When the static fizzled out, Phil leaned forward and resumed his monologue. I could even hear his voice, but the studio monitor inflected everything with a buzzing that obscured the words. It was a full minute before he smiled at Kallie to indicate she could reply, but I couldn't see her lips. She began to hunch her shoulders too, a far cry from her customary breezy movements. I wished I knew what she was saying. I felt so helpless and inadequate, just watching the rise and fall of her shoulders, like that gave me any clue at all. But then I noticed Phil, beaming at her every word. Maybe Kallie had a talent for talking about soft rock after all.

Phil launched into another extended question, then stared at Kallie expectantly. She seemed more relaxed this time. I leaned back and forced myself to breathe normally again.

I was still focused on my breathing when I noticed Phil waving his left hand energetically. I pounced on the OFF AIR b.u.t.ton and tried to remain stoic as he rolled his eyes.

Three minutes later I was directed to put them back ON AIR, and this time I never took my eyes off Phil. No matter what, I didn't want to miss another cue.

Phil's questions kept coming, and Kallie's answers seemed to delight him. He laughed with childlike innocence, waggled his finger, clapped appreciatively, then licked his lips and drank from a cracked mug like a man dying of thirst. When he thunked it down on the desk before him, he turned bright red, and it dawned on me that he was acting the way Josh did around Kallie. In fact, he seemed to have regressed about thirty years, practically leering at her.

Oh G.o.d. Phil was coming on to Kallie.

Gross.

I checked the other band members and quickly worked out that Phil's crush on Kallie was the least of my worries. Josh had shifted his chair so that it touched Kallie's, and his arm rubbed hers in a proprietary "she's taken, dude" way that made me want to retch. Meanwhile, Tash had fully turned her chair ninety degrees, to get a better view of the girl she evidently planned to dismember later that evening. I glanced at my watch and willed the remaining few minutes to pa.s.s without violence.

As soon as Phil signaled for me to take them OFF AIR, I gladly obliged, then pushed open the door to the booth and began ushering Dumb's members away. Phil's eyes remained locked on Kallie's b.u.t.t as she exited the room, her face caught somewhere between surprise at all the attention she'd received and fear at the vague premonition she was about to suffer a Tash takedown.

"That Kallie is a stunner, huh?" sighed Phil, as soon as we were alone.

I tried not to gag. "She's seventeen."

"That's okay," he laughed, scratching his belly. "I can wait a year."

"You owe us some money," I shot back, trying to redirect the conversation before I called him something offensive.

"Oh yeah, expenses. Ten bucks okay?" he said, reaching into his wallet.

"Thirty."

"What? No way."

"Ten for parking. Five for gas. Five for discretionary refreshments."

"That's only twenty."

"And ten for my producing skills. I normally charge twenty bucks, but I'm giving you the family rate."

Phil snorted. "For thirty, I'll need receipts of course."

"I'll mail them to you . . . of course."

He shook his head as he opened his wallet and took out some bills, and I got the feeling he didn't like me as much as he liked Kallie.

"Five-dollar bills, please," I said, pointing to them helpfully.

He handed them over like he couldn't wait to be rid of me. "You're a pushy one, aren't you?" he said.

I beamed as I pocketed the cash, and I could tell by the disgusted look on his face that pushy wasn't necessarily a bad thing to be.

By the time I got to the elevator, everyone had already gone downstairs. I jabbed the elevator call b.u.t.ton, then waited an eternity as it ground its way back toward me. I didn't have a clue what Kallie had said, but whatever it was, she hadn't checked it out with censor Tash beforehand, that was for sure. But it was too late to undo the interview now. I could only hand out the bills as quickly as possible, and hope that Dumb's good graces could be bought for the bargain price of five bucks apiece.

I ran outside as soon as the elevator deposited me on the ground floor, but Tash was already laying into her nemesis.

"Break it up. I've got money," I shouted, stuffing a bill into each of their hands.

"What's this?" asked Josh. He held the bill like it was a piece of used toilet roll.

"It's your share of Dumb's first paid gig."

Josh froze. "Hold on. You don't mean-"

"You told me I had a month to get you a paid gig. I did it."

