“Oh my gawd, Lacey,” someone said. She couldn’t even have said who, and she’d been living, eating, and breathing with these people for two solid weeks. “I had no idea.”
“Did you, like, completely have no life whatsoever?”
“Shhh!” someone else said. “Will you look at that one—remember that show?”
And so Lacey found herself staring, goggle-eyed, at the same screen that everyone else was for another harrowing two minutes, as the laughing, giggling groupie who had taunted her over champagne a few nights earlier paged through the scrapbooks and mocked her. The intercut images from the YouTube cameras today looked jarring in comparison. Here’s Lacey Dawes looking smart and professional; here’s a frizzy-haired, braces-wearing, lunatic grinning Lacey Dawes photographed next to a cut-out image of Dante’s teenaged likeness, like they were best friends going to the freshman dance.
The groupie was perfect for her role, laughing at the silly girl who’d lost her mind over the rock star. The camera then posed lovingly on a transition from teen dream Dante into a cool, smokin’-hot close-up of Dante perched on an overlook of Virginia Beach, the wind rustling his hair, his dark eyes hidden behind a pair of sunglasses. “From everyone’s teenage dream guy to everyone’s rocker fantasy” was the subtext, and then the cameras cut again to Lacey, clutching her folders to her chest, looking far off and contemplative—Lord, they could have caught that image at any time in the past two weeks. That was just her look. And finally, mercifully, it slid away to the last shot, the most recent show, with the screaming fans and full-on rushed attack on the band—bodies flying, hands everywhere, and in the center of the storm was Dante.
And then someone else sighed—some random roadie with a whiskey voice. “Oh wow, Dante, I can’t believe how much you—”
You? That snapped Lacey back to reality. She jolted, wheeling, and realized that Dante Falcone had joined the group—probably had been there the whole time, seen the whole mess. He wasn’t looking at the flat screen anymore, however, he was looking at her, his lips curving into a smile.
“So I guess you’re a fan?” he asked.
Everyone burst into laughter, and Lacey’s world devolved into a sharp pinprick of pain that seemed to squeeze all of her vital organs into dust. Her phone chose that moment to ring, and she snatched it and thumbed it on, her eyes registering the caller before her brain could fully catch up. If she didn’t make it outside, get some fresh air, she was probably going to puke.
“Cameras,” Dante reminded her as she pushed past him, and she looked up at him wild-eyed. But of course he was right. The camera guys would be waiting for her, perched outside. They’d probably seen her fly down the hallway toward the viewing room. It’s not like she’d noticed anyone around her.
“Hang on,” she muttered into the phone. “I’ll call you back—” Concerned voice, shrill on the other side, and Lacey shook her head. “Hopefully thirty seconds. Really. Don’t worry about it.”
She shoved her phone into her pocket, put on her brightest, sunniest smile, and glided out into the hallway. She had now become part of the show.
Thirty seconds turned into twenty long minutes. Reporters seemed to be everywhere, as if Brenda had bussed them in for the event, and all of them wanted to know the same thing. Where had she gotten the scrapbooks? Were they really hers? Was she that much of a superfan? What was IMO planning next for the tour? No sooner had she finished one set of sound bites, when another mike was thrust in front of her and she had to compose her face again, smile broadly, and admit to an entire new viewing audience that yes, in fact, all of those scrapbooks were real.…
And on it went. It was Dante who finally rescued Lacey, shouldering into the fray and announcing to the laughing crowd that he had a few questions of his own for his number one fan. He pulled Lacey into the elevator and barely blocked the reporters from following them in.
The doors closed and Lacey sagged into the back of the space. “Oh, God, Dante—I’m so sorry.”
“About what?” he leaned against the wall on the other side. “Those books?” His smile was gentle, all tender again, and made her want to curl up in a ball and disappear. “You want to talk about it?”
“No. Not at all. Not ever.” She reached out to punch the button on the elevator door for her floor, but Dante stayed her hand.
