Size 12 and Ready to Rock (31 page)

Of course, neither Nicole nor Jordan knew the truth about Gary Hall. But the more Tania fretted that it was going to come out, the less likely it seemed it was going to. No one had yet made the connection between the New York Gary Hall, with the thick glasses and red hair and goatee, and the Florida Gary Hall, with the clip-on tie and conductor’s baton. The only way anyone might ever catch on was if Gary Hall himself spilled the beans.

And to do that, he’d have to come out of hiding, like one of those cockroaches Tania said used to live under the refrigerator in the first apartment she shared with him.

As soon as that happened, there were 36,000 NYPD officers—not to mention my boyfriend and me—waiting to squash him.

In the Fischer Hall library, Tania says “Okay,” with a nod as Stephanie backs away from her. “I got it.”

“Great,” Stephanie says. “All right, everybody,” she says to the girls, “I know it’s hot in here and you’re tired, but I really like the energy we’ve got going right now. We’ll break for lunch right after this.”

All the girls groan . . . except for Sarah, who looks eager to get back to her note-taking.

“Come on,” says Chuck, the assistant camera operator, in an attempt to jolly them along. “Lunch. It’s fajita day. Who can resist a delicious fajita?”

The girls titter because Chuck has made the word “fajita” sound vaguely lascivious. Sarah looks confused. “It’s just meat and vegetables in a tortilla,” she says.

“I actually came up here for a reason,” Gavin says to me as Marcos gets the boom back in place, “besides wanting to watch the collapse of the American entertainment industry. Lisa wants to see you down in the office.”

“Why?” I ask, straightening up.

“I don’t know,” Gavin says, with a shrug. “She saw me walking by in the hall and told me to come find you. She says it’s important.”

I nod and leave the room quietly, just as Tania is saying, “Write about what you wish would happen to you, your hopes and dreams, what you wish you’d done differently, what you wish you could change but how, if those things hadn’t happened to you, you might not be the strong person you are today—”

Hopes and dreams,
I see Sarah scribble as I’m leaving.

That’s it, Stephanie,
I think as I softly close the door to the library behind me.
Keep her mind off the dark stuff.
Can’t have Tania breaking down now, when the Rock Off is just a week away and she’s so close to the finish line.

The funny thing is that I had no idea how close we
all
were to the finish line as I was thinking this. Particularly me.

Chapter 22

Lisa is at her desk and Davinia, the resident assistant from the sixteenth floor, is sitting in a chair beside her when I walk into our office. Neither of them looks too happy.

“Hey,” Lisa says to me gloomily.

“Hey,” I say back. “Gavin said you needed to see me?”

“Yeah,” Lisa says. “Davinia thinks we’ve got a problem.”

I sit down at my desk, then spin my chair around so I can look at them both through Lisa’s open office door. “We had a guy die of cupcake poisoning last week, and
TMZ
is hiding in the bushes this week,” I say. “What could possibly be worse?”

“Well, this isn’t necessarily worse,” Lisa says. “But it has to do with the girls in 1621.” She lifts an incident report that’s sitting on her desk. “Need I say more?”

“Oh jeez,” I say. “I was just with them in the library. Cassidy was being her usual charming self, but nothing out of the ordinary. What’s going on now?”

“Mallory and Cassidy requested a meeting with me early this morning—very top secret,” Davinia says. “They even made sure none of the film crew was around to film it, if that’s any indication of how serious they think the situation is. They say they’re worried about Bridget.”

I knit my brows. “
Worried
about her?” I recall the way Cassidy searched the library for Bridget when Tania mentioned writing about someone you hate. “Jealous of her is more like it. I think they may be trying to eliminate the competition.”

“Could be,” Davinia says. “But according to Mallory and Cassidy, Bridget’s got a boyfriend—”

“Wait.” I don’t believe a word of it. “She’s sneaking out? I can’t believe, after last time, that any of those girls would dare—”

“That’s what I asked,” Davinia says. “They say she’s not sneaking out at night. She sees him during the day whenever there’s time off from filming and the other girls are practicing their solos for the Rock Off and the chaperones are busy—”

“—doing other things,” I finish for her, knowing all about happy hour at the Washington Square Hotel. “Who’s the guy? Not Magnus,” I say, suddenly feeling my heart begin to race. “Please not one of the basketball players—”

“He
is
attending summer classes here at New York College,” Davinia says. “But he doesn’t live in this building. Mallory says he lives in Wasser Hall, across the park. She and Cassidy only found out because Bridget has been texting someone nonstop for the past week and wouldn’t tell them who, so one day when they were all supposed to be going into rehearsal they followed her—”

“Weasels,” I say, not in the least surprised.

“—and they saw her go to Wasser Hall and get signed in by him. Obviously, later on, they confronted her—off camera, thank God—and Bridget begged them not to tell, because apparently the boy is Orthodox Jewish and not allowed to date outside the faith, so if their relationship gets shown on camera and his family ever sees the show, he’ll be disowned.”

“Oh please,” Lisa says with disgust. “Is she kidding?”

I tap my front teeth, thinking. “This could actually be true,” I say. “One of the reasons Wasser Hall is so popular is because some of the suites on the lower floors have kitchens, so residents who keep kosher can cook in them,
and
they don’t have to use the elevator to get to them on the Sabbath. The dining hall is also big enough to serve both kosher and non-kosher meal plans. So if he
is
Orthodox, it’d make sense for him to live in Wasser Hall.”

