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  Pilar waited to see what Eduardo would say.

  "Samantha who ?" he breathed.

  "Students and faculty, ladies and gentlemen, gather round!" Vice principal Vorhees's voice boomed out from the public address system. "Gather round, gather round! It's time to announce your fiftieth-anniversary prom court!"

  The amplified voice shook Sam out of her fantasy. No, nightmare. Something about Eduardo and some perfect bitch named Pilar. What a horror. The last thing she remembered, she'd been thinking about Eduardo at his party. Then she'd seen the dark-haired waitress in the golden toga with the impossibly long legs. Then her mind had started to race, worry, invent.

  Pilar . Where the hell had Sam even come up with that289

  name? Did she trust Eduardo so little that she'd picture him with someone like Pilar ?

  Vorhees went back to the mike, as few of the thousand prom guests seemed to be paying attention to his summons. "Gather round, gather round! It's time for your fiftieth-anniversary prom court!" He motioned to the band, which struck up a ragged version of the Beverly Hills High School fight song.

  Focus , Sam told herself. This was the coronation of the prom queen, the culmination of the night. She'd planned on her documentary storyboard to intercut moments from this coronation through the film--she was toying with the idea of starting with it, in fact. She wanted close-ups of various queen hopefuls as they tried to hide just how badly they wanted that stupid crown on their heads. Sam scanned the crowd, which was clustering by the stage. Where was Parker? Where was Monty? She wanted to get as much film of this moment as possible; multiple camera angles of the moment when hopefully either Fee or Jazz would be named queen of the prom.

  Ah . There was Monty, exactly in the position she'd assigned him--behind one of the huge black subwoofer speakers on the stage, with a telephoto lens so he could come in tight on the triumphant winner. Where the hell was Parker?

  As Sam watched, two of Fee and Jazz's prom-weenie friends practically danced across the stage to the vice principal. They held a gargantuan envelope in the school colors that presumably held the names of this year's

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  prom queen and king. When the vice principal took the envelope, Hollywood premiere-style spotlights pre-posi-tioned on the Colosseum floor burst forth, their beams splitting the sky. Meanwhile, two more spotlights came together on Vorhees, who puffed out his chest a little. The bemused Slick Willy drummer let forth a thirty-second drumroll that ended with the loudest cymbal crash in history.

  "It's a pleasure to announce your prom court," Vorhees intoned, trying to build the tension by slowly tearing the envelope open and feigning having difficulty reading the names on it. "Our first two prom princesses are Stephanie Epstein and Katelynn Thistle-Phelps!"

  Two prom committee girls--friends of Fee and Jazz in variations on black de la Renta and Armani, respectively--bounded up to the stage to polite applause. Each received a bouquet of long-stemmed roses from Slick Willy's mop-headed lead singer. Sam caught Monty's eye and pointed toward the singer to make sure Monty got the moment on film.

  Vorhees quieted the rowdy crowd. "Our last princess is ... Ophelia Berman, escorted by Miles Goldstein!"

  There was louder applause this time, as Fee took Miles's arm and ascended the stage. Sam found that she was glad for Fee but aggravated that Monty couldn't cover Fee and shoot Jazz's reaction at the same time. Why wasn't Parker where he was supposed to be? At least Jazz was still carrying her handheld camera and filming her friend's moment of glory.

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  The new prom court assembled behind the vice principal. "And now, students and honored guests, the moment you've all been waiting for."

  Sam took one last look around. No Parker. Damn him.

  Vorhees dug into the oversized envelope for one last sheet of paper. "For your fiftieth-anniversary prom queen and king ... it's an honor to present to you Samantha Sharpe and Parker Pinelli!"

  What ?

  Amid deafening applause, Sam stood frozen to the spot. She couldn't possibly have heard what she thought she had heard.

  Suddenly, she felt Jazz's arms surround her. "We all voted for you, Sammy!" she cried.

  "There wouldn't have been prom without you!" someone else yelled, and then the accolades came fast and furious as Jazz used her handheld to film Sam's stunned reaction.

  "You rock! You saved our prom! Go, Sam! Go on up there, prom queen!"

  No, no, this was impossible. Me ?

