I learned that the little hand gesture I’d noticed in the first episode meant that Cole was about to reveal something new or pull off some virtuoso bit of playing or dancing. I made a note of it. Or rather, I made a mental note that he never accidentally did the hand gesture when he was with me. It wasn’t a real-Cole gesture he had co-opted for his shows. It had to have been a gesture that he invented for them.

I learned that he had a long-running inside joke with interviewers where they often asked him what he was afraid of and he always replied “nothing.”

I learned from a two-year-old interview that he wrote most of his songs in the car or in the shower or while in movie theaters or making out with soon-to-be-ex-girlfriends.

I wasn’t interested in learning much after that. So I looked up Baby North instead.

Near the end of my shift, I called Cole. When he picked up, I heard tinny music in the background, including Cole’s recorded singing voice. The sound of it gave me a strange little crawl up my skin. “Did you finish your homework?”

“Nearly. It got complicated. I really want my gold star, though.”

“There’s no partial credit,” I replied. I clicked on a hyperlink for an article on Baby. Her face smiled out at me, open and honest, beside a headline that said death by baby. “I’m practicing being you. What’s one thing you know you would never say in an interview?”

Immediately, he replied, “ ‘I’m sorry.’ ”

I didn’t have to see his face to know he was pleased with his answer. “God, you are unbelievable. Like, do these lines just come to you, or do you actually see in your head how your words look printed before you say them?”

“What a superpower that would be. Like a thought bubble?”

I demanded, “Do you say anything without thinking whether or not it sounds good?”

“I don’t even know why I’d bother opening my mouth otherwise.”

“Yeah. You know, this whole thing where interviewers ask you what you’re afraid of and you always answer ‘nothing,’ ” I said. “That’s such a lie.”

Cole was quiet. It was impossible to tell if it was because he was picturing a clever answer in the thought bubble above his head, or because he was doing something while he was talking to me, or because he had no answer.

Finally, he replied, his voice very different from before. “It’s not a lie. It’s super clever. It’s why I’m still here on this planet.

I’m surprised you haven’t figured it out with your giant brain.

It’s a riddle. Like how to get my Mustang out here from Phoenix without having to ever speak to my parents. These are puzzles, Isabel, and I think you should solve them all for me.” His voice had returned to normal. Over-normal.

“I don’t like puzzles,” I told him.

“That’s because you are a puzzle,” Cole replied, “and you don’t like your own kind. It’s okay. I don’t like other me’s, either.”

I didn’t believe him. Cole got along great with a mirror.

“Don’t you have homework?”

“Hey, you called me.”

“Tell me what to tell the world.”

“Tell them,” Cole started, then paused. “Tell them I am making them a present. And tell me that you’ll dance to it.”

Chapter Twenty

· cole ·

That night, I returned to the apartment, too tired to be restless.

I was the sort of tired that came from finishing something, from emptying myself. I’d chased this feeling before, too, with fancy drinks and cheap drinks and pills that made you slow. But just like how the drug highs could never quite match the highs of creating music, the induced lows could never match this real peace that came from having created.

If I were always making an album, I would never be unhappy.

I lay on my bed and put my headphones on and listened to the track on repeat. It was impossible to get tired of listening to a new song the first day I breathed it into life. I texted Isabel. I did my homework.

She texted back: I’m checking your work.

In the end, I’d pulled the imperfect, lo-fi audio from T’s video footage and used it as a scratchy intro. Then I’d had us rip into a harder version with the tinny operatic singing pieced through. It sounded like we’d meant for it to turn out this way all along.

I was glad Isabel was checking my work. But I didn’t need anyone else to tell me I’d gotten a passing grade.

I drifted off with the song still playing in my ears. I dreamed about drifting off with the song still playing in my ears.

I woke to the sound of my door opening.

Isabel —

I heard a breathy giggle.

Not Isabel.

I had locked the door, I thought. I had been tired, but I remembered the action of turning the bolt.

My headphones hissed; my music player battery had died. I pulled them off an ear and heard another little snort. The giggles were traveling in packs. I felt like I was living a memory.

My wolf ears heard hands scrubbing over walls. Smelled perfume and sweat. The light came on.

Three topless girls stood in my living room area, peering at me through the see-through IKEA bookshelf into my bedroom.

One of them had artfully written my name across her breasts.

COLE on one. CLAIR on the other. ST. in small letters on her breastbone.

“I think you have the wrong place,” I told them pleasantly, not sitting up. This inspired another round of giggles. They remained in my apartment. They remained topless. I remained in bed.

In the old days, this wouldn’t have been a problem. Bored and horny and high, I would have entertained them all if not myself, and then passed out on the deck.

But now I was not only on camera, but I very much wanted Isabel Culpeper to keep taking my calls. I was working arduously and single-mindedly toward my gold star, and there was nothing about this situation that was going to get me that.

“I’m sure I locked that door,” I said, sitting up.

One of the girls held up a key. She flashed a million-dollar smile at me.

Oh, Baby.

The girl with my name written large informed me that she was a virgin.

“I’m proud of you,” I said. I held up a finger and called Isabel, keeping one eye on my half-naked visitors. “Pumpkin, do you have Virtual Cole with you?”