Saturday, July 9

LOCATION: A top secret location in Miami Beach, Florida

Knock, knock, knock!

“Password?” I asked gruffly. I was trying to sound tough. After we arrived in Miami today, Kyle and I called a secret meeting with Jilly and Mikey G. to share what we found out about Bad Kitty (and to find out what Jilly was working on). Privacy was key.

“Password?” I heard Mikey G. grumble. “Why would I need a password? I’m the band’s bodyguard. My job is to be on the same side of the door as you guys, and you asked me to meet you here!”

He had a point.

Kyle opened the door for him, but Mikey G. wasn’t alone. Zander and Heath were with him, which was strictly against the rules of this meeting.

Mikey G. was calmly eating a WHEY OUT! bar. “Can we come in?”

I glared at Heath and Zander. “You can,” I said to Mikey G. “Alone.”

Heath dropped to his knees and proceeded to beg. “We’re sorry we wigged out on you. We know we were wrong.” He touched his head. “Look, I even dyed my hair turquoise because it’s your favorite color.”

“Kyle texted us about what happened,” Zander said, and I looked at Kyle, who smiled weakly. Zander held out a bouquet of gorgeous orange, yellow, and red wildflowers I recognized from a display in the lobby. “We should have known you would never betray us.” He batted his eyelashes at me. “I mean, you once told me you were Perfect Storm’s biggest fan and knew everything there was to know about me, so I’m hoping that’s still true.”

Grrr… I hated how often Zander liked to bring that up. “And yet somehow you forgot that last night,” I reminded him.

“Well, you’re not completely innocent,” Zander pointed out. “You did lose your journal long enough for Thunder and Lightning to steal Kyle’s song.”

“Allegedly,” Kyle pointed out.

“Probably,” Zander countered, “and that blows because, dude, your song was amazing and the perfect first single for our new album. That’s probably why I’ve been so stressed about Thunder and Lightning. I hate them getting anything that awesome.”

Kyle’s grin exploded like fireworks. “Thanks, mate. That’s decent of you to say.”

“We’re a team; we’ve got to have each other’s backs,” Heath agreed. “But we wouldn’t be where we are without our friends, and Mac is one of the most loyal ones we’ve got.” He was still on his knees. “We know you would never do anything to hurt us on purpose. That would be like Iron Man being against Captain America.”

“Um, isn’t that the whole premise of the Civil War comic series?” I asked.

Heath’s hands dropped to his sides. “I forgot about those. Bad example.”

“The point is, we were wrong and you were right,” Zander said. “Now we just want to help you take down Bad Kitty and save our reputation.” He ran his hand through his hair. “If only we knew who she was.”

“Has anyone seen Jilly?” I asked, and sent another WHERE ARE U???? text. The guys shrugged. Where could she be?

“So do you forgive us, O Comic Book Goddess, best friend and tour mate ever?” Heath clung to the bottom of my tank top. Zander dropped to his knees and started begging, too, which is something I never thought I’d see.

“Please, Mac? PLEEEEASE?” Zander sang. Heath joined in harmony.

“I forgive you!” I said with a laugh. Heath and Zander practically tackled me. Kyle dived over, too, and they made what they called a Mac sandwich.

“Now that you’re mates again, let’s get everyone up-to-date on what we do know,” Kyle suggested, closing the door to the room to give us all some privacy.

We were meeting in the rooftop lounge of Blue, our hotel in Miami. Kyle got permission to take it over by telling the hotel manager he needed to practice singing a top secret song in private. (Kyle also gave the manager tickets to tomorrow night’s show for his kids.) With floor-to-ceiling glass windows that overlooked Biscayne Bay and comfy leather furniture, the lounge was a relaxing oasis. But today it was our command bunker. With Jilly still MIA and not answering texts, Kyle and I filled everyone in. We taped up a timeline from the night at the recording studio when my journal first went missing to last night, when we spied Jeremy and Bad Kitty taking my journal off our tour bus. Scarlet and Iris joined us on speakerphone to weigh in after e-mailing us all of Bad Kitty’s vlogs on Perfect Storm.

“Hi!” Iris said nervously. “I just wanted to say it feels nice to be included, and I feel like we can really contribute to the conversation because I read everything there is to read about Zander—I mean, Welling. I mean, the band!”

Zander was too focused on Bad Kitty to realize what Iris had said. “Okay, people. Let’s stop Bad Kitty. What do we know?”

