“Duh.”

“I’m serious.” I felt the laughter ebb away. The familiar chill of anxiety was now stirring in my stomach. “My life feels like such a commodity already. I don’t want everything of mine being sold off. Or Merry’s life, for that matter.”

“Your secrets are always safe with me,” he said, voice low. I looked at him for a long moment, the bulb on the tip of his nose, the mole on his right cheek, and memorized this feeling of trust.

“And Merry’s,” I said.

“And Merry’s,” he repeated, just as earnest.

“Okay.” I gave him the camera and film, which he clenched in one of his big hands. He put his head back down on my chest and we breathed together.

20.

January 2002

L.A.

Cassidy

The third bedroom was bare, stripped and scattered with forgotten hair elastics and an extra pallet of Cherry Cola. A slice of sunlight, freed from the vertical blinds along the back patio door, glowed yellow on beige carpet. The living-room ceiling fan swung around lazily, shifting the handles of a plastic grocery bag lying on the floor. Rose and I existed together in the apartment like ghosts, rarely there at the same time, but little by little, our belongings disappeared from their places and moved to our new homes.

In a rare moment between recording and training, we were in the apartment at the same time, packing up the last of our belongings. I heard her ripping a roll of packing tape down to the cardboard base and cursing. A moment later, she was framed in my bedroom’s doorway, wearing the worn-down tube as a bracelet. “Do you have any more tape?”

She’d been friendlier ever since our visit to see Viv; sometimes, like now, her voice softened and sounded conversational.

I held mine out and our fingers brushed as she took it from me. Her eyes flicked down to my mouth, before she quickly said, “It’s weird. Us leaving.”

A beat. “We’ll be neighbors,” I said helpfully. My four-bedroom house with Spanish clay tile was only a few miles from Rose’s all-glass-and-concrete dwelling above the Strip.

“I know,” she said. “It won’t be the same.” She seemed to want to say more, but shook her head and padded back to her side of the apartment. I watched her go. I’d miss her barking orders at me early in the morning, I’d miss her indignant sighs when we rode in the SUV together. I would just . . . miss living with her, as strange as that seemed. The realization streaked across my mind, unbidden, surprising me.

Eager to be out of the apartment and away from my confusing thoughts, I crammed the last of my clothes into a laundry hamper and left the last few wire hangers in the closet. I called Lucy. “What if I told you I could make you laugh and cry at the same time?”

She giggled. “Oh, I’m in.”

“Will you pick me up?”

When she arrived at the complex, I had an old ratty towel in my arms. “Interesting . . . ,” she said, eyebrows raised. I gave her directions to the animal shelter I’d visited with her aunt. She parked her Jaguar in a space and turned to me. “You’re kidding, right? You’re not going to put some mangy mongrel in my pristine car, are you?”

I held up the towel and smiled winningly.

“Ugh.” She clutched the steering wheel until her knuckles were white and pretended to smack her head on it. “Why can’t you just use your own car,” she groused.

“That would require buying one. And I’m already doing enough. A house and a move and a world tour and a dog . . . Come on.”

We exited the car and made our way to the front door. “A world tour and you’re adopting a dog now?” She sounded incredulous. “Dogs are hard work. You’re not going to bring this dog with you on the tour, are you?”

“First, we have to see if the dog is still there.”

She was. Copper-colored Penny, her tail still thumping against the floor, was waiting for me. Lucy’s expression softened when she saw her. “Oh, she’s a sweetie. But wait.” She dug into her back pocket and pulled out a fat silver brick the size of a passport wallet and thick as a deck of cards. She swiveled the screen with a snap, revealing a small keyboard.

“What is that?” I asked.

“It’s called a Sidekick, won’t be officially out for a few months,” she said absentmindedly, thumbing the pad with both hands. She lifted it to her ear and glanced at me. “You can’t do something like adopt a dog and not have the tabloids know about it.”

“That’s a phone? You’re calling the paparazzi? Why?”

