“Remember, that nickname made us quarter of a million dollars,” I called after her, sounding a lot like Rose. Marisa pushed past me toward the bathroom I’d just vacated, but Grant didn’t follow.

Stephen had found a table of people to talk to, but when I emerged, he handed me another shot. Rose was nowhere to be seen. “Sassy! You’re back. Let’s show ’em how it’s done.” We got lost in the beat.

A REPETITIVE SHRIEKING assailed my ears.

Slowly, I realized it was a phone. I cracked one eye open a slit and reached out at the air, grasping nothing.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, she’s super hungover,” said a voice, and something was jammed into my hand. “Cass, it’s for you.”

My throat felt as though it had sandpaper lining. “Mmmph. ’Lo?”

“I was so worried,” said a male voice. It was familiar. Harried. Frustrated.

“Dad . . . ?”

“Not Dad. Alex. Remember me?”

I wiped a hand down the front of my face and remembered, suddenly, that I had promised to call him after the awards ceremony. Instead, I had slunk into the car with the girls and tossed drinks back at Slice, then danced with—

“Ohh. Shit. I’m sorry, Alex.” Cracking the other eye open as well, I saw that I was in a hotel suite, having apparently fallen asleep on the first flat surface that would absorb me. Yumi, who had handed me the phone, now wordlessly placed a glass of water and ibuprofen on a side table littered with our goody bag items, cellophane peeled away in a pile. I shuffled forward on my elbows, using the phone as leverage against the plush carpet, to reach Yumi’s act of kindness. Alex was still speaking, his voice loud enough that even with the receiver clapped to my shoulder instead of my ear, I could hear him clearly.

“When I hadn’t heard from you, I called my parents in Houston. They were watching it live, and they told me you were there, so I knew you’d actually made it to the show, but . . .”

“No, yes,” I croaked, gratefully sipping water.

“Are you okay?” he demanded. I took a languid inventory of my body. I was fully clothed, though missing shoes. The underwire of my bra was cutting deep into my rib cage and I rolled to my side, but the pressure of the ground against my belly had apparently held my nausea at bay; I moaned.

“Yes, no, maybe,” I whimpered.

His voice softened somewhat. “Did you overdo it? You know you don’t handle liquor well.”

I clutched at my stomach and slowly rolled myself into a ball, still on my side. “Ughhh.”

“Call me later,” he said, his voice rising at the end like he was asking—but not quite.

There was no way to hang up the phone, so I left it clasped under my hand until the dial tone began its intermittent growl. With a weak arm I hurled it away, skittering the receiver across the floor until it clattered to a stop, anchored by its coiled cord.

Yumi appeared once again as a pair of legs wearing white cotton socks. She stooped over to pick up the phone and set it back in its cradle. Then she perched on the edge of a chair nearby. I closed my eyes, wishing that the room would stop spinning, so I heard rather than saw her sitting there, studying me. “Are you all right?”

“Will you help me get this bra off? It’s cutting off circulation to my arm.”

She sighed and unhooked it, helping me to slither out of it.

“What’s this?” she said, dumping one of the cups out. A soggy piece of paper towel, damp with sweat, peeled away and floated to the floor.

“I’ono,” I mumbled. “Can we order some food? Need some Alka-Seltzer.”

Yumi ordered two plates of dry toast, poached eggs, and fruit bowls with a side of seltzer. I was able to pull myself to a sitting position but stayed cross-legged on the carpet and sipped at the water when it arrived. It was hard to look at the eggs, which glistened like gelatinous white fish on the coffee table, and when I averted my eyes I spotted empty McDonald’s bags on the side table. I was sure I hadn’t eaten any burgers last night. I cut my eyes over to her. “So . . . how much of an ass did I make of myself?”

Yumi was nibbling on a corner of her toast. “Not too terrible,” she said. “But I didn’t stay until the end. Peter had to drag you up here.”

“And the others?”

She glanced down and brushed crumbs away from her legs. “When I left, Rose was fine. Tipsy, but fine. Merry, however . . . She probably feels about as bad as you do right now. Maybe worse.”

I felt for Merry right about then, but my own self-pity won out. “Mmph,” I grunted.

“It’s probably going to be everywhere soon, if not already. Grant and Marisa Marcheesa had a huge blow-out fight last night.”

“Over Merry?” I sipped the water slowly. “Merry wouldn’t be stupid enough to get involved with him again after the tabloids ripped her apart earlier.”

“I don’t know. Both of them were yelling, though. I’m sure we’ll hear about it soon enough, if Merry’s involved.” She slid one of the plates closer to me. “Chin up. We fly back today.”

I WASN’T THE only one who emerged from the hotel room slightly hunched and wearing sunglasses; Merry was so pale, she looked blue. Yumi and Rose slipped on their sunglasses as well, to quell any invasive paparazzi. When we stepped out of the Suburban at JFK, Merry vomited on the pavement next to a trash can, bought a pack of spearmint gum immediately inside of the entrance doors, then cursed when the remaining change set off the metal detector. But once we were through to the terminal, we ducked inside a first-class lounge and waited without harassment for our flight to be called.

Throughout the flight I thought about Alex. We had maintained our friendship over years of physical closeness—the same schools, same classes, same homework, same hangouts—and now that our lifestyles were diverging, it was obviously going to take more work to keep the connection. Everything I did now was work—so should a relationship also be work? At what point do you say that it’s too much work?

I hated that I had doubts about us. He was my roots. He was the only one who seemed to know the real me. I couldn’t just throw that away.

Above all, he was a good person. He’d traveled all the way to Hollywood to bring me pizza and break it to me gently that he couldn’t go with me to New York—not that I’d minded, but he’d thought I would, and that’s what counted.

I made up my mind and hired a car to take me to Pomona. I needed to make things right. What if he was angry right now, still stewing, talking to Joanna or Edie about how I was cheating on him with Stephen St. James?

When the car pulled up to a corner of the campus, I realized I didn’t know where I was headed. Nervously pulling my hoodie up over my head and donning sunglasses, even though it was dusk out, I approached a couple and asked where I could find the dorms. “Follow this path and turn right,” the guy said.

“Thanks.”

When I turned away, the girl hissed, “I think that was Sassy Cassidy.”

“. . . Who?”

I speed-walked away and came to a dorm with an arched, and very locked, door. As I ruminated on how ill-thought my plan was, a girl swiped a key card to enter the dorm and I followed her in, removing my sunglasses to see. A guy with a shock of brown hair opened the door to room 202. I backed away. “Oh, I’m sorry, I must have the wrong—”