Mikey G. tossed the WHEY OUT! bar he was eating into the nearest trash. “I know I’ll never eat another one of these babies again. I can’t believe they were sending me my favorite protein bars as a trap! How did they know the WHEY OUT! bars case was so heavy I had to leave the bus unlocked to carry them in? I was only gone a few minutes!”

“And that’s when they’d strike,” Heath admitted. “It’s pretty clever of them to send the big guy snacks and then use the delivery time to sneak on the bus.” He scratched his turquoise head. “I’ll have to remember that one.”

“I’ve failed Bodyguarding 101,” Mikey G. moaned. “Mac, you trusted me with your journal, and I failed you.”

“You didn’t know what they were up to.” I hugged him so tight I didn’t hear the door to the lounge open. “They tricked you. Now we can’t put my journal back or they’ll read this and know I’m on to them.” I paused. “But if we don’t put the journal back, they’ll know we know and we can’t catch them.” This was getting complicated.

“I just don’t get how they knew I had your journal and that it was in the DVD case in the first place,” Mikey G. complained.

“They knew because someone overheard you say it that night at the Beacon.” Jilly rushed into the room with a stack of papers in her hands. “And I know who.”

“Who?” we all cried.

“Lola!” Jilly said gleefully. “Remember when Mikey G. had thrown her out of that first concert for not having a confidentiality agreement signed?” I nodded. “We went out the same door to talk about Mac’s journal. I’m pretty positive Lola overheard us.”

“Impossible. Why didn’t we spot her?” Mikey G. asked.

“We didn’t spot her because she was wearing this!” Jilly slapped a photo of a girl in a black hoodie down on the table.

“Bad Kitty!” I exclaimed. “Wait, are you saying…?”

“YEP!” Jilly bounced up and down excitedly. “Lola Cummings is Bad Kitty!”

Everyone started talking at once while Scarlet and Iris were yelling into the speakerphone (“What’s happening?”). Jilly whistled to get our attention.

“This is how I know,” she said, and produced another piece of paper. “Lola is the one who e-mailed Popstar! magazine.” We stared at the offensive e-mail that claimed I was the one leaking all the band’s secrets. “That editor was lying when she said she didn’t know who sent the e-mails.” She threw up her hands and grinned. “When Jeremy got thrown from the bull at the photo shoot, I looked at the message she’d printed and memorized the e-mail address. Then I had a tech guy at Rock Starz find out where the e-mail came from, and, voilà, Bad Kitty is Lola Cummings.”

“You traced the e-mail?” Heath asked. “Impressive. You’re like a real spy.”

“I just don’t get why Lola would turn on us,” Zander said. “She loves me—I mean us—I mean me. She follows the band to every city. She’s a huge fan.”

“Yeah, but you haven’t been treating her like your biggest fan lately,” Scarlet weighed in. “And knowing Lola, that was probably the problem.”

“We did tell her that job was already taken—by Mac,” Iris added.

We were all silent for a moment. “So do you think Lola did this because she was jealous of me?” I wondered aloud. I was completely shocked.

“It kind of makes sense,” Jilly said. “We always teased Lola that you were PS’s biggest fan; and the last few times we saw her, the guys didn’t give her the time of day. She must have been steamed.”

“But she was so nice to me that day at Hurricane Harbor,” Zander pointed out.

“She was probably trying to dig up more dirt,” Jilly guessed.

“What’s that jerk Jeremy got to do with any of this, though?” Heath asked. “Why would he team up with Lola?”

“I know the answer to that question, too. Cody!” Jilly yelled. “You can come in now.”

Cody Callum walked into the lounge!

“No way! I don’t trust this guy,” Heath said. “I don’t care what he told you.”

“Just hear him out,” Jilly said. “I already interrogated him, and I believe him.”

Wow, Jilly really was a secret agent. Amazing.

“Jeremy was really mad you ignored us that night at SoundEscape,” Cody said. “We were really nervous about our demo, and you guys just blew us off when we asked for your advice.”

“Dude, we’d been recording for over ten hours,” Heath said. “We were toast.”

“We still could have talked to them,” Kyle realized. “Remember when we got our big break? The least we could have done was give them a few minutes.” He looked at Cody. “I’m sorry, mate. But that still doesn’t give Jeremy the right to tear us down.”

“I knew he and Lola were talking trash about you guys, but I had no idea they had taken things this far,” Cody said. “I feel so stupid. One time I even saw him coming off your bus, but when I asked what he was doing, he said he was returning something he borrowed. I guess it became easier for me to just let Jeremy do his thing.” Cody stared at the floor. “I hate when he gets mad at me.”

