“Great,” Stephanie says. “All right, everybody,” she says to the girls, “I know it’s hot in here and you’re tired, but I really like the energy we’ve got going right now. We’ll break for lunch right after this.”

All the girls groan . . . except for Sarah, who looks eager to get back to her note-taking.

“Come on,” says Chuck, the assistant camera operator, in an attempt to jolly them along. “Lunch. It’s fajita day. Who can resist a delicious fajita?”

The girls titter because Chuck has made the word “fajita” sound vaguely lascivious. Sarah looks confused. “It’s just meat and vegetables in a tortilla,” she says.

“I actually came up here for a reason,” Gavin says to me as Marcos gets the boom back in place, “besides wanting to watch the collapse of the American entertainment industry. Lisa wants to see you down in the office.”

“Why?” I ask, straightening up.

“I don’t know,” Gavin says, with a shrug. “She saw me walking by in the hall and told me to come find you. She says it’s important.”

I nod and leave the room quietly, just as Tania is saying, “Write about what you wish would happen to you, your hopes and dreams, what you wish you’d done differently, what you wish you could change but how, if those things hadn’t happened to you, you might not be the strong person you are today—”

Hopes and dreams, I see Sarah scribble as I’m leaving.

That’s it, Stephanie, I think as I softly close the door to the library behind me. Keep her mind off the dark stuff. Can’t have Tania breaking down now, when the Rock Off is just a week away and she’s so close to the finish line.

The funny thing is that I had no idea how close we all were to the finish line as I was thinking this. Particularly me.

Chapter 22

Lisa is at her desk and Davinia, the resident assistant from the sixteenth floor, is sitting in a chair beside her when I walk into our office. Neither of them looks too happy.

“Hey,” Lisa says to me gloomily.

“Hey,” I say back. “Gavin said you needed to see me?”

“Yeah,” Lisa says. “Davinia thinks we’ve got a problem.”

I sit down at my desk, then spin my chair around so I can look at them both through Lisa’s open office door. “We had a guy die of cupcake poisoning last week, and TMZ is hiding in the bushes this week,” I say. “What could possibly be worse?”

“Well, this isn’t necessarily worse,” Lisa says. “But it has to do with the girls in 1621.” She lifts an incident report that’s sitting on her desk. “Need I say more?”

“Oh jeez,” I say. “I was just with them in the library. Cassidy was being her usual charming self, but nothing out of the ordinary. What’s going on now?”

“Mallory and Cassidy requested a meeting with me early this morning—very top secret,” Davinia says. “They even made sure none of the film crew was around to film it, if that’s any indication of how serious they think the situation is. They say they’re worried about Bridget.”

I knit my brows. “Worried about her?” I recall the way Cassidy searched the library for Bridget when Tania mentioned writing about someone you hate. “Jealous of her is more like it. I think they may be trying to eliminate the competition.”

“Could be,” Davinia says. “But according to Mallory and Cassidy, Bridget’s got a boyfriend—”

“Wait.” I don’t believe a word of it. “She’s sneaking out? I can’t believe, after last time, that any of those girls would dare—”

“That’s what I asked,” Davinia says. “They say she’s not sneaking out at night. She sees him during the day whenever there’s time off from filming and the other girls are practicing their solos for the Rock Off and the chaperones are busy—”

“—doing other things,” I finish for her, knowing all about happy hour at the Washington Square Hotel. “Who’s the guy? Not Magnus,” I say, suddenly feeling my heart begin to race. “Please not one of the basketball players—”

“He is attending summer classes here at New York College,” Davinia says. “But he doesn’t live in this building. Mallory says he lives in Wasser Hall, across the park. She and Cassidy only found out because Bridget has been texting someone nonstop for the past week and wouldn’t tell them who, so one day when they were all supposed to be going into rehearsal they followed her—”

“Weasels,” I say, not in the least surprised.

“—and they saw her go to Wasser Hall and get signed in by him. Obviously, later on, they confronted her—off camera, thank God—and Bridget begged them not to tell, because apparently the boy is Orthodox Jewish and not allowed to date outside the faith, so if their relationship gets shown on camera and his family ever sees the show, he’ll be disowned.”

“Oh please,” Lisa says with disgust. “Is she kidding?”

I tap my front teeth, thinking. “This could actually be true,” I say. “One of the reasons Wasser Hall is so popular is because some of the suites on the lower floors have kitchens, so residents who keep kosher can cook in them, and they don’t have to use the elevator to get to them on the Sabbath. The dining hall is also big enough to serve both kosher and non-kosher meal plans. So if he is Orthodox, it’d make sense for him to live in Wasser Hall.”

“How does Bridget say they met?” Lisa asks, looking at Davinia.

Davinia shrugs. “How does anyone hook up with anyone around here? In the park, of course. That’s why the girls came to me. They say they feel like they’re being ‘disloyal’ to Tania by keeping this huge secret, but this show is supposed to be about ‘reality,’ and the ‘reality’ is, Bridget isn’t being real.”

I roll my eyes. “Oh right. That’s why they want to tell, out of fear that the integrity of Jordan Loves Tania is being compromised. Not because they’re huge drama queens and want to get more airtime on the show for themselves.”

“But she’s definitely not sneaking out at night?” Lisa asks.

Davinia shakes her head. “The girls say no, because we confiscate all their IDs. She’d never be able to get back in without getting caught. She visits him at his place and only during the day.”