"By 'paid gig,'" said Josh, curling his fingers into air quotes, "we didn't mean five bucks."

"Fine print's a b.i.t.c.h," I agreed sympathetically.

Our discussion would probably have gone on much longer, except that Tash had pocketed the money and commenced verbally a.s.saulting Kallie again, and I knew I needed to intervene.

"What's going on?"

"Nothing," bristled Tash. "Kallie's just explaining who made her spokesperson for Dumb."

Kallie's eyes brimmed with tears. "I didn't mean for him to ask me all the questions."

Tash rolled her eyes. "Then refuse to answer. Tell him that someone else can speak instead."

"I'm sorry. I really am. I just wasn't thinking."

"d.a.m.n right. You didn't even have a single intelligent answer." Tash flicked at the ring in her lip. "We're not just trying to have some fun, as you put it. Maybe that's all this is to you, but it actually matters matters to me." to me."

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"For Christ's sake, stop saying sorry. I never wanted you in this group anyway."

"But I was voted in."

"Did you see my hand go up?"

Kallie shook her head. Now that her hair was getting wet from the misty rain it seemed to lose some of its life, hanging slick against her head. "I just thought I could probably win you over. I love what we do. And I've been practicing hard. You can tell, right? I really nailed it at the recording session."

Tash laughed. "Are you kidding me? Wake up, Kallie. We told Baz to shut down your channel. . . . You never played a note on that recording."

Kallie looked like she'd just been slapped. "That's not true."

"Of course it is. You didn't really think we'd let you screw it up, did you?"

Kallie turned to me, waited for me to deny it. And although I knew that it was in the group's best interests for Kallie to leave, I still hated not being able to tell her that Tash was lying.

I would have understood if Kallie had said something terrible right then, but she didn't. She simply smiled like she understood, and forgave us all anyway. She studied the five-dollar bill again, proof that she'd lived the life of a rock star for a few precious days, and began walking away.

Josh hurried after her, stopped her and wrapped an arm around her. Kallie buried her face in his shoulder and cried as he ran his hands across her back, up and down, up and down, and down, down, down, until they rested provocatively on her b.u.t.t. With a shuddering breath, Kallie pulled away and continued her solitary march down the lamp-lit street. I wondered if she knew where she was going. I worried that she was lost.

Everyone shuffled back to the car, until only Josh and I remained on the sidewalk. As he approached me, he waved the five-dollar bill accusingly.

"What did he do, pay our expenses?"

"Does it matter?"

"You think you're clever, huh?" he sneered. "Well, if you're really our manager now, then sort out this mess."

"How, Josh?"

"Kallie is a member of this group, same as everyone else. They don't like it, then too bad."

"She shouldn't have joined in the first place."

"You voted her in."

"It was a mistake."

"Live with it. Just the same as we live with Ed."

I almost laughed. "Not the Ed argument again. We've been through this, remember?"

"Yeah, I remember. And it's the same thing."

"No, it's not. Ed can actually play his instrument. Ed is a musician. Heck, Ed has a functioning brain."

Josh's head whipped up. "Yeah, well, you know what I think? I think that even if Kallie were the best musician in this band, you'd still hate her. So would Tash. And if everyone had treated you the way they just treated Kallie, you wouldn't have lasted a single day as our manager. And you know why we didn't treat you badly?"

I rolled my eyes-I knew what was coming. "Because I'm deaf."

"No. Because I convinced Will and Tash to give you a chance to prove yourself. We gave you a month, but all you needed was three weeks. Don't you think it's hypocritical you couldn't even give Kallie half that long?"

Josh acted like he was waiting for me to respond, but I think he knew there was nothing more to say. For once, he was absolutely right, even if I couldn't bring myself to admit it.

CHAPTER 22.

Over breakfast the next morning I stared at Kallie's junior year portrait on my laptop screen. I remembered when I first saw it in the school yearbook, a pa.s.sport-sized photo with all the mysterious allure of a Vogue Vogue photo shoot. And now here it was again, blown up to fill the entire screen. photo shoot. And now here it was again, blown up to fill the entire screen.

I glanced up from the computer to see if Finn had come downstairs yet, but no. He probably figured there was no need to be on time for school when he was always late leaving at the end of the day. I finished my last piece of waffle and checked out the photo again.