  Somehow, Sam's legs took her toward the stage. Parker materialized from the opposite direction, taking the stairs two at a time before meeting Sam with an Academy Award-winning grin and dipping her backward in an Old Hollywood-style kiss. Then the vice principal and Ophelia draped him in a prom king sash.

  The applause and whistles grew even louder when

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  Slick Willy segued into a punk version of the old Miss America theme song. "Oh, great. Now you show up," Sam managed to hiss at Parker, away from the microphone.

  "Come on, Sam," Parker cajoled. "You're the queen. Enjoy it."

  When he righted her, last year's prom queen--Ivory Maxwell, the beautiful blond daughter of a horror flick director--placed the tiara with BHH in blue encrusted rhinestones on Sam's head.

  "Congratulations," Ivory, who was an aspiring actress, told Sam. "Let's do lunch sometime."

  "Speech, speech!" The cry went up from the crowd that pressed forward against the stage, but before Sam could make a decision about whether to say a few words--she wasn't sure she could even put together a sentence with both a subject and a predicate--Fee stepped up to the microphone.

  "I think we all know that Sam Sharpe single-handedly saved our prom," Fee recounted into the mike, the words echoing around the Colosseum, every head in the place nodding fervently. "I mean, how great is this? Here we are on the set of Jackson Sharpe's next unbelievable movie. Sam, we all just want to thank you for taking lemons and making lemonade!"

  The crowd roared. Sam saw Anna and Ben--they were beaming and applauding. Damian, Jordan, Skye-- everyone was cheering.

  The strangest thing happened. The omnipresent

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  voice in her head that always said that she wasn't cute enough to be the queen of anything fell silent.

  Here she was, with the crown to prove it and the hottest boy at Beverly Hills High with an arm around her waist. For a brief, singular moment in time, Sam Sharpe didn't just feel happy--she felt beautiful.

  The feeling was gone in an instant--when Monty stepped out from behind the big speaker. The red light of his camera reminded Sam that the magic minute was being recorded for posterity.

  Oh shit on a shingle. The film.

  Sam knew she couldn't be prom queen in her own movie. The judges would die laughing. Nor could she do the movie without including this section--you couldn't have a prom without a prom queen. What kind of a documentary would that be?

  Damn, damn, damn. All that work, all that planning, all those storyboards. Right down the goddamn drain.

  A few moments later, Parker helped Sam down the wooden ramp to the golden chariot drawn by four snow-white horses, conducted by a quartet of Roman gladiators in golden helmets. There would be a royal victory lap around the racetrack.

  "Where did you disappear to before?" She asked Parker as he helped her into the carriage. Not that it mattered anymore. But she needed to focus on something besides her now-dead-in-the water documentary.

  "I was with Jazz and Fee, trying to stop this disaster ," he explained. "They came to me all atwitter and said that

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  everyone was voting for you. I told them you didn't want to be queen, but they wouldn't listen. I tried, though."

  Her anger at Parker dissipated like helium through a four-day-old balloon, and she mustered the energy to wave mechanically to her classmates as they whistled and applauded the passing carriage. The fireworks she'd arranged for went off, exploding in confetti rainbows in the sky. Sam appreciated irony more than m
ost, and the ironies of the situation were overwhelming. Fate had conspired against her. Her documentary was finished. She could have accepted that. What was impossible to accept was that for one brief moment in time, Sam Sharpe had been chosen the fairest of them all, and the one person she really wished had been there to experience it with her--Eduardo--was two thousand miles away.

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  Thread by ThreadThe forty-five-minute limo ride back from Palmdale had been a grim and silent affair. Cammie had made sure there was space between them on the white leather seat. The chill in the air had nothing to do with air-conditioning.

  Now they were inside Adam's house, on the green leather sectional couch in the family room. The room was so cozy--stone fireplace, a big-screen TV, and a pool table--that it felt like it should be used only for convivial gatherings like Super Bowl parties or Halloween bashes for little kids dressed in scary costumes that didn't really scare anybody.

  Unlike the manila envelope in Adam's hands at that very moment.

  "Where are your parents?" Cammie asked. It was bad enough that Adam had the envelope--she didn't want Mr. and Mrs. Flood joining the festivities.

