Then the power came back on.

The headphones still weren’t working, so I ripped them off and charged into the engineering room. Every computer was beeping and whirring as it came back to life.

“Give me good news,” I said.

Dante looked at me. There was a thin rim of white all the way around his pupils. He shook his head.

“Any of it?”

He said, “The drum track?”

It took a long moment for the truth to sink in: Everything weird and one-of-a-kind we had just done was gone. We could redo it, but it would sound like we had redone it. It was like today had never happened. Like someone had just taken my time and thrown it away. Like the pressing deadline that was always there had been shoved closer.

“And it didn’t occur to you to save along the way,” I said.

“You’re working with a six-figure project, and you didn’t think at some point after the drum track, I will hit these buttons here on this fancy machine and save it?”

“I did save,” Dante insisted. “The power cutting off has messed things up. Like, it’s corrupted stuff. That machine won’t even start back up again.”

I wasn’t even certain which machine he was pointing at. I was certain that Baby had done this. I was also certain that she had done it to get me to implode on camera. I was even more certain that she was going to get what she wanted.

“Show me,” I said. “Show me the corrupted files.”

Dante scrolled through a bunch of empty screens. “It’s gone, man. I don’t know. . . .”

“That is the most obvious thing you have said all day. Is this your job? Have you seen one of these things before? Tell me how it is that we still have a drum track.”

If he had been in on the plan, he was doing a good job of looking shell-shocked now. He fumbled through some more screens and muttered, “That’s, like, the last save that it paid attention to; I don’t know, I don’t know. . . .”

I gestured toward T, who stood at my shoulder. “I hope you’re happy that your total incompetence is being broadcasted to the planet.”

I stormed out. In the recording room, Jeremy was packing away his bass because he knew me, and Leyla was still sitting behind her drums because she didn’t.

“We could redo it,” the bass cop suggested.

Girl opera cop shook her head. She knew.

Leon clapped his hand on my shoulder and then got his car keys.

“It was meant to be,” Leyla said. She didn’t look surprised, but it was hard to tell if that was because she was in on Baby’s plan, or because she was baked, or because she really did believe that it was meant to be.

“I know that you’re trying to get me to kick your drum set in,” I warned her, “but I’m onto you.”

Jeremy told the cops how glad he was that they had come and that at least the cameras had caught their contributions. He made sure that he had their telephone numbers. He shook Leon’s hand. He closed the door behind them all. He was good at this.

I called Baby. “This is not the way to get me on your good side.”

Baby said, “What?”

“Oh, come on.”

“I’m not a mind reader.”

“I know you want drama. But you mess with the album again,” I said, “and —” I stopped because I couldn’t think of what to end the sentence with. I didn’t have half an ounce of leverage.

I was right back where I’d started. I’d thought I’d been so clever to circumvent the system, to make an album without a label as overlord, and here I was again, just merchandise.

I thought about how she’d been so concerned at the beginning.

I kicked over one of the microphone stands. It barely made a sound in this pointless, generic studio. This wasn’t a place to make music. It was a place to record commercials for music.

I didn’t even know what the hell I’d been thinking.

“And what, Cole? I don’t really like being threatened, and for no reason. I’m working. I have a call on the other line. I don’t know what has happened, but I’m happy to help.”

I wanted to snarl This is war! but the fight was going out of me. I couldn’t believe the track was gone. I just couldn’t believe it. What a damn waste of everything.

“I want my Mustang,” I told her. “That’s how you can help.

Get me my Mustang.”

I hung up. I felt like a toothless dog.

If Victor had been here, I would’ve turned to him and said, “Let’s go get high.”

But he wasn’t. And I was on camera. And that wasn’t me anymore. That wasn’t me anymore. That wasn’t me anymore.

I looked at Jeremy.

He said, “What are you thinking?”

I said, “I wish Victor would come through that door.”

The camera was right on me. Baby was winning this game uncontested. My brain whirred, looking for some kind of traction, some way to turn this to my advantage, but nothing caught.

Jeremy said, “That’s not gonna happen. We have to work with what we have.” He paused. “What’s the way, Cole?”

It was a ridiculous question, because that ship had sailed so miserably away.

A text vibrated through on my phone. It was from Isabel. It just said, you’d better be recording something I can dance to.

I had been, but it was gone. I pictured it, the way that track would have sounded as she danced to it. Because it was both a fantasy and a memory, I knew precisely what it would feel like to have her hips pressed up against mine. Isabel Culpeper, perfect ten.

I wanted that gold star.

And then it was like a bank of mist cleared from my brain.

I turned to T’s camera. “You’ve been filming this whole time, right?”

“Oh, hey,” T said, looking alarmed. “You know, it’s my job, I —”

I waved my hand to cut him off. “I just wanted to make sure you had what I needed. Let’s do this thing.”

Jeremy grinned.

Chapter Nineteen

· isabel ·

That first day that I was Virtual Cole St. Clair, I spent a lot of time on the Internet. Not because I was posting updates, but because I was researching the way Cole looked on the outside. I realized I’d only heard a few of his songs, so I listened to some with one earbud while my CNA instructor showed movies in a darkened room. I listened to the rest on my drive over to .blush. I had never read an interview with him, so I queued up web pages and scrolled through them on my phone while Sierra pinned various bits of clothing on me in the back room. I listened to NARKOTIKA Behind the Band segments as she pulled them off. After she had left me to close down the shop, I watched videos of the bands Cole thanked in his liner notes or mused on as influences in interviews.