“The tabloids are here,” she said. “They’re supposed to be here to cover me. To make me officially part of the scene.” Her cry had gone angrier, and the familiarity deepened.

“And they still will.”

“How can they?” she seethed. “There are no lights on this piece-of-shit boat. How is anyone supposed to see me? How is anyone supposed to appreciate me and all that I’ve done?”

He put his hand on her arm, a calming, almost sweet gesture. “They will. The lights will come on and everyone will see you, Luna. I promise.”

“Don’t call me that,” she growled.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s a habit, I’ve told you. I will always see my little girl under that face, even if you get a million surgeries.” He ran a thumb down her cheek. “Even if you change your hair a hundred times or buy a hundred colors of contacts. You’re beautiful, just like your mother. Much prettier than that silly little starlet was, Luna.”

She slapped his hand away. “I am not Luna. I am Celeste. Why can’t you get it through your thick skull that I am Celeste? Not a silly little starlet. I am a star. Luna was a nobody. Luna is dead. I am not a nobody. I will not let you make me a nobody again.”

Realization washed over me like a tidal wave, and I swam in a gray and black sea. Of course. That was why her cry was familiar, why her voice was familiar. She wasn’t disguising it because she thought they were alone. But now I could see it. In her movements. In her posture. In her pitiless crocodile eyes. I sagged against the wall.

“You were never a nobody,” Peter was saying, but I couldn’t pay attention to his words, my mind was racing so hard.

I heard footsteps coming up the stairs and pressed myself into the shadows of the restroom.

“Sir?” a voice said. I peeked out to see a short man in a sharp uniform standing in the doorway.

“What is it, Tony? Why don’t you have the lights back on yet?” Peter snapped, irritation lining his face as he advanced on poor Tony.

Tony held up the hammer that had been hanging slack at his side. “Someone destroyed the breaker box, sir. Smashed it to bits.”

Peter took the hammer from Tony. My stomach lurched.

“Destroyed it?” he said, almost to the hammer itself, as if he expected it to be able to answer him.

“Yes, sir. It is not fixable tonight. We will need to replace the whole thing. There are also wires loose in the upstairs storage room. Door was unlocked and open.”

Peter’s face twisted. “Wires loose?”

“Yes, sir. Someone wanted the lights out tonight.”