  "Upstairs, asleep."

  Adam turned the envelope over. Cammie saw the open seal.

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  "You opened it." Her voice was hollow.

  "Yeah," Adam admitted. "I shouldn't have, but ... I guess I thought maybe I could protect you if it was something bad."

  "Bullshit. It is something bad, and you didn't protect me.

  She took the envelope from him. He didn't resist. She didn't open it.

  "I can chuck it, Cam. Burn it, even," Adam offered.

  She cut her eyes to him. "You know me better than that."

  "Yeah." He sighed. "I do."

  What would be better? Slowly or quickly? Reading slowly could be like pulling a stitched wound apart thread by thread. Reading fast could be like having a heart attack.

  Fast was better. You either died from a heart attack or got better.

  She took out the papers. Adam had left the most relevant one right on top.

  SANTA BARBARA POLICE DEPART MENT WITNESS STATEMENT SUMMARY: DINA RACHEL SHARPEMrs. Dina Rachel Sharpe is the wife of movie actor Jackson Sharpe. Her statement, attached, indicates the following:

  Mrs. Sharpe was on board the vessel the night that Jeanne Sheppard went overboard.

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  Mrs. Sharpe had been picked up by the owners of the vessel, the Strikers, at the marina in Carpinteria at 6 P.M., after the Strikers and the Sheppards had departed from Santa Barbara Harbor at 5 P.M.

  Mrs. Sharpe admits to having sexual relations with Mr. Sheppard during the course of the evening. She did not or could not specify the time.

  Mrs. Sharpe claims to have been returned to the marina in Carpinteria just before midnight and denies being on the vessel either when Mrs. Sheppard disappeared or when the death of Mrs. Sheppard was reported to the Coast Guard the next morning.

  Numb. Nothing. Cammie felt nothing as the sheaf of papers slid to the celery-green area rug. Adam retrieved them and stuck them back into the envelope.

  "You okay?"

  "My father was screwing Sam's mother," Cammie muttered. The truth didn't feel real until she said it aloud. "My father was screwing Sam's mother . She was on the boat that night. Nobody told me about that."

  "That doesn't necessarily mean that anyone committed a crime," Adam pointed out. He scratched at the tattoo behind his ear and started to put an arm around her, then stopped and just stared straight ahead. This was awful.

  "Thanks a lot," she told Adam, her voice bitter. "You've made my prom a night to remember."

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  He held his palms up. "If I could do it over, I would. I'd--" He stopped himself. "Who am I kidding? I'd do the same damn thing again. I'd open the envelope, read what was in there, and then show it to you. I'm sorry."

  "I told you to leave it alone--"

  "I know--"

  "But you didn't listen to me." She felt her voice rise; the louder it got, the madder she felt. That was good. It felt so much better than that cold, dead place where her heart was supposed to be. "Do you know the position you've put me in? I fucking hate you right now, you know that? I hate you."

  "It's okay, Cam." He spoke softly and held his arms out to her.

  "Leave me alone, you asshole! I mean it!"

  His arms wrapped around her.

  She willed herself not to lose control, not to push him away or pummel him or--worst of all--cry. Instead, she went as stiff and unyielding as a mannequin, and didn't speak until he let go of her body.

  "I was right," she whispered. "All these years. I knew I didn't know everything."

  He stroked her hair. His touch didn't alarm her now, didn't revolt her. In fact, it somehow gave her the courage to go on.

  "Ask my dad about that night and he always changes the subject. He says I'm only making things harder for me, for him. For him !" She leaned her forehead against his shoulder. "My mother hardly drank. I remember how my dad would tease her--it was a big deal if she had

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  a glass of wine at a restaurant. She was on the swim team at UCLA." She lifted her face so that she could look into his eyes. "Does that sound like a woman who fell off a boat?"

  "I don't know, Cam--"

  "Goddamn. My best friend's mother slept with my father, my father never says a word about it all these years, and I find out on prom night. I shit you not: John Hughes wouldn't make this movie. Freddie Prinze Jr. wouldn't be in it. Shit. Keira Knightly wouldn't be in it!"

