She was very drunk.

Two years ago, I would’ve been, too.

What’s the way, Baby?

Then, while two of Magdalene’s boys worked on mixing the refrain, she opened up one of the massive doors so that we wouldn’t all die from carbon monoxide poisoning, and we drove her beautiful cars around in circles in the warehouse and then in the chain-link fenced parking lot.

The sun had gotten high and then gotten low somehow as we worked. A whole day vanished into a microphone. Dust buffed up into the air in big, choking clouds, all of it orange and violet in the sunset, everything beautiful and industrial and apocalyptic with the warehouses and the sky blue cars.

Maybe this was the only point of the episode. Enviable and beautiful excess, good music and pretty people.

As I got into car number four or five — a Nissan GT-R, or something flat and mouth-shaped like that — Magdalene climbed into the passenger seat beside me.

“Take it down the road and back. See what it can do!” she shouted, pointing down the perfectly straight road that ran in front of her warehouse. “We’ll be back in two minutes, boys!”

Then she turned to me and said, “Punch it, kid.”

I didn’t know what it was, but it wasn’t the Saturn, and that was great.

I let it charge to the edge of the lot. Just before we squealed out onto the long, straight road to the airport, Magdalene ripped off her mic and threw it out the window. In the rearview mirror, I watched it roll into the gravel and become invisible.

“Vandalism,” I remarked uneasily. “Baby won’t be pleased.”

As the speedometer climbed and the warehouse disappeared in a fresh cloud of dust, she said, all messy and sexy, “Are you enjoying your cage?”

The engine howled. In the rearview mirror, I saw that the cameramen had stepped out into the road to film our short escape. “What cage?”

“The one they watch you prowl around in. I have something for you,” she said. “Once we get out of view.”

I screwed a gear shift. What the hell did I know about driving?

And what the hell was this car anyway? We were already going eight thousand miles an hour, and I was pretty sure we were only in third gear and had very little marked road left. “If you’re talking about substances, my dear, I am clean.”

The road dead-ended in a massive parking lot. Before I could hit the brake, Magdalene leaned over and snatched up the parking brake. The car immediately spun. For a single moment, we were weightless. It was life and death and stopping and going at the same time. The car sailed sideways, the steering wheel meaningless, but there was nothing for it to run into.

Chaos without consequence.

Magdalene released the brake. With a jerk, the car finished its spin. We faced back the way we came. Dust rolled by us in herds.

“I am the greatest,” Magdalene observed. “Cole, you have never been clean.”

“I’m not using,” I said as the windshield cleared. “Give me some credit.”

“You’re an addict,” she said. “You’d be an addict if no one ever invented a drug. I saw you before you started using. You aren’t any different now.”

The car was so loud, even idling. “I’m sober now.”

“You were sober back then, too. Maybe the world thinks you loved heroin, but I know what your real addiction is.”

I looked at her. She looked at me. I wanted her to say music, but she wasn’t going to. We’d started this as the same thing: ambitious teens with no idea of what to do once the ceiling was removed from the world.

She asked, “Have you seen those big black-and-white monkeys at the zoo? They sit around all day picking their butts hoo hoo hoo, until a crowd comes along. And then they pick up all the toys in their cage and start throwing them and clowning around. They do it for the laughs. They do it because there are people watching. It’s not even about the toys. It’s only about the crowd.”

She meant the way. She smiled then, sharp and beautiful, just the girl I remembered appearing in the studio on day one, back before it all went to shit.

Magdalene opened up her hand, and in it was some ecstasy.

“Who’s your friend? I am.”

I hated how much I wanted to take it. My heart was crashing as if I already had.

But even more than that, I hated how Magdalene believed in that old version of me. She was so certain I’d already toppled.

The world didn’t want me to reinvent myself. Not a single person in it.

“Did Baby give that to you?” I asked.

She made a dismissive sound. It was accompanied by a very alcohol-scented breath. She was such a lovely and friendly drunk.

“Oh, Magdalene, Magdalene. What did she say when she asked you to be on the show?”

Magdalene smiled at me, her other hand on my face again.

This smile was a real one, not her camera-ready number from before. Her obscenely beautiful lips parted to reveal that she was slightly gap-toothed. I suddenly remembered Jeremy saying that everyone looked like kids to him, and just like that, I could see her as the little girl she must have been before she ever got discovered.

It was the saddest thing I’d ever imagined. I couldn’t comprehend how Jeremy could stand it.

“She told me to be myself,” Magdalene said.

I closed her hand back over the ecstasy. Her eyes widened in surprise.

Cole, what’s the way? Nobody but me was going to tell me how to be Cole St. Clair.

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, me, too.”

As the camera van approached us, I put the car back in gear and screamed back the way I’d come.

Chapter Thirty

· isabel ·

I was not in the mood to pick out sexy boots. I was not even in the mood to stare at famous people and dissect what made them look famous. I was in the mood for lab work. Back when I’d been taking AP Biology, I’d discovered there was nothing like plucking and dicing and observing to occupy the more active parts of my brain. If nothing else, biology was relentlessly logical. You could not change the rules. You could only work within them.

But this was not biology. This was Sunset Plaza, which was sort of the opposite of biology. It defied logic. It was famous for being filled with famous people, but apart from that, it really wasn’t that exceptional. In fact, the inside of Erik’s didn’t look like much of anything. The narrow store boasted thin, hightraffic carpet, clear plastic, and dull lights that did nothing to replace the sun blocked by the yellow awning out front. .blush.