Page 18

Repeat, repeat, repeat. I zone out until, finally, the emotions fade, and the colors in the room seem crisp again. I’ve got this. I am chill.

Then, I grab my iPad from its hiding spot inside my jeans, grin down at it triumphantly, and scan the room for a good place to hide it.

Seriously, whoamI? Is this who I’ve become? Someone who gleefully smuggles contraband electronics, and isn’t automatically nice to bad people just because they’re nice to me, and who plans and executes an international revenge plot?

If I’m left to snowball, who knows where I might end up? It’s a slippery slope from rule-fudger to world domination, and, baby, I’m already enjoying the ride a little too much.

Eventually, I decide that inside my jeans is still the safest spot for it, so it goes into my drawer, with as many other pants and shirts piled on top of it as I can manage.

Once I’m satisfied, I figure I should probably get out before Skye comes back, so I dart outside. As I close the door, a frustrated groan rings down the hall. It seems like it came from within a nearby room, and the door’s open, so I peek inside to make sure everyone’s okay.

One of the girls—Perrie, I’m pretty sure her name was—is sitting on the shag rug in the middle of the floor, with long legs stretched out in front of her, and a steaming mug of coffee on the floor beside her. On her lap is the binder of instructions Gwendolyn gave us, and she’s flipping through it quickly. Her suitcases are empty already, and from the looks of the room, at least 60 percent of her luggage was made up of sneakers. There are at least fifteen pairs, lined neatly up against the wall.

“Hi,” she says when she notices me in the doorway. “Come in. I’m just checking the cell phone rules.”

“That’s easy,” I say wryly. “We can’t have them.”

“Okay, obviously. But I figured it was because they don’t want us to contact anyone, right? So, I took the SIM card out of mine and brought it, but my producer confiscated it anyway! I’m checking to see if I can use the rules to argue my case.”

I think of my iPad and wince. “What do you want a phone without a SIM card for?”

“Photos and videos.” She turns the last page of the binder, then throws it off her knees in disgust. “I’m in a literal mansion, next to a glacier lake in Chalonne, and I’m not gonna have a single thing to show for it!”

“We get promo photos this afternoon, don’t we?” I ask.

Perrie shoots me a disbelieving look. “Yeah—a photographer who’s gonna make us all look identical. I’m talking proper content, for my profiles. I had a whole posting scheduleplanned out for when I leave the show, and now it’s totally wrecked.”

“Oh.” I sit down next to her and flick through the binder. I don’t really expect to find anything she didn’t, but, you know, it makes me feel like I’m helping. “Have you asked your producer if you can borrow a camera or something?”

“Honestly, I haven’t really had a chance. She sort of dumped us here then left.”

I get onto my knees and put the binder on the ground. “Well, my producer seems pretty nice, and he’s just downstairs. Wanna ask him?”

She considers this, then grabs her coffee. “Sure. The worst he can do is say no, right?”

“Exactly.”

A few minutes later, we find Isaac in the cobblestone courtyard, giving directions to a man in an apron. All around us, staff and producers are weaving around, carrying string lights, glasses, flower arrangements, clipboards, chairs, and camera equipment. We watch them set up for tonight with interest as we wait for Isaac to finish talking, then Perrie approaches him with her request.

Isaac shrugs. “I don’t see why you can’t borrow one. We have a ton of equipment. Just make sure you don’t take it home with you, or they’ll bill you, and they’ll charge you about three times more than it’s worth, okay? Trust me, I’ve seen them do it.”

“Yes, totally, I promise,” Perrie says with a squeal as Isaac leads us to the equipment caravan.

Half an hour later we’re both in bikinis, posing by the pool. Perrie is obviously a bit of an expert at this, because shejumps straight into creative mode, directing me to stand in specific spots and take the pictures at certain angles while she poses by the pool, in front of the fence, on a lounger.

“I need to get as many light neutrals and blues in the frame as I can,” she explains, which makes me respect the hell out of her. The most thought I ever put into my photo aesthetic is whether my hair looks flat. Then again, I’ve got about four hundred followers, and I’m related to an embarrassing percentage of them, so effort equals output I guess.

It’s not exactly hard to get the color palette she’s looking for; the sky is a rich blue, and there’s not a cloud in sight. It casts a warm glow over us, like we’re at a tropical resort somewhere, and not a short drive away from the snowcapped Alps. The pool is practically glittering as the sunbeams hit it, too—in a way that the camera really can’t capture. Or more likely, let’s be real here, the problem isn’t the camera, so much as the photographer. I’ve never taken photos with anything fancier than an iPhone before, so sue me.

“One last pose, one last one,” Perrie says, fluffing her dark brown, natural hair, which is sitting on her shoulders in an explosion of thick curls, before turning to lean on the fence and stare out at the view; a skyline of snowcapped mountains. Blues as far as the eye can see. “Like this. Candid.”

“Oh,supercandid,” I joke, snapping a bunch. “Okay, so, out of the thirty thousand options, you have about fifty shots that are better than anything I’ve ever posted in my life.” I pass her the camera to flick through and return to recline on a lounger.

“Yes,” she agrees, joining me. “Yes, yes,yes.Thank you. Now we can take fun photos.”

“Those weren’t fun?” I ask, and she turns the cameraaround to face us for a selfie. I lean in and pose with her while she clicks it about twenty times.

“Delete the bad ones before giving the camera back to them,” I warn, lying down as she flicks through them again. “Otherwise they’ll probably go online as, like, exclusive behind-the-scenes content.”