“He sounds like a creep. You should’ve had security throw him out.”

“I wasn’t thinking. I mean, I was, but it happened so fast, and then Merry started shouting at a guy—a different one—and I just didn’t know what to do.”

“I hate to say this, Cass, but this is going to keep happening. Your star is going to get bigger and more weirdos are going to fall in love with you. I wish I could protect you.”

My eyes were open in the darkness. The cubicle was so small and narrow, but it didn’t feel small and narrow because I couldn’t see the edges. Rolled up in my little cocoon, with the vibration of the diesel engine and bouncing tires beneath me, I imagined being in a warm, safe space with Alex, the one friend who still made time for me despite our new lives. “I wish you were here with me.”

And I meant it. Alex gave a laugh I’d never heard before, like he’d breathed from low in his throat into the mouthpiece of the phone. “Yeah,” he whispered.

There was a twinge. A small, short one, at the base of my spine. I didn’t know if I missed my friend or if I missed Alex, specifically.

“Yeah,” I whispered, smiling, puzzled but pleased.

After we’d hung up, I unfolded the privacy curtain from my bed to brush my teeth. I jostled my way down the narrow aisle as the bus rumbled along.

Rose bumped into me at the sink, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge, and leaned against the attached cabinets as she sipped and watched me brush.

“Who were you talking to?”

I gave her a quick glance but didn’t answer.

“My bunk is right under yours. I usually can’t hear anything with all the bus noise going on, but I couldn’t fall asleep, I felt so grimy. And I heard your voice yammering on. So who was it?” She crept closer and wiggled her eyebrows at me mischievously. “Could it have been . . . a certain . . . Monsieur St. James?”

Her remark landed flatly; it felt more personal than a probe into my romantic interests, but I didn’t know why she would care. I rolled my eyes and pointed at the toothbrush in my mouth.

“Look, chicas, you’re on the local news,” Veronica, our sound technician, called from the back of the bus. She and Yumi sat cross-legged on the bench facing the mounted TV. Rose and I stepped to the side and watched as the screen switched from the establishing outdoor shot of the mall we’d left earlier that day to one of the food court where we’d set up our stage. A quick pan of the tween audience, cheering; a few seconds of us dancing our choreography; a shot of Rose smiling wide at a young fan at the signing. A teenager’s face showed on the screen, her smiling mouth full of braces: I made my dad drive me and my sister.

The closed-captioning read: Not every Gloss girl was on her best behavior tonight. The cameraman had been filming down from an elevated spot, so he caught Merry’s outburst. There was the back of Nick’s head; he gave an 8 x 10 piece of paper to Merry to sign, and her face changed from smiling to hostile as soon as she saw it. That’s when she stood and shredded it. But for the most part, it was a big success. A man’s face, eyes highlighted with round-rimmed glasses, and my heart jumped: Jerry. I came in from out of town to meet them. I know I’m a little old but I know talent when I hear it.

“What was she so mad about, d’ya know?” I asked, words garbled from the foam in my mouth.

Yumi said, “It was her tits.”

The screen shifted to its final feel-good anecdote of the night, a goat-petting zoo, which closed the broadcast. Veronica changed the channel, blue tinting her and Yumi’s faces in flashes.

“Whose tits?”

“Merry’s. The guy had pictures of Merry with her boobs out.”

I held up a finger, ran to the sink, spit, then ran back. “Um, how?”

Yumi shrugged. “Apparently, she did some amateur modeling for some artsy-fartsy photographer. She told us that kid had a print of it somehow.”

“Gosh, I’d scream too if that happened to me.” With all of those middle-schoolers around, I wasn’t surprised she ripped up the photo as quickly as she did. I then wondered how many other prints of Meredith’s breasts were out in the world.

Rose said, “Hopefully, only the local news ran that clip. We don’t want the entire world to think that Merry is unhinged.” On that note, she walked back up the aisle and zipped into her bunk.

