“Oh, give me a break. Are you still hung up on the concert last night?” Maury cracked a broad grin. “Nice moves, kid. By the way, Dancing with the Stars called—”
“No!” Eric stood up from his stool with a lurch. He couldn’t believe that his manager would joke about this. The incident the night before was a wake-up call. The current security procedures had utterly failed to protect him. Anything might have happened if he hadn’t been so quick on his feet. “Maury, this is serious,” he said. “I want a twenty-foot perimeter between me and the fans. No more touching people’s hands. No more general admission either. Reserved seating only. Everyone in the first five rows has to provide a photo ID—”
Maury interrupted with a dry cackle. “Eric, you know that’s not feasible.”
“Somebody tried to assault me!”
“Assault you? She tried to hug you.”
Eric gave his head a violent shake. “She had her fingers around my neck. What if she had a knife? She could’ve slit my throat before—”
“You handled it just right, Fred Astaire.” Maury waved away Eric’s worries, gesturing with the cell phone in his hand. “That was a gift from the heavens last night. The videos are going viral. We couldn’t have staged a better PR stunt if we tried.”
Eric took a step back and leaned heavily against the dressing table. He cast a suspicious glance at Maury’s face. A PR stunt… That was just another of his manager’s bad jokes, right? The publicists would never go quite that far.
Eric couldn’t help but wonder, though, about the press release this morning. Not a knife in the girl’s hand? Some kind of metallic pen? He remembered the sound as it fell from her grasp and clattered to the stage. It hadn’t sounded like any pen he ever encountered before…
Eric fisted both his hands. Paranoia. That’s all it was. Maury would have told him if she’d really had a knife. The publicists might lie to the press, but not to him. They had his back. He looked at his manager again. “We’re pressing charges, right? Why haven’t the police come by to take my statement?”
Maury rested a hand on Eric’s shoulder, wrinkling his nose at the sticky makeup residue. “Listen to me, kid. Relax. Your fans love you. They don’t want to hurt you. That one just got a little overexcited.”
“You didn’t see the look in her eyes!” Eric brushed his manager’s hand away, frustration welling in his chest. “What if she tries to do it again? Maury, I danced with her. I put my arms around her.”
“You did what you had to do to get her off the stage.”
“I know, but I totally played into all her sick fantasies. It’ll only encourage her more!” Eric’s voice rose with emotion, but his manager wasn’t even paying attention. Maury had his eyes cast down instead at Eric’s cell phone.
The sight of it struck Eric with a new wave of dread. Crap. He just remembered which Twitter account he’d been using when Maury grabbed it.
“Not half-bad,” his manager said. “A little washed out, but you kinda got the Greek god marble statue thing going on. It’ll work.”
“What’ll work?” Eric snatched the phone and looked at the screen, sending up a silent prayer of thanks that he didn’t see Twitter. Maury must have closed it when he opened the camera app. No way his manager could’ve noticed the username on the account.
Still, Eric chastised himself for his carelessness. He needed to keep his wits about him. Talk about a near miss.
“Social media wants you to tweet a selfie,” Maury said.
Eric eyed the photo that his manager had snapped. Maury had caught him in profile, with one eyebrow raised in surprise, and the muscles of his bare chest and shoulders rippling as he turned. The tacky layer of grease on his skin reflected the light from the flashbulb like a sheen of sweat after a hard workout. Not an unflattering look, Eric had to admit. The makeup people knew what they were doing.
“This? They want me to tweet this?”
Maury nodded. “Sure. Show you survived unscathed, and keep the buzz going for the music video.”
“Oh great.” Eric rolled his eyes. “Hey, I have an idea! Run this by the label, why don’t you? Maybe we could get some buzz going for the video by—I don’t know—releasing the song? There’s going to be a song involved, right? Or is this video just silent footage of me getting molested by evil fangirls?”
Maury glowered back, all trace of humor fading from his face. He glanced at his watch impatiently. “You know what, Eric? Don’t worry about it. I’ll tweet it for you.”
The manager reached for the phone again, but Eric saw him coming this time. He jerked the phone away, out of Maury’s reach, perhaps a bit more violently than necessary. “Don’t touch my phone, OK? This is my personal cell.”
“Whoa!” Maury put up his hands in defense. “Just trying to help, big guy. You got something on there that I should know about?”
Eric ignored the question. He prayed that the pancake makeup would cover the guilty flush of color prickling his cheeks. “I’ll send the tweet,” he said, turning his face away. “Just give me a little space, please. Like three inches of personal space. That’s all I’m asking.”
“Sure,” Maury replied. He waved an arm expansively around the six-foot-wide trailer. “You got the whole place to yourself, kid. Just send the tweet and get yourself ready to start shooting. The director’s going to call for you in five.”
12
DESENSITIZING
Breathe in.
Hold.
Eric one…Eric two…Eric three…Eric Thorn…Eric five…
Tessa let her breath out with a slow sigh, visualizing the ball of tension in her chest rising up through her throat and out of her mouth like a puff of smoke. The breathing exercises that Dr. Regan taught her usually had some effect, but not today. Not after that scene she’d just witnessed on TV and the creepy DM conversation afterward.
She never should have gone on Twitter. She’d vowed to herself that she wouldn’t—not until today’s desensitization exercise was complete. Now Tessa only had a few more moments to undo the damage. She could already hear her mother’s heavy footsteps on the stairs.
“Tessa? Are you ready?”
Tessa buried her face in her hands. She sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her TV, with the image of Eric’s face still freeze-framed on the screen. Tessa grabbed for the remote. The picture faded to black just as her mother entered.
“Watching TV?” Her mother had a work bag slung over her shoulder and a white cardboard box in one hand. She set them both down heavily on Tessa’s dresser and strode over to the window to open the horizontal blinds. Then she pulled up the window sash with a jerk.
“Mom, don’t!” Tessa raised her arm to shield herself from the sudden burst of sunlight and the gust of crisp fall air. “Close the window!”
“It smells like dirty sweat socks in here.”
“Just close the blinds at least!” Tessa said, turning her back. “Please, Mom. Someone could see.”