“You know they’re going to be waiting for you outside your room,” he said reasonably. “You want to hang out with me for a while?”
“God, no,” she said, waving him off and hitting the button. “That’s not going to help. You need to stay as far away from me as possible.”
“Oh, c’mon, Lacey,” he said. “It’s not that bad.”
“Dante. It’s bad.” Lacey pressed her hand to her forehead. “I mean, for heaven’s sake. I wrote you a hundred letters in one year.”
He blinked at her. “That was you?”
“That was me.” Lacey closed her eyes, wondering what sort of a wreck her face was by now. That was going to make for some lovely video—member of rock-star crew outed as crazed perma-fan. She wondered what the fallout would be. She should probably call her mom back. Or the girls. Or maybe a headhunter.
Lacey’s phone shrilled, and when she glanced at it, she realized her brief reprieve from IMO was over. “Oh, fucking perfect,” she muttered, then lifted the phone to her ear just as the elevator doors slid open at her floor. Her gaze caught and held Dante’s for just a moment, and at his clear concern, her heart broke into a dozen pieces. What sort of freak did he think she was?
He started to speak, but she shook her head, hard, the tears sparking in her eyes. “Hello, Jim,” she said into the phone, steeling her voice as her gaze swept the corridor. The reporters hadn’t followed her up. Maybe her fifteen minutes of fame were already over. She dashed into the hallway, grateful that Dante didn’t follow her out.
“Lacey Dawes, I’d like to personally thank you for taking one for the team.” The booming voice of IMO’s president bellowed out of Lacey’s phone, and she grimaced as she keyed open her hotel room door. She walked in and dumped her crap on the bed, jabbing her iPad on again as Jim Greer said something else she couldn’t understand about hits and comments. In the intervening half hour of Lacey losing her last shred of sanity, the Wi-Fi had finally kicked in for her room. The YouTube Dream It Tour channel now filled the small screen, and Lacey realized what Jim was yammering on about, his words hitting her ears like a crashing, distant storm.
She’d gone viral.
The webisode series always drew its share of comments and poll votes—they were all tied to giveaways, and Dante had scores of devoted fans. But even as Lacey responded rotely to Jim, she could already tell this reaction was outside of the expected. Thousands of comments were scrolling down the page. The video had gotten nearly double the hits in just a few minutes that it normally would have in the immediate aftermath of a webisode, and the Twitter feed into the page was exploding. Everyone wanted to dish about the girl and the scrapbooks, the scrapbooks and the girl, how pathetic she was, how romantic, how creepy, how it was all a setup, how it couldn’t have been a setup. How amazing it was, and how weird.
“Lacey—Lacey are you there?” Jim’s voice now contained an authoritative edge.
Lacey shook herself. “I’m here, Jim. Did you know this was going to air?”
“Brenda told me she had worked it out with you—I’m impressed with your dedication to IMO, Lacey. Of course, I agree with Brenda, we may need to replace you on the tour if it doesn’t blow over in a day or so. The people need to be focusing on Dante, not his love-struck tour handler.” He chuckled and Lacey closed her eyes, felt the blood drain out of her face. Replace me on the tour … Worked it out with Brenda …
Why had she not seen this coming?
“But we’ll deal with all of that after tomorrow night’s show. In the meantime, play nice with the camera guys, okay? And let me know your availability for interviews.”
“Interviews?” Lacey looked at the phone in horror. “Please tell me you’re joking.”
“Are you kidding? Something needs to jump us from Internet phenomenon to pop-culture news of note. If the Scrapbook Princess doesn’t do it, I don’t know what will!”
Jim was still chortling when Lacey hung up.
This was even worse than she had imagined.
Her phone immediately chirped again, indicating an incoming text. Lacey glanced at it despite herself—then blinked. The brief two-sentence message was from Anna, and it was the last thing she would have expected from the constantly working woman who, she knew for a fact, was scheduled well into the next century.
Hang in there, sweetie. I’m on my way.