“Why didn’t you tell us he was sneaking around our bus?” Heath demanded.

“Jeremy’s my brother,” Cody said. “Things had gotten so bad. I had to take a side, and I chose his.” He looked miserable. “But I always felt bad about Kyle’s song. I swear I didn’t know the song was stolen! I thought it was weird how we got it right before we had to record the demo, but Jeremy wouldn’t tell me who gave it to him.” He looked up. “WAIT. I just remembered something.” Cody locked eyes with Kyle. “Jeremy was talking to a girl outside our recording studio the night we met you guys. She gave him a piece of paper, and I thought it was her phone number!” He hung his head sadly. “It must have been Kyle’s lyrics. I’m such an idiot.”

Heath leaned against the window. “Wow. And I was starting to think The Raven gave him Kyle’s song. He never liked it—no offense—and he kept pushing for a different single. But it was Lola!”

“We can’t trust anyone anymore,” Zander said mournfully.

“I should have told you sooner,” Cody said. “I never wanted any of this—touring, record deals, my name all over blogs and Twitter. I just wanted to write music, but Ronald said a duo was stronger than a solo artist, so Jeremy begged me to do this with him.”

“You want to write songs?” Kyle asked quietly.

Cody nodded. “I like arranging music more than writing words. What you wrote is gold, and I’m sorry we took it from you. I’ve been trying to come up with something better ever since, but songwriting is much harder than I thought it would be. You can’t come up with a new song every day, can you?”

“No, you can’t,” Kyle said, but he didn’t sound angry. He sort of sounded like he understood what Cody meant. “I’ve been struggling to come up with a single as good as the one I already wrote for over a month now, but blimey, it’s tough.”

“Maybe we could try doing something together,” Cody suggested.

“That’s so nice,” Jilly said, and I noticed her staring at Cody in that same way she had when we first met him. “But that doesn’t change the fact that we can’t get Kyle’s song back—the label would never let them record it now. The only thing we can do is try to stop Lola from ever vlogging about Perfect Storm again.”

“Whatever we do, we have to be careful,” Iris said. “We have no idea how many other things Mac’s written about that Lola’s holding to use. I’m sure Jeremy is just egging Lola on more.”

“Let’s face it.” I sank into the nearest armchair and covered my face with one of the decorative pillows. “The only choice I have is to stop writing in my journal for good. As it is, I’m writing in a replacement journal so they don’t read these posts.”

“Mac, no!” Jilly cried. “You love your journal.”

“You said it inspires your Mac Attack comics!” Scarlet added. “You can’t stop writing.”

“If you do that, then you’re letting Big Bird Cummings win,” Jilly said angrily.

“You can write about me all you want,” Kyle said. “I don’t care what that cat says about us. Our loyal fans will know the truth.”

“Yeah, but do they have to know everything about us?” Heath asked nervously. “Those stuff-a-bear places have been calling all week, asking me to be their new spokesperson.” The rest of us started to laugh as his cheeks continued to redden. “It’s embarrassing.”

“What if I write some lies about Perfect Storm in my original journal?” I suggested. “Bad Kitty would look like a fool if we could prove they were false.”

“Too risky. We don’t need any more bad publicity,” Heath said.

Gotcha. This morning Iris forwarded a gossip column that said Heath had brushed his teeth with a toothbrush that fell in the toilet. It’s true. I saw it happen. But maybe I shouldn’t have, um, written about it.

“What if you wrote about a mean prank we were going to play on Thunder and Lightning?” Kyle said, thinking aloud. “And said exactly when and where it was going to happen. Then they’d probably show up to record the whole thing, and we could catch Lola in the act.”

“Now we’re talking,” Heath said eagerly. “But what about Jeremy?”

“You could stake out your tour bus to get pictures of them stealing your journal,” Cody suggested.

“You want to help us take down Jeremy?” Jilly asked. “Won’t your brother be mad?”

“It’s the least I can do after we took your song,” Cody said. “I owe you guys. I can help. Lola’s dad is coming to town tomorrow to see our set at the show. If you set the prank to happen before the concert, her dad would be backstage and see for himself how his daughter is trying to ruin the reputation of a band he sponsors.”

“This is brill,” said Heath, stealing Kyle’s favorite word.

“Do you really think we can pull this off?” Jilly asked.

I scratched my chin. Mac Attack could do it, which meant so could we. “I think we can. Everyone in favor of Operation Take Down Bad Kitty?” I put my hand in, and everyone piled their hands on top while Iris and Scarlet yelled their support from the phone. “That cat goes down tomorrow!”