“How does Bridget say they met?” Lisa asks, looking at Davinia.

Davinia shrugs. “How does anyone hook up with anyone around here? In the park, of course. That’s why the girls came to me. They say they feel like they’re being ‘disloyal’ to Tania by keeping this huge secret, but this show is supposed to be about ‘reality,’ and the ‘reality’ is, Bridget isn’t being real.”

I roll my eyes. “Oh right.
That’s
why they want to tell, out of fear that the integrity of
Jordan Loves Tania
is being compromised. Not because they’re huge drama queens and want to get more airtime on the show for themselves.”

“But she’s definitely not sneaking out at night?” Lisa asks.

Davinia shakes her head. “The girls say no, because we confiscate all their IDs. She’d never be able to get back in without getting caught. She visits him at his place and only during the day.”

I look at Lisa. “I don’t know. What do you think we should do about it?”

“That’s what I’m wondering,” Lisa says, her expression concerned. “We’re responsible for her while she’s here, and so is Cartwright Records Television. But there’s no law in New York that says a fifteen-year-old girl can’t have a boyfriend, so long as he’s younger than eighteen.”

“On the other hand, if he’s a legal adult and the two of them are engaged in sexual relations and we knowingly let it go on, we can be held liable,” I say with a sigh, and spin around in my chair to reach for the campus directory. “Do you know the guy’s name, Davinia?”

“No,” she says. “What do you mean, we can be held liable?”

“It’s statutory rape,” Lisa explains. “The age of legal consent in New York is seventeen.”

“But we don’t know that Bridget—”

“We don’t know that she’s not,” I say. “Hi,” I say when someone on the other end of the number I’ve dialed on my office phone finally picks up. “Is this Wasser Hall? It is? Well, when you pick up, you should say that. You should say, ‘Hello, Wasser Hall,’ or something like that. Anyway, this is Heather the assistant hall director from over at Fischer Hall. Could you please put me through to Simon? Simon Hague, the residence hall director.
Simon Hague,
the guy who hired you.”

I hold the receiver away from me and say to Lisa and Davinia, “Oh my God, it sounds like a zoo over there. And
we’re
the ones with a reality show being filmed here. Yes,” I say into the phone. “I would be happy to hold.”

“Should we tell Ms. Brewer what’s going on?” Davinia asks, looking worried.

I frown. “That’s exactly what Cassidy and Mallory want us to do. Then, when Bridget goes back to the room in tears and Cassidy and Mallory are all, ‘What’s wrong?’ Stephanie can get the entire confrontation on film.”

Lisa nods. “I agree with Heather. Let’s keep this to ourselves for now. I’ll call Bridget down for a one-on-one with me in order to let her know that we know and to make sure she’s doing okay emotionally and—”

“Hello?” I say when someone on the other end of the line picks up. “I called to speak to Simon, please. He’s not? Well, is anyone in the residence hall director’s office? Anyone at all? How about the assistant residence hall director? Is there anyone there at all who can tell me . . . How about . . . Oh? Oh, really. Oh, okay, I see. That’s very interesting. You know what, that’s okay. I’ll just come over and do it myself. Okay, bye.”

I hang up.

“Simon’s not in the office today,” I say, climbing to my feet. “He’s still in the Hamptons.”

Lisa stares at me. “What? It’s
Tuesday.
”

“Yeah,” I say, trying not to allow the glee I’m feeling inside show on my face. “He has a summer rental where he’s been spending every Thursday through Tuesday, except when he’s on weekend duty, which is only every fourth weekend. He’s sharing the rental with his assistant resident hall director, Paula. She’s in the Hamptons with him now.”

Lisa’s jaw drops. Davinia looks confused. “Then who’s running the office?”

“That’s a very good question, Davinia,” I say. “I’ll be sure to let you know when I get back. Right now I have to go check the Wasser Hall security desk’s sign-in logs to find out the name of this guy Bridget’s being signed in by. I’ll see you guys later.”

Chapter 23

By the time I get across Washington Square Park and into the air-conditioned lobby of Wasser Hall, I’m sweating beneath my bra, which somewhat ruins the good mood I’d been in after discovering Simon’s dirty little secret. It’s another beautiful summer day, which means that the park is crowded with the kind of people who have the leisure time to stroll around a park when the weather is fine: workers on their lunch hour, dog walkers, nannies pushing baby strollers, students taking a break between classes to study outdoors, tourists snapping photos, and of course the type of people who make their living off tourists—buskers beating on drums or playing guitar for spare change, grifters pretending to have lost their keys and to need five dollars (five dollars only) to get a locksmith, and the drug dealers who discreetly offer their wares all over the park, most of them undercover police officers.

“Not today,” I growl at one of them when he heads in my direction.

He backs off immediately with a murmured “Sorry, ma’am,” causing me to wonder when I went from a “miss” to a “ma’am.”

Once I reach the security desk in the front of Wasser Hall’s gleaming modern lobby, it takes me three seconds to figure out the name of Bridget Cameron’s boyfriend. That’s because I find her New York College ID. It’s in the protection officer’s ID box.

“You have
got
to be kidding me,” I say, straightening up. “She’s here
right now?
”

Filming of
Jordan Loves Tania
must have broken for lunch. Bridget had to have hightailed it across the park pretty quickly to have gotten to Wasser Hall before me. But she
is
quite a bit younger than I am, young enough to be my daughter . . .
if
I had been a teen mom and did not have chronic endometriosis.