  Cammie got to her feet and started pacing in front of the fireplace. Meanwhile, Adam sat back on the couch looking visibly relieved, as if he'd emerged unscathed from a horrible storm. "Maybe ... your dad didn't want you to know he was having an affair."

  Cammie's laugh sounded dark and bitter to her own ears. Her father always had affairs. He wouldn't have given a shit if the whole world had known he was doing Sam's mom. It wasn't like the man had a conscience. Nope. There could be only one reason he'd covered it up all these years. It was time to say it aloud.

  "I think they killed my mom. My dad and Sam's mom."

  Adam paled. "Geez, Cammie, you don't know that--"

  "Like hell I don't." She strode over to him, grabbed the envelope, and headed back the way they'd come in.

  Adam bounded after her. "Where are you going this time?"

  "To do what needs to be done."

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  Cerebral AnnalandThe unofficial prom after party was at Shutters on the Beach in Santa Monica, but Anna and her friends were having their own private afterparty on the set of the new hit television show Hermosa Beach.

  Clark Sheppard's talent agency had packaged the show, meaning that the writers, stars, and directors were all Apex clients--it meant the Apex agency got an even heftier chunk of the revenues than usual. Anna had briefly been an intern for Clark, but even her friendship with the show's wunderkind writer, Danny Bluestone, hadn't prevented her from walking away from the gig. She'd found Clark to be a venal man. Yet by permitting his daughter and her friends to have their after-prom party here, he'd proved that even the worst people in Hollywood occasionally came through for their children.

  When the convoy of limousines had arrived at two-thirty in the morning, there was a bonfire already lit on the beach and a sound system set up on the patio of the hotel that was the main set for Hermosa Beach. The best restaurant in Hermosa Beach , the Blue Pacific, had

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  set out a sumptuous buffet for twenty: cold cracked lobster; a marinated salad of octopus and baby shrimp; a fruit salad of fresh pineapple, coconut, apples, grapes, and almonds; a dozen different pâtés and cheeses, plus hot bread baked in a portable oven right on the beach. Two older bartenders served lemonade mojitos--mint leaves with sugar syrup, club soda, lemon juice, and vodka. For those not in a lethal-lemonade mood or who preferred to make an atempt to sober up, t
here was espresso that could be laced with Kahlua.

  Fifteen minutes after they'd arrived, Anna and Ben were walking hand-in-hand in the moonlight along the ragged surf line where the surf washed up and then went back out to sea. They were both barefoot, having left their shoes up by the patio. Ben casually two-fingered his tuxedo jacket over his shoulder. Suddenly, Anna giggled.

  "What's so funny?" Ben wondered.

  "I'm still thinking about Maddy and Jack," Anna admitted. "What you told me."

  "That it was all a plot for her to get Mr. T?" Ben stepped out of the gentle splash of an approaching wave. "That's not the worst of it. That teacher was into her. I made her promise that she wouldn't hook up with him."

  "I hope not." The sea breeze ruffled some hair onto her cheek and she pushed it back. "But you can't control what she does."

  "Yeah, I guess...." He didn't sound convinced.

  "You could climb down from the horse, Ben," she

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  ventured. "Not everyone needs you to be a white knight."

  "I don't do that."

  She bumped into him playfully with her hip. "Yes, you do. You've done it ever since the day I met you, when you saved me from that jerk on the airplane."

  "Well, he was messed up."

  "So are a lot of people in this world. You come through for everyone. But sometimes ..."

  She hesitated, unsure if she had any right to continue. Who was she to tell him what he should or shouldn't do?

  "Go ahead," he urged ruefully. "Hit me with your best shot."

  Right. Honesty.

  She stopped and took his arm. "Not everyone needs to be rescued, Ben. I don't."

  "Only when you're stuck in the window seat on a long flight next to an asshole, huh?" There was a subtle but noticeable edge to his voice.

  She turned toward the dark ocean. "The reason I understand is because that was always my role with my sister, Susan." She thought about all the times she'd held Susan's head over the toilet while her sister puked up whatever illegal substance she'd ingested, all the times she'd been at parties and spent the whole evening as Susan's watchdog. "Maybe taking care of everyone else is just a kind of protection."