Merry shrugged, trying to look nonchalant, but she seemed to be holding back frustrated tears. “I’m just off. I’m sorry. I’ll get it.”

Yumi smiled at her. “I’m sure you will. It’s the first night, and you might still be dealing with the fire stuff. You’re sure you’re all right?”

Merry nodded, but her mouth twisted uncomfortably. “I feel a little sick. I should’ve eaten more.”

“Want a protein bar?” Ang said, trying to be helpful.

“Nah, if I eat one of those now I’ll really puke. I’ll eat after the show.”

We made it through the first London show without any more mishaps, but there was a bigger crowd than usual when we left the hotel for day two. Flashes strobed in our faces and the yelling was an indistinct curtain of our names and noise. We moved through slowly, molasses trickling through a twisted spout, bumping away microphones with the backs of our hands.

“Sassy! Sassy!”

A security guy said, “No more pictures,” and waved the pap away, but he popped back up like a whack-a-mole. Now that I tuned in to the noise, the indistinct sounds weren’t general hollers for Gloss, and they weren’t asking the others a lot of questions. Everything was directed toward me.

“What did he do to you?”

“Tell us what happened! Sassy!”

I tried to remain stoic in the eyes of their lenses, breathing in deeply through my nose and exhaling slowly, beat by beat. The group of paparazzi swarmed, moving as one writhing mass like a school of fish. We were almost outside at our waiting SUVs. Ian opened the door and I slid in after Rose. The flashbulbs were still going off, camcorders rolling, microphones probing outward from the mass, preventing the car door from closing. Security gamely peeled fists and camera lenses away from the door when one of the grackles shouted, “Why would Alex hurt you?”

The door slammed shut, the tinted window hiding my surprise.

Alex?

Ian climbed in the front and I leaned back in my seat, almost too exhausted to think, as we rolled away from the curb.

“Did that guy say Alex?” I murmured to Rose.

Her eyes were closed. “I think so . . . ,” she mumbled.

I reached into my bag and turned my cell phone on, certain that if Alex were involved, someone from Houston would have notified me about it. I quickly started cycling through what felt like hundreds of new voicemails, trying to glean any information before we were set to perform, but we arrived at the stadium too soon.

“Waitwaitwait,” I said, as Ian hustled me out of the car. But we couldn’t wait. Everything was on a timetable. We pushed through another crowd, this time mostly fans who breached the cordons and were held back by security, and when I had a moment to sit in my dressing room to continue my mission, I found that my phone battery had died.

I chased down a PA. “Find all the tabloids that mention Gloss and leave them in the bus for me,” I instructed.

That night, I was distracted by my curiosity and stumbled over my steps. Merry broke away from our ensemble during “What Did U Say” and pitched to the back edge of the stage, tossed her microphone to the side, and vomited into the wings. Because it was the song right before intermission, the stage lights cut out dramatically as the stadium lights came on and we all rushed to guzzle water and change.

“Ughhh,” she said, gargling.

“What the fuck was that?” Rose said, depositing Visine under her lashes and blinking hard.

“God, I have no idea. My stomach has been acting weird all week.”

“Are you feeling better now?” Yumi asked.

“Tons. Maybe I just have a little bug. Or ate something wrong.”

When we went back out after the intermission, we had scripted banter among ourselves to engage the audience. Tonight, Rose ad-libbed, striding out in front of the rest of us with her hands high in the air and shouting, “Whew! What’s up, London?!”

Screams rang out from the audience, a wave of undulating adoration.

Rose took a few steps back, the cue for Yumi’s line.

“We’re so excited to be here tonight!” Yumi yelled.

I had to muster energy from deep within to shout my bit: “But are you excited? Make some noise!”

More screams.

“Merry, you were so excited, you got a little sick back there,” Rose said jokingly, turning toward her friend.

“Oh, yeah,” Merry responded wryly. “Well, all I can say is . . . for all the naysayers who claim that we lip sync, I think I showed them that we always sing live.”

Laughter and cheers, people bobbing their glow sticks in appreciation.

