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handful of fries into my mouth. “Thergonaslwmdn.”
    â€œReally, Jameson. Your manners.”
    I chewed and swallowed. “They’re going to slow me down,” I repeated.
    â€œOr, it could be their timing is perfect.”
    â€œSay what?”
    Michael heaved an exasperated sigh, something he frequently did when speaking with me. “Perhaps those girls are more than meets the eye.”
    My gaze shot up to the visor and I gave Michael—well, my Bluetooth link to Michael—a suspicious look. Weren’t those the same words I’d been using about Dakota?
    â€œAre you saying Ms. Preppy and her punk sidekick are bad news?”
    â€œAu contraire!” Michael shrilly negated me. “What I’m saying is they just might be the key to Dakota’s downfall.”
    I crumpled up the red fry box and tossed it into the paper sack on the floor. “Miiiikey,” I drawled in warning. His cryptic clues were beginning to piss me off. “What do you know about these girls?”
    â€œI really can’t say—”
    I yelled an expletive that had the old man huffing in surrender.
    â€œOkay, okay. Look, all I know is they’re supposed to be there. And you’re supposed to use them.”
    â€œUse them!” My appetite vaporized and the food I’d eaten congealed in my stomach like day-old bacon grease. He wanted me to use the girls? My morals had frequently been challenged on this job, but this …
    â€œTrust the boss, Jameson,” Michael said, in a rigid tone he rarely used.
    Trust the boss, trust the boss.
    How could I have faith in—?
    Suddenly, a line from my mom’s favorite Christmas movie, Miracle on 34th Street, sprang to mind: “Faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to.” My common sense was screaming that things were getting out of control, way out of control, but I had to believe. It had worked for little Susan Walker and her Kris Kringle—hopefully it would work for me.
    What choice did I have?

ALY
    â€œWhat if I do something monumentally, horribly embarrassing?” Des hissed under her breath.
    We were walking down an endless hall of floor-to-ceiling windows on the seventeenth floor of a bronze L.A. high-rise that boasted a garden plaza. When we’d first emerged from the elevator, Des and I had gawked at the spectacular view of “The Miracle Mile,” a chrome-shiny business district so congested the locals joked it’s a miracle if you find a parking spot within a mile. Although we were swaying on our feet from the dizzying height, the perf-panorama had worked to calm our nerves for uno momento. But now we were headed to the EnterTEENment Magazine office and, predictably, Des had grown a little … manic.
    I gave her a doubtful look. “Embarrassing, like what?”
    â€œI might have a spontanepiss.”
    â€œSpontanepiss?” I choked out the question.
    â€œWhat?” she asked in all innocence. “It’s a word.”
    â€œI’ll have to add it to my Des Dictionary, alongside pierconify and tattegory.”
    â€œTwo totally legit terms,” she declared. “You can’t tell me that a person isn’t personified by their piercings; they so are. And tattegory, hullo, you can take one look at a person’s tats and know everything about them.”
    Despite having heard her bod-mod theories a thousand times, I still grinned. “And spontanepiss?”
    â€œA nervous, spontaneous reaction. Duh. I have to pee when I’m scared.” She clenched her thighs together and looked over her shoulder where Jameson trailed us at a discreet distance. “What if I pee my pants?” she whispered, and then her eyes widened in alarm. “Or worse? What if—?”
    â€œDes!” I said in exasperation. “Don’t go there.”
    â€œBut—ha ha, butt, no pun intended—it could be like bowel Tourette’s.”
    I got