I looked in the rearview mirror, checking to make sure my teeth were clean, and reapplied lipstick. “There’s no harm in being prepared to hear what they have to say.” I spoke the words neatly to my reflection, blotting on the clean side of the McDonald’s napkin.

When I got to the ninth floor of the FPZ office building, a young guy in a suit hopped up to greet me. “Ms. Otsuka!” He extended a hand. “I’m Mike Parsons. We spoke on the phone. Right this way.”

I followed him into a small, comfortable conference room, where a few other figureheads sat.

“Hello, Ms. Otsuka, thank you for joining us,” said a tall, sandy-haired man with thick-framed glasses. “I’m Henry Grafton—I head the network’s programming—and I’d like to introduce Lila Landry and John Grant, executive producers for Sing It.” I sat, and Henry instructed Mike, the assistant, to provide coffee for the room.

“As you know,” Henry Grafton said, getting right down to business, “FPZ is rebooting Sing It. It’s been off the air for a few years but has a huge legacy and we think we can revive its booming franchise. We are trying to find the right judges for the reboot—people who are known in the industry, nothing too flashy, you understand, not some hot new star who hasn’t been tested. We need tried-and-true stars like yourself to be on the panel.”

I smiled slightly and nodded, taking a sip of the coffee politely, even though I had no taste for it.

“For the first season,” Lila Landry said, ignoring the cup set down in front of her, “the judges were a mix of talent. Some were people only the industry insiders knew, like Marsha Campbell from Big Disc. But others, like Emma Jake, were big names that had dominated the charts in years past.”

“We understand you’ve been retired for some time.” Henry picked up where Lila left off. “We were hoping that you would come out of quote-unquote retirement to help make the rebooted Sing It a success. Be the next Emma Jake.”

The smile froze on my face. It hadn’t occurred to me, even though it should have been obvious, that being a judge was a mentor role. Age hit me suddenly and I felt ancient. Cassidy had been seventeen when she auditioned for the first Sing It, and that was half a lifetime ago. I took another sip from my cup to give myself some time to consider the years behind me. “I see.”

Lila seemed to sense what I was thinking, because she hurried to add, “You may have noticed that FPZ has been . . . fairly homogenous in the past. We are trying to become more inclusive and welcome diversity. Of course, we’re not interested in you because of your ethnicity, we’re interested because you’re pop royalty. But we are excited to have better representation on television.” She smiled graciously. “And also, we’ll have judges from different generations of music. We’re talking to a few so I can’t name names for certain yet, but you would be the youngest on the panel and therefore the ‘cool’ one.”

I thought back to how I felt like the token Asian in Gloss. How I was called Tasty, my name mispronounced as Yummy. All the Chinese-inspired prints I was put in, even though I was Japanese. After years of feeling like an outsider, I was supposed to be glad that I—my face and my name and my body—fit a profile they wanted to check off?

“This seems sudden, your interest in the Glossies, reaching out only in the past week?” I said to distract myself from my anger.

“We were considering another Sing It veteran—Stephen St. James, winner of season one,” Lila admitted. “It’s just too bad about the rumors swirling around him.”

“Rumors?” I repeated. My home might be in L.A., but my feet had been outside the industry for too long. I hadn’t heard anything about Stephen except buzz when a new album was out.

John sighed. “It’s not my place to talk about it,” he said, “but rumors like the ones following St. James around are not good for business. We reluctantly had to withdraw our interest in him. Hence, Gloss. We’re wondering if you’d be interested in the position at all. We are prepared to offer you a good salary for the season. Seven figures.”

I shifted a little in the seat, focusing on the question at hand, as they looked at me expectantly. “I’m interested,” I hedged, “though as you can see, I’m by myself at the moment. I’d really like to be able to look over everything with my lawyer before I say anything further.”

They stood. “We will send the paperwork to whomever you direct,” Henry said, extending a hand. I reached out and shook it, standing as well. “Just full disclosure, however—we are talking to Rose McGill as well, and we are not interested in having two ex–Gloss members on the panel at the same time.”

“I understand.” I gathered my purse, leaving my nearly full coffee cup on the table, and shook hands with Lila and John before making my exit.

My car stank of stale french fries. I looked in my rearview mirror again and studied my face. Was I old? Had Emma Jake been my age when she was a judge on the first season of Sing It?

I pulled out my phone and searched for Stephen St. James. The third hit was a gossip site that spelled out the alleged rumors. I recognized the woman who made allegations, though she was fifteen years older now: the runway model Jeannette, whom we’d met at the single release party.

I read her long, sordid description of what Stephen had put her through. Physical and mental abuse, and his staff had helped with any cover-ups. He had threatened her burgeoning career if she said anything at the time, but now that she was retired from modeling, she didn’t care anymore. “This man is still preying on women today,” she said. “Women who are a lot more vulnerable than myself. I speak on behalf of those women, some of whom didn’t extricate themselves fast enough and suffered more than I did. I am one of the lucky ones.”

I physically recoiled as I remembered that we had worked alongside this man for months, had considered him a friend. Had even—hadn’t Cassidy had a crush on him?

And then horror: Hadn’t Cassidy had a crush on him, and suddenly, she was over it? Around the same time she broke her arm . . .

My stomach dropped. I’d been so fixated on Alex abusing Cassidy at the time, I hadn’t considered someone else hurting her. But it made sense now. The way Cassidy went quiet around Stephen, the way she tensed when he showed up at that meeting before Australia. And how she quit the group right before we were going on tour with Stephen opening for us.

While I knew I shouldn’t be so quick to believe my gut this time, I knew that Jeannette was telling the truth. And I also knew immediately that Cassidy had been threatened to keep quiet by Stephen and his staff.

My phone buzzed; I didn’t recognize the number, but it was a local area code so I slid my finger to answer. “Ms. Otsuka,” the voice said. “This is Detective Lawrence.”

“Oh. Hold on a minute.” I bowed my head over the wheel, taking a deep breath in and a long breath out, cleansing my head of all its bubbling thoughts before setting the phone against my ear. “Okay. I’m ready.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Detective Lawrence said. “I wanted to let you know that this investigation is now officially closed.”

His tone grated on me. “Call me Yumi, not ma’am. There was nothing in the letters?”