When we climbed aboard the bus for our ride to Manchester, there were a few gossip rags waiting but they were all backdated. Apparently, the rumors about my arm had jumped the Atlantic some other way. I flipped through twice to be sure, but the only thing of note was that Sterling Royce had a new girlfriend—not Lucille Bowen.

Merry’s stomach troubles persisted throughout our European leg. She blamed it on questionable food, a bug, motion sickness. While she didn’t vomit onstage again, Merry was constantly sipping ginger ale and tapping out vitamin C tablets into her palm, and a bottle of Pepto-Bismol was never far from her reach. If the other girls noticed, they didn’t mention it, but I wasn’t talking to anyone on the bus between cities. I lay in my bunk, numbed by prescription painkillers, trying not to jostle my arm, wordlessly observing the people around me: Rose, staring out the window; Merry, rubbing her chest like she was experiencing heartburn; Yumi, chatting animatedly with Veronica, the sound tech, who was on our crew again. And a low hum of exhaustion and dizziness from the Vicodin permeated my existence, so when I could, I slept.

What did it matter if I sometimes overheard a fragment of a conversation between two crew members about someone being “antisocial”? Or that the loneliness sometimes turned into sullenness?

By the time we reached Stockholm, I’d learned to space my Vicodin doses so that its numbness would wear off as I clumsily applied stage makeup, and I’d be fresh enough to perform, albeit with a throbbing arm. Ian stole into my dressing room before the show and slapped a magazine on the bureau beside me. “This came for you. I thought I’d run it by you.”

I set down my eyeshadow brush and flipped through the pages, but couldn’t read it. It was a flimsy newsprint that looked more like a supermarket tabloid than People magazine or In Touch Weekly. “It’s in Swedish,” I said.

“It’s French. You think it’s Swedish? I worry about your education that you can’t see the difference.” He shook his head as he took the magazine back and opened it, turning the print toward me and jabbing at a spot with one finger. “Here.”

“I still can’t read French. Can you read French?”

“A little. Jordan is taking it in school so I pick up a tiny bit by virtue of being around him.”

I felt a twinge of envy. “Isn’t Jordan, like, twelve?”

“Thirteen, going on thirty. Anyway, as much as I could piece together, it says that you and your boyfriend had an argument and it got violent. This paper is very slim on details.”

I snatched it out of his fingers but my proficiency in French hadn’t changed in the last minute. Just boyfriend? Not Stephen or Alex by name? “What time is it? Can we call Peter and see what’s being said in the U.S.?”

Ian shook his head. “He probably knows about it and is taking care of it. He would probably tell you to focus on finishing Europe strong, so that you can start the U.S. tour when you get back.”

His words didn’t soothe my anxiety for very long. I abandoned my eyeliner and walked the corridor to Merry’s dressing room, thinking that if anyone knew how to handle a tabloid situation, it would be her. But her room seemed empty.

“Hello?” I said, turning around in the space, and noticed that the adjoining bathroom door was ajar. Maybe she was sick again. I knocked lightly. “Merry, you in there?” The door swung open.

She was curled in front of the toilet, looking miserable. Her face didn’t move, but her eyes met mine. They were giant and sad and communicated everything.

And somehow, I knew. “Oh, shit.”

Merry turned to look directly at me. “You can’t tell anyone.”

“I wouldn’t. But Merry—”

“What.” She spit into the bowl.

“People are going to figure it out. You keep complaining about feeling sick, things will start to click.”

“I know.” She stood on wobbly legs and pushed past me through the door. “Don’t say anything to Yumi.” Breathing shallowly, she swallowed and curled up on the couch, barefaced and still in her dressing robe and fleece pajama pants. “I swear, everyone in the media says I flap my mouth too much, but Yumi—she’s the one who can’t keep a secret.”

I sat too. “We need an adult. We’re really just kids, in way over our heads.”

Leaning her head back slowly, Merry gave a little moan. “Ian would blow a gasket. Peter would replace me in two seconds. I don’t know what I’m doing about it yet. Maybe it won’t even be an issue . . .”