After a moment, he tipped his phone to me so that I could see the e-mail on it. From: Baby North. Subject line: AUDITIONS.

T tells me you’re doing auditions on the beach. I’ve touched base with people to make sure the world knew to come.

When you’re done with that, I’ve jotted some other ideas in the notebook. Let me know.

Cole pulled a small notebook from his back pocket. It looked brandnew, but when he flipped it open, the first page had slanted, excited handwriting:

Reveal your identity to fans in the music aisle of Target.

Run a block party.

Crash a wedding.

Steal a car.

You know. Be yourself.

“I thought this was a show about you recording an album?”

I asked, but it wasn’t really a question.

“Who would watch that?” he replied. He frowned at the list, but not like he was upset with it. More like it was a slightly perplexing shopping list, and he was contemplating the mechanics of fulfilling it.

“Are you really going to do all of those things?”

“Maybe,” Cole said. “I can think of better ones.”

“She wants you to be a disaster.”

He tapped the notebook against his mouth. “She wants me to look like a disaster.”

“Those are the same thing.”

He was very disinterested in this line of questioning. “This is just performing. I know what they want.”

“Who is ‘they’? How did we get plural all of a sudden?”

“The masses. The people. Don’t you watch TV?”

I did watch TV. I watched Baby’s shows. I thought of those knee-high cameras. Perfect angle for catching a shot of someone on his way down.

I wanted to tell him to quit the show and stay here for me.

But that was the opposite of not getting in too deep.

Things were starting to get projected on the movie screen of my mind, and they were all things that might make me cry if they happened.

I pushed off the sink. “I have to go to work.”

“Work,” echoed Cole, as if he had not heard the word before.

“How can you work and help me destroy the hopes of a dozen hopeful bass players at the same time?”

“I can’t. And I’m not going to be on your — your thing. I’m not part of the Cole St. Clair show.”

“How boring that is.” Cole’s face was carefully expressionless, though, so I knew he meant frustrating or upsetting instead of boring.

“Well, that’s how things run in the Isabel show. Call me next time you’re off camera.” For some reason, I was irritable now. It was as if every time my feelings were prodded into action, the first thing was always pins and needles.

I opened the bathroom door.

“Wow. Just like that?” Cole asked.

“Just like that,” I replied. “Frosty.”

I stepped back into the view of all the cameras. Cole, still out of their reach in the bathroom, held a pretend phone to his ear. He mouthed _____ me, only I didn’t think the verb was call.

A smile flashed across my face despite myself. His own smirk bloomed so quickly in response to it that I knew he’d been waiting for me to do something forgivable.

Really, that made two of us.

Chapter Eleven

· cole ·

After Isabel had gone, I felt charged and ready to be Cole St.

Clair. I was so high that it made me think about how I used to replicate this feeling with drugs. Thinking about that feeling made me imagine how once upon a time, I would have gone looking for some now: not for right away, but for later, as a reward for good behavior. A private high in a harmless environment.

Even through my thoughts of Isabel, I felt a surge of nerves and anticipation, some part of me already planning for the treasure hunt through L.A.

I shut it down, feeling dirty for even remembering it.

Thinking it is not doing it.

I thought of how I’d been a wolf just a few hours before.

Last time for even that, for a while, I told myself. It wasn’t a crime, but I didn’t need it.

Then I got to work. I called Jeremy on my way to the beach, even though I knew what he’d say, because he’d been a part of NARKOTIKA, which meant he’d been a part of me.

He picked up on the fourth ring.

I peered at my reflection in shop windows as I walked down the sidewalk. “No chance you want to play bass for me again, right?”

“Hey, man,” Jeremy replied, in his slow, easy way. He had the most glorious Southern accent you’ve ever heard on a guy from upstate New York. I’d known him long enough to remember him before he’d cultivated it. If he was shocked to hear from me after a year of silence, he didn’t show it. “I thought you were underground.”

It was at once comforting and suffocating to hear his voice.

He was all tied up with my memories of NARKOTIKA, and they were all tied up with my memories of everything before becoming a wolf. It was all awful nostalgia.

“I have emerged like a wondrous butterfly,” I told him. “And now I am going to be on the TV.”

“Yup.”

“I need a bassist. I —”

“Shhh,” Jeremy said, soft as a feather. “I’m Googling you.”

I waited. There was no point hurrying Jeremy. It was like punching fog. I walked half a block in the brilliant sun while he researched my recent life.

“The only problem with you on a reality show,” Jeremy said finally, “is that reality’s never been your strong point.”

I paused to look at a window full of sunglasses. A tiny, tinted version of me appeared in each lens. “They hired me the absolute worst bass player.”

“Cole, I doubt that,” he replied mildly. “They seem like smart people. They used integers to represent the letters in their website name.”

“There was nothing about the guy that was right. And she got me a guitarist, but that’s another story.”

“Guitars are the ones with six strings, right? Have I seen one before?”

I looked in another store window. This shop only sold belts in the color blue. It seemed unnecessarily specialized. “I told her no guitarist.”

“I assume he’s already gone.”

“Oh, yeah, of course. So now I’m going to audition people on the beach, and the best thing would be for you to show up and be the best.”