Half the people in the lobby—the half who recognize my name—turn to look. Begin pulling out their phones. Clicking on their cameras at my arm elbow-deep in trash. I grab the lid with one hand and push Ethan toward the emergency exit with the other and we escape into an EMPLOYEES ONLY hallway that connects to a few offices and the laundry service.

“I hate this,” I mutter as Ethan takes off the ornate golden lid and drags out the clear plastic bag. “It’s at the bottom, isn’t it? Isn’t that it?”

He twists the bag and holds it up with one arm. “I think that’s a fast-food container.”

It is.

“Maybe it’s more toward the middle?” he reasons, but I shake my head.

“No, I remember the clunk as it hit the bottom.” I step back and press my palms against my eyelids. “Someone found it. Someone saw me chuck the envelope and then went after it.”

I feel myself spiraling just as inevitably as a spiral galaxy.

Breathe. Think. Breathe.

I press myself against the wall and slide down until I’m sitting because I can no longer stand upright. I can’t feel my knees.

“I am in so much trouble,” I whisper.

Ethan puts the bag back in the garbage can and digs into his pocket, bringing out a small bottle of hand sanitizer. He squats next to me, squirts some into my palm, lathers his own, and stuffs it back into his pocket.

I take out my phone to look at the Twitter handle that leaked the scene. A faceless gray icon. Whoever it is posted a photo of the script. In it, the page is surrounded by retro green carpet. I know I’ve seen it before, but the longer I wrack my brain the less familiar it looks.

Ethan glances down at my phone and makes a face. “Looks like the hideous showroom floor. Well, I guess there’s no accounting for taste.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, I guess there’s no accounting—”

“About the background in the photo. This is the con carpet?” I point to the art-deco pattern behind the script. “This carpet?”

Realization hits him. “That carpet.”

All the color drains from his face—and probably mine, too. That confirms my worst fear. I tossed the script Amon gave me, I leaked it, and the worst of it is: this anonymous trash panda knows the future of my career before I do.

Never mind whether Amara is dead—

“I am so dead,” I say. My voice is barely a whisper but steadily gets louder the more I panic.