The smile froze on my face. It hadn’t occurred to me, even though it should have been obvious, that being a judge was a mentor role. Age hit me suddenly and I felt ancient. Cassidy had been seventeen when she auditioned for the first Sing It, and that was half a lifetime ago. I took another sip from my cup to give myself some time to consider the years behind me. “I see.”

Lila seemed to sense what I was thinking, because she hurried to add, “You may have noticed that FPZ has been . . . fairly homogenous in the past. We are trying to become more inclusive and welcome diversity. Of course, we’re not interested in you because of your ethnicity, we’re interested because you’re pop royalty. But we are excited to have better representation on television.” She smiled graciously. “And also, we’ll have judges from different generations of music. We’re talking to a few so I can’t name names for certain yet, but you would be the youngest on the panel and therefore the ‘cool’ one.”

I thought back to how I felt like the token Asian in Gloss. How I was called Tasty, my name mispronounced as Yummy. All the Chinese-inspired prints I was put in, even though I was Japanese. After years of feeling like an outsider, I was supposed to be glad that I—my face and my name and my body—fit a profile they wanted to check off?

“This seems sudden, your interest in the Glossies, reaching out only in the past week?” I said to distract myself from my anger.

“We were considering another Sing It veteran—Stephen St. James, winner of season one,” Lila admitted. “It’s just too bad about the rumors swirling around him.”

“Rumors?” I repeated. My home might be in L.A., but my feet had been outside the industry for too long. I hadn’t heard anything about Stephen except buzz when a new album was out.

John sighed. “It’s not my place to talk about it,” he said, “but rumors like the ones following St. James around are not good for business. We reluctantly had to withdraw our interest in him. Hence, Gloss. We’re wondering if you’d be interested in the position at all. We are prepared to offer you a good salary for the season. Seven figures.”

I shifted a little in the seat, focusing on the question at hand, as they looked at me expectantly. “I’m interested,” I hedged, “though as you can see, I’m by myself at the moment. I’d really like to be able to look over everything with my lawyer before I say anything further.”

They stood. “We will send the paperwork to whomever you direct,” Henry said, extending a hand. I reached out and shook it, standing as well. “Just full disclosure, however—we are talking to Rose McGill as well, and we are not interested in having two ex–Gloss members on the panel at the same time.”

“I understand.” I gathered my purse, leaving my nearly full coffee cup on the table, and shook hands with Lila and John before making my exit.

My car stank of stale french fries. I looked in my rearview mirror again and studied my face. Was I old? Had Emma Jake been my age when she was a judge on the first season of Sing It?

I pulled out my phone and searched for Stephen St. James. The third hit was a gossip site that spelled out the alleged rumors. I recognized the woman who made allegations, though she was fifteen years older now: the runway model Jeannette, whom we’d met at the single release party.

I read her long, sordid description of what Stephen had put her through. Physical and mental abuse, and his staff had helped with any cover-ups. He had threatened her burgeoning career if she said anything at the time, but now that she was retired from modeling, she didn’t care anymore. “This man is still preying on women today,” she said. “Women who are a lot more vulnerable than myself. I speak on behalf of those women, some of whom didn’t extricate themselves fast enough and suffered more than I did. I am one of the lucky ones.”

I physically recoiled as I remembered that we had worked alongside this man for months, had considered him a friend. Had even—hadn’t Cassidy had a crush on him?

And then horror: Hadn’t Cassidy had a crush on him, and suddenly, she was over it? Around the same time she broke her arm . . .

My stomach dropped. I’d been so fixated on Alex abusing Cassidy at the time, I hadn’t considered someone else hurting her. But it made sense now. The way Cassidy went quiet around Stephen, the way she tensed when he showed up at that meeting before Australia. And how she quit the group right before we were going on tour with Stephen opening for us.

While I knew I shouldn’t be so quick to believe my gut this time, I knew that Jeannette was telling the truth. And I also knew immediately that Cassidy had been threatened to keep quiet by Stephen and his staff.

My phone buzzed; I didn’t recognize the number, but it was a local area code so I slid my finger to answer. “Ms. Otsuka,” the voice said. “This is Detective Lawrence.”

“Oh. Hold on a minute.” I bowed my head over the wheel, taking a deep breath in and a long breath out, cleansing my head of all its bubbling thoughts before setting the phone against my ear. “Okay. I’m ready.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Detective Lawrence said. “I wanted to let you know that this investigation is now officially closed.”

His tone grated on me. “Call me Yumi, not ma’am. There was nothing in the letters?”

“I’m sorry, m—Ms. Otsuka. The M.E. ruled it a suicide. We go by what he says. It seemed very open-and-shut to him, no matter what a bag of letters might have indicated. The body—that is, ah, Ms. Holmes—has been released to her family.”

“Oh. I see.”

There was a short pause, but the detective didn’t hang up. I drummed the steering wheel with my fingers, my mind a series of snapshots, flipping, flipping. I’d known that Cassidy had been unhappy sometimes while we were touring. She never said it outright, but she was subdued and dismissive, evasive and snappy, especially during our Prime tour. We’d all had our own issues during that tour, from what turned out to be Merry’s pregnancy to Rose and Cassidy getting into their giant unnamed argument that we as a group never rebounded from, and I’d attributed Cassidy’s low moods to her fractured arm—the arm that I was now convinced had been broken by Stephen. But maybe there was something deeper going on—a small seed of disease that festered for years after we’d disbanded. This couldn’t be the outcome, could it? I sat in the car, weighing the possibility that there was no answer that would arise from my question.

“Ms.—Yumi. I hope that you can put her to rest. May her memory be a blessing,” Detective Lawrence said, his voice softer, more personable. Like two people discussing an old friend.

The lump I’d been avoiding in my throat sprang up again, making it hard to swallow. I couldn’t tell if I was angry about Stephen, angry at myself for not seeing it for so long, or in mourning. I ended the call abruptly to wipe my eyes.

33.

August 2002

L.A.

Cassidy

The entire month of August had me in a state of perpetual dread. I had avoided Stephen St. James since the bombshell tour meeting, but as this year’s Music Video Awards show loomed closer, MVC suggested that Gloss present with Stephen. Peter leapt at the idea and brought it up when he visited us at the choreographer’s studio while we were rehearsing for the performance. The other girls were still annoyed with me for taking the group’s Variety spot with my Alex rebuttal and were speaking to me only when the job required it. I could barely get out of bed to make rehearsals, and every time I opened my eyes and it was a new morning, I willed the earth to swallow me whole. Every night, I’d take four sleeping pills and collapse into bed, Penny licking my face, as I wished the tour would be canceled.

And then Peter described his vision for the MVA performance.

“They’ve already seen you two together from last year’s show,” Peter said. “Maybe we can work in some banter between Sassy and Stephen.”

I studied myself in the studio’s wall of mirrors as he said it, my expression deceitfully calm. Maybe Peter didn’t know the full story. Maybe he should be let into the loop. “Peter? Could I talk to you in private for a sec?”

We walked to a different corner of the room. With my gaze off to the side, toward the other girls, who were standing separately and looking with quizzical expressions in our direction, I cleared my throat. “I’m not comfortable with this.”

“With what?” Peter’s head tilted exaggeratedly.

“With Stephen. Remember when I told you that I broke my arm falling down? Well, um . . .” I took a deep breath and before I lost my nerve blurted, “Stephen did it.”

Peter nodded, like we were discussing the weather. “Yes, and?”

I dug into my palm with my nails, peeling a blister. “Isn’t that enough?”