Bowie doesn't acknowledge Mom on his way out. Her eyebrows lift when he storms past, but she doesn't say anything to him or me. I'm sure it's just one more strike against Bowie in her mental tally that she hints at from time to time.

My phone dings in my hand. A message from Elton pops up on the screen, answering my earlier text.

They're both alive. The mother was treated for minor injuries last night and released. The daughter is at Children's Hospital and had surgery to remove shrapnel from her arm and her leg, but she's expected to be okay. How are you holding up?

The injuries, surgery, and shrapnel aren't good news, but knowing the fan I was supposed to meet last night made it out alive is. I tuck my phone in my pocket and amble down the stairs.

Two police officers stand in the foyer. One officer looks out a window that's next to the front door. I presume he's watching Bowie make his escape from me and anything that might be difficult or real. The other, a tall, dark-haired woman who looks to be in her thirties, observes me as I approach.

"Cayden?" she asks. I can't tell if her confirming this is a formality, or if she was expecting to see a pink-haired pop star instead of plain old me with my ponytail, puffy face, and worn T-shirt and shorts.

I nod. "Yes ma'am."

"I'm Officer Martinez, and this is Officer Lane." She gestures to the fair-haired man beside her, who turns his attention away from the window when he hears his name. "We'd like to ask you a couple of questions."

I swallow the lump that's rising in my throat. My recollection is fuzzy, but I remember answering questions last night at The Domino and also giving a statement to an officer. Most of this happened in the minutes between my fits of hysterics and eerie calm. I wonder now if I was incoherent and if Martinez and Lane are here to have me repeat what I told the other officer last night.

"Would you like to come in to the living room?" Mom's question is directed at the officers.

"This shouldn't take long," Martinez replies. "I think most questions were covered last night."

This is something different, then. "Do you know who did it?" I blurt out.

"We're still investigating," Officer Lane tells me, but the crease in his forehead and the way he shifts his weight from one leg to the other are signs he knows more than he's saying.

"Are you familiar with a nineteen-year-old man named Dallas Fernsby?" Martinez asks.

I must startle or give some other visual cue, because she and Lane both lock their eyes on me. Dallas Fernsby is a name I haven't heard in two years.

"Um, yeah." I cast my gaze down at a tiny piece of lint on my shirt. An image of Dallas as a lanky eleventh-grader comes to mind. I visualize his sandy hair, slate gray eyes, and freckles, and the brightly-colored ironic T-shirts and earbuds he wore back then like a uniform. Half the school had a crush on him, or at least it seemed that way.

"Does that mean you knew him?" Lane prompts.

Knew him. Lane is speaking in past tense. A knot forms in my stomach.

I glance up at the officers. "You just said 'knew him.' Was Dallas one of the people who died last night?"

"Did you know him?" Lane inquires again. I guess we're both good at sidestepping questions.

"Kind of, but not really." My voice is quiet. "He went to the same school Sawyer and I used to go to. Dallas specialized in performing arts and got a lot of lead roles in school productions. Everyone knew who he was, but I didn't know him personally."

"Sawyer?" Martinez repeats.

"Sawyer Santiago," I clarify. "He's my best friend, and his band opened for me last night."

"What else can you tell us about Mr. Fernsby?" The question comes from Officer Lane.

I feel like I'm being tag-teamed. The few scattered memories I have of Dallas from our time at the same school flood my mind, and each one causes the knot in my stomach to grow. I take a breath, trying to fight the queasy feeling once again rising inside of me. Mom touches my arm, an unspoken directive to take my time.

"Not a lot," I finally admit. "He was two grades ahead of me in school."

"When was the last time you encountered him?" It's Martinez this time.

"Actually encountered?" I ask. No one responds, except for the slight bob of Officer Martinez's head. "Probably never," I continue. "I don't remember ever having a conversation with him. He was just someone whose name I knew, because everyone knew who he was, or they did then. He was a star at our school."

"Deni has been home-schooled and tutored for close to two years," Mom pipes up. "It became impossible for her to attend a regular school with her schedule after her first album was released."

Lane scribbles something on a notepad. "Did Mr. Fernsby ever try to engage with you while you attended school together, or since then?"