Maybe I should have been thrilled. All press is good press, right? But there was something deeply unsettling about seeing Kallie's likeness gracing a website run by a concerned parents' support group concerned parents' support group. And the photo was just too large, like the authors had decided that their audience would enjoy ogling Kallie even more than reading the text below.

I scanned the article. It was chock-full of phrases like "positive message," "endearingly humble," and "ideal role models." I tried to reconcile these observations with my own experience of Dumb-Josh's overflowing ego, Tash's overflowing temper-but the two just wouldn't mesh, so I kept reading . . . and discovered the article wasn't about Dumb at all, although the band's name appeared often. It was All About Kallie, and whatever she had said on the radio had clearly enchanted concerned parents across Washington State.

And that wasn't the only site dedicated to preaching the gospel of St. Kallie. Even religious bloggers got in on the act, describing Dumb as ideal role models for teens everywhere. Some splashed older photos of Kallie across the screen, ones I hadn't even seen before. Below one of them, a caption read: "Kallie Sims-modest, kind, and beautiful too!" Another described Kallie as "not only stunningly gorgeous, but a supremely talented lead guitarist."

I read that last sentence again, tried to pretend it didn't really use the word "talented" in connection with her playing. Heck, she hadn't played at all on the recording. And while I knew I should be laughing at a situation so completely improbable, I just couldn't. Because as Finn entered the kitchen and stared at me like he was about to administer CPR, it dawned on me that Kallie had just become the face of Dumb-a pretty face that Tash was no doubt eager to rearrange.

CHAPTER 23.

It was raining hard by the time school ended, so I stood just inside the main doors and watched a thousand students disgorge like water down a drain. Several of them actually flicked their heads in my direction as they pa.s.sed, which represented a serious shift from my customary invisible state. True, they didn't actually say anything to me, but as far as I could tell, they didn't often say anything to each other either. In any case, I kind of liked the attention.

Ten minutes pa.s.sed before I saw Kallie, by which time I'd begun to wonder if she'd taken a mental health day. Turns out she was just avoiding anyone connected to the band-not a positive development, but certainly understandable. She stood with her supermodel posse, all head flicks and lip biting. Every boy who pa.s.sed by ogled them, including Finn, who almost walked into me.

I sensed that the conversation I was about to have with Kallie might be delicate, and I wanted some moral support, so I told Finn I needed him to interpret for me. It wasn't actually a question, so I was taken aback when he said no.

If you don't help me, you can walk home, I signed, making the stakes perfectly clear. I signed, making the stakes perfectly clear.

Finn sighed. "Sometimes I really hate you," he said. But he followed me anyway.

I knew she had seen me-her full lips straightened into a thin line as I approached-but she wasn't about to initiate a conversation with someone as hopelessly uncool as me. She even turned away from me slightly, forcing me to stand right in front of her before signing.

Finn looked crushed, his eyes half closed while he relayed my message: "Piper wants to check that everything's okay."

Kallie curled her lip. "What are you talking about?"

I signed again.

"The band," explained Finn. "She wants to make sure there's no problem."

Kallie stared at Finn, exasperated. "Why are you interpreting for her? I've seen her at band practice. I know she can read my lips."

Finn looked lost, but all eyes were on me, not him. The modelettes shook their heads disapprovingly, like I'd been lying about my deafness all these years. I wanted to scream.

"I'm done, Piper, okay?" said Kallie firmly.

I thrust printouts of the blogs at her-the glowing praise, the Kallie love-fest. She glanced at the text and handed them back. "So what? I'm done. That's my final answer."

I took a deep breath, produced a copy of the contract she'd signed. I pointed to a clause embedded deep on page three, the one that stated no member could leave the band without majority approval, under forfeit of $1,000 fine. Mom said it wouldn't be legally binding for anyone under eighteen, but I was willing to bet Kallie didn't know that.

Sure enough, Kallie's face turned ashen. "No way. You wouldn't."

I signed, Yes. I would. People want to see you. My mother is a lawyer. If you leave, she will sue you. Yes. I would. People want to see you. My mother is a lawyer. If you leave, she will sue you.