Veronica glanced at me and replied nonchalantly, “It’s such a small story, I doubt it will be aired anywhere else. Now, if the tits were on television, that’d be a different story. They’d be everywhere.”

When I pulled the covers up to my chin, it was so dark in my bunk that the carpeted cubicle surrounding me was black as tar. I cracked a curtain so that the passing streetlights would create a hypnotizing repetition as I took stock of my thoughts. Meredith. Alex. I’d never thought of Alex in any way except as a good friend. He, Joanna, and Edie were my three bedrocks while in Houston. We’d grown up in the same neighborhood and attended the same schools. All of those shared experiences, our similar humor—we were just on the same wavelength most of the time. Sure, Edie was an artist, Joanna was a scientist, and Alex was Alex (and on that note, I was just me), but we just knew one another. And Alex and I had known each other for so long that sexual attraction just didn’t seem to be on the table.

Until that laugh.

I closed my eyes.

7.

Friday

Yumi

Soleil Warner @sosweetsoleil causes scandal on Instagram with backhanded comment

* * *

#SoleilWarner deletes controversial post but we have the receipts

* * *

Merry texted me to say she couldn’t make it—probably because of whatever Sunny had done this time. That girl attracted attention like nothing else, much like her mother. I stood inside the police headquarters awkwardly, scrolling through Twitter headlines waiting for Rose, when her text came through as well: Hey, can’t make it. No apology.

I sighed and hitched my handbag to my shoulder and ventured farther inside. I’d made a note of the police spokesperson that had been quoted in yesterday’s news reports, but when I asked for whoever was in charge of Cassidy’s case, I was steered to a desk with a nameplate that said DET. D. LAWRENCE. Though the LAPD building was new, with sharp angles and several stories’ worth of tinted windows, the budget apparently hadn’t trickled down to the department wares: Detective Lawrence’s desk was small and shabby, and its surface was covered in a hodgepodge of manila folders and stacks of paper. The detective, phone clasped to his ear, had a young face—maybe in his mid-forties—but his close-cropped hair was all white.

He slid the receiver back into place. “Yes, what can I do for you,” he said, voice flat, as he shifted his attention and brandished a hand toward a desk chair.

“Hi, I’m Yumi Otsuka,” I said, sitting down. I was glad I’d never changed my name.

Fifteen years ago, the detective hadn’t been our target audience; while we had been selling tickets to stadium shows to teenagers, he was probably already out of school and more concerned with marriage or his mortgage than to keeping up with the Billboard charts. But he had to have recognized me. Gloss had been more than a national phenomenon. We were global. Universal. Our likenesses had been on lunch boxes and thermoses, our voices in soft drink commercials. And he was leading the investigation as to what had caused Cassidy’s demise. He must have researched her past—and with it, us.

Detective Lawrence’s expression did not change when he looked at me. He waited a beat and then leaned forward, his badge tumbling along his tie on its neck chain. “Ma’am, I think I know what you’ve come here to ask, and unless you have additional information for me to help with the investigation, I can’t discuss anything with you.”

“Of course not,” I said, feeling stupid that I’d tried to do this in person instead of on the phone. The conversation stalled for another long moment. I shifted uncomfortably in the chair and tried again. “Maybe I can help, though. We’ve had so many stalkers over the years. The rest of us—that is, the rest of our, um, group . . .” I coughed lightly, feeling embarrassed. “We thought about it and wanted to give you as much information as you might need. Housekeeper. Groundskeeper. Ex-boyfriends. Superfans.”

“I did look at old complaints she filed, over a decade ago. Stalkers and harassers. We are looking at many angles here. We treat all unattended deaths as suspicious, so until the medical examiner says it’s self-inflicted, we will be pursuing all avenues of inquiry.”

My arm hurt and I realized it was because I was digging the nails of my right hand into my left wrist.

“So it is her, then?” I asked. I guess I had been holding out hope that maybe it hadn’t really been Cassidy’s body that they’d picked up.

The detective’s eyes were very blue behind his lenses. “Yes, ma’am. Her family flew in yesterday and identified her.”

I swallowed.