It's an odd question, since I just told them I've never talked to Dallas. "Not that I know of. It's possible he reached out to me on social media and I didn't see it, but I don't know why he would."

Lane stops writing. "So you never had a friendship or anything else with Mr. Fernsby?"

I struggle to keep impatience from creeping into my voice. "No. Is there a reason why you think I'd be friends with Dallas?"

It's Martinez's turn. "Did your friend Mr. Santiago engage with Mr. Fernsby at all?"

"I don't think so," I answer. "You can ask him, but I'm pretty sure he never spoke to him either. We didn't hang out with the same people Dallas did and we didn't have classes with him."

There's a lull in the conversation as Martinez and Lane take more notes. I use the opportunity to repeat what I tried asking earlier.

"Was Dallas at The Domino last night? Is that why you're asking about him?"

Martinez hesitates. "He's a person of interest," she replies.

A person of interest. That means a suspect. "You think he set off the bomb?"

"We're still investigating what happened last night." Lane caps his pen and tucks it into his shirt pocket. "If you remember anything else about Mr. Fernsby or anything you saw last night, please give us a call."

Martinez hands Mom a business card. The officers say something else, but I'm no longer listening. Neither of them has stated it outright, but they think Dallas did this.

It's somehow easier to believe a faceless monster attacked a group of random people than it is to think about this. Once Mom shuts the door behind Martinez and Lane, I'm overcome by nausea again.

* * *

Rumors start leaking to the media a few hours after the officers leave my house. By the time the evening news is on, the name Dallas Jones Fernsby is everywhere. I wasn't aware his middle name was Jones until today. It's creepy to hear Dallas called by his full name, but so is the thought of him being responsible for killing so many people last night.

Some news broadcasts and tabloid sites manage to scrape photos from his Instagram before the account is locked. Anchors and panelists search for clues in every image they find. Nothing escapes their scrutiny, whether it's something they deem to be a smug or troubled expression, or a benign article of clothing with a statement they find telling or controversial.

My phone dings and I know it's a message from Sawyer. I told him about the visit from Martinez and Lane right after they left. They stopped by his house an hour later to ask what he knew about Dallas, and his responses were in line with mine. Sawyer did have a small part in a musical theater production Dallas starred in after I left our school, but they only attended rehearsals together. There was no conversation between them beyond brief hellos.

It makes no sense that he would do this. He was nice to everyone. Sawyer's thoughts are the same as mine.

There are now rumors the police found a suicide note written by Dallas when they searched his mother and stepfather's house in Topanga Canyon today. On the TV in my living room, a panelist on a news channel speculates about the contents of the note, and about what little they so far know of Dallas' life.

One panelist remarks on his parents' divorce when Dallas was eight years old. Another throws out theories about the supposed pressures to achieve at our performing arts school, and the cutthroat competition. The way the lady speaking describes our school, she may as well be talking about a parallel universe from what Sawyer and I knew.

One man mulls over the link between Dallas and me having attended the same school. He ponders if we had a connection to one another that could have given rise to the violence and what appears to have been a suicide bombing. Unreciprocated attraction, perhaps, or psychological games and bullying. Those words actually come from the man's mouth, but he's careful to say these are only his own thoughts and theories. He's trying to stir things up without bringing on a defamation lawsuit. The entire panel latches on to what he speculates about, some disagreeing with the ideas and others agreeing.

It feels as if they're shifting some of the blame to me. They may as well say they believe what happened was caused by something personal between Dallas and me, and it led to my fans getting killed. I want to scream at the TV that there is no link. There's no occurrence from before last night that would ever have put Dallas on my radar or cause me to think he would do this.

The television screen goes dark and the panelists' voices fade from my living room. It takes me a moment to realize Mom is now in the living room and has turned off the TV.

"They're a bunch of sick and twisted vultures," she mutters, setting the television remote on the coffee table. The lines etched between her eyebrows and the faraway look in her eyes tell me her remark isn't only about the panelists who were on our TV just now. She's endured the baseless commentary before, fifteen years ago, while she mourned the loss of my father, two of his legal firm partners, and six paralegals and law clerks who died in a workplace mass shooting.

