“Jada, what are you doing out here?” Karah exclaimed.

Piper saw no need to rat out the teenager. “Sorry about that. We were making too much noise and woke her up.”

Jada carefully slipped the Nerf gun behind her leg where her mother couldn’t see.

Piper gazed down at Logan. “As long as you two are awake, would you help me move him?”

“I will!” Jada exclaimed.

They maneuvered Logan back into the apartment and onto Piper’s couch. She fetched a bucket from under the kitchen sink and put it next to him, just in case.

Jada hovered over him. “Ohmygod, if he, like, gets sick, somebody should be watching him. Can I do it? Please, Piper! I’ll sleep in the chair. Can I, Mom? Please?”

“Absolutely not.”

Piper remembered how much Jada wanted to fit in at her new school and thought about the cred this would give her with her classmates. “It’s okay with me, Karah,” she said. “I’ll watch out for her. And this’ll be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Jada to observe firsthand the perils of fame.”

Karah hesitated, then conceded, maybe because she’d arrived at the same conclusion as Piper. “If there are any problems, send her home right away.”

Problems? How could there be any problems? Piper thought, but didn’t say.

She wouldn’t let Jada sleep in the same room as Logan, even if he was comatose, and she sent the teenager to the bedroom. The club was closing, so she didn’t have to go back downstairs. After she’d washed her face and exchanged her dress for sweats, she curled up in the living room chair.

It seemed as though she’d barely fallen asleep before a thin shaft of sunlight followed by a rap on the door awakened her. She peeled open her eyelids. Across the room, Logan Stray lay on his stomach, a hand and foot dangling over the edge of the couch onto the carpet. In the bedroom, Jada was still asleep.

Her neck was stiff, and it cracked as she pulled herself out of the chair. Cursing whoever was on the other side, she stumbled across the carpet.

Two bright-eyed women with cheery smiles pasted on their faces barged in. One held a cardboard tray of coffee, the other a box of doughnuts. Piper gripped the doorknob to support herself. “You are going to die.”

“And good morning to you.”

“How’d you get in?” Piper growled.

“Cleaning crew.” Jen set the doughnut box on the counter, and Amber did the same with the coffee.

“Go away.”

“Can’t,” Jen said. “Dumb Ass asked me out.”

Amber puffed up with outrage. “She’s thinking about going, and you know he’ll tell her she has to have sex with him to keep her job.”

“Probably.” Jen ripped open the doughnut lid and pulled out a Bismarck.

Piper yawned. “Timezit?”

“Eight o’clock,” Amber said, “and you’re always awake at this time.”

“Not when I’ve been up most of the night!”

Just then, Logan rolled over, and the part of him that wasn’t already on the floor slid there. But he still didn’t wake up.

“That’s Logan Stray!” Jen exclaimed. And then, after a long pause, “Is he alive?”

Piper slouched back into the chair. “I guess.”

“If you killed him, we’ll help you hide the body.”

“I know who Logan Stray is!” Amber sounded as if she’d come up with the answer to Final Jeopardy.

Someone else knocked on the door.

“Will everybody leave me the hell alone?” Piper shouted.

But Jen had already opened the door, and Berni stormed in. Her short hair erupted in an orange geyser around her face, and a pair of pink sweatpants poked out from under another of Howard’s old cardigans. “I knew it! You all came here so you could talk about me behind my back!” She spotted Logan on the floor. “Isn’t he a little young for you, Piper?”

Piper buried her face in her hands. “Will somebody please kill me?”

Berni rounded on Amber. “You’re behind this secret meeting. You think I’m too old to know what I saw with my own eyes. Next thing you’ll try to get me hauled off to a nursing home.”

Piper lunged for the coffee.

“Calm down, Berni,” Jen said. “Stop being so mean to Amber.”

“Me?! Why don’t you tell her to stop being so hateful to me?”

Maybe it was the coffee or the sugar from the doughnuts, but Amber, like Tosca about to hurl herself from the battlement, reared up to her full height and advanced. “I have never been hateful to you, but from the day we met, you’ve either acted as if I didn’t exist or been outright—”

“You called me Mrs. Berkovitz!”

“—or you’ve been outright rude. I was brought up to be respectful of my elders, but—”

“There!” Berni pointed an accusing finger at all of them. “Did you hear what she said? Did you hear what she called me?”

Mild-mannered Amber’s anger was a sight to behold. “Regardless of your age, there’s no excuse for racial prejudice!”

Berni puffed up. “What racial prejudice? Stop trying to change the subject. And how can you talk about respect after the way you’ve treated me?”

Jen was still looking dumbfounded, but Piper was starting to get the drift.

“I’ve treated you with nothing but respect!” Amber exclaimed.

“Like I’m in my coffin. You call that respectful? Jumping in front of me to open doors . . . running out to get my newspaper in the winter because you think I’m too old and weak to get it for myself . . . You think I don’t see what you do, but I still have eyes. Piper doesn’t behave like that. Neither does Jen. Is that respectful?”

Amber’s mouth closed on its way to its next sentence. Jen laughed.

Somebody had to be the grown-up here, and Piper figured she was it. “Amber,” she said with forced patience. “Berni doesn’t hate your guts because you’re Korean . . .”

Berni protested. “What does Korean have to do with anything?”

“She hates you because you were brought up to be respectful of your elders,” Piper said. “Which she is.”

“That was unnecessary,” Berni sniffed. “And I don’t hate her.”