The next day, I pass the morning in a small gym (which has been blocked off for my private use) doing weighted lunges (ouch!) and an hour-long Pilates workout with Gunner, my personal trainer, before going over footage of last night’s concert with Lance. He’s made a list of twenty-three barely noticeable errors I apparently made in the dance routine he choreographed.

“Honestly, Star, are you going to take this seriously or not?” he asks, letting out a disturbed sigh.

I’m torn between hating him and feeling frustrated that I’m not getting it right. It’s not like I’m not trying. But nothing I do is good enough for him.

“You’re never going to reach the next level if you don’t want it,” he snaps.

“I want it,” I mumble back.

“Then you need to work harder.” He rolls his eyes at me. “Some days, I don’t know how you got to be the pop princess you are.”

Mom lets him talk to me like this only because he’s the best in the business. I’m not even allowed to snap back. I bite my tongue so hard it hurts.

I’m mentally and physically exhausted by the time I head back to the Regency on Park Avenue with Mike and Tiny Joe, my bodyguards. The lobby is overflowing with screaming fans holding I LOVE STAR and YOU’RE THE STAR OF MY WORLD banners as I cut across to the elevators. I stop and sign a few dozen autographs. (I’m allowed to sign in “controlled environments,” like hotel lobbies, when I have two or more bodyguards present.)

“We love you!” gush two little girls in unison as I sign a white canvas teddy bear with the pink Sharpie they’ve handed me.

“You’re pretty great too,” I say, winking at them, trying to ignore the fact that my legs are killing me, thanks to my dance practice with Lance. I’m starting to get a splitting headache. One girl shrieks so loudly that I’m afraid my eardrums are about to pop. This does not help my headache.

“W-would you g-go out with me?” asks a boy who can’t be older than ten, as I sign a poster he hands me. I smile at him.

“I wish I could,” I say. “But you know, Jesse Bishop might get mad.” It’s times like this that my faux romance comes in handy.

“He d-doesn’t l-love you as much as I do,” the boy says solemnly, his voice cracking. “My dad could drive us to the m-movies.”

“Ask me again in a few years,” I say. I give him a peck on the cheek and he turns beet red.

“You’re hot,” says a teenage boy dressed all in black as he thrusts a CD case at me for my autograph.

“You totally rule,” affirms a pink-cheeked girl in a T-shirt emblazoned with my last album cover.