"Thanks for turning that off." I get up from the overstuffed loveseat and walk to where she is to give her a hug.

"Don't listen to any of them," she cautions. "They'll grab hold of anything they can and keep going until it spirals out of control."

We've had different versions of this conversation on a few occasions since my singing career took off. It's nothing new, but being hounded by paparazzi and having my wardrobe, hair, or dates with Bowie picked apart are one thing. This is something beyond my darkest nightmare.

"I know." I hug Mom a little tighter, then release my arms from around her.

"Are you hungry at all?" she asks. "I can make us something for dinner." Her hands fidget with the gold bracelet she almost never takes off. It was the last gift she received from my dad.

I skipped breakfast and lunch today and have no appetite to speak of, but I won't give her more reasons to worry about me than she already has. "Sure," I lie. "I can eat something. Maybe the roasted vegetable pizza that's in the freezer?"

"I'll warm up the oven." Mom's gaze lingers on me for another second or two, then she turns and heads for the kitchen.

I flop back onto the loveseat and pick up my phone. The TV may be off, but Dallas is still on my mind. I have a few minutes while Mom is busy in the kitchen, so I open Twitter and head for the danger zone of my mentions. I need to know if Dallas tried contacting me in recent days, and if it will help me understand any of this.

I told Martinez and Lane that it's possible Dallas could have reached out to me and I just didn't notice. With the number of posts I'm tagged in, it would take a few hours every day to read through all of them. I'll glance at my mentions once in a while and respond to or retweet my fans, my record label, and some of my friends, but I usually miss thousands of posts.

Today's mentions are no exception. They're at least ten times worse than usual, and that's because of what happened last night. I scroll through, trying not to read anything asking me about what happened at The Domino or that extends thoughts and prayers. The sentiment is appreciated, but it's too soon to read those without bawling again. The usual tabloid story shares are mixed in, along with up-to-the-minute conspiracy theories about my relationship to Dallas. I keep scrolling, trying to reach a point in my mentions from before the bomb went off at The Domino.

Those posts are different, but they're the type I've become used to.

Give it up, @CaydenIndigo. Everyone knows you and Bowie aren't dating, and it's all about selling albums and tickets to your summer tour. You expect us to take your fake hand-holding and tweets to each other seriously?

The tweet was posted by someone using a blurry image of cinnamon toast cereal with googly eyes and drawn-on eyebrows for their avatar. A peek at their profile shows me a dozen more posts in the last twenty-four hours slagging on different celebrities. I return to my mentions.

Ugh. Of anyone @RealBowieNelson could hook up with, why would he settle for @CaydenIndigo? She's dull as a rock, shorter than a tree stump, and she's not even pretty. And seriously, what's with her eyebrows?

That one comes from someone whose avatar is a photo of Bowie with an unbuttoned shirt. I'm curious if anyone would be good enough for Bowie in this fan's opinion, but I don't bother asking. There are hundreds of other tweets just like it on any given day.

I skip past a few more posts criticizing me, along with others that gush about my music, my style, or me, and a handful that make no sense at all. I stop when I get to one from a celebrity gossip blogger who writes for Tinseltown Buzz.

Is it over for @RealBowieNelson and @CaydenIndigo? A picture is worth a thousand words, and this one tells me Bowie was out with teen reality star Portia Garnet instead of attending Cayden's concert at The Domino.

A photo below the tweet shows Bowie in the driver's seat of his Maserati. A blond-haired, red-lipped girl who most definitely resembles Portia Garnet is beside him in the passenger seat. Both of them appear to be laughing and enjoying each other's company.

I scroll back up through my mentions, taking notice now of the posts that Bowie and I are both tagged in as replies to this one. Some of the ones that seemed nonsensical before make perfect sense now. If this is for real, then I know why Bowie wasn't at my show. I can guess why he wasn't answering texts from me last night, and I doubt it's because he was asleep.

I close the app, my plans to search for tweets from Dallas abandoned. With everything else that's happened in the last twenty-four hours, Bowie with another girl is the last thing I want to think about or deal with right now.