“God no,” Stephanie says. “Let everyone finish breakfast in peace. The minute we let them in, they’ll start making demands. I’m surprised at you, Heather. I’d think you’d know a little something about pushy stage moms.”
I smile humorlessly back at her. Ha ha.
Gavin swivels on the desk chair to complain, as Jared passes Stephanie a cupcake, “How come they get to eat the stuff people have dropped off for Tania, and you won’t let us have any?”
“Because,” I mutter—even more irritated when Christopher Allington saunters over to Stephanie and murmurs, “Gimme a bite, babe”—“in this building we have a policy. We don’t take—or eat—things that don’t belong to us.”
“And Heather was right when she said that you don’t know where those came from,” Lisa points out. But I don’t miss the envious glow in her eye as she watches Stephanie take a bite.
“We know exactly where these came from,” Stephanie says, chewing. “Tania’s fans. Let’s not forget, they’re the ones”—she makes a slight face—“paying our salaries.”
Christopher walks over to the nearest trash can and spits out what was in his mouth, but Simon tries to be more discreet.
“I think it’s quite good,” he says, chewing. “A bit dry maybe.” I notice, however, that he leaves the rest of his on the paper plate holding his fruit salad.
Muffy looks disappointed. “Oh, now that’s a darn shame,” she says. “And I heard so many good things about them too.”
President Allington has been holding his hand out across the desk. Now he withdraws it.
“No thanks,” he says. “Trying to keep my girlish figure. No sense wasting calories on something that doesn’t taste as good as it looks.”
I notice some of the basketball players have gathered in the lobby as well. Nothing would keep them away from a chance at grabbing some free food and perhaps a glimpse of Tania Trace, and they glance at one another with barely suppressed smirks on their faces.
“Honestly, Jared, he’s right,” Stephanie says, oblivious to what’s going on behind her. “How can you sit there and eat those? They taste like cardboard.”
“I don’t know,” Jared says. He seems to have lost some of his previous enthusiasm and is dabbing at his nose with his sleeve. “I was hungry. I skipped breakfast.”
“Well, go get a bagel in the cafeteria,” Stephanie says irritably. “So what rooms are Cassidy and those other girls in?” she asks me.
“Sixteen twenty-one,” I reply without checking the roster.
Lisa smiles at me, impressed, but the truth is, I’ve known all along. I’ve been stalling for time in order to get a sense of what’s going on behind the desk. I have all the room assignments memorized, given that I did them myself. I can’t use the computer system—for which Muffy Fowler told me the college spent a “scandalous” amount of money—to do Fischer Hall’s room assignments because it makes too many mistakes, assigning people who’ve requested a room on a “low floor, south-facing window,” to a room on a high floor with windows that face north. It’s easier for me simply to do the assignments by hand.
“There was a note telling me to put Bridget, Cassidy, and Mallory in the same room,” I explain to Stephanie. “So I did, with Cassidy’s mom in the outer room as chaperone. But now that I’ve met Mrs. Upton, I think she might not be too—”
“Brilliant,” Stephanie says, not waiting for me to finish. “Those three girls got the highest TVQ ratings from the test audiences who viewed their audition tapes. If we could get a smackdown going on between them for the Rock Off, it’d be terrific.”
My eyebrows go up, and I hear Lisa ask, “What?” in alarm.
“Not a real smackdown,” Lauren the PA assures us. She hasn’t been in the television business long enough to have become as jaded as her boss. “She means a vocal smackdown. The Rock Off is the talent show we’re going to have the final night of camp to see who the most gifted performer is. The winner gets fifty thousand dollars and a recording deal with Cartwright Records.”
“Those three girls all sang the same song when they auditioned for the show,” Stephanie says. I notice that she says “the show” and not “camp.” “It was ‘So Sue Me.’ ”
“Oh, I love that song,” says Jamie, and the other female RAs, Tina and Jean and even Davinia, all nod enthusiastically.
I don’t blame them. “So Sue Me” does have a different feel than any of Tania’s previous songs, and not just because it perfectly showcases her powerful voice, or because it’s the title track to her newest album and her first real Mariah-style power ballad. Although singers—especially popular ones like Tania—are often given cowriter credit for the songs they sing, it’s not always because they’ve actually written the song. Songwriters are guaranteed residuals by the label, but musicians and performers are not.
Every word of “So Sue Me,” on which Tania has a cowriter credit, sounds like it means something personal to her, however, and is coming from a place deep within her soul. Since every time I hear her singing it I get chills, I can almost believe she wrote it herself.
And so must everyone else, since it’s been the number-one song in the country—and Europe—for weeks.
“That’s why we want the floor to have a rock ’n’ roll feel,” Lauren explains, more to Davinia than to me. “Mallory and Bridget will probably go edgy for their songs for the Rock Off. We can’t be sure about Cassidy, with that mother—”
“We’ll get her agent to have her go pop,” Stephanie says firmly. “She’ll sing ‘So Sue Me,’ blow away all the competition, Tania will cry, Cassidy will win, and the sponsors will love it.”
I’m starting to understand what Jared meant in my office when he said I’d be amazed at how little actual reality ends up in their “docu-reality” series.
“Speaking of Cassidy,” I say, “when I met Mrs. Upton outside just now, I—”
“Later, okay?” Stephanie says. “Lauren, what did Art say?”
“Done,” Lauren says, checking her phone. “Can we print them out in your office, Lisa?”