“It’s a good deed! I keep trying to get my aunt to capitalize on her good heart but she refuses. I might as well bring someone else into the light.”

I sighed and looked at the worker who had let us in. “Well, it looks like you’re going to get some unexpected visitors,” I told her.

By the time the three of us—Lucy, Penny, and myself—walked out of the shelter, the parking lot was a full circus. We clambered back into the Jag amid the frenzied clicking of cameras. Luckily, Penny didn’t seem perturbed by the noise and enjoyed smearing her nose on the window glass.

“Consider this my good deed,” Lucy said, putting the car in drive.

“Calling the paps? Hardly.”

“No, letting you get my back seat all slobbery.” Some of the paparazzi followed us in their own cars. I checked out the back windshield as they continued to give chase while on the 5 and even after we exited Los Feliz.

“Don’t go to the house,” I said suddenly, worried.

“I wanted to see your new crib!”

“I don’t want them to know where I live.”

Lucy rolled her eyes. “They’re going to find out eventually.”

“Can’t I just have one minute of peace? Go to your place. We’ll lose them after an hour, maybe.”

“My parents will flip if they see a dog on my leather interior. Or anywhere on my mother’s antique rugs. No.” She shook her head and handed me her Sidekick. “We’ll go to Malibu. Go into my contacts and message Emily Kinnerman. Tell her to meet us at the beach house.”

By the time the car slipped past a set of wrought-iron gates, the last persistent paparazzo was left behind. Two other cars—a gleaming black Maserati and a more practical-looking Toyota—and a short-haired woman in distressed jeans were waiting for us at the end of the drive. “You’re still renting this place?” I asked, clipping the complimentary leash to Penny’s throwaway collar.

“My parents, well, they need some alone time. It seemed easier to just keep staying here to get out of their way.” Lucy waved at the woman. “Emily! This is Cassidy. Cass, Emily. And Emily, this is Penny.” She turned to me. “Are you keeping that name?”

“Sure, why not.”

“Em is fantastic with animals,” Lucy said. “She just recently started her own business as a pet-sitter, and I figured you’d be a good client, considering you seem to know nothing about keeping a dog.”

Emily and I shook hands—a little formal, I thought—before Penny jumped excitedly on the woman’s legs. We went inside, where we found Sterling Royce riding an exercise bike while shirtless and sporting headphones. Surprised, I asked, “What’s he doing here?”

Lucy giggled. “This is Sterling’s beach villa.” Sterling nodded an acknowledgment at us, but didn’t break his pace. “He won’t care if you bring a dog in. He has a maid service come in, like, every day. Just don’t let her chew on anything.” She sat down and started to sift through a cascading pile of architectural and fashion magazines to pluck out the gossip rag. “Sit. Talk.”

Perching on the slippery couch reminded me of the last time I was here, the day of Lucy’s post-Moldova party, but unlike that dark morning, the midday sky was so blue it was almost white and the room was bathed in an even glow. Sterling’s headphones emitted a tinny beat that we could hear from all the way across the open floor plan. He pulled off the headphones and panted, “Lucy, are we having guests over for dinner?”

Lucy raised her eyebrows. “What do you think? His personal chef is the best. She makes everything macrobiotic.”

We sat and chatted over a meal of beans, vegetables, and miso soup. Emily, who confided that she was twenty-five, had been a personal assistant to some B-list stars, mostly taking care of errands and pets while nannies oversaw children and drivers kept to schedules. Tired of having her agency take most of her profit, she decided to go into business for herself.

Sterling poured ionized water for the table and listened to the conversation without contributing too much himself.

Lucy was describing the fraught day she’d had on set as she popped open dessert wine—apparently, Sterling ate macrobiotic meals but drank whatever he felt like. He sipped lightly, wetting his lips on the glass, and said, “I thought you were going to quit The Jet-Setters if they continued to put you through that bullshit.”

“Quit?” I said, alarmed. I knew that the show wouldn’t last forever, but Lucy’s character was my family’s favorite.