“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.

“What we don’t have are any current stalkers or harassers. Do you ladies still hear from your obsessive fans?”

“Yes,” I said. “One of our employees has boxes and bags full of letters.”

“How many, would you say?”

“Thousands. It used to be more.” Rooms of letters. Some adoring; some not. Some too adoring. Some frightening. As the years passed, the nostalgic fans tried to talk to us through the internet: Twitter replies, Instagram comments, Tumblr tags. These days we couldn’t keep any in-box for very long. I disabled all of the direct messaging features on my social platforms so that I could sleep better at night. If someone I truly knew wanted to reach me, they could call. But it was only the very devoted who continued to put pen to paper and affix their stamps. These were what Emily collected. “We could have her drop them off.”

Detective Lawrence leaned back and steepled his fingers. It was only a moment, but I could sense his hesitation to have to read through bags of letters, each one with a person behind them, each one a potential threat that had to be crossed off. But duty spoke: “Yes, I would like to see them. Your employee can leave them with the front desk clerk and they’ll make their way to me.”

“I’ll get on it right away.”

The detective handed me a business card with his contact information. “If you think of anything else.”

“If you learn anything, will you let me know? Here.” I pulled a Post-it pad on his desk close and jotted down my number. “Please don’t share this widely. I normally don’t give this out but Cassidy is important to me.”