . . . at least not personally. But the president’s office had a lot of questions about how a suspected murderer was able to walk in and out of so many New York College buildings for the past several weeks without being recognized, let alone able to register for housing and classes using false identification in the first place.

“Although with that kind of customer volume,” Cooper had pointed out, “it’s bound to happen once in a while. Do you have any idea of the percentage of people